Kingdom vs Kingdom
Monthly cross-kingdom war. Matchmaking, a five-day prep, a twelve-hour battle, and a two-day recovery — the one event where the whole kingdom wins or loses together.
Kingdom vs Kingdom — labelled Kingdom of Power in-game, KvK in chat — is the one event in Kingshot where your whole kingdom wins or loses together. Matchmaking pairs you against another kingdom, both sides compete through a five-day prep phase, a twelve-hour cross-kingdom battle decides it, and the loser spends the next two weeks living under the winner’s High King.
That kingdom-level stake is what makes KvK different from every other event on the calendar. Alliance Championship, Bear Hunt, and Cesare’s Fury reward individual or alliance execution. KvK rewards a server that prepared together. A kingdom with three loaded alliances and forty disengaged ones loses to a kingdom where every active player did their share of prep points.
TL;DR
- KvK matchmaking is locked in by your kingdom’s top-100 active troop power. Disbanding troops or stripping gear does not lower it — the matchmaking layer ignores those tricks
- Save speedups, Truegold, Mithril, Forgehammers, hero shards, and pet marks for the prep week. The 30 points per minute of construction speedup is the cleanest score-per-resource conversion in the event
- Shield before Battle Phase opens at 10:00 UTC. Your personal shield burns down to zero at the start of the battle window — set it before bed the night before if you sleep through that hour
- Both kingdoms can teleport into each other’s map and attack cities the entire Battle Phase, regardless of who won prep. You can only be attacked, and you can only score combat points, against players whose Town Center is within 3 levels of yours. A TC 27 player is invisible to Truegold 1 raiders; a Truegold 1 player wastes their stamina on TC 27 targets
- Only the kingdom that wins Preparation gets to attack the opposing King’s Castle. The winning kingdom’s own castle stays shielded for Battle Phase; the losing kingdom’s castle is the target. City-on-city war runs in parallel for everyone
- Losing means the opposing kingdom’s High King runs your kingdom for two weeks — appointments, buffs, and titles all sit on their side
- Server unity is the strategy. Top-100 power decides matchmaking; alliance-wide prep points decide State Bonus; coordinated rallies decide the castle. None of those are individual levers
When it runs
KvK opens once your kingdom is roughly 70 days old and then runs monthly, with the Battle Phase landing on a Saturday. The three active phases run back-to-back:
| Phase | Length | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Matchmaking | ~2 days | Game pairs your kingdom with one of similar strength |
| Preparation | 5 days | Server-wide point race; winner earns the State Bonus and the right to attack the opposing King’s Castle |
| Battle | 12 hours (10:00–22:00 UTC) | Cross-kingdom teleport opens, castle fight starts at 12:00 UTC |
The two-day Matchmaking phase is also when you finalise prep stockpiles and time any building or research upgrades to land during prep (where they score points) instead of before it (where they don’t).
Why this is a server unity event
Three structural rules make KvK a kingdom event, not a personal one:
- Matchmaking uses top-100 active troop power. Disengaged mid-tier players don’t lower it, and they open the back door once Battle Phase opens
- Winning Preparation buffs the whole kingdom and unlocks the castle attack. The State Bonus and the right to push the opposing castle land on every active player in the winning kingdom; the losing kingdom fights Battle Phase without either
- Castle holds need sustained alliance presence. A solo wrecker can’t hold the King’s Castle long enough to win — it takes layered rallies, swap rotations, and turret control
What that means for any one player: do your daily prep tasks, stay in alliance rally calls during Battle Phase, don’t disband troops to “lower” matchmaking, and take any King appointment your leadership asks you to fill.
Saving for KvK
KvK is the highest-leverage spend window on the calendar. The four weeks between events are a stockpile window, not an upgrade window — anything you spend before prep opens is points handed to the opposing kingdom.
Stockpile, both tracks:
- Construction, research, and training speedups
- Truegold and Tempered Truegold
- Hero shards (across all heroes you’d build)
- True Dust
- Skill manuals and Hero Roulette tickets
- Advanced Taming Marks
- Forgehammers
- Mithril
- Hero Widgets
- Charms (Charm Guides and Charm Designs)
- Governor Gear materials
The general rule: anything that goes into a permanent upgrade — building, research, hero, pet, gear — scores more during prep than at any other time. When to spend each one is on the scoring chart below.
Save windows that matter most. The single best F2P move is stopping all construction the week before KvK and banking the resulting speedup inventory. Forty-eight hours of saved 60-minute speedups is a meaningful chunk of the Day 1 board.
- Coordinate major upgrades with the prep window. Start them so they finish during the prep phase
- Save 100% of Truegold drops from Hall of Governors, Bear Hunt and event chests — Truegold is the single best per-unit prep score the event offers
- Run Champagne Fair the month before KvK to convert your shard surplus into Hero Widgets, Forgehammers and Mithril — both score on Day 4
- Don’t ascend heroes between events. A 5★ Mythic ascension scores 3,040 prep points; a 4★ scores 1,400. Hold the shards
The mistake that bleeds the most F2P value is doing routine upgrades on a quiet Tuesday because nothing else is going on. Every upgrade started outside the prep window scores zero for KvK.
