Learn the realm in minutes.

What is Valtheryn?

Valtheryn is a persistent multiplayer strategy game centered on Thornhaven, the current main and only playable Realm. Every new Warden is assigned to Thornhaven automatically. Build your economy, train increasingly capable troops, research permanent advantages, support an alliance, and compete for Oathenreach in the shared Realm. The multi-Realm foundation remains available for future growth, but Moonveil is currently locked.

Your first day in the realm

1. Find the bottom navigation: Realm · Settlement · Army · Campaign · Guardian · Infirmary · Research · Alliance · Events · Trade · Shop. Re-click the currently open main tab to close its workspace without reaching for the X.
2. Review your settlement: check your completed Keep level, ordinary resources, troops, protection, and available upgrades.
3. Meet your Guardian: use the compact Status / Build / Loadout workspace, choose a cosmetic identity and specialization, review the seven equipment slots, and inspect the new Guardian research branch in the Verdant Archive.
4. Claim Daily Guardian Training: when the green-and-gold card appears below the top-right profile area, claim 250 base Guardian XP. It disappears after claim and returns 24 hours later; Guardian XP research increases the amount.
5. Start your independent queues: begin one construction project, one training order, and one research project when affordable.
6. Inspect Campaign Expedition: open Campaign to see the current floor and stage, automatic expedition force, Guardian availability, enemy profile, projected victory chance, first-clear rewards, and Campaign-only sound control. You do not manually choose Campaign troops anymore; improve your army if the automatic projected chance is too low.
7. Claim the free Shop delivery: open Shop → Featured and collect your once-daily ordinary-resource supplies.
8. Choose your daily objectives: complete any five of twelve available tasks; use your one free reroll if a task does not suit you.
9. Check Realm Milestones: open Warden’s Path → Realm Milestones to see one-time Realm achievements such as Keep/Power growth, troop-training totals, scouting, PvP, Market purchases, alliance activity, Guardian progression, Research, and Oathenreach participation. Progress belongs to the Realm where it is earned; currently all new Wardens progress in Thornhaven.
10. Explore the frontier: occupy open deposits, complete peaceful civilian expeditions, or select a visible Frontier Bounty camp on the Realm map and dispatch a real patrol.
11. Join an alliance: coordinate defenses, rallies, and Oathenreach; caravans unlock after Keep level 3 and 12 hours of settlement age. Alliance Hall also exposes Diplomacy, while Officers/Leaders can publish alliance-only Realm pins.
12. Open Events: inspect the current 24-hour competition, review live standings and scoring rules, and check your personal three-tier Event Milestone Chest track. The same event points that determine Realm rank also fill your personal progress bar. Unlocked chests turn gold and can be opened from Events; finished eligible placement rewards auto-credit securely and are recorded in Reports & Notifications.

Realm, settlement, and Warden level

The realm is the shared map, every player settlement, 640 resource deposits, alliances, competitions, and Oathenreach. Thornhaven is currently the only playable Realm and supports up to 1,500 Wardens. Your settlement is your individual base. Your Warden is the commander whose separate experience level increases through play.

Resources, gold, gems, manuscripts, and Astral Crystals

Ordinary resources accrue with building production, occupied deposits, completed doctrines, and applicable Crown Holder bonuses. The server processes up to 24 hours of ordinary-resource catch-up when a settlement returns.

All 11 settlement buildings

Keep levels 1–24 support one active construction upgrade; Keep 25 unlocks a second construction slot. Benefits apply only when a timed order finishes, and no supporting building may exceed the completed Warden’s Keep level. Major Keep milestones also require a developed settlement instead of allowing a pure Keep rush. Construction remains separate from research, training, and healing.

Troops, training, and company capacity

Open Army in the bottom navigation to train Infantry, Archers, Cavalry, and Elite Guard. Each training order consumes ordinary resources and finishes after its real-time countdown. Barracks levels 1–24 support one active training order; Barracks 25 unlocks a second military training slot. Each troop card also contains a protected dismissal control for permanently removing ready-at-home troops you no longer want.

Troop counter triangle

Troop composition has a real battlefield matchup system. The three main classes form a complete counter triangle: Infantry counters Cavalry, Cavalry counters Archers, and Archers counter Infantry. Verdant Wardens, Oathbound Sentinels, and Aegis Templars are Infantry; Dawncrest Riders, Royal Vanguard, and Celestial Lancers are Cavalry; Thornveil Archers and Astral Champions are Archers. This keeps the counter triangle strategically relevant through the full Tier V roster.

Companies may contain as few as one trainee. Elite Training, Drillmaster Corps, and Mythic Armaments improve training speed; Quartermaster Corps and Expeditionary Supply improve training economy. Troops become available when their training timer completes.

Settlement power, visible rank, and deployed troops

Settlement power combines your Warden progression, completed building levels, finished research, and the real attack-and-defense strength of every surviving troop you still own. The realm sorts settlements by this value to determine public rank.

• Completed buildings increase power: Keep, Barracks, Archive, production buildings, and every other completed settlement building each contribute their weighted development value.
• Newly completed training increases power: troop quality matters because each unit contributes its actual attack and defense values.
• Finished research contributes power: advanced doctrines and higher completed levels add weighted development strength.
• Deployed survivors still count: troops marching, guarding deposits, reinforcing allies, joining rallies, or defending Oathenreach remain part of your total power and realm rank.
• Deployed troops are unavailable for home defense: their absence changes the settlement garrison, not the ownership-based public ranking.
• Combat losses and wounded troops can reduce immediately available strength: successful treatment restores recovered units to active service.
• Map settlement labels show settlement level and realm rank: your own location is labeled YOUR SETTLEMENT.

Research branches and permanent bonuses

The Verdant Archive offers 139 doctrines: 52 foundational and 87 advanced. Each doctrine belongs to one of seven selectable research categories, with its own progression tree, earlier-doctrine requirements, and permanent completed bonuses. Completed effects are consumed by the authoritative production, training, movement, scouting, trade, recovery, attack, defense, rally, and Oathenreach calculations—not merely displayed in the interface.

Resource emphasis also follows the doctrine branch. Economy leans toward Food and Wood, Warfare toward Food and Stone, Defense toward Stone and Wood, Troops toward Food and military materials, Temple toward Stone and Gold, Espionage toward Gold and Wood, and Guardian toward Stone and Gold while still demanding meaningful Food/Wood support. These weights redistribute each doctrine's total cost without changing its permanent effect.

Only one research project runs at once. Advanced projects require completed Keep and Archive levels, earlier doctrine ranks, ordinary resources, and the required Scholar Manuscripts. Research benefits and competition points apply only when the project finishes.

Five flexible daily objectives and login rewards

Valtheryn presents twelve daily objective choices, but you only need to claim five to earn the complete daily progression reward. Most objectives accept peaceful, solo, healing, or progress-based alternatives. One unclaimed objective can be replaced with Flexible Warden Duty once per UTC day.

Alliance discovery, diplomacy, crests, roles, and leadership

An alliance supports up to 50 Wardens. Unaffiliated Wardens can use Find an Alliance to compare public recruiting banners by member count, primary language, minimum expectations, aggregate activity level, description, and Crown Holder status before choosing where to join or apply. The current Oathenreach-holding alliance also receives a distinctive gold presentation in supported discovery/ranking surfaces. Membership makes allied settlement defense, lawful resource caravans, combined rallies, Oathenreach garrisons, and shared crown bonuses possible.

