Castle Building

Overview
A strong castle is critical to your ability to fight over the long term. You should always have your craftsmen working on upgrades, and when they are working you should be thinking about the next upgrade, how long it will take and ensuring you have kept or gathered enough resources to build it before it finishes. Wasting time asking for caravans or farming for rss because you spent everything on more units is a dumb move.
If you are ever planning on buying sapphires I suggest getting them as early as you can and using them to buy more craftsmen before anything else, it will help you the most over the long term.

Keep
The keep is the centrepiece of your castle. It does everything and nothing. The keep adds a whole 191 to your food production, this will remain the same regardless of the level of your keep.


From the keep you can inspect the armies at your castle, your armies held at other castles (garrisons) and those in transit. This is also where you go to collect rss from any settlements you might control and to send or recall                                                   units to or from that settlement.

Your keep's level sets a limit on the level of most of your other buildings but to increase the level of your keep you will need to first upgrade several other buildings to their current limit as shown in the Upgrade Requirements in the Keep's Info panel.



Farms/Mines/Townhouses
These are your most consistent source of rss production. Most of the time you will want to keep all 6 at the same level. This gives you the best increase for the time spent building. Each level adds 10 food/hour and each level takes longer to build.

At least 1 of each type of building needs to be at your current maximum before you will be able to upgrade your keep to the next level.









Altar of Mara

This altar allows you to start producing Maranian Amulets through the expenditure of gold and iron equal to the value of the number of Amulet and time. I recommend keeping this operating as much as possible. This building can not be upgraded.






Altar of Weor
This altar provides a permanent production increase of 5% per level after level 1 up to a maximum of 25% at level 6. This building requires no rss to upgrade but it does still take time, a lot of time at higher levels. This building can also be destroyed when you are successfully raided, meaning you will lose the bonus until you upgrade it again.





Barns/Warehouses
Your ability to store rss is determined by your barns (food) and warehouses (gold, iron and Maranian Amulets). A single dragon requires over 19,000 iron and later Lost Arts can require well over 100,000 in total rss so don't make these an afterthought or you may find yourself struggling to hold enough to upgrade or build your army.

At least one of each kind will need to be                                     upgraded to the same level as the keep in order to upgrade your keep further.

Catacombs
Traditionally a place to bury the dead under a city or castle your catacombs keep your armies and (some) of your resources safe from attack.

Your armies are only safe from attack if they are sent to the catacombs, but armies in your catacombs do not provide any assistance to your defence. Always send your offensive units to the catacombs. Using your offence for defence is a dumb thing.

The value shown in your Catacombs' Info panel is how much of your rss is protected from attack. For example if you have 20,000 gold and your Catacombs protects 10,000 then the most gold a single raid can take is 10,000. Understanding how this works is important for both farming other castles (you can't raid everything that your spy shows is held by the castle) and for defending yourself (if you are under attack then it's probably a good idea to use up or give away anything over your Catacombs' limit).

Your Catacombs will need to be upgraded to the same level as your Keep before you can upgrade your Keep any further.


Crystal Vault
Oh dear, the Crystal Vault. Quite possibly the most irritating and useless building in the game. The Crystal Vault is required to store, craft and use Crystals gained from Crystal Coffers. The level of the Crystal Vault determines the highest level of crystal you can use, but as there is no point in using crystals above level 4 you won't need to upgrade this building beyond level 2 for a long, long time.

Note: for those who have not yet discovered the problem with crystal vaults, Goldsmiths are a one use item that costs several thousand sapphires (about $20USD) and are needed to keep salvaged crystals above level 4 when you remove them. This is why you should not use crystals above level 4 unless you have the 2048 level 1 (256 level 4) crystals of a single colour required to make a single level 12 crystal which you might, might want to leave permanently activated.

Eagle's Nest
You will need this building in order to access Battlegrounds, Saga Quests and Settlements. Each level of upgrade will increase the range you can spot Settlements by 2km. The level of the building has no effect on your Battlegrounds or Saga Quests.







Forge/Dungeon
These require Lost Art discoveries to unlock (Bran's Legacy and Light of Eldur respectively).
The increase your iron or gold production by 2% per level up to a maximum of 10% at level 5.







Sentry House/Hall of Shadows/Order of Knights/Council of Mages
These are the buildings required to produce your army units. Sentry House builds Infantry, Hall of Shadows builds Bestiary, Order of Knights builds Cavalry and the Council of Mages build Occult units. All of these buildings also require the relevant Lost Art to be discovered before you can build them.

The level of each building determines how long your queue can be. Except where you are required to have a building at a particular level to upgrade your Keep I see no real point to having a maximum queue longer than 24-28 hours unless you have already upgraded your other buildings to the highest level and can spend all your rss on building your armies.


House of Scrolls
Leveling your House of Scrolls reduces the time of discoveries by 2% per level, which may not sound like much but later on when your discoveries can take multiple days for a single level those small reductions can really add up.

Besides which you will need to upgrade the level of you House of Scrolls to the level of your Keep before you can upgrade the Keep any further.


House of Unity
Your House of Unity is your link to Facebook. Rise of Balur would obviously love you to get your friends playing and it does this with a carrot and stick approach.

The carrot is the rewards on offer for successful invitations and the ability to give rss (costing you nothing) to other players that you are friends with on FB.

The stick is that the 1% bonus to all your primary rss production per building level requires you to use a unique, untradable rss called Timber Packs. There are two ways to get Timber Packs, the first is to have your FB friends accept your invite, connect the game to their FB account and then play up to at least level 15 (in that order!), the second is to buy Timber Packs with Sapphires.

That said, as it is the only way to give a permanent % increase to your food generation it is probably worth getting Timber Packs by either method for at least a couple of levels.

Infirmary
Note: With the exception of your in-Castle defensive units like Immortals, Crusaders and Hydras any units that are killed stay dead.

Units in your infirmary are comprised of 70% of your units killed in combat. These units will not recover, regenerate or get better. If you want them back you have to pay Sapphires, lots of Sapphires, at a price of 1/2 of the regular purchase cost. The timer you see is a 7 day countdown timer to purchase them at that discounted price. When that timer reaches zero your longest dead units can no longer be purchased and if you want more like them you will have to purchase them at the full price from the Black                                                      Market.

However, a small percentage of your units killed defending your castle may be revived for free. That percentage is determined by the level of your Infirmary up to a maximum of 30% at level 13.

This building can be upgraded to a level higher than your Keep, up to it's maximum of 13 of course.

League Hall
You will need to build one of these early in the game to search for and join leagues (like [W0G] Game of War). This building can not be upgraded.








Obelisk of Power
This building allows you to use Skull Runes to further customise your gameplay style. Read the linked post for more information. This building can not be upgraded.








Spring of Life
The food equivalent of your Forge and Dungeon but much more powerful and much more important. This building reduces your upkeep cost by an average of 4.5% per level. This is key to being able to maintain a larger army or three. This building and your Keep are the most expensive to upgrade and I strongly recommend saving up lots of food to begin upgrading this building as soon as you are able to. I also strongly recommend upgrading it to the same level as the keep as soon as you discover it.