KvK is where Kingshot spend pays back hardest. The prep board converts cash into points more efficiently than any other event, and the State Bonus from winning prep then makes every Battle Phase troop loss cheaper to heal. Time your monthly pack budget around it.
- Truegold and Tempered Truegold packs are the highest per-dollar prep score on the board. If you only buy one pack tier this cycle, this is it
- Mithril and Forgehammer packs are the second-highest. Both score on Day 4 and both feed permanent gear upgrades that ride into the Battle Phase
- Don’t burn Normal packs reactively during prep. Buy high value packs slowly leading up to the event instead of inefficient Normal packs last minute
- After Battle Phase opens, stop pack purchases for this KvK. Anything you buy after 10:00 UTC Saturday doesn’t affect the snapshot of your prep score and is better held for the next cycle
The trap at this spend level is panic-buying during the final 12 hours of prep when the kingdom leaderboard is close. The dollars-to-points conversion in that window is real but the same money spent before prep started would have scored more cumulatively. Plan the spend, don’t react to it.
How the Preparation Phase scores
Five days, one scoring board per day, points accumulate across the week. Each upgrade category scores best on a specific day — line up your stockpile against this chart and spend each resource where it pays the most:
| Upgrade | D1 | D2 | D3 | D4 | D5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Construction | 💚 | 🆗 | ❌ | ❌ | 🆗 |
| Truegold | 💚 | 🆗 | ❌ | ❌ | 🆗 |
| Charms | 💚 | ❌ | 🆗 | 🆗 | ❌ |
| Research | ❌ | 💚 | ❌ | ❌ | 🆗 |
| Roulette | ❌ | 💚 | 🆗 | ❌ | ❌ |
| True Dust | ❌ | 💚 | ❌ | ❌ | 🆗 |
| Gathering | ❌ | 💚 | ❌ | 💚 | 💚 |
| Hero Shards | ❌ | 💚 | 💚 | ❌ | ❌ |
| Pets | ❌ | ❌ | 💚 | ❌ | 🆗 |
| Troops | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | 💚 | 🆗 |
| Forgehammers | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | 💚 | 🆗 |
| Mithril | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | 💚 | 🆗 |
| Hero Widget | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | 🆗 | 💚 |
| Governor Gear | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | 💚 |
Legend: 💚 do it today · 🆗 optional / fallback · ❌ hold for a better day.
Rows are grouped by their primary 💚 day, top to bottom. Day 1 sits at the top (Construction, Truegold, Charms), then Day 2 (Research, Roulette, True Dust, Gathering, Hero Shards), then Day 3 (Pets), Day 4 (Troops, Forgehammers, Mithril), and Day 5 (Hero Widget, Governor Gear). The 🆗 markers further down each column are your release valve — dump leftover stockpile on a fallback day when the optimal day is past.
Three king skills line up with the prep schedule and should be requested 48 hours in advance:
- Day 1 — Groundworks (construction speed buff). Stack your saved construction speedups inside this window
- Day 2 — Fresh Ideas (research speed buff). Start your biggest research project under this buff
- Day 4 — Mobilise (training speed buff). Queue troop training to land during this window
Personal rewards unlock at point milestones throughout the day, with the final personal chest sitting at 200,000 points per day. Above that, you’re scoring into the kingdom leaderboard, not your own.
Shield discipline
Have a shield active when Battle Phase opens at 10:00 UTC. If you sleep through the opening, set the shield to cover until you wake up — an unshielded player who logs in at noon UTC has already eaten a wave.
Once Battle Phase is live, re-shielding is the only way to disengage. Park troops in alliance HQ or Banner buildings while shielded or between marches — those buildings cannot be attacked.
Battle Phase rules
Battle Phase runs 10:00 UTC to 22:00 UTC on the Saturday of the event cycle, twelve hours total. The Castle Battle itself starts at 12:00 UTC, two hours after teleporters open, and runs inside the same window.
The constraints that shape every individual decision:
- Cross-kingdom teleporters open at 10:00 UTC for both kingdoms. Whichever side won prep, players from either kingdom can teleport into the opposing map and rally, attack, or reinforce. Many alliances pre-stage rally leads on the enemy map in the first half-hour
- You can attack opposing-kingdom players only if their Town Center is within 3 levels of yours. A TC 28 player cannot hit a Truegold 1 player; a Truegold 1 player can hit anyone from TC 28 to Truegold 4. Use this when choosing where to teleport in
- The prep-winning kingdom’s King’s Castle is shielded; the losing kingdom’s castle is the contested objective. Only the prep winners can push for the castle win — the losing kingdom plays Battle Phase for cities and personal points
- Alliance buildings (HQ, Banner) cannot be attacked during Battle Phase. Defensive positioning around alliance buildings is therefore safer than open-map positioning
- Castle Battle resets all kingdom-castle positions at 12:00 UTC — whoever held positions in the days before, those slots are emptied and the fight starts clean
Castle and turret control
If your kingdom won Preparation, your own King’s Castle is shielded for the cycle and your alliances push the opposing kingdom’s castle. If you lost Preparation, your King’s Castle is the contested objective and you spend Battle Phase defending it, plus running cities, turrets, and personal scoring on the side. Either way, the city-on-city war runs in both directions the whole window.
