One Dollar Short Achievement Alternative

Another guide on how to get the "one dollar short" achievement in 9kings.

You have 10 years until the merchant appears, so there are multiple options on how to reach the goal, but here's how I did it:

Walkthrough and Tips

- Start as King of Greed with 3 points spent in "Nepo-Baby" (King's abilities)
- Don't use any cards that spend or gain money (including cards that buff your units like Midas touch, vaults, etc.)
- Don't throw any card in the pit
- You can build units, towers etc. as usual. Upgrades you can also choose preferably level ups for your units/towers to make them stronger to do the fights for you.
- Each year/round gives you +9 Gold after the round is over.
- Kill 8 golden units in these 10 years with your palace (1 Gold per golden unit killed for Palace Level 1, 2 Gold for Palace Level 2, so you have to kill either 8 units or 4 units depends if you level the palace). Otherwise just sit back and let your units do the rest, don't accidentally kill more golden units than needed.
- When year 10 starts you will be presented with one last choice of cards, that's the point where you burn all your money to come out with 29 Gold. After the choice of cards, the merchant will appear directly and the achievement pops up.

Gold count in these 10 years

Note: You decide when to kill the 8 golden units with your palace Level 1, you can do multiple in one year or kill 1 each year, up to you. I counted the money for these 8 units at the end-year below.

- Year 1: 60 startgold +9 for year = 69
- Year 2: +30 startgold +9 = 108
- Year 3: +9 = 117
- Year 4: +9 = 126
- Year 5: +9 = 135
- Year 6: +9 = 144
- Year 7: +9 = 153
- Year 8: +9 = 162
- Year 9: +9 = 171
- Year 10: +8 from the killcount = 179, then re-roll 5 times (-10, -20, -30, -40, -50) = 29 Gold

Hope this helped and enjoy your achievement. :)

[mrBars1k]

King of Greed
The benefits of the Verticalist and Nepobaby, to get 60 coins.

Next, kill 6 gold units manually through your castle to get 6 coins in any year before the shop.

Then, before the shop, roll cards for money, leaving 29.

1 - 69
2 - 78
3 - 87
4 - 96
5 - 105
6 - 114
7 - 123
+ 6 (for killed units) in any year = 129

Subtract money for rerolling 10, 20, 30, 40 = 100 coins, leaving exactly 29.

[omega]

Shop in year 7 (and the game being buggy by being one gold wrong every two years?)

King of Greed with the Nepobaby perk and the one that gives you one more vault card at the start:

- Play on peaceful
- Do not use the attack of your base
- Play three cards on your plots in total (but no cards that generate gold!)
- Sell the rest
- Should be on 128 or 129 gold on the card reward leading to year 7: Re-roll down to 29 gold

Thanks for the guide; thanks for the comment @Dirty Dan

[Dirty Dan]

I dunno if the updates changed this formula since it was posted but I get the shop at year 6 now so this doesnt work out now. The guide did give me a nice outline on what I needed to do. So thanks for this.

For the merchant at year 6 you need to get 15 extra gold before then. I did it with 1 kill with a lvl 1 palace, 1 kill with a lvl 2, and 4 kills with a lvl 3 palace then reroll for 29.

Did this with lvl 1 nepo baby since for whatever reason putting down the palace gives 30 gold so staring year one with lvl 1 nepo baby is the 60gp+9

[Knight Lamune]

I did this on accident a few times on a pirated copy before I ended up buying the game. (It's that good.) It never happened again in a dozen hours, and I'd already done 9 Kings, both time travel achievements, etc. This stupid one was keeping me up. This tutorial just confused the hell out of me too, but the "hey dumbass just use Greed you can adjust your gold 1 at a time at level 9 to make it work..." was kind of what I needed.

[Christian Burger]

thanks!

[I am a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Architect]

THANK YOU 'SPOILER' IN THE COMMENTS

TWO LINES OF WORDS, AND WORKED, YOU'RE THE BEST

[GamerDad]

Yea this guide was hella confusing for me, i got to year 9 with 171 gold and then realized i was going to go over. I think my brain just works differently, here's a different brain train if it helps anyone
3x Nepobaby (90 gold to start)
Basically i just used the greed guy and made sure my money was at these stages by killing units when i needed to (8 in total)
I get my money to match one of these, then just let it ride, spend nothing sell nothing once you're at year 10 re-roll 5 times

If your money matches up with any of these years just let it ride, do nothing to lose or gain money


Year 2 - 107
Year 3 - 116
Year 4 - 125
Year 5 - 134
Year 6 - 143
Year 7 - 152
Year 8 - 161
Year 9 - 170
Year 10 - 179 - re-roll 5 times before picking card.

[WaffleKnight]

Simple solution, don't realize the achievement exists and get it on accident :)

[Spoiler]

I did this achievement starting with 30 gold and just selling 2 cards until year 10

[meffe]

i followed the guide and got 29 gold but i didn't get the achievement. I tried a few times but nothing...