How to Beat For the King (Updated 3/2022)

This guide gives you an overview on how to beat the game on Easy and Normal. Hardcore is a different beast, and one I've yet to master. There will be spoilers in this guide, not for the story, but for the fights. Do not read it if you don't want them.

Before you Begin

Edit: This game has changed quite a bit since this guide was written. I have since played a number of games and succeeded at beating the For the King Campaign on Master Difficulty in March 2022. Below are my thoughts and takeaways. This guide will focus on being useful to the master difficulty player. If you put these tips to use you should be able to beat the game on any lower difficulty. [/b]

You have the option between 4 different types of characters: Strength, Talent, Intelligence, or Awareness.

Strength Heroes:
Blacksmith - Available as a base character, Blacksmiths start with the skill Steady. This skill triggers Steadfast (sometimes) when attacked and prevents all damage and effects the attack would have done. The Blacksmith is the slowest character in the game, meaning that she will get less rounds of combat than other heroes.

Lumberjack - This character needs to be unlocked with 15 Lore before he can be chosen. He starts with the skill Justice, which sometimes triggers a single target attack to have an AOE splash damage equal to 50% of the main attack damage. This is an absurdly powerful skill early in the game.

Gladiator - The Gladiator must be unlocked in the Lore Store by defeating the Arena in the DLC campaign Lost Civilization. He is a fast Strength/Awareness hero, though I tend to use him as Strength. He starts with the skill Entertain, which produces gold when the Gladiator ends his turn next to a town or a market, as well as the skill Glory, which occasionally increases his damage for the first two rounds of combat. He also starts with a full set of Awareness weapons, which can be passed to a Trapper or Hunter for an early game damage boost.

Monk - The Monk must be unlocked in the Lore Store by entering a special Ice Cave in the campaign Frost Adventure and defeating the Yeti that guards the stuck Monk, a la Luke Skywalker. Like a jedi, he is trained in both strength and magic. He comes with the skill Party Heal, described in the Herbalist section below, and the skill Discipline. Discipline allows the monk to restore a focus to ally who is out of focus when he hits an enemy in combat.

Talent Heroes:
Minstrel - Available as a base character, Minstrels come with two special abilities. Encourage sometimes triggers an automatic success for another of your characters when in combat. Inspire triggers XP gain for your heroes that end adjacent to the minstrel on the worldmap.

Busker - The Busker needs to be unlocked with 12 Lore before he can be chosen. This character comes with three abilities of note. Entertain produces gold when the Busker ends his turn next to a town or a market. Distraction sometimes triggers an automatic failure of one enemy roll when in combat. Elite Flee allows the Busker to roll just once when attempting to flee, rather than the normal two rolls.

Treasure Hunter - The Treasure hunter can be unlocked from the Lore Store with 20 lore after encountering and defeating the unique Whale Belly Dungeon in the Into the Deep campaign. His two skills are Find Treasure, which gives a high chance of finding treasure on the overworld map once per day, and Mimic Whisper, which transforms mimics into regular chests when opening. He starts with an even amount of Awareness, Talent, and Intelligence, and can be played as any of those roles.

Intelligence Heroes:
Scholar - Available as a base character, Scholars start with the skill Refocus. This skill can regenerate 1 focus at the end of each round. This allows you to spend focus a bit more freely - and since focus = guaranteed successes, this is a good skill to have. My revised opinion is the scholar is the best hero in the game as he is the fastest intelligence hero and refocus is massively important to save other resources.

Herbalist - The Herbalist needs to be unlocked with 9 Lore before she can be chosen. She comes with two skills, and both are useful. Party Heal allows, when in combat or in a dungeon, for the Herbalist to spend a Godsbeard (healing item) to heal the entire party 75% what she would normally have healed herself. She also comes with the skill Gather Herbs, which allows for a chance at getting a free random herb at the end of each round. Herbs are pretty critical in this game, and towards the late game they become VERY expensive.

Astronomer – The astronomer is a DLC class that comes with two moderately useful special abilities: Support Range and Black Hole. Support range means that the Astronomer permanently has one additional range to be brought into combat initiated by your other characters, and Black Hole allows the astronomer to occasionally delete one enemy from the battlefield (which seems to work even against bosses). If Black Hole procs, you do not receive the experience from the mob sucked away, but you do receive a star fragment, which can be used to provide a party wide protect, a useful thing.

Awareness Heroes:
Hunter - Available as a base character, Hunters start with two skills. Energy Boost allows Hunters to occasionally get one more point of energy (movement) after they have exhausted their movement on the world map. The second skill, Called Shot, sometimes gives a full success bar of combat rolls when using a single target ability with a bow.

