Tips and Tricks

Evony: The King's Return is a combination empire building and puzzle game. Here are some tips and tricks to get new players started.


  1. Follow the main quest!

    • On the upper left-hand side of your screen, there is an icon labeled "Quests"

      • Following the upper "Main Quest" portion is often your best use of resources. These main quests reward you with exceptional experience, resources, items, and even generals to really speed you along your way.

      • The lower "Side Quest" section of this menu will provide bonuses as well, but often to a lesser extent than the Main Quests.

  2. Use your Speed Ups!

    • The game showers you with Speed Up items early on and it is useful to use these as you get them. There's no need hanging on to them, I promise, they won't appreciate in value.

      • Always use less time than the full duration. For example, if you have 9 minutes left on a timer, it's usually better to use a 5 Minute Speed Up, rather than a 10 Minute one; otherwise you're wasting a minute that could have been used elsewhere!

      • Always use specialized Speed Ups before general ones. You will receive many Speed Ups that can remove time from any timer. These are incredibly useful. You will also receive specialized Speed Ups such as "60 Minutes Speed Up for Construction." If you are doing a construction task longer than 60 minutes, it would be wise to use the specialized "Construction" Speed Up before a general one.

      • The last few minutes of all construction timers are always free to speed up; keep an eye out for this!

  3. Do Mysterious Puzzles

    • While waiting for Construction, Research, etc. to finish, it's a great idea to complete puzzles in the Mysterious Puzzle section (icon in lower left-hand side of screen). Just like the Main Quest, these puzzles will grant resources, Speed Ups, and generals for your use.

  4. Keep Donations Below 4 Hours

    • When donating to Alliance Research, each donation adds 20 minutes to a cooldown timer. When that timer reaches 4 hours, it requires an extremely high amount of gems to continue donating, effectively forcing you to run down the entire 4 hours of cooldown.

      • If you only donate until the cooldown reaches 3 hours and 59 minutes, however, then you can wait another twenty minutes and donate at 3:39. Constantly repeating this means you can donate every 20 minutes instead of only every 4 hours!

That's it for basic tips! I recommend reading through the Advanced Tips no later than Keep level 10

Advanced Tips

These are some extra tips that are in no way necessary, but might help a player looking to build quickly. If you're already overwhelmed, just skip this section and follow the Tips listed above.


  1. Use Beginner Protection (BP) to your advantage!

    • For the first 7 days or until you upgrade your keep to level 11, your city will remain in a protective bubble that cannot be penetrated by any other player (they cannot attack nor scout you). The trade off is that you cannot attack nor scout other players or NPCs (you can still attack monsters and gather map resources, though).

    • Use this time to your advantage! Once you follow the Main Quest to the point where "Upgrade Keep to level 11" is your next task, stop! Take a breather. Most players arrive at this quest within the first couple of days of playing. Use the rest of the BP duration to build up your resources and army within your walls.

      • Click on all the squares within your city walls and see what buildings you can make. Try and level them up as high you can. This will complete many Side Quests and get you ready for the rest of the game past level 10 and outside of the Beginner Protection.

  2. Keep Resources as Consumable Items until Needed

    • Once you leave BP, your city can be attacked and your resources plundered. Keeping your resources artificially low by keeping them as consumable items gives a much lower chance of an enemy stealing your hard-earned resources.

      • When constructing (or upgrading) a building, check the resources necessary to build the next building/upgrade you want to accomplish. It's a good idea to convert consumable items into resources before using any Speed Ups. This way, you run down the timer doing necessary steps that you would still have to do otherwise.

  3. Choose your Talents Wisely

    • If you want to focus on more defensive roles, Follow the right and middle Talent Trees. Free Construction is very useful early on, and Resource Production is good if you want to rely on internal resources rather than looting map resources. Later talents tend toward defensive capabilities in the middle tree and boons to subordinate cities in the right-hand tree.

    • If you want to focus on a more aggressive world-map oriented play style, the left (and some middle) talents are your friend! In particular, the early level marching speed will increase your monster hunting and map resource gathering capabilities quite a bit. You should avoid Resources Production if you want to gather map resources (which is faster than internal production, but ties up a March). Later talents such as Stamina Regeneration on the left-hand tree will greatly improve how much you can do on the world map.