• Recruitment policies: Open alliances allow immediate joining when a slot is available; Application Required alliances let an unaffiliated Warden send an optional introduction for Officer/Leader review; Closed alliances remain visible in discovery but accept neither joins nor applications. A Warden may hold at most three pending applications at once. Applications expire automatically after 7 days if they are not accepted, declined, or withdrawn. You can also found your own alliance for 2,000 gold.
• Alliance Hall sections: Overview, Operations, Members, Diplomacy, Recruitment, Rallies, and Activity; plan privately, search members, inspect allies, manage diplomatic context and crest identity, recruit, reinforce, locate, trade, and coordinate rallies.
• The private Operation Board supports six record types: target markers, reinforcement requests with troop goals, scheduled rally plans, Oathenreach operations, alliance objectives, and expiring notices.
• Readiness is visible to the alliance: eligible members can answer Joining, Maybe, or Unavailable, and the board shows live counts plus the response roster.
• Operation permissions are configurable: the Leader chooses whether Recruit, Sentinel, Officer, or Leader is the minimum role for each operation type and for closing operations. Sentinel is a real intermediate authority tier between Recruit and Officer.
• Targeted operations create private map markers: only members of the operation's alliance receive them. Marker actions can locate the target or open the correct reinforcement, rally, or temple control.
• The Leader can promote, demote, or remove eligible members and transfer alliance leadership directly from the Members roster.
• Alliance Members uses public portrait identity: each roster entry—including your own row—shows the member’s currently equipped Warden Profile Portrait. The portrait is presentation-only and does not expose private progression.
• Leadership transfer is explicit: the selected member becomes Leader and the former Leader becomes an Officer.
• Recruitment settings are Leader-controlled: the Leader sets the public description, primary language, minimum expectations, and Open/Application Required/Closed policy.
• Application review is shared with Officers: Officers and the Leader can inspect pending applicants, their Warden level, Settlement level, current power, and optional introduction, then accept them as Recruits or decline the request.
• Activity labels protect individual privacy: discovery uses aggregate, rate-limited gameplay activity such as Very active, Active, Casual, or Quiet rather than exposing individual last-active timestamps. Very Active also requires a meaningful number of active members, so a one-person alliance cannot earn that label from percentage alone.
• Removal has consequences: a normally removed Warden receives a 24-hour rejoin cooldown for that alliance. The Leader can instead block rejoining/applying until the block is manually removed.
• Application review scales: Officers and the Leader can page through pending applications in groups of 25, and alliance discovery itself is paged in groups of 20 recruiting banners.
• Alliance members cannot attack or scout one another. Friendly settlements appear with green map markers.
• Reinforce allied settlements within their defensive reinforcement capacity; each Warden can recall their own contributed defenders. Capacity begins at 850 and grows with the Alliance Embassy, Keep, Layered Ramparts, Beacon Network, Counterassault Drills, and Citadel Aegis, reaching 25,185 when all contributing progression and Embassy milestone bonuses are complete.
• Trade is alliance-only and requires the sender to have Keep level 3 and a settlement at least 12 hours old.

World map, settlement labels, Realm markers, and 640 resource nodes

The expanded 64,000 × 40,000 Thornhaven Realm contains 640 food, wood, stone, and gold deposits, real player settlements, and central Oathenreach. It has four times the land area of the previous 32,000 × 20,000 map and sixteen times the original 16,000 × 10,000 playable area. Existing settlements, active route endpoints, and persisted live resource deposits were proportionally migrated into the larger map so established progression and journeys were preserved. NPC settlements and seeded NPC alliances are not part of the live realm. Drag to pan and scroll to zoom. For player privacy, the minimap shows only your settlement, Oathenreach, and the harmless camera viewport; it does not show other settlements or node landmarks and cannot be clicked to locate other Wardens.

Only five deposits may be occupied by one settlement at the same time. Stationed garrison gathering and civilian expeditions both reduce the shared reserve. Garrison yield accumulates as server-authoritative unbanked cargo and is banked only when a recall or automatic exhaustion return reaches the settlement. Civilian workers visibly march outbound, gather for 45 minutes after arrival, and visibly return; their resources and earned manuscript are also awarded only when they reach home. When a deposit is empty, stationed survivors automatically march home with their secured cargo; after 30 minutes the deposit respawns at a new safe location with a full tier reserve. A settlement Peace Seal does not make external resource-node garrisons immune to competition.

• Settlement locations are stable: combat, power changes, rank refreshes, and reloads do not move a base. Only a confirmed Waystone relocation changes its server-owned position.
• Settlement artwork is level-aware and customizable: without an equipped premium style, levels 1–29 use the established Valtheryn castle and a completed level-30 Keep becomes the larger Golden Crown Citadel. Wardens who permanently own a premium settlement style may equip it cosmetically at any level; level, rank, Peace Seal, hitbox, combat state, and progression remain unchanged.
• Premium settlement styles are public cosmetics: Verdant Crown Citadel, Moonveil Enclave, Ironroot Bastion, and Sunforge Oasis each have their own original Realm-map architecture. Other Wardens see the equipped style, and owned styles can be re-equipped without another purchase.
• Oathenreach is a fortified sacred citadel: its wider rectangular precinct, four tower masses, central nave, crown spire, battlements, stairs, banners, and illuminated windows share one matching hover and selection footprint.
• The realm landscape is procedurally original: organic grass variation, layered forests, meadow details, sacred causeways, water depth, river reflections, and resource landmarks are drawn by Valtheryn's own canvas code without third-party map art.
• Alliance operation markers are private: active targeted plans are drawn only for members of the owning alliance and disappear when completed, cancelled, or expired.
• Private Realm Bookmarks are personal: every Warden may save up to 60 bookmarks. They are visible only to that Warden and can be created from the position currently centered in the Realm Navigator.
• Alliance Pins are shared privately: Alliance Officers and the Leader may maintain up to 80 alliance-only markers. Other alliances and unaffiliated Wardens do not receive them.
• Seven marker categories are available: Bookmark, Rally, Enemy, Resource, Avoid, Oathenreach, and Meeting. Both personal bookmarks and alliance pins can use these categories.
• Realm Navigator now includes markers: it lists your private bookmarks and, when you belong to an alliance, the alliance’s shared pins in addition to alliance settlements and live resource deposits.
• Peace Seal protection is visible: a protected settlement is surrounded by a luminous animated dome on the realm map.
• Open Player Gold Bounties are visible on cities: a pulsing Wanted medallion appears above a settlement whenever its open escrow total is greater than zero. At ordinary zoom the label includes the public Gold total; when all open bounty escrow is gone, the marker is removed.
• Deposits expose useful state: each resource landmark displays its tier and remaining reserve while retaining distinct food, wood, stone, or gold artwork.
• The Realm Navigator protects player location privacy: its settlement results still include only current members of your alliance; enemy and unaffiliated settlements remain excluded. It now also includes your private bookmarks, alliance-only shared pins, and live resource deposits.
• Home and Oathenreach use their own map controls: neither is duplicated in the Navigator, and personal march routes remain in the dedicated march tracker.
• The bottom HUD uses three non-overlapping lanes: Home, Temple, zoom, Realm Navigator, and Music On / Off sit in the mini-control lane on the left, the main command navigation sits directly beside it, and the private Realm Map occupies the right lane. All three remain aligned to the same bottom baseline; narrower screens scroll controls within their own lane instead of stacking or overlapping.
• Valtheryn uses original game audio: The Verdant Realm is the looping Realm soundtrack. A successful scout launch plays the original Scout Dispatch cue immediately. Settlement, occupied-node, Oathenreach, Frontier Bounty, and launched rally combat use the original Battle Arrival cue at authoritative contact; the current Realm cue runs about 8.2 seconds. Campaign uses a separate shortened playback window of about 2.35 seconds and has its own Sound On / Off preference.
• Moving formations are authoritative: the map no longer creates decorative patrols toward Oathenreach. Visible military armies, Frontier patrols, launched rallies, settlement scouts, caravans, and civilian workers correspond to server-recorded journeys. Occupied-node and Oathenreach scouting use their separate immediate report paths.
• Detected hostile threats can frame the Realm view: a thick, pulsing viewport-edge warning appears for detected hostile activity. Scouts use a strong amber edge treatment, while incoming attacks and rallies use a more urgent red/crimson treatment. Undetected scouts do not create a defender warning frame, although an active settlement-scout route can be seen on the shared map.
• Map details respond to the pointer: hovering a settlement, live deposit, or authenticated formation adds a clear highlight and a concise identification tooltip.
• Oathenreach carries its own live plaque: the countdown is attached to the temple landmark, moves with it while panning and zooming, and shifts beside the temple when necessary to avoid the command dashboard.

