Spend gems on VIP levels and nothing else until you reach VIP 10, and only then start buying books of covenant. That single rule is most of a Rise of Kingdoms F2P guide, because gems are the only currency a free account controls and VIP is the only place they compound.

What follows is the spending order, where VIP points come from when you refuse to pay, how a farm account works, and an honest account of the ceiling. If you are still building out the basics, the first-60-days breakdown covers the buildings and alliance work underneath all of it.

Updated September 2026. Checked against Rise of Kingdoms version 1.1.11.28. The game is free to download and the Anniversary Festival events currently running are unusually generous, which makes this a good month to bank rather than spend.

Spend Gems in This Order and No Other

VIP 6 first, then VIP 10, then books of covenant, then VIP 12. One gem buys one VIP point, VIP 6 costs 11,500 points in total, and every gem you spend anywhere else before that is a gem spent badly.

VIP 6 is the real milestone because it hands you the second builder permanently, which means you stop paying gems to rent one, and it opens the Courier Station. VIP 10 is the second, because it pays a free legendary sculpture every single day. VIP 12 pays two. On a free account that daily trickle is the largest source of legendary sculptures you will ever have, and it arrives whether you log in to fight or not.

Books of covenant slot in between at 10 gems each, and they are the one non-VIP purchase worth making. Castle 25 gates Academy 25, which gates tier 5 research, and farming books off barbarians alone will not get you there. Most of what circulates as a Rise of Kingdoms spending guide buries this behind a list of bundles. The honest version is four items long.

VIP Points Are Mostly Free If You Are Patient

Collect your 200 free VIP points every 24 hours without fail, because that daily login alone carries you a long way toward VIP 6 before a single gem changes hands. Missing it is the most common quiet mistake free players make.

After that, alliance credits buy VIP points at 50,000 credits for 100 points, which is slow but free, and alliance gifts drop VIP point items in amounts from 10 up to 1,000 whenever someone in your alliance buys a bundle. That last one is the single most mercenary piece of advice in the game and it is also correct: join an alliance with spenders in it. Their credit card genuinely pays your VIP bill.

When you do convert gems into VIP points, do it during a More Than Gems event, which pays extra rewards for spending you were going to do anyway. Holding gems for three weeks to catch that window is worth more than any efficiency trick. Lilith posts the event calendar in the client and on the official Rise of Kingdoms site.

The Farm Account Is the Biggest Free Multiplier

Run a second account in the same alliance, build its Trading Post, and let it gather full time while your main fights. A farm doubles your effective resource income for the price of some tapping, and it is the closest a free player gets to a wallet.

Both accounts have to sit in the same alliance for transfers to work, and shipments go through the Trading Post, pay a tax on the way, and are capped by transport capacity. Build the farm toward City Hall 17 for four march queues, or City Hall 22 for five, then put everything into gathering commanders, economic technology, and tier 1 siege units. Nothing else on a farm matters.

The fair criticism of any Rise of Kingdoms farm account guide, this one included, is that it is advice to play a second game you do not enjoy in order to afford the first one. Plenty of people quit at exactly that realization, and they are not wrong to. The same tax on your attention runs through Whiteout Survival and most of the genre.

What a Free Account Cannot Buy

You will reach tier 5 troops months after the spenders, you will field one strong commander pairing instead of five, and you will not lead rallies. None of that stops you competing, and pretending otherwise is what makes most free-to-play advice useless.

The trap to name directly is Wheel of Fortune. The opening run of ten spins costs about 5,600 gems, which is roughly half of VIP 6 spent on a chance at sculptures you might get free from VIP 10 anyway. Save it for after VIP 10, or skip it. Rise of Kingdoms has run this economy since 2018, and the offers get loudest exactly when you feel furthest behind. That pattern holds across the mobile war strategy field, so recognizing it beats resenting it.

How to Use This Rise of Kingdoms F2P Guide

Work out which milestone you are closest to and drive at it alone. Below VIP 6, every gem goes to VIP points and you buy nothing else. Between VIP 6 and VIP 10, keep going and start a farm account. Past VIP 10, the daily sculpture changes the math and books of covenant become the priority.

Any Rise of Kingdoms free to play guide that opens with redeem codes and daily quest checklists has the emphasis backwards. Codes are pocket change. The account that reaches VIP 10 six months ahead of yours will beat you with worse commanders and less playtime, so the only question that matters is how fast you get there. The strategy guides archive covers the rest of the account from there.

If running two accounts to stay competitive in one game sounds like a poor trade, that is a reasonable verdict rather than a lack of commitment. Our list of free mobile strategy games where free actually means free points at the games that do not ask it. Everything else is at Strategygame.org.

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