Trapper - The Trapper needs to be unlocked with 6 Lore before she can be chosen. She has three skills, none of them are combat active skills. First, Elite Ambush, reduces the number of coin flips needed to successfully ambush an enemy - a very useful action. Elite Trap Disarm, likewise, reduces the coin flips needed to disarm traps. Finally, the poorly named Counter Attack, which simply prevents you from being ambushed, turning those encounters into potential encounters to evade or ambush.

Hobo - The Hobo can be unlocked in the lore store with 15 lore after happening upon a special encounter marked with a purple question mark. The Hobo starts out with 70 value in all stats, which makes him jack of all trades but master of none. I don’t think much of this character.

TL;DR:
I think that the best setup at this time is to take a Scholar, Trapper, and Gladiator.

Quest 1: The Glittering Mines

Starting off:
Immediately take a quest from your starting town. If you are playing Master difficulty, take reduce chaos. If you are playing another difficulty, gold is likely your best option. Your #1 priority is to get a new weapon for your Intelligence hero so trade money around and buy a Lightning Staff or Dusty Tome if available when you are able. If you’re playing with a Gladiator and an Awareness hero, trade the extra weapon set from the Gladiator to buff up your team damage.

Secondly, keep your party together for fights. This is critical as it will help you avoid taking unnecessary damage. If there are fights within two tiles of your starting town, go ahead and take them with the first move. If you are playing on Master difficulty, use the teleport scroll from your Scholar to warp to Woodsmoke and take the additional reduce chaos quest. You will want to fight often, not only for the gold, but for the experience and loot that comes from them. Your goal is to have everyone at least close to level 2 with an upgraded weapon before the Glittering Mines.

If there are nearby stones you can devote to, try to work those into your path. The benefits from the stones can be massive and last until the devoted character dies. Some mobs that are worth fighting are the piranha plants, which give an herb as a reward, and bees, which can give an item to permanently increase one character’s resistance by 1.

You should search around the Guardian Woods for the Black Cave and complete it for the additional experience and loot before entering the Glittering Mines.

Things to do before you enter the Glittering Mines
1) Buy all the Godsbeard in every easy to access town (generally only Oarton and Woodsmoke).
2) Have an upgraded weapon for each adventurer

Optional:
1) Buy teleport scrolls and/or portal scrolls from towns

It will be critical to have a store of items for the late game that you have acquired in the early game. This is because as you complete quests, the price of all items will rise in the stores. For example - during the first quest Godsbeard costs between 8-10 gold each depending on your difficulty level. By the time you are ready to encounter the final boss, the same Godsbeard will cost well over 200 gold apiece.

You will want to have a good supply of Godsbeard and Golden Root for the later game.

Finish the First Quest:
When you finally enter the Glittering Mines focus the Bone Mages and Green Jellies first in combat. You ideally want to kill Green Jellies before they get a chance to act, else they will do an AOE attack that will hit and potentially poison all of your adventurers. When you get to the boss focus the things your party is strong against.

Don't hit the mage with your own magic users when there are bone warriors without magic resistance available. Try to knock individual enemies out before moving to the next as much as possible. If you are a strong physical team, focus the mage first. If you have better spell damage, focus the bone warriors.

Quest 2: The King's Maze

Starting off:
Once you finish the Glittering Mines you are on a timer. The turn counter at the top of the screen is a full day, or 15 complete turns. Once those 15 turns are gone, prices go up, new items are available for shops, and newly discovered locations are more difficult. Our goal is to discover all locations in the three biomes of Golden Planes, Rogue Isles, and either the Poisoned Bog or Burning Forest, by the time that day is gone.

Parid can spawn some distance away from where the Glittering Mines are. Do not hesitate to use the portal scroll dropped by the boss in the Glittering Mines to expedite the trip to The Golden Plains. You have precious few turns to waste in the Guardian Woods any longer. Hopefully you are about 3 at the moment. You are about to enter what I would consider the hardest portion of this game.

To mitigate this, you NEED to have at least one person on your team with access to Heal Party, either from an item or as a starting skill (Monk or Herbalist). That person should get both available upgrades for their pipe from a town (this will cost a total of about ~100 gold). Go to services, and upgrade their pipe. When heal party is used, it heals 75% the healing value of the user on everyone.

Monsters in the Golden Plains are all level 3-4, which will be quite a challenge for your budding party and I largely implore you to not fight them now. Your goal at this point is to reveal as much of the Golden Planes as possible while searching for the Catacombs mini dungeon and activating the quests from both Parid and Cazeli’s Watch. You should be under less pressure from chaos at this point and can afford to take an item quest if an exceptionally good item is available (Boots of Might or Goat Wizard’s Staff for example). Leverage the fact that the Catacombs dungeon will pull in your entire party from across the whole biome of the Golden Planes when you enter.