Shop items, protection, speedups, supplies, and identity tools

Open the dedicated Shop tab in the bottom navigation. Its departments are Featured, Speedups, Protection, Supplies, Command Boosts, Gem Vault, and Identity. Prices and rules below match the current server-authoritative v0.62.0 catalog.

How to relocate your settlement with a Settlement Waystone

1. Check your inventory: new settlements receive one Settlement Waystone; additional Waystones cost 15,000 gold in Shop.
2. Find open land: pan around the Realm map and select an available grassland position.
3. Review the destination: inspect the coordinates and ensure the land is not blocked or too close to a protected object.
4. Confirm the move: choose “Relocate settlement here”; one Waystone is consumed and your settlement relocates.

Legal destinations cannot overlap another settlement, resource deposit, Oathenreach’s protected grounds, map boundaries, or restricted landmarks. Buy the Waystone once, then select open land directly; you do not need to reopen Shop for every move.

Settlement, deposit, and Oathenreach scouting

Reconnaissance now uses layered intelligence. Your Espionage research and Sunfire Watchtower capability are compared against the target’s Watchtower and counterintelligence to determine how much information is recovered. Weak reconnaissance may reveal only approximate troop strength, while advanced reconnaissance can expose troop composition, exact quantities, Guardian presence, combat power, and major bonuses. You can scout hostile settlements, opposing occupied resource deposits, and an enemy-held Oathenreach garrison while its weekend siege is active.

• Scouts have a base five-minute cooldown; applicable Espionage research and completed Sunfire Watchtower levels reduce the wait.
• You cannot scout members of your own alliance or your own alliance’s Oathenreach garrison.
• Veil of Silence strengthens counterintelligence rather than guaranteeing perfect secrecy. It can fully repel weaker reconnaissance or force stronger scouts into a lower intelligence tier. Oathenreach evaluates the defending host’s strongest available counterintelligence instead of allowing one commander’s personal Veil to conceal the entire alliance army.
• A blocked scout does not advance scouting quests or competition scoring.
• Scout detection is not automatic. Strong Watchtower and counterintelligence progression substantially improves the defender’s chance to detect hostile reconnaissance; an undetected scout can complete its mission without identifying itself to the target.

Scouting intelligence quality

Settlement attacks, node battles, and raid safeguards

Combat compares the real strength and research bonuses of committed attackers against the actual defending garrison, allied reinforcements, relevant defensive doctrines, and battlefield-specific modifiers.

Solo settlement attrition

Only the troops in the attacking march fight. The defender uses the home garrison plus valid Alliance reinforcements. Troop type and tier, completed troop-specific and general Research, Guardian stats and command scaling, Guardian gear/refinement/set/specialization, eligible Crown/Oathenreach effects, and the combat-weighted Infantry/Cavalry/Archer matchup contribute to effective Attack and Defense. Field attackers do not carry home-only settlement defenses with them: their home Sunfire Watchtower bonus and the settlement-only Guardian Bastion Companion effect stay at home. The defending settlement still receives its own Watchtower defense, and allied reinforcement troops use the Watchtower level of the settlement they are actually defending. Normal solo battle variation remains within ±3%.

The battle calculates two pressures independently: attacker lethality compares attacker Attack with defender Defense and drives defending casualties; defender counter-pressure compares defender Attack with attacker Defense and drives attacker casualties. This means an attacking Guardian’s Defense and defensive Research can improve the march’s survival, while a defending Guardian’s Attack increases the danger to incoming troops. A severely outmatched force faces an escalating rout floor that casualty-reduction Research cannot cancel.

After the two-sided pressure model and applicable casualty-reduction Research set the army-wide casualty target, losses are allocated across the actual troop types using bounded weights for tier, per-unit Defense, class exposure, enemy counters, and the owning Warden’s recovery development. Those allocation weights decide who absorbs the losses; they do not reduce the already-adjusted side-wide casualty target a second time. This rule now applies consistently to the current settlement/rally/Oathenreach/Frontier pressure family. For example, 10,000 T5 Astral Champions attacking 50,000 comparably developed T5 Astral Champions can lose roughly nine tenths of the attacking force even with strong casualty-reduction Research. It is an illustrative matchup, not a guaranteed battle report.

• Settlement attacks: travel by authenticated visible troop march; a win can plunder ordinary resources above the defender’s protected storehouse reserve.
• No Settlement-level attack range: v0.56.7 allows any hostile settlement to attack any other hostile settlement regardless of Keep/Settlement level or relative military power. A level 10 Warden can attack level 4, and a level 30 Warden can attack level 1 if every other attack requirement is legal.
• Settlement plunder scales with progression: a victory can seize up to 4% of each exposed resource after Storehouse protection and any active protected starter reserve, subject to a server-authoritative plunder cap based on the attacker’s Keep level and legal march capacity. The cap begins at 350 per exposed resource and rises into late game instead of remaining permanently flat.
• Peace Seals are player-controlled: losing a settlement battle never activates protection automatically. A Warden must own and manually activate a Peace Seal, must satisfy the normal deployment rules, and cannot reactivate Peace during the 30-minute cooldown created by successful hostile activity or scouting. Total active/banked Peace is capped at seven days.
• Five-minute visual aftermath: in a solo settlement battle, a defender suffering more troop casualties than the attacker enters a visibly ruined state with crumbling damage, five active fire/smoke sources, layered dark smoke, flames, and glowing embers before reconstructing automatically. The Realm stays in its higher-motion animation mode while any visible settlement is in this defeated state. This presentation does not move the settlement or replace the real casualty, infirmary, plunder, and protection calculations.
• Node battles: an enemy garrison can be attacked; winning transfers control only when the attacker has an available occupation slot.
• Allied defenders participate as their own forces: the ±12% troop-composition matchup evaluates the settlement owner’s home troops plus all stationed allied reinforcement troop types. Each reinforcing Warden keeps their own troop statistics, military research, Crown status where applicable, Guardian, equipment, and specialization; the settlement-defense Watchtower modifier comes from the settlement being defended, not the reinforcer’s home Watchtower. In v0.57.3, allied casualties are pooled before being distributed by troop type and contributor, preventing small split contributions from suffering extra rounding losses.
• Temple assaults and settlement rallies: use real committed troop contributions, commander bonuses, meaningful casualties, and battle reports.
• Peace Seal is a strict non-combat state for contested player warfare: it blocks hostile settlement attacks/scouting and the protected Warden’s outgoing attacks/scouting/offensive rallies. While protected, a Warden also cannot begin a new allied-settlement reinforcement or Oathenreach combat-defense deployment, and existing stationed allied/Oathenreach combat deployments must be recalled before activating Peace. Peaceful node occupation remains allowed, but external node garrisons stay contestable.
• Friendly fire is prohibited: alliance members cannot attack or rally one another.

Visible outbound travel, return marches, and recall

Open-deposit occupation, settlement attacks, occupied-node battles, Frontier bounty patrols, allied reinforcements, Oathenreach actions, launched alliance rallies, settlement scouts, resource caravans, and civilian expeditions travel visibly across the realm. Active player routes are shared with other Wardens on the current Realm map, including marches that cross the visible map area. The server verifies the owner, destination, force or cargo, and arrival before resolving an action.

