Game is designed to defeat you. You can't win.

[bryanW]

So i've found, after much research that the game is essentially designed to defeat you, you can't "win" this game. and that's just poor game design. But this *can* be fixed without sacrificing difficulty or game balance.

What I've discovered: Winter was designed as a mechanic to force players to leave an island, or run out of coins and be INCAPABLE of surviving by any means possible past day 100-105.

The long night (game of thrones reference), the neverending winter breaks a lot of what makes the game fun. It takes away from the realism, and it's essentially "okay, well this island is F**ked, time to leave."

But if the game were to have spring and winter come in cycles, perhaps even with the difficulty or quantity / types of Greed that came during different seasons, this could make it possible to outlast winter, build new farms, and see how long you can actually last given a renewed source of coin. But as it is now...haven't picked up the game in MONTHS once i discovered the game was basically like "nope, this island is f**ked now, time to leave. no 100 day award for you."

[Timeslice]

Kingdom Classic is designed around seasons. Kingdom: New Lands is designed around islands. If you're on an island for more than one year then you're literally doing it wrong. However this in no way makes the game unbeatable. Having beaten the game in its entirety multiple times I can tell you that it is far from impossible to do so, and is only even challenging if you outstay your welcome on an island.

If you want to play over multiple years then just play Kingdom Classic, but don't forget the very first lesson the game teaches you (every Kingdom falls). If you want to have a continually evolving Kingdom experience then play New Lands and stop trying to make a permanent settlement out of each island.

Remember: home is where the heart is, but the Kingdom is where the Crown is.

As for the achievements, those are leftover relics from Kingdom Classic and honestly aren't meant to be in New Lands. I couldn't care less, but it's incredibly frustrating for cheevo sluts.

[spacemanmillion]

Originally posted by Timeslice:

Kingdom Classic is designed around seasons. Kingdom: New Lands is designed around islands. If you're on an island for more than one year than you're literally doing it wrong. However this in no way makes the game unbeatable. Having beaten the game in its entirety multiple times I can tell you that it is far from impossible to do so, and is only even challenging if you outstay your welcome on an island.

If you want to play over multiple years then just play Kingdom Classic, but don't forget the very first lesson the game teaches you (every Kingdom falls). If you want to have a continually evolving Kingdom experience then play New Lands and stop trying to make a permanent settlement out of each island.

Remember: home is where the heart is, but the Kingdom is where the Crown is.

As for the achievements, those are leftover relics from Kingdom Classic and honestly aren't meant to be in New Lands. I couldn't care less, but it's incredibly frustrating for cheevo sluts.

Well I guess that's explane everything

[NeosDany]

As long as the banker exists, this game is not designed to defeat you, the only thing that can kill you is the lag.

[TTV| N0fuxLoki]

the game is not even that hard to beat ^^ stopy crying and try aggain

[MarineKing]

oh

[mruuh]

Yes, the neverending winter is, well, neverending. It's not poor game design, though, far from it. It is simply a design choice, one with which you may agree or not. Not every game has to be for every player, each of us likes different things.

Your initial argument is akin to saying that purpose of life is to die, which is of course preposterous. The fun part comes between the beginning and the end. :) And planning for making it as long as possible in as good state as possible is a very engaging part of it.

And ... day 100-105? C'mon, try 140-150! Just like in life, if you live it well and plan for it (and have a bit of luck), you can push it pretty far. Or am I getting too metaphysical here? :)

[Lцсᶖаᶇ º¹]

Well either you destroy all portals or leave the island. I thought the point of new lands was to finish the boat and move the next island, so you shouldn't get too attached to your kingdom.

[CEARON]

Heck, if you so successfully manage 100+ days please add to the guides! I've been trying for tens of hours and haven't made it past day 55 T_T

[Orange Guise]

okay, well, let me shed some light on this one.

I was able to get up to a ridiculous daycount on Island 1, but that was back when the Stone Shrine was there.

I just got Kingdom: New Lands for the PS4 and my first Queen (Long Live her) traveled clear from island 1 to Skull Island with no troubles. As she went, she unlocked the Archer Shrine, the Ballista, and the Baker, and probably something else that I never used.