You should be level 3 at least exiting the Catacombs and will need at least 90 gold. Your next target is to get to a port and buy a Fishing Boat Deed. Do not tarry in the Golden Planes for any longer, we have stuff to do.

Begin sailing the ocean towards the Rogue Isles. Stay within 1 tile of land so that you are not ambushed by the Kraken, which can end your run. If you happen to encounter the Kraken, your best chance is to focus all your damaging moves on the body of the Kraken. If you kill it, the tentacles die as well.

Your goal is the same as it was in the Golden Plains, find the Dark Cave mini dungeon, find the Scourge, find the Chaos Generator and spawn the quests from Devil’s Wharf. Complete the Dark Cave dungeon and you should be level 4. Once this is done you can move onto the final biome (either Burning Forest or Poisoned Bog). Again, try to locate the mini-dungeon, Catacombs, and complete it. Locate the Scourge and Chaos Generator and spawn the quests from the two towns if possible. This should be the majority of your 15 turns, if you’ve been so lucky as to find everything.

Now you have a couple of goals, complete Sea Caves, fight the reduce chaos battles to give yourself some breathing room, and destroy scourges as needed to keep those under control. Use the money you get during this time to find some upgraded weapons with a focus on the following.
Sea Anchor (available at night markets only)
Goat Wizard’s Staff (available through item quests or night markets)
Sais (Lore Store unlock occasionally available in towns)


Only one character will enter to fight an Acid Jelly. The main threat here is that if the jelly hits you with acid, it will burn away one of your equipped items per round, which can end your run. To mitigate this, you can drink a mead on the first turn to protect yourself against the acid attack. The Jelly is slow and you will hopefully get three turns before it attacks again. Also, bring a panax to this fight. If the jelly hits you with acid, use the panax to cure that condition.


Before attempting either of these, your whole party should have weapons in the 14-20 damage range. This will allow you to continue to do damage to the increasing armor & resistances you will encounter on enemies. Your party should also have armor and resistance of about 10 (depending on the class) to mitigate the scaling damage done.

The Mind Lord fight can be tempting to get done and out of the way. This is a mistake, as the fight can be extremely challenging. The Mind Lord himself is flanked by two minions who tend to spam stunning moves. The Mind Lord can easily wipe your party with AOE if you consistently have stunned party members. I recommend fighting the Mind Lord last because of these difficulties. Bring anti-confusion gear if you have any.

You should strive to be about halfway through level 6 as you complete the last of the initial three objectives.

King's Maze
This is a level 6 dungeon, so you really need to be level 6 to survive it. If you’ve completed 4-5 of the 8 sea caves, you should be level 7 already. Coming out of the dungeon, you should be roughly halfway through level 8. Your focus will be very important here, not only in combat, but also to make it through deadly traps without worry.

TL:DR:
1) You are trying to spawn all fights, scourges, and dungeons in the first 15 turns post-Glittering Mines in order to keep the dungeons at level 3, and the quest fights/scourges at level 4 rather than level 6.
2) While the game sends you to the Golden Plains post-Glittering Mines, this is not really where you want to be. After completing the mini dungeon in the Golden Plains go do the same in the other two biomes and then use Sea Caves / Quest fights to level up prior to completing the main quest objectives.
3) You must upgrade your weapons and upgrade your pipes before entering the King’s Maze. All characters should have a level 3 pipe and a couple Godsbeard in their inventories. Your party healer should have a level 4 pipe. All character should be protected by a Sanctum.

Quest 3: Getting the Airship

Starting off:
Upon completing the King’s Maze you will be granted either a Glacier Tome or a Volcanic Tome. You want the Volcanic Tome. If you didn’t get it, you still have chances. Hurry your way across the ocean to Hasta and Trigger the Reduce Chaos Quest in each of the 4 towns of the Desert and Volcanic biomes. Each of these camps has a 50/50 chance to drop a Volcanic Tome. You can only spawn these 50/50 camps in the first 15 turns after defeating the King’s Maze.

The reason you want the volcanic tome is that it has the ability to reset the entire enemy lineup, removing their nearest turn entirely from the timeline. This will save you an INCREDIBLE amount of pain in the demon caves. Without this, you can expect to use 5-10 Godsbeard per demon cave.

You should be into level 7 at least by now, and as you cross the ocean should take advantage of the remaining Sea Caves to hit level 8. You are not given a terribly large amount of rounds for this section, so I advise using a portal scroll, or series of teleportation scrolls, to advance to Hasta once landing.

You are approaching the end game, and your items will not be needed much longer.

All of your heroes should have fully upgraded pipes at this time, and you should be flush with Godsbeard. You are going to need it. Monsters in the desert and nearby lava fields range from levels 8-10, and will be a large challenge if you fight them in groups. Fight solo creatures where possible on the way to the newly revealed Demon Caves and Ambush when needed.