• Personal routes scale across the game: Keep levels 1–14 support three simultaneous routes, Keep 15–29 support four, and completing Keep 30 unlocks the fifth.
• A personal route stays occupied for the entire deployment. Outbound armies, stationed resource garrisons, allied settlement reinforcements, Oathenreach garrisons, active rally commitments, civilian gathering operations, caravans, recalls, and return marches continue consuming their route until that force actually returns home. Reaching a destination does not free the route.
• Base maximum march size is 250 troops, plus 50 per Keep level above 1, before research bonuses.
• Marching Banners adds 200 slots per level; Campaign Roads adds 300 per level.
• Advanced solo-march research scales much harder: Marching Banners adds 200 per level, Campaign Roads adds 300 per level, War Academy adds 400 per level, Ironbound Campaigns adds 600 per level, and Legendary Host adds 600 per level. A fully developed Keep 30 Warden with all march-capacity research reaches the 10,000-troop solo march cap.
• Forced March adds 8% speed per level; Campaign Roads adds 5%, with additional advanced movement bonuses.
• The expanded Realm now uses a longer military travel ceiling. Normal military outbound and return journeys can take up to 8 minutes before speed bonuses; civilian expeditions and alliance caravans use up to 6 minutes. A launched alliance rally retains its larger travel allowance of up to 12 minutes, so long-distance geography matters more than under the former four-minute military ceiling.
• Follow March keeps the camera with a moving formation. Use Follow March beside Recall in the left-side live march card or from the March Command Center. The Realm view automatically centers on and tracks that route until you choose Stop Follow, the route finishes, or the formation is no longer active. Following is visual only and never changes travel time or server authority.
• Recall a personal march before arrival to cancel the original destination order and turn the committed force around safely. A recalled settlement attack, node attack/occupation, Oathenreach attack/garrison march, allied reinforcement, or Frontier patrol does not resolve its original arrival action after recall.
• Recall turns a force around from its current location; it does not instantly return the force home.
• Battle survivors are not instantly available: settlement and failed node attackers, recalled garrisons, rally survivors, and eligible Oathenreach contributors must complete the return journey to their own origin.
• Node-garrison cargo returns with the force: gathered resources remain unbanked while stationed and become settlement resources only when the authoritative return-home arrival resolves.
• Hostile targets receive incoming-attack alerts promptly in an open Realm tab. The lightweight live feed checks for new routes and danger notices about every 2.5 seconds while the tab is visible and about every 5 seconds while hidden; network delays or browser throttling can add time. Detected settlement scouts also warn the target on dispatch, and launched alliance rallies appear as shared warhosts. An undetected scout can still appear as a public route without a danger notification. If a settlement has an active Peace Seal before the hostile march arrives, the attack cannot bypass that Peace Seal protection.
• Peace-protected Wardens cannot begin new allied-settlement reinforcement or Oathenreach combat-defense marches. Existing contested allied/Oathenreach deployments must be recalled before Peace can be activated. If a relevant support march becomes invalid because Peace is active at resolution, the committed force returns safely rather than disappearing.
• Rally joiners physically assemble: joining a recruiting alliance rally reserves the committed force and creates a visible normal-speed assembly leg to the rally commander. The contribution merges only after arrival, must be able to reach the commander before launch, and is not double-counted as a second army.
• Alliance resource caravans deliver only when they arrive, then visibly return to the sending settlement before that march route is available again.
• Civilian expeditions are complete journeys: workers march to the selected live deposit, spend 45 minutes gathering after arrival, and return visibly. Rewards are granted at home, not at dispatch or destination arrival.

Marches use original Canvas-drawn formations appropriate to their purpose. Launched alliance rallies are the largest visible warhosts, with a broader mixed formation, multiple cavalry leaders, shield ranks, archers, standards, heavier dust, and stronger route styling. Solo settlement, occupied-node, Oathenreach, and Frontier Bounty attacks use a medium assault formation with cavalry, infantry, archers, a command standard, and a distinct crimson route. Scout missions use the smallest military formation: a four-rider green reconnaissance party with lighter dust and a slimmer path. Rally joiners remain intentionally smaller until their force actually reaches and merges with the commander. Caravans still use wagons and civilian expeditions use workers with a handcart. A deployed Guardian remains attached through outbound travel, combat, occupation, recall, and return—even when every accompanying troop is lost and the Guardian must return alone.

Oathenreach Temple, weekend occupation, and rotating blessings

Oathenreach opens every weekend for 48 hours: Saturday 00:00 UTC through Monday 00:00 UTC. Alliance membership is required to scout, occupy, reinforce, attack, or rally the temple. The Realm landmark carries the live open/close countdown and opens the wide Oathenreach command workspace.

1. Join an alliance and review the Oathenreach schedule from Events or the Realm landmark.
2. Scout an enemy garrison while the battle is open. Intelligence quality is resolved against the defending alliance’s counterintelligence rather than trusting browser values.
3. Occupy, reinforce, attack, or rally as the situation requires. Successful occupation is a real alliance garrison and surviving contributed troops remain stationed until recalled, defeated, or the event resolves.
4. Hold Oathenreach at Monday 00:00 UTC. Physical occupation at event close determines the finalized winning alliance.

The permanent Crown foundation remains +10% ordinary settlement production and +8% army attack/defense for the reigning Crown Holder alliance. The seasonal specialty is additional; see Chapter 20 for the exact six-blessing cycle.

The interface tracks weekly troops stationed, assaults, defenses, victories, captures/holds, and enemy troops defeated. “Troops stationed this week” is cumulative contribution activity for that ISO week, while the garrison panel shows the exact force currently defending the temple.

Three-minute settlement and Oathenreach rallies

Valtheryn supports alliance rallies against enemy settlements and enemy-held Oathenreach. The player who starts the rally supplies its shared troop-capacity and march-speed rules. Every participant’s completed combat doctrines are calculated against that participant’s own contributed troops.

1. Select an eligible target: choose an opposing unprotected settlement or enemy-held Oathenreach during its open weekend.
2. Prepare the commander’s force: the strongest legal contribution is preselected instead of falling back to 20 troops. Choose 25%, 50%, 75%, or Max, use ±10 and ±50 controls, or fine-tune every troop type before confirming.
3. Recruit for up to three minutes: alliance members receive invitations and use the same force builder. Commanders and members may add more troops while personal and shared capacity remains. Contributions physically assemble at the commander before an early launch is permitted.
4. Launch when ready: the rally launches automatically when the recruitment window ends. The commander may also launch an assembled rally early, and may optionally enable accelerated auto launch once the rally is full.
5. Resolve on arrival: each participant’s army, unit-type, rally, and Temple bonuses apply to that participant’s own troops. Final eligibility is revalidated. Formula 14 first fixes the side-wide casualty target from two-sided pressure and casualty reduction, then distributes that target across contributors/troop types using bounded vulnerability weighting without reducing it a second time. Settlement-rally plunder / Enemy Troops Defeated attribution uses effective attack contribution rather than raw troop headcount.

• One active rally per alliance per target. Different targets may be rallied simultaneously; Oathenreach has only one target, so only one Oathenreach rally can be active per alliance.
• Base rally capacity: 850 troops. Twenty capacity projects in the Temple branch now provide a long alliance-warhost progression. The original five remain, followed by fifteen increasingly demanding projects from Mustered Cohorts through Endless Banners.
• The commander can launch an assembled rally early. Every committed contribution must first finish its assembly leg. Commander settings can also define a minimum new contribution, preferred Infantry/Cavalry/Archer composition, optionally reject contributions dominated by a class the commander has set below 20%, add a short rally order, and enable accelerated auto launch when full.
• Only the initiating commander may cancel the entire recruiting rally. The commander can record an optional cancellation reason that is preserved in the cancelled rally record and participant notices. Other participants may withdraw only their own contribution before launch.
• Protected Wardens cannot start or join offensive rallies; targets with an active Peace Seal cannot be attacked.
• Enemy settlements and defending alliances are warned when a hostile rally begins assembling.
• Each participant keeps personal limits: the shared rally cap does not let one member contribute more troops than that member’s own researched maximum march size.
• Adding troops is cumulative and validated: the interface shows personal slots and shared slots remaining, while the server prevents repeated additions from exceeding either limit.

All 20 rally-capacity projects

Dedicated Events tab and realm schedules

Open the Events button in the bottom navigation. The old side-of-screen events panel has been replaced by this dedicated area, where you can inspect active competitions, weekend schedules, standings, rules, and completed reward results.

