Just started Kingdom management....overwhelmed!

[Doomjazzer]

Hi all, after 20 hours of playtime, I've finally started the whole kingdom management aspect of this game and am overwhelmed by all these new mechanics the game throws at you. I haven't left the throne room yet, just been reading all the menus, and following the quests the game keeps throwing at me.

I'd already read online that 'problems' should be a priority over 'opportunities', however my biggest question at the moment is at what point should I found new settlements? Is it ok for me to focus on my original village first, and after I've built all I can there, to move onto founding new settlements? OR: should I be expanding rapidly and not aiming to populate every village with as many buildings I can?

I've just been following the main quests as they keep popping up, and for some reason it told me to expand into the Outskirts immediately.

Any general tips on the gameplay loop regarding kingdom management would be appreciated.

I'm guessing the first thing I should do is handle the hilltop curse quest before I do anything else? Then the Trolls quest? Should I visit the throne room every month? (I think I read somewhere you just need to be within your borders to access it?)

Thanks for any help.

[Hasefrexx]

Hi,

When you need to visit your throne room you will get a card that tells you to visit your throne room.

Founding settlements is not very useful, neither is building buildings. and claiming ressources on the map.

To get a strong kingdom, the most important is to level up kingdom stats.

To level up kingdom stats you need to reach a multiple of 20. Then you will level up the stat which will make your advisor have better rolls at opportunities and problems. They will succeed more often which will overtime increase your kingdom attributes to level them up again.

Right. So now, how do you start leveling them up? Claim lands! It provides a lot of flat bonus, much better than other sources. You should be close to getting something to 20 once you have the Outskirts. Then you go to your city, build a few buildings to bump that stat up to 20 (or complete an opportunity or problem with the corresponding advisor), you wait a few days, go to your throne room and upgrade your stat.

And you do that, again and again.



Now, Hilltop quest should always be your top priority. Do it ASAP (the battle and then the problem card in kingdom mode).

Main quest should be your 2nd priority. So trolls in that case.

Opportunities and problems all expire at the 1st of a given month, so checking kingdom mode 2 or 3 times a month is usually a good idea (in case you need a given advisor to solve 2 cards a month for exemple).

[Hasefrexx]

To add to that, the main advantage of new settlements is that you will unlock new artisans, so you might want to build the settlements even if you don't build anything there for a while. It also lets you rest and buy basic stuff there so it always helps when adventuring.

[Doomjazzer]

Interesting, thanks for the advice, much appreciated. This gives me a better idea of the gameplay loop. (this game is very counter-intuitive, I hope the sequel is more coherent!)

When I'm on the regular map, is there a button on the UI that can automatically take me to kingdom mode or do I have to trek back to my village?

[Zaris]

After nearing the end of my playthrough and reading about that myself i made a priority list, slight spoilers:

In general:
- equip your current heroes with best items and sell the rest (keep one good item of every type like heavy, medium light armor and some good weapons), you mostly only need money for buying building points, the best items drop only
- first goal is to unlock all 10 advisor slots, for doing that you need 60 in the kingdom stats for the main 5 advisors and increase their rank to 3 to unlock the new advisor slot
- look up all possible advisores and group members so you have some choices for every slot because mercenary advisors don't have mini events which can give more bonusses, there are some easy missable characters !
- buildings, villages, events and so on are just pure kingdom stats pusher, nothing more only some of them have a effect like "mage academy" for teleporting around the world map
- quicksave before doing throne room meetings to check out your options, try to use the advisor choice that they don't leave you if possible

Priority when a new story chapter starts like "troll trouble" at the beginning after Stag Lord:
- spend all money if necessary to build out all villages
- always do throne room meetings first, otherwise bad events happen
- always have advisors on "event" missions active, if none are availabe do "project" missions if you have BP over
- take your group and solve the chapter problem first / explore the map on the way, don't waste time on kingdom management (time jumps from missions) or many bad events will happen
- after clearing the chapter problem like "troll trouble" explore the whole accessible map, do sidequests and companion missions (there are blockers at the corners) to get xp, money, items, location unlocks for villages
- skip time by doing "annex new countries" and do "rank up" missions for your advisors so they have better chances for "events" and getting more BP/week
- if nothing is left to do just do project missions if you have money over (after mid game you swim in money)

You will have enough money, i'm now after chapter 4 and have about 750k gold over and everything build in my 8 villages.

[Breca]

Kingdom Management can be overwhelming at first. There are guides out there that can help, such as: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1534683229

First, make a hard save at the start the Kingdom Management (KM) phase of your game. Then leave it untouched as a safety net to return to, once you've played with KM for a while and gotten a feel for how it works.

Before thinking you can just learn KM as you go, it's a good idea to run a KM experiment (and don't go on quests in your experiment). Just play around with buildings. Watch how Events shape your kingdom stats, how timers work, and how to manage BP. Don't worry if things start to fail. That will be an important lesson.

A lot of Kingdom Management is actually Time Management, and understanding when you should spend time on quests, and when you should spend time ranking up. Both the Kingdom and Quests will seem to demand your attention at the same time.

Once you've gotten a good feel for KM in your experiment, return to your hard save, and start playing "for real" (but always keep that hard save, just in case). You should now have a sense for how long KM matters take to resolve, and how long you have to do some questing in between.

Bring rations on quests to minimize the time you spend resting. That will allow you to get back to your kingdom more than once a month, which should be viewed as a minimum. Events will pop up on any day of the week. The sooner you can task your advisors with an Event, the sooner they will be freed to address new Events as they come. That means your problems won't start piling up.

If all fails, and you are to the point of ragequit, because you like the RPG but hate the KM, there is a nice mod that will soften the timers. But try the experiment first, so you have a baseline.