You will want to have roughly 20-30 damage weapons on each of your heroes in addition to resistances between 15-20 on average. Don't be afraid to spend money at the towns in both of these locations as this is essentially the endgame.

Once you've reached Hasta, immediately set out for the Demon Caves, especially if they happen to be separated by some distance. In general, you will want to target mages first. If there are wisps, they need to die as they will drain all of your focus, but they will also reflect physical damage unless that damage kills them, so be careful.

Once you have finished the two Demon Caves you will need to make it back to Hasta before the round timer is reset one final time and you are given access to the Airship.

TL;DR[/b]
1) Finish all the easily accessible Sea Caves to get to level 8-9.
2) Get the Volcanic Tome from either being lucky in the King’s Maze or by spawning the Reduce Chaos quests and acquiring one from the camps that spawn.
3) Complete the Demon Caves by leveraging the Volcanic Tome’s Smoke Wall move to reset the enemy lineup and give your bruisers additional damage dealing turns.
4) Return to Hasta and acquire your airship.

Quest 4: End Chaos' Rising

Starting Off:
All your heroes should have ~90 in their appropriate stat based on gear which will give you a very high chance of proc-ing any status ailments their weapons may inflict. You will want extra damage to elemental gear. You may want status immunity. You will likely want a confuse immunity item or sanctum on your physical bruiser.

Ending the Game:
It is a simple thing to get to the final portion of the game at this point. Simply fly your Airship to the Tower and disembark. You will face four fights before encountering the final boss.

Your first fight will be against a generic mage and two henchmen. Second fight will be against an ice mage and two ice warriors. Third will be against a fire mage and two fire bowman. Fourth will be against a lightning mage and two lightning imps.

In general, I recommend taking down the henchmen before the mages. The exception to this is the lightning mage. Kill him first. In my experience, if the imps are killed the mage starts to spam a skill that can easily do 40+ damage to all three of your heroes at a time. Once you have killed the lightning group, you will ascend the final set of stairs and be greeted with a chest. Inside will be 3 full heal items. Use them or save them as needed. Fill up your focus with items. Use lotus flowers to prevent death and then cure the curse if needed using Hag's Bane. Finally, proceed forward to face the final boss.

You will be facing a mage and two wolf henchmen. The mage counts as humanoid and will be affected by +humanoid damage items. All three enemies have mediocre resistances, but quite a lot of health. The wolves have around 300 each and the mage over 600 on Master. The wolves are not immune to shock, which can be helpful, and the mage is not immune to water, which you can use to remove his shock immunity.

You will absolutely want to shock at least the wolves, and the mage as well if you can. If you can apply freeze, it will boost your damage output by around 25%. If you have an orb that can boost party evasion, that is a useful item to use here as well. Make sure you are using one item from your inventory every turn. Blow those evasion herbs, the combat speed herbs, the party armor buffs, everything.

The wolves have a group stun, and the mage can inflict a wide variety of status conditions. Kill the wolves one at a time, then focus the mage down. If you keep shock on the mage, this should be a rather trivial fight.

Congratulations, you've beaten For the King.

[lioneaglegriffin]

Thanks, didn't realize I was in endgame. Now I can stop being a packrat and liquidate stuff i'm not going to use.

[Koffer]

thanks to the guide did it ty very much kind sir

[Cal]

@defenestratable seems like some one off bug ive since started again and the catacombs are level 3 after doing glittering mines first

[Cal]

the one i found first in poisoned bog was on day 1 or possibly 2 it was right on the border of the starting biome

[Defenestratable]

@Cal I don't believe that is normal unless you have taken a very long time. The game automatically "levels up" all the encounters each day if you have not completed one of the main quest stories.

[Cal]

the 2 catacombs i found in poisoned bog and plains near the start of the game are level 5 is that normal?im only level 3 and havent done glittering mines yet

[Mal38]

im bad someone carry me

[Snakedog]

You can't kill the wolves at the end. Their health regenerates after each attack...

[Scorchie]

This guide doesn't include Monk, Hobo and Treasure Hunter (though I find that those classes aren't all that useful, the ideal combo being Blacksmith, Hunter and Herbalist like you said). Still a good guide nonetheless.

[Isra3lite]

Thanks for this guide and threads!!!I After a few Apprentice run throughs to the King's Maze, thinking this should get better/easier each time. It doesn't, though I've tried splitting my team up to save Chaos time (multi-tasking) but it ends up costing more time/risk trying to regroup to tent/dungeon crawl. Mostly, thanks for the suggestions on weapons and team matchups, the early run killer is bad RNG when focus runs dry.