Personal Event Milestone Chests

The milestone track uses the same server-authoritative points already earned for the active competition. It does not create a second scoring system and does not replace the Realm leaderboard. Progress is personal: reaching a threshold unlocks that chest even if the Warden does not place in the Top 10.

Crown Holder title, permanent foundation, and rotating Oathenreach specialties

The alliance physically holding Oathenreach when the weekend closes becomes the Realm’s Crown Holder alliance after the season result is finalized. That reigning alliance keeps the Crown foundation and the season’s specialty until a later Oathenreach event finalizes a new result.

Current Crown ownership and the active specialty are surfaced through Oathenreach/current event state. During an open siege, the alliance physically holding the temple can differ from the reigning Crown Holder until the weekend result is finalized.

Danger alerts, alliance activity, battle reports, and Clear All

Battle reports separate the attacker and defender into clear force cards. Each card lists every recorded troop type sent, lost, and surviving, alongside attack and defense power, Guardian contributions, plunder where appropriate, and participating alliance commanders. Combat Reports 2.0 also records the factors behind new battles: applicable general and troop-specific research, Sunfire Watchtower defense, Crown Holder effects, Guardian power, alliance reinforcement defense, troop-composition advantage or disadvantage, and the deliberately narrow battle-variation roll. Rally and Oathenreach reports identify participant-owned research instead of implying that the rally commander lends personal doctrine bonuses to the entire warhost. New solo settlement reports can also retain effective-strength ratio, attacker exposure, each side’s casualty percentages, Guardian contribution, and combat factors. Legacy reports retain the information that existed when they were created rather than inventing missing detail.

How to grow as a stronger Warden

1. Use the whole bottom navigation: keep Settlement, Army, Infirmary, Research, Alliance, Events, Trade, and Shop working together.
2. Protect your opening days: preserve your 72-hour novice Peace Seal protection until you are ready to remove it.
3. Keep four independent queues moving: construction, troop training, research, and eligible healing can progress at the same time.
4. Choose five reachable daily objectives: peaceful expeditions, healing, bounties, and timed progress make the full reward available to solo Wardens.
5. Claim free supplies: collect Shop → Featured supplies once each UTC day, then choose ordinary Gold or Gems for additional supply bundles based on what your settlement can best afford.
6. Build the Guardian as a long-term system: claim Daily Guardian Training when available, use Frontier combat and real battles for Guardian experience, and invest in the Guardian research branch as Keep, Archive, Workshop, Manuscript, and Guardian-level gates become reachable. The 7,500-Gem Guardian Training Codex is optional and intentionally inefficient compared with normal progression.
7. Research practical capacity: improve training companies, march size, rally capacity, infirmary treatment, and protected resources before forcing risky battles.
8. Scout honestly and defend together: public rank is not a full troop report; reinforce allies and coordinate rallies against legitimate targets.
9. Match completed actions to the current competition: score only genuine qualifying actions, and respect the Frontier Dominion cooldown.
10. Time Oathenreach: the alliance garrison at the exact weekend close wins the crown; early control matters only if your alliance can hold it.

Settlement levels and independent timed queues

Your settlement level is the completed level of Warden’s Keep. Your Warden level increases separately through experience and awards 25 gems per level. A Warden can have a higher commander level than the settlement level.

• Each of the 11 settlement buildings can progress to level 30.
• Keep level 30 is a prestige milestone: the default Valtheryn settlement artwork becomes the larger Golden Crown Citadel and the fifth personal route unlocks. If a premium settlement style is equipped, that cosmetic architecture remains visible instead of forcing the default level-30 appearance.
• Personal routes unlock in stages: Keep 1–14 supports three routes, Keep 15–29 supports four, and Keep 30 unlocks the fifth. Outbound armies, Frontier patrols, civilian expeditions, caravans, allied reinforcements, Oathenreach garrisons, rally commitments, stationing, recalls, and return journeys keep consuming the applicable route until the deployment is back home.
• No supporting building can exceed the completed level of Warden’s Keep.
• Construction, research, military training, and infirmary treatment progress independently. Keep 25 permits two construction orders, Barracks 25 permits two training orders, while research and infirmary treatment retain their deliberate single active-project queues.
• The new building level, practical bonuses, quest completion, and eligible Master Builders points apply when construction finishes.
• Construction costs and natural durations increase with building level and continue while the player is offline. The current curve is deliberately heavier in the mid and late game: around level 14 a normal building takes about 1h 21m and the Keep about 2h 20m; around level 20 those are about 8h 15m and 14h; by level 29 they are about 4d 9h and 7d 13h. Existing orders keep the completion time they had when started.
• Daily Settlement Builder can also be satisfied through 10 minutes of actual construction progress when a long upgrade will not finish that day.

Scholar Manuscripts and gameplay earnings

Scholar Manuscripts remain an important progression material for advanced Research and Peace Seal crafting. The core Realm Market does not sell Manuscripts, and they cannot be transferred through alliance caravans or substituted for completed building/research requirements. In the current launch-ready Treasury rules, real-money packages do not deliver Scholar Manuscripts; broader administrator/free promotional grants may still award them when deliberately configured. The normal gameplay earning sources below remain intact.

Advanced doctrines consume manuscripts according to their target research level. A crafted Peace Seal normally consumes two manuscripts; Workshop level 25 reduces that requirement to one, so weigh immediate protection against permanent long-term research progression.

Moonwell Infirmary, wounded recovery, and healing speedups

Open Infirmary directly from the bottom navigation. The treatment interface shows wounded troop types, capacity, treatment cost, the active healing queue, recovery progress, and Project Speedup/saved-credit controls when treatment is underway.

• Casualty reduction resolves before admission. Applicable casualty-reduction research reduces battlefield casualties before the Moonwell attempts to admit wounded troops.
• Every available bed can be used. After casualty reduction, eligible casualties fill remaining Moonwell capacity; only overflow becomes permanent death.
• Existing wounded troops occupy beds. Troops already wounded or currently undergoing treatment reduce the capacity available to protect the next eligible casualties.
• Mixed armies use the battle’s troop-specific casualty allocation. Moonwell admissions then use available beds for eligible wounded defenders; the resulting wounded and killed totals are recorded separately.
• Normal Realm offense does not use the attacker’s Moonwell. Casualties suffered while attacking settlements, nodes, Oathenreach, or Frontier camps are permanent. Defensive casualties at home, allied reinforcement defense, node defense, and Oathenreach defense can use that Warden’s available beds.
• Campaign is a deliberate PvE exception. Campaign uses its own real-casualty routine with Moonwell wounded/killed handling even though it is not a normal Realm defensive battle.

Healing consumes Food and Gold and supports one timed treatment queue. Base treatment duration scales with troop count/tier and completed Moonwell level. If your alliance currently holds Moonwell Grace, the active Oathenreach specialty applies an additional +15% Moonwell healing speed.

Completed treatment returns recovered troops to active settlement service. Treating five wounded troops can satisfy the appropriate Daily Muster and Daily Rune Workshop alternatives. Battle reports distinguish battlefield casualties, wounded admissions, permanent deaths, and survivors.

Protected storehouses, Peace Seals, crafting, and Guardian gear

Ironroot Storehouse

The storehouse uses a nonlinear protection curve: 750 + (650 × level) + (35 × level²) of each ordinary resource before Protected Storehouses research. This begins at 1,435 per resource at level 1 and grows substantially faster in the late game so settlement defense remains economically meaningful.

Runecrafter’s Workshop

Peace Seals prevent hostile settlement attacks and settlement scouting, and block the protected Warden from launching attacks, scouting, offensive rallies, new allied-settlement combat reinforcements, or new Oathenreach combat-defense deployments. Existing allied/Oathenreach combat deployments must be recalled before activating Peace. Peace remains enforceable during Annihilation. Peaceful resource-node occupation remains allowed, but externally occupied node garrisons are not immune to attack. Active/banked Peace duration is capped at 7 days. Successful hostile activity or scouting starts a visible 30-minute Peace reactivation cooldown, preventing an attacker from acting offensively and immediately hiding behind a new Seal.