She met her end on Skull Island. I was doing okay on day 15, aggressively exploring immediately after an attack, when I got caught by the Greed. I had just thrown my last coin to a peasant; when I was struck the crown disappeared and did not reappear until the Greed had it... C'est la vie.

The game is tough but fair. Common complaints include "Stupid AI" - more like, stupid player who didn't bother to figure out how the AI worked, and just did whatever (and lost horribly as a result) and "Endless Winter". The winter is intentional. It is supposed to break the stalemate, force you to move on and play.


That said, I wasn't really feeling the squeeze on Skull Island. True, I got caught playing aggressive and I lost - but, things seemed to be proceeding at a normal clip up to that point. I even had that peculiar hourglass statue seemingly under control.

Making it halfway through the hardest difficulty stage (I had bashed a good number of portals by day 15) on my first attempt on the platform isn't too bad. Couple that with the fact that my total playtime on Steam with the game is only -14 hours-.

I think you may not be so good as you think you are.

[Orange Guise]

Actually, I'll tell you what. I'll go get the Day 100 achievement and then report back here. I already have a plan to make it happen.

[mruuh]

I got to day 130 or so on Island 1 even without a stone shrine, and I could have gone a bit further. Although at that point, your outer wall gets broken through every third or so night, and you start having to spend more and more coins to fix it, build new catapults, replace lost bows, and still keep getting new archers and bows for them. Still, I reckon that I could have kept going until at least day 150, I had more than enough coins saved with the banker, and the merchant's daily coin drop slows the spending down considerably.

I kept wondering whether it's better to have the archer statue active or not - focused fire brings down the big spawner guys in one volley, but with enough archers, unfocused fire creates a veritable rain of arrows that is more deadly for the small guys, as well as the flying mantraps. In the end, I went for focused, since the big guys can get through your walls faster.

My guess is that my game over would come more probably from all my defences breached through sheer numbers, my archers scattered and greedlings reaching me all the way on the dock, long before my money would dry out. I have to try Island 1 again someday, but it gets so boring...

[Orange Guise]

Hey guys!
I have been actually recording my attempts at clearing the 100 days achievement. So far I've botched 2 runs but, third time's a charm. Best of all, I was able to save the crown on each failure. So I'm still technically on my first queen after wiping my save.

I'll probably post a bunch of the videos later tonight. Stay tuned.

[Orange Guise]

Day 60!
Day 75!

Day... crap, out of hard drive space.
Hang on, I have to upload a few.

THERE we go! Day 100. It's quite possible. Uploading.
https://youtu.be/ibHjHJDrXP4

Give it about 40 minutes to upload.
Please enjoy.

[Orange Guise]

oops. Seems it was unpublished. There we go.
For those of you who are totally obsessed, I'm going to put that video in a playlist featuring the ENTIRE RUN from blank account to Day 100.

You can see me play the early islands, fail out of three separate attempts, why I decided not to bother with those tries, and how my full Day 100 run went (except for 3 days lost due to toothache and hard drive space deficit) as well as my prep cycle beforehand.

It's been a long, long, LONG, GRUELING run to get this one little achievement, but I did it and you are welcome to stare at the whoooooooole thing.

But I recommend just watching the day 100 video since it's nice and short... and then possibly the videos for day1 and day16 if you really want to see how I managed it. You can watch the whole setup there.

[bryanW]

i have "beaten" the game, i just find it some of the design decisions unacceptable. i have played through all islands, destroying all portals, getting all items, and beating all islands, my problem: or my complaint, is the fact that the season does in fact, change and never change again. it would have been far better game design technique to have winters last longer for the more difficult islands, but, eventually become spring again...and to have different sorts of challenges face the player the longer they CHOSE to stay in one place, not to make it, necessarily "easy" or "harder" by changing the season mechanic, but to incentive the player to not just "okay, here's a ♥♥♥♥ ton of coins, build the boat, bye now, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥" as soon as possible.