Welcome to the 9 Kings Best King Guide — a condensed collection of advanced tricks, meta strategies, and subtle interactions that define success in high-difficulty runs of 9 Kings.
If you’ve already mastered your favorite King on normal or hard difficulty and want to climb toward King IX and endless mode dominance, this guide outlines both universal mechanics and King-specific optimisations that will make or break your late-game performance.
These core mechanics apply to every King and can drastically impact your early and mid-game outcomes.
1. Exploit Early-Year Opportunities
If you begin your run with extra deployable cards, it’s worth rerolling your Year 1 enemy to face the King of Spells.
Deploy a few early units or buildings, win the battle, and afterward use the “Offering” card. If RNG blesses you, you can gain up to three Castle or Tile upgrades right at the start — one of the strongest early-game accelerations in the game.
This trick remains viable throughout the run, letting you turn bad RNG draws or useless cards into meaningful progress.
2. The Earthworks Cloning Trick
Using the “Earthworks” card on your max-level Temple destroys it but refunds three base-level Temple cards and two free tile spaces.
Re-deploy and re-upgrade them repeatedly to stack ridiculous stats, duplicating other cards in the process.
This method can be applied to any upgradable card — not just Temples — allowing infinite scaling until the game performance starts to suffer (or outright crash).
3. Boss Damage Shortcut – The Converter Tower
If your main Castle damage output can’t handle late bosses, deploy a Converter Tower.
Normally, this structure transforms enemies into rats — but when used on bosses, it instead inflicts massive direct damage, often enough to instantly kill or severely wound them. Even an unupgraded Converter Tower can finish fights your army can’t.
9 Kings Best King Guide – Builds, Tier List, Endless Mode Tips
The best in no particular order:
A-S tier:
Red: king of blood
Blue: King of nomads
Grey: King of stone
Purple: King of Spells
D-F tier:
Yellow: King of Greed
Yellowish: King of Progress
Green: King of Nature
Green: King of nothing (hence his name)
Below are the key strategies and synergy notes for each King, optimised for high-tier play.
King of Progress
Survive the brutal early-game, then scale endlessly.
- Focus on early survival using the “Feast” decree.
- Combine this with Defenders and Temples to create a wall of near-immortal units.
- Prioritize Defender upgrades (+4 levels early on).
- Avoid King-specific decrees early — pick universal ones for consistency.
Once stabilized, this King’s combination of HP scaling, regen, and reinforced defenses ensures no unit loss during boss battles.
King of Blood
Endless offence through blood magic.
- Spam Imps and Cemeteries.
- Keep upgrading your Castle — your offensive scaling is exponential.
- Avoid overusing Temples mid-game; their spread can weaken boost focus.
- The “Feast” decree is still your best survival tool during RNG-heavy mid-stages.
- Against King of Stone, place Imps behind Ballistas to avoid being nuked.
Once stabilised, this King’s base DPS and sacrificial synergy make him unstoppable — chaotic but devastating.
King of Spells
Pure magical destruction through speed scaling.
- Use Citadel’s instant-kill perk and combine it with Universal Defenders and Temple spam.
- The King-specific castle attack speed decree is mandatory here.
- Defenders alone can