Guardian equipment acquisition

The Guardian Hall uses three compact sections: Guardian, Gear Sets, and Identity. Ironbark, Dawnsteel, and Oathforged pieces use ordinary settlement resources. Crownward Tier IV costs 320 Gems + 1,800 Gold per piece. Astral Tier V now requires Settlement Level 30 and Runecrafter’s Workshop Level 30 and costs 3,000 Gems + 1,500,000 Gold per piece. Duplicate acquisition is blocked, equipment can change only while the Guardian is home, and the large portrait deliberately shows only the selected character—not armor drawn over it.

All eight troop types, five tiers, and exact unit costs

Training-company formula

• Barracks company capacity starts at 250 troops and scales through progressively larger Level 10/20/25/30 bands; Barracks 30 contributes 7,900 capacity before Research.
• Expanded Barracks adds 100 slots per level; Grand Mustering adds 200 slots per level.
• Regimental Quarters adds 90 slots per level; Grand Drillgrounds adds 200 per level; Imperial Muster adds 500 per level. Fully developed Barracks and training-capacity Research reach the authoritative 12,500-troop normal company cap.
• Elite Training, Drillmaster Corps, and Mythic Armaments reduce training duration.
• Quartermaster Corps and Expeditionary Supply reduce applicable training costs.
• Higher military tiers require their completed doctrine and building gates; currency alone cannot bypass those requirements.

Research, construction, training & Moonwell healing speedups

• Four queue types are eligible: active Research, Construction, Troop Training, and Moonwell Healing.
• No mandatory natural-time remainder: owned speedups or saved credit can legally reduce an eligible active queue all the way to completion.
• No daily usage cap: acceleration is limited by owned items/saved credit, not a daily seconds allowance.
• Exact queue targeting: when two construction slots or two training slots are active, the command accelerates the selected queue only.
• Universal saved credit: unavoidable excess seconds from the final consumed speedup are banked and can later be spent on any of the four eligible queue types.

The pinned Research Accelerator remains available while Research is active, preserving tree position and keeping speedups/saved credit accessible without scrolling back to the top. Equivalent queue controls appear for active construction, training, and Moonwell treatment, and eligible queues can also be managed through the Realm Queue Center where exposed.

Complete reference: all 139 research doctrines

This reference reflects the current v0.62.0 game definitions. It includes 52 foundational doctrines and 87 advanced doctrines. Manuscript amounts shown for advanced research apply to its first level; higher doctrine levels require additional Manuscripts. Core gameplay earns them normally. The launch-ready real-money Treasury path does not currently deliver Scholar Manuscripts; broader administrator/free promotional grants may still award them when deliberately configured.

52 foundational doctrines

85 advanced doctrines

Complete daily earnings, map-based Frontier Bounties, free supplies, and recovery

Free Shop delivery by completed Settlement level

The once-per-UTC-day Featured delivery is calculated from the Warden's completed Keep/Settlement Level. The original early-game linear amounts remain a minimum floor, but mid- and late-game rewards now follow the settlement progression curve so the delivery remains useful as upgrade costs rise.

30-Day Login Bonus

The compact Login Bonus card sits directly above the private Realm Map/minimap. Clicking it opens the full 30-day calendar in its own drawer. The calendar advances one Realm UTC date at a time: only the current day can be claimed, missed past days are permanently darkened/unavailable, future days remain locked, and missing a day never resets the calendar. The map-side card can be minimized and reopened; that preference is remembered per Warden and Realm on the current device, and a claim-ready minimized card still shows a highlighted reward-ready state. The calendar retires after the 30-day window resolves.

Emergency Militia · progression-scaled recovery

Emergency Militia is a catastrophic-loss recovery system, not a normal troop source. Eligibility counts the complete owned force: ready troops, wounded troops, troops already queued for training, marches, deposit garrisons, allied reinforcements, rally commitments, and Oathenreach deployments. When that total falls below the Keep-specific trigger, the system calculates the gap toward the recovery target—but a single claim is deliberately capped.

Warden Journey objectives, 47 Realm Milestones, and weeklies

Warden’s Path now has two distinct long-term surfaces. The normal Path retains daily objectives, weekly objectives, Frontier Bounties, and the existing 35 permanent objectives. A separate Realm Milestones tab adds 47 one-time achievements that reward natural settlement growth and broader Realm participation.

Realm Milestones · 47 one-time Realm achievements

Realm Milestones are a separate tab inside Warden’s Path. They do not replace the existing daily, weekly, frontier, or 35 permanent Warden objectives. Each milestone is one-time for that Realm membership, progress is checked by the server, and existing Wardens receive retroactive completion only when current progression or retained Realm counters can safely prove the requirement. Milestone progression never transfers to another Realm.

All 35 permanent Warden’s Path objectives

All six weekly Warden objectives

Weekly progress uses a fresh weekly baseline, so only progress made during the current week counts toward these six repeatable objectives.

Alliance caravans, Keep 3 gate, and transfer limits

Alliance caravans transport ordinary food, wood, stone, or gold only between verified members of the same alliance. The sending settlement must satisfy both anti-funneling requirements before Trade becomes available. Cargo leaves immediately, is delivered only on arrival, and the wagon must complete its visible return journey.

For example, a caravan carrying 1,000 food at an early Embassy delivers 920 food after the 8% base fee; a level-30 Embassy delivers 950 after the 5% milestone fee. If the recipient leaves the alliance before arrival, the full 1,000-food cargo returns to the sender. Gems, manuscripts, Shop items, and troops cannot be sent through ordinary resource caravans. You cannot trade with yourself or another alliance.

Six rotating competitions, personal milestone chests, and verified placement rewards

Six competition types rotate in 24-hour windows. Eligible activity is scored when the relevant action actually completes, even when a timed queue finishes while its owner is offline. Permanent Research and normal Construction continue to scale event credit by eligible natural progress when accelerated. Grand War Muster now scores the troops actually completed regardless of speedup use, while repeatable Academy Studies and Settlement Works cannot be accelerated at all and therefore award their fixed completion score. Those same authoritative points now drive two parallel reward tracks: personal Tier I / II / III Milestone Chests and the existing Realm placement leaderboard.

• At most 25 scored actions count for each Warden in each 24-hour competition.
• The live event leaderboard lists active scorers only: a Warden does not appear with a zero-point row. Their name enters the current competition standings only after they actually earn points in that event.
• The main Events screen shows only the current Top 10: when more than ten Wardens have scored, See All Participants opens a dedicated scrollable ranking containing every scoring Warden in rank order.
• Participation rewards require real qualification: at least 120 points and two scored actions, unless one substantial action is worth at least 300 points.
• The authoritative event ledger accepts up to 250,000 points from one scored action. Individual competition formulas may use lower caps; for example, Realm Provisioning remains capped at 1,200 points per qualifying return.
• Ties are decided by the earlier qualifying score time; actions beyond the 25-action cap cannot refresh a tied player’s timestamp.
• Frontier Dominion’s first qualifying claim scores immediately; subsequent scored claims require three minutes between qualifying score awards.
• Repeatedly reclaiming the same deposit does not create unlimited quest or leaderboard progress.
• Blocked scouts, emergency militia, frontier bounty camps, and direct purchases cannot be farmed for unearned competition points.

Personal milestone rewards

Every scoring Warden has a personal three-chest progression track for the active event. These thresholds are calibrated to the scoring pace of each event family rather than using one universal target.

Placement rewards

Warden dossier, Campaign progress, earned cosmetics, identity, and force presets

The self Warden Profile uses the established classic dossier layout in v0.62.0. An experimental compact/wide no-scroll workspace was rolled back after proving less usable in practice, while all newer profile systems—including Campaign progress, Likes, protection controls, diplomacy/crest presentation, Warden Profile Portraits, the optional permanently hidden Realm Orientation card, and the enhanced Crown Holder prestige presentation—remain intact. The profile keeps six sections:

Other-Warden profiles use a compact command console and display their public all-time Warden appreciation total. Hostile profiles expose Profile, Scout, Solo Attack, and Rally. The hostile Profile overview also exposes the Player Gold Bounty placement panel when the target is eligible. Allied profiles expose Profile, Reinforce, and Trade. Private troop/building/research/Campaign detail stays concealed unless another legitimate system reveals appropriate information.