The King’s Castle and its four turrets decide the kingdom-level winner:
- The first alliance from the attacking kingdom to hold the King’s Castle for 2.5 hours continuously wins outright. If no alliance manages a continuous 2.5-hour hold before Battle Phase closes, the alliance with the longest cumulative hold time takes the win
- Turrets stack a Lethality bonus for whichever kingdom controls them, escalating with how many turrets that kingdom holds. A coordinated kingdom holding all four turrets buffs every squad of theirs attacking the castle; if the turrets are held by the opposing kingdom from whoever holds the castle, the turrets damage the castle holders
- Turret rotations matter as much as the castle. A two-alliance kingdom that commits all power to the castle and leaves turrets uncontested often loses the lethality math even when it briefly holds the centre
This is the layer where alliance coordination is non-negotiable. R4/R5 across alliances must agree on which alliance commits to the castle and which to turrets, and that agreement has to be in place before 12:00 UTC.
What invasion means
KvK is the only event where the consequences of losing extend past the event window. The mechanism the game uses is the High King title, awarded to the winning kingdom for the two weeks between this KvK and the next one.
If your kingdom wins Battle Phase:
- Your alliance appoints a High King, who appoints titles and city buffs across both your kingdom and the loser’s for two weeks
- Your kingdom collects 50 Kingdom Coins per qualifying player; the losing kingdom collects 15
- The top 50 personal leaderboard players earn an exclusive city skin
- Your kingdom keeps access to the King’s Castle and its appointment buffs for the cycle
If your kingdom loses Battle Phase:
- The opposing kingdom’s High King appoints titles in your kingdom, including the slots that grant the strongest buffs. Their players sit on those slots; yours don’t
- Your kingdom-wide buffs run on a foreign player’s schedule. King skills like Groundworks and Mobilise may not fire when you need them
- Your strongest players can be jailed by the High King, which removes them from rallies and gathering during the jail window
- Your alliance’s appointment buffs are partially withheld depending on what the High King decides
- You still keep your city, your troops, your gear, and your resources. KvK is not a server merge. The penalty is governance, not destruction
The two weeks of foreign appointments are the part most players underestimate. Losing one Battle Phase doesn’t wipe an account — it makes the next two weeks of progress meaningfully slower, which compounds into the next KvK if your kingdom doesn’t tighten up.
What individual players actually lose
Even on the losing side, the personal damage is bounded:
- Wounded troops recover through the Infirmary and Enlistment Office — the kingdom does not get reset and you do not lose your roster permanently
- Resources lost to plunder are capped by your warehouse protection — set protection limits before Battle Phase opens
- Gear, heroes, charms, and buildings cannot be destroyed. Only troops and unprotected resources move
The realistic worst case for a non-castle player who shielded through the opening is a few hundred wounded troops and a small resource skim. Gear, heroes, and progress carry forward unchanged.
After Battle Phase closes at 22:00 UTC, the two weeks until the next KvK are also your next prep window. Stop construction, hold shards, and bank speedups again.
Common mistakes
- Treating KvK as a personal event. Matchmaking, prep totals, and battle outcomes are all server-level. Personal prep without server coordination loses to coordinated kingdoms with weaker individuals
- Disbanding troops or stripping gear to “lower” matchmaking. Neither lowers the top-100 power that matchmaking uses. You just weaken your own defence
- Doing routine upgrades the week before prep. Every construction, research, and ascension done outside prep is points handed to the opposing kingdom
- Forgetting to shield before 10:00 UTC Saturday. The opening burns active shields to zero; an unshielded player who logs in at noon UTC has already eaten a wave
- Reactive pack purchases during prep. The same dollars spent the week before prep buy speedups and resources that score on the same boards, often through bulk-pack discounts
- No alliance rally discipline during Battle Phase. Solo marches at the King’s Castle don’t move the hold timer; only coordinated rallies do
- Ignoring turret control. A kingdom that wins the castle but loses all four turrets often loses the cumulative time race anyway because the lethality bonus flips against them
- Doing nothing in a “bye-week” kingdom. Even when matchmaking pulls a weak opponent and the win looks safe, the Preparation milestones (State Medals, Island Blueprints, Lion of Glory) are progression you cannot get elsewhere. Skipping prep because the win is in the bag is leaving rewards on the table