Elder Kingdom is free to play, and Coins are its paid currency. This guide lays out exactly what Coins do, so you can decide how much, if anything, they’re worth to you.
Coins and Gold
Ambrose keeps the books. He knows which one you’ve got more of.
The game has two currencies, and they’re easy to mix up:
- Gold is earned in play. Hunts, forts, Daily Chance, the daily gift and selling things at the Market all pay Gold. It pays for Market trades, alliance founding, gear upgrades and plenty more.
- Coins are the premium currency. You mostly get them by buying them, and they pay for anything that saves time or skips a wait.
Your Coin balance is always in the top corner of the screen, with a + next to it that opens the coin packs.
Where Coins come from
A few Coins drip in for free. Most are bought.
Every new kingdom starts with 30 Coins. After that, the free trickle is small:
- The Weekly Pass track: 15 Coins across the ten tiers, but only if you bought the pass.
- Daily Chance: 10 Coins, one free pick in two hundred.
- The daily gift: 10 or 30 Coins, about one day in a hundred.
The rest come from coin packs in the Shop, from 9 Coins up to 1,600 in the app. The web shop’s packs are sized a little differently. Bigger packs give you more Coins for your money. Your first purchase also comes with a Founder’s Gift: a large crate of each resource, 10,000 Gold, ten Quick Hourglasses, a 7-day VIP pass and two 7-day Output Charters.
Speeding things up
Quick, regular, Great and Instant.
This is where most Coins go. Any building upgrade, study or Barracks batch can be cut short with an hourglass:
| Hourglass | Takes off | Coins |
|---|---|---|
| Quick Hourglass | 15 minutes | 1 |
| Hourglass | 1 hour | 2 |
| Great Hourglass | 5 hours | 5 |
| Instant Hourglass | the whole wait | 10 |
Hourglasses in your bag get used first. If you don’t have one, the game buys it for you at the price above.
The screen shows how long is left and how many of each hourglass you hold.
An Instant Hourglass on a 20-minute job is a waste. On a 16-hour gear cooldown it earns its 10 Coins. Hourglasses work on gear upgrade cooldowns too.
VIP
VIP adds a third of almost everything.
VIP is a timed pass. While it’s active you get:
- A third build slot in every city.
- A third study slot at the Academy.
- Three troop types training at the Barracks at once, instead of two.
- Three hunts at once instead of two.
- Three carts on the road from each city instead of two.
- Faster chat: one second between messages instead of fifteen.
- 10 extra Coins whenever the daily gift gives Coins.
| VIP pass | Coins |
|---|---|
| 1 day | 2 |
| 7 days | 10 |
| 30 days | 30 |
| 180 days | 120 |
| 365 days | 200 |
If you only spend Coins on one thing, VIP is the one that pays back every hour. An extra build slot in every city adds up fast.
More resources
Coins turn into resources or Gold at a fixed rate.
Two ways to turn Coins into stuff:
- Output Charters raise one resource’s output in one city by 50%. They come in 1-day, 7-day and 30-day versions, for 1, 5 and 20 Coins.
- The exchange swaps Coins straight for goods: 1 Coin gets you 20,000 of a resource or 2,000 Gold.
The exchange is handy when an upgrade is a few thousand Stone short and you’d rather not wait.
Gear, coffers and title treasures
Anything in the Shop can be bought outright.
The Shop sells gear and title treasures for Coins. A level 1 Signet Ring costs 2 Coins; the five title treasures run from 10 Coins for a Gold Nugget to 200 for a Circlet. The titles guide lists them all.
Coins also fill the gaps in gear work. Short on Tempering Stones? Each missing stone costs 1 Coin. No key for a coffer? A Silver Coffer opens for 5 Coins and a Gold Coffer for 10. And every gear upgrade costs a few Coins on top of the Gold, from 2 for the first level to 91 for the last.
In a fight
Retreats, recalls, loyalty and Truce Seals all have a Coin price.
A handful of Coin costs show up around battles:
- Retreat: pulling your attacking army out of a battle costs 5 Coins.
- Calling a garrison home: if an enemy army is marching on a tile you hold, you can bring your troops home before it arrives for 2 Coins.
- Loyalty: restoring a city’s loyalty costs 5 Coins.
- Truce Seals: 20 Coins for 12 hours of peace, 50 for 5 days.
Fixing mistakes
Moving a city, or rethinking your general, costs Coins.
- Moving a city: 40 Coins for your capital, 20 for a branch city, unless you have a Relocation Writ.
- Resetting your general: 20 Coins for attributes and 20 for skills.
Free things to claim
Some of what Coins buy also turns up for free.
Without spending, the free Daily Chance pick, the daily gift, hunts and the free row of the Weekly Pass all bring in resources and items.