Why your first 30 days matter more than any other stretch
Progression in Kingshot compounds. A Town Center level you delay in week one can bottleneck research, troop tiers, and building unlocks for weeks afterward. The single biggest lever new governors have is sequencing — doing things in the right order, not just doing more of everything.
This roadmap is opinionated on purpose. It tells you what to prioritize first, second, and third, rather than dumping every possible task on you at once.
Week 1: Foundation (Days 1-7)
What should a brand-new governor do first in Kingshot?
Rush your Town Center as high as your resources allow — it caps the level of almost every other building in your city, so under-leveling it stalls your entire base. Right behind it, keep your Storehouse and Infirmary within two or three levels of your Town Center at all times.
Concretely, in week one:
- Complete the tutorial quest chain in full — it front-loads a large batch of free resources and speedups that are wasteful to leave unclaimed.
- Join an active alliance immediately. Alliance-only bonuses (gifts, tech contributions, help speedups) are free power you cannot get solo, and coordinating early makes Bear Hunt and garrison defense dramatically easier.
- Start your Barracks and Academy on a resource-training loop rather than letting either sit idle — idle production buildings are the single most common time-waste in the early game.
- Don't skip Storehouse levels. New accounts get raided constantly in week one, and an under-leveled Storehouse means losing a meaningful chunk of every resource haul to attackers.
Building priority order for week 1
| Priority | Building | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Town Center | Gates every other building's max level |
| 2 | Storehouse | Protects resources from raids while you're vulnerable |
| 3 | Infirmary | Keeps wounded troops recoverable instead of lost |
| 4 | Barracks / War Academy | Keeps troop training and research flowing |
Week 2: Defense and your first heroes (Days 8-14)
By now you should have a small standing garrison. Build it around Jabel (free-to-play, tanky, available from day one) and Zoe once she unlocks — she's widely considered the strongest F2P garrison hero and remains relevant for a long stretch of the mid-game. See the full hero database and tier list for how every hero compares.
This is also the week to make a shard-saving decision: pick one long-term hero to invest shards into rather than spreading them thin across several heroes you like the look of. F2P-focused guides consistently point to heroes like Marlin or, later, Yang as the highest-value long-term saves — see our F2P hero priority guide for the full reasoning.
Week 3: Research and troop tiers (Days 15-21)
Once your War Academy is online, start pushing Truegold research in the troop type your hero lineup favors (check each hero's troopType on their detail page). Use the Building Upgrade Calculator and Troop Training Calculator to plan exactly how much you need banked before starting a research or training push, so buildings and Barracks queues don't sit idle waiting on resources.
Week 4: Events and KvK prep basics (Days 22-30)
By week four you should be participating in Bear Hunt consistently (it runs multiple times a day — see the event calendar) and paying attention to your kingdom's KvK preparation schedule. Read the KvK preparation guide and the KvK prep checklist before your first prep week so you're not scrambling to understand the scoring system on day one of an event that only comes around periodically.
Join an alliance on day one if you have not already — the Alliance Tech primer explains why donations only work when the whole alliance picks one tree. Encode Town Center and Academy rows on the Progression hub when you want alliance chat to open the same plan.