Maximum solo march size begins at 250 troops, gains 50 per completed Keep level above 1, and grows through Marching Banners, Campaign Roads, War Academy, Ironbound Campaigns, and Legendary Host to the 10,000-troop hard cap. Normal Realm attack/rally force builders still support presets and manual troop-type selection; Campaign is different and automatically builds its expedition force.

Keep levels 1–14 support three simultaneous personal routes, Keep 15–29 support four, and Keep 30 supports five.

Cosmetic Identity · Warden Profile → Identity

Identity now contains seven visual categories. Warden Profile Portraits use a mixed unlock model—four included choices, four permanent Gem unlocks, and two active Crown Holder rewards—while Profile Frames, Profile Banners, Settlement Nameplates, Guardian Portrait Frames, March Standards, and Showcase Badges continue to unlock from progression. All seven categories are cosmetic only: they add no combat power, production bonus, movement bonus, or progression advantage.

Realm Market departments, Gem Vault, prices, supplies, cosmetics, and payment methods

The current Shop is opened from the bottom navigation and is organized into Featured, Speedups, Protection, Supplies, Command Boosts, Gem Vault, and Identity. Supplies contains 33 ordinary-resource delivery bundles plus the separate Guardian Training Codex. Shop → Identity contains the four permanent premium settlement styles. Warden Profile Portraits are managed separately from Warden Profile → Identity; four portrait choices are included, four premium portraits use Gems there, and two are Crown Holder rewards. Gem Vault is its own department and is also linked from Featured.

• Featured: claim the free daily Settlement-level-scaled food, wood, stone, and gold delivery once per UTC day. Early-game amounts retain their existing floor while late-game rewards grow much more aggressively with settlement progression.
• Speedups: buy any of the twelve Project Speedups with Gems, from 1 minute through 3 days, and use them on active Research, Construction, Troop Training, or Moonwell Healing. Oversized unused time is preserved as universal saved credit.
• Protection: buy 12-hour Peace Seals for 90 Gems and Veils of Silence for 50 Gems. Peace activation is manual, total active/banked Peace is capped at seven days, and successful hostile activity or scouting starts a 30-minute Peace reactivation cooldown.
• Supplies: twenty-seven Food/Wood/Stone/mixed resource bundles span starter through level-30 stockpiles and allow either Gold or Gem payment. Six Gold-delivery bundles are Gem-only so there is no Gold-for-Gold purchase loop. The separate Guardian Training Codex costs 7,500 Gems and grants 500 base Guardian XP; its deliberately high price keeps combat, Frontier Bounties, Daily Guardian Training, and Guardian research as the primary progression routes. Suggested Settlement Lv. labels apply to resource packs only and never gate purchasing.
• Identity: buy a 120-Gem Warden Rename Scroll after the first free name change; permanently unlock Verdant Crown Citadel, Moonveil Enclave, Ironroot Bastion, or Sunforge Oasis for 15,000 Gems each; buy Settlement Paint Tokens for 1,500 Gems to save custom settlement colors; or unlock the Prismatic Warden Name for 20,000 Gems at Settlement Lv. 30. Paint can be reset to the equipped style’s original colors for free. The Prismatic name is permanent and appears on public Profiles and World/Alliance Chat. Warden Profile → Identity separately offers Sunforge Mark (1,800 Gems), Starfall Rune (2,000), Emberwatch Sigil (2,200), and Waystone Compass (2,400) as permanent portrait unlocks, alongside four free portraits and two Crown Holder reward portraits. All of these are cosmetic.
• Relocation: buy additional Settlement Waystones for 15,000 ordinary gold.

Gem Vault 2.0 · Shop → Gem Vault

The Gem Vault is a fixed-return in-game treasury feature using earned/owned Gems. Only one deposit can be active at a time. A deposit removes the chosen Gems immediately. If held to maturity, claiming returns principal plus the fixed yield exactly once. A Warden may instead cancel an active deposit before maturity; cancellation returns the stored principal only, awards no yield, and resets the Treasury Streak.

Frequently asked questions for Valtheryn v0.62.0

General frequently asked questions

Realm glossary and quick-reference terminology

Guardians, tiered equipment, and military deployment

Every Warden commands one Guardian. All Guardians begin with the same 120 attack and 120 defense; Verdant, Dawn, and Dusk male or female identities are cosmetic and never change strength.

Gear-set acquisition

Guardian levels and specialization

Guardian progression is server-authoritative. Every Guardian begins at level 1 with 120 attack and 120 defense, can advance to level 50, and gains +2 attack and +2 defense for every level above 1 before equipment, specialization, matching-set, and Guardian-research effects. Guardian XP is awarded by qualifying settlement, rally, Oathenreach, and Frontier combat, Daily Guardian Training provides a separate 250-base-XP rolling 24-hour claim, and the Supplies department offers an intentionally expensive optional Guardian Training Codex for 500 base XP at 7,500 Gems.

Guardian Research · 18 doctrines

The Guardian branch is deliberately a long-term Archive investment rather than a cheap stat purchase. Early levels use the normal progression-scaled research floors; advanced projects add higher Keep, Verdant Archive, Guardian-level, Runecrafter’s Workshop, Scholar Manuscript, resource, and time gates. Research must complete before its bonus becomes active.

Guardian XP sources

Open Gear Sets in the Guardian Hall to expand one complete tier at a time. Each panel shows all seven pieces, their exact statistics, ownership, equipped state, progression gates, and acquisition cost. Duplicate purchases are blocked.

Exact statistics for every piece

Complete matching-set totals

Mixed-tier loadouts use the exact value of each equipped piece but do not receive a complete matching-set bonus. The totals above assume a level-1 Balanced Guardian with no Guardian research; Guardian levels, Guardian research, Vanguard/Sentinel specialization, specialization mastery, gear scaling, and matching-set research can increase them further, while Wayfarer and Pathfinder Bond add Guardian-bearing march speed. Guardian attack is added to eligible offensive deployments; Guardian defense applies automatically at the home settlement while the Guardian is home and follows the Guardian when assigned to a node, allied reinforcement, or Oathenreach garrison. Reports identify the exact Guardian contribution used.

Returning from battle

The Guardian remains attached to its assigned force through travel, battle, occupation, recall, and the return journey. If every accompanying troop is lost, the Guardian still completes a Guardian-only return march before it can be equipped or deployed again.

Astral Guardian refinement · +1 through +10

Tier V Astral gear has a permanent endgame refinement layer. Each owned Astral Helmet, Shoulders, Armor, Gloves, Legs, Boots, and Weapon can be refined independently from +1 to +10 while the Guardian is home. Every refinement level adds 3% of that piece’s base Astral attack, defense, and any march-speed stat. A +10 piece therefore provides a 30% refinement increase over that piece’s original Astral values before the rest of the Guardian’s legitimate specialization, matching-set, Research, and battlefield modifiers are resolved.

Thornhaven, Moonveil, and Realm Chat

Valtheryn retains its multi-Realm foundation for future growth, but Thornhaven is currently the main and only playable Realm. Every new Warden is assigned to Thornhaven automatically, so normal onboarding does not ask players to choose or switch Realms.

Server authority protects the realm

Valtheryn uses server-authoritative Realm rules for meaningful gameplay state. Troops, resources, node cargo, rewards, Realm membership, purchases, alliance permissions, progression, and battle outcomes are checked against the current game state before they are committed.

One Warden name, layered prestige, and earned visual identity

Your Warden Name remains the single public identity used by both your Warden and your Settlement. Around that name, the current game supports prestige, alliance, diplomacy, portraits, settlement paint, and permanent Prismatic-name identity without creating a second player-managed Settlement Name.

Campaign Expedition: automatic force, ten floors, and 250 stages

Campaign Expedition is Valtheryn’s structured PvE warpath. It uses your actual ready-at-home army, completed Research, troop composition, automatic Guardian participation when available, real casualties, Moonwell handling, and persistent progression rather than a disposable Campaign roster.

How the automatic force is evaluated

• Only ready-at-home troops qualify. Deployed, wounded, and still-training troops are not available to Campaign.
• The server builds the force. It ranks current troop effectiveness using offensive and defensive value and fills the legal solo-march cap from strongest candidates, with modest weighting against infantry-, archer-, rider-, mixed-, or elite-heavy enemy profiles.
• Enemy formations have distinct identities. Shieldwalls emphasize Defense, longbow formations emphasize Attack, rider assaults favor burst pressure, mixed hosts are balanced, and bosses use floor-specific Attack/Defense traits and counter guidance.
• Guardian participation is automatic. Its current level, equipment, specialization, set effects, and Guardian Research are resolved only when it is home.
• Campaign uses one authoritative two-sided pressure model. Your Attack is measured against enemy Defense while enemy Attack is simultaneously measured against your Defense. The projected victory chance combines both directions of pressure, so defensive troop strength and Guardian Defense matter directly. The old one-dimensional victory helper is no longer part of the current build.
• Campaign armies are field forces. General military Research, troop-class bonuses, Crown/Oathenreach army effects, Guardian stats, and the matchup system can apply, but the Warden’s home Watchtower and settlement-only Guardian defense effect do not follow the expedition away from the settlement.
• Projected victory chance remains guidance plus a safety gate. Strong favorable matchups can reach 99.5%, extreme two-sided overmatch can become guaranteed, and an automatic force below 10% projected chance cannot engage.
• Recommended Attack remains a preparation reference around the enemy-defense target; it is no longer a button or force preset.
• Veteran pressure prevents trivial click-through. If a mature Warden crosses the overgear threshold for an authored stage, Campaign applies one stage-authored Veteran Pressure bump based on floor/checkpoint/boss difficulty. It no longer keeps scaling enemy Defense from the Warden’s own rising Attack, so additional upgrades always improve the final strength ratio.
• Casualties are real. Campaign removes losses from the actual selected ready force and uses its special Moonwell wounded/killed handling.
• Campaign is isolated from Realm routing/PvP. It consumes no personal Realm route, does not remove Peace Seal, does not award Enemy Troops Defeated/PvP victory credit, and does not advance PvP-victory objectives.

Rewards, results, and cadence

Winning a stage grants that stage’s first-clear package. Guardian XP is awarded when the Guardian automatically participates; a failed attempt grants no stage resources, Gems, Warden XP, or manuscripts, although an auto-participating Guardian can receive the smaller defeat participation XP. The latest Campaign encounter is stored inside Campaign state rather than being added to the normal Realm Reports & Notifications battle-report stream.

Warden Profile progression

Your own Warden Profile displays the current Floor · Stage (or Campaign Complete) and stages cleared out of 250 alongside the normal power metrics. The current build uses the established classic Warden Profile layout; the experimental compact/wide profile workspace was rolled back without removing Campaign progress or any other profile data. Other Wardens do not receive your detailed Campaign progress on their public profile.

Using Campaign efficiently

1. Open Campaign; the next uncleared stage is selected automatically.
2. Review the automatic expedition force, Guardian status, enemy Attack and Defense, formation trait/counter guidance, projected chance, and first-clear rewards.
3. If projected chance is below 10%, improve your troops, Research, Guardian, or available force rather than trying to manually swap Campaign units—manual selection no longer exists.
4. Use Fight Stage / Fight Boss. After a victory, Campaign advances to the next stage/floor automatically; after a defeat, recover wounded troops or strengthen the army before retrying.

Gem Vault 2.0 and Treasury progression

The Gem Vault lets a Warden lock owned Gems for a fixed, deterministic maturity return. It is an in-game progression system—not a random investment roll—and all deposits, maturity times, and payouts are server-authoritative.

• Deposit range: at least 100 Gems and no more than the current unlocked tier cap or your available Gem balance.
• One active deposit: a Warden cannot open another deposit until the existing maturity has been claimed.
• Principal is removed immediately: the Gems stop being spendable as soon as the deposit is accepted.
• Cancellation is available: before maturity, cancelling returns the stored principal only, awards no yield, and resets the Treasury Streak.
• Claim is explicit: after maturity, principal + yield are credited exactly once when claimed.
• Return is fixed: new deposits use the current +0.5% / +1.5% / +3.5% base schedule, and the chosen base rate plus any eligible streak bonus are recorded when the contract opens; there is no random gain/loss roll.
• Existing contracts are honored: a Vault deposit that was already active when the rates changed keeps the exact rate stored at opening instead of being retroactively rewritten.

Treasury Streak

Every successfully claimed maturity raises the stored streak by one, capped at 4. If the next deposit is opened within 48 hours of the last maturity claim, it receives +0.10 percentage point per active streak level. At streak 4, the maximum extra yield is +0.40 percentage point; for example, a new 7-day term becomes +3.90% total, so a 5,000-Gem deposit matures to 5,195 Gems. If the 48-hour window is missed, the next deposit receives no streak bonus; cancelling an active deposit also resets the streak.

Player Gold Bounties, Most Wanted, and the Bounty Center

Player Gold Bounties create a Gold-only PvP contract system around normal settlement combat. They are completely separate from the existing Frontier Bounty PvE camps.

Placement and claim rules

• Bounty creation maturity gate: the contributing settlement must have completed Keep 8 and be at least 72 hours old.
• You cannot place a Player Gold Bounty on yourself.
• You cannot place one on a Warden who is currently in your own alliance.
• Each contribution must be an integer from 1,000 to 25,000,000 Gold and you must actually own the Gold.
• Gold is deducted when the contribution is accepted; it is not merely promised client-side.
• A target may have contributions from multiple Wardens.
• A qualifying solo settlement victory claims all still-open contributions on that target except contributions originally placed by the victorious attacker.
• Your own contribution therefore never pays back to you; it remains open rather than being included in your claim.
• Peace Seal protection, Recovery Wards, alliance friendly-fire restrictions, march legality, authoritative arrival/battle resolution, and the same-attacker repeat-victory safeguard still apply.

Most Wanted and Bounty Center

Open Realm Rankings → Bounties or Warden Profile → Bounties. Most Wanted ranks targets by total open Gold escrow and shows the Warden, alliance, Settlement level, deliberately approximate power, Enemy Troops Defeated, current Peace Seal / Recovery Ward state, total bounty, contributor count, your own contribution, and the amount currently eligible for you. On large desktop screens the Bounty Center expands to roughly 1,480 px; Most Wanted, monthly Bounty Hunters, and recent claims occupy parallel columns instead of one long vertical stack. The first eight wanted entries stay visible and additional loaded targets are collapsed behind an expand control.

Your personal bounty summary shows the open bounty on you, Gold you currently have in open escrow, lifetime Gold claimed, number of successful claim batches, and largest single claim. The Bounty Center keeps the eight newest realm-wide claim batches immediately visible; additional loaded history is collapsed on demand, while the server-side center can retain/load up to the 30 most recent claim batches.

Wanted marker on the Realm map

Any settlement with open Player Gold Bounty escrow receives a pulsing gold-and-crimson medallion above its city. At normal zoom the label reads WANTED · [open bounty] GOLD; at farther zoom the medallion remains the compact visual cue. The amount comes from the same public open-escrow projection used by Most Wanted, and the marker disappears automatically after all open escrow on that target has been claimed or otherwise closed.

Monthly Bounty Hunter standings

The hunter leaderboard follows the current UTC calendar month. It ranks Wardens by total Player Bounty Gold claimed, then by claim count, with a deterministic final tie-break. The top 10 are displayed and your own standing is surfaced when available even if you are outside the top 10. A new monthly window begins on the first day of the next UTC month; open bounty escrow itself does not depend on that leaderboard reset.