The Stronghold

Claiming your keep

Any character from Rank 1 can claim a Stronghold, so this is available essentially from the start. Buildings then rise one level at a time up to level 20, each level costing more than the last on a 1.5x curve, which compounds hard: level 10 of a building costs roughly 38x what level 1 did.

How production actually scales

Producer output does NOT scale linearly with level. It follows an exponent of 0.5, which is a square root: doubling a building's level multiplies its output by about 1.41, not by 2. Quadrupling the level doubles the output.

That single fact should shape all of your spending. Because cost grows geometrically while output grows as a square root, the cheap early levels of a building you do not yet own are almost always better value than the next expensive level of one you have already invested in. Spread your buildings wide before you push any single one deep.

The Gem Mine is the exception worth naming. It produces shadowgems, the game's premium currency, at a deliberately tiny rate compared with the gold producers. It will never make you rich in gems, but it is the only way to earn them purely through play, so it accumulates quietly into something real over weeks rather than hours.

The Vault cap is the real constraint

Production accumulates into a Vault, and the Vault caps how much of each RESOURCE it will hold: bone, blackstone and ironwood, separately. It starts at 100 of each and doubles with every level (2x growth), so by level 5 it holds 1,600 of each.

Once a resource is at the cap, producing more of it stops mattering. Everything the Bone Quarry, Blackstone Pit or Blighted Grove would have made past that line is simply not there when you next log in. Nothing warns you, and the buildings still read as producing at full rate. A player who upgrades those three and neglects the Vault is throwing away most of their output overnight, every night.

The gold from the Counting House and the shadowgems from the Gem Mine are the exceptions: neither is capped by the Vault, so they pile up unbounded until you claim them. Only the three building resources can overflow.

The practical rule: size your Vault against how long you actually stay away. If you log in twice a day, you need a Vault that holds half a day of resource production. If you play once every couple of days, you need far more, and raising it is a better purchase than any producer level.

The Counting House

The Counting House is the Hold's gold producer, and it reads its rate from two places: its own level, and the combined levels of every other building you have raised. That second term is worth 10% as much per point, and it counts LEVELS rather than output, so a Vault at level 10 feeds it exactly as much as a Bone Quarry at level 10 despite producing nothing itself.

That makes it a perfectly good early purchase, not a late one: it pays from level 1 on its own account, and everything else you build afterwards quietly raises it again. It is the one building that gets better without being touched.

Every building in the Hold

The Keep gates every other building outright, and each one first becomes buildable only once the Keep reaches the level named below. There are 14 buildings in total, listed here in the order the Hold unlocks them, each with what it does and its numbers at level 1 and at the maximum, level 20.

• The Keep: Shaves time off the whole build queue, its own upgrades included, from no discount at level 1 up to 62.3% faster at level 20. It also gates every other building outright: none of them can rise past the Keep's own level. First level costs 50 bone, 50 blackstone, 50 ironwood.
• Bone Quarry: Unlocked from the start. Drips bone into the Vault around the clock, from 2.00/min at level 1 up to 8.9/min at level 20. First level costs 30 blackstone, 30 ironwood.
• Blackstone Pit: Unlocked from the start. Drips blackstone into the Vault around the clock, from 2.00/min at level 1 up to 8.9/min at level 20. First level costs 30 bone, 30 ironwood.
• Blighted Grove: Unlocked from the start. Drips ironwood into the Vault around the clock, from 2.00/min at level 1 up to 8.9/min at level 20. First level costs 30 bone, 30 blackstone.
• Counting House: Unlocked from the start. Turns Hold activity straight into gold: 0.60 gold/min at level 1 rising to 12.0 gold/min at level 20 from its own level alone, plus a smaller trickle worth 10% as much per point, per combined level of every other building in the Hold. First level costs 25 bone, 25 blackstone, 25 ironwood.
• Vault: Unlocked from the start. Raises the storage cap shared by bone, blackstone and ironwood, from 100 each at level 1 to 52,428,800 each at level 20. First level costs 40 bone, 20 blackstone, 40 ironwood.
• Sanctum: Unlocks at Keep level 3. Adds bonus XP to every successful action, worth 30% at level 20. First level costs 35 bone, 20 blackstone, 30 ironwood.
• Apothecary: Unlocks at Keep level 3. Speeds up mana regeneration, up to 40% faster at level 20. First level costs 20 bone, 35 blackstone, 30 ironwood.
• Altar: Unlocks at Keep level 5. Raises maximum energy directly, up to +40 at level 20. First level costs 45 bone, 25 blackstone, 20 ironwood.
• Crypt: Unlocks at Keep level 5. Improves material and gear drop rates, up to 10% at level 20. First level costs 50 bone, 20 blackstone, 20 ironwood.
• Library: Unlocks at Keep level 7. Adds a flat success-chance bonus to every action and stable theft, up to 4% at level 20, and lifts the success ceiling itself, up to 99% at level 20 (see Combat & Stats for the base clamp this widens). First level costs 20 bone, 25 blackstone, 45 ironwood.
• Forge: Unlocks at Keep level 7. Discounts Blacksmith crafting materials, up to 50% off at level 20, and gear repair gold, up to 30% off at level 20 on a gentler curve. First level costs 25 bone, 35 blackstone, 35 ironwood.
• Gem Mine: Unlocks at Keep level 3. Trickles shadowgems on the same power curve as the resource producers, from 1.0/day at level 1 up to 4.5/day at level 20. It never overflows the Vault, only your patience. First level costs 30 bone, 30 blackstone, 20 ironwood.
• Church of Shadows: Unlocks at Keep level 5. Lets you pray about once every 23 hours for a 60-minute boon, one choice among six. At level 20 that choice is worth +60 luck, +60 attack, +60 defense, +100% energy regen, +40% gold gain, or +100% XP gain. First level costs 20 bone, 20 blackstone, 35 ironwood.

The spending order that actually works

• Claim the keep immediately, at any rank. It costs nothing to own and starts earning at once.
• Buy the cheap first levels of every producer before deepening any one of them, because cost grows geometrically while output grows as a square root.
• Raise the Vault whenever your play pattern means bone, blackstone or ironwood is sitting at the cap. This is the single most commonly skipped upgrade in the game.
• Add the Counting House early rather than late. It pays from its first level, and every other building you raise afterwards adds to its rate for free.
• Treat the Gem Mine as a long game. It will not pay off this week and it will have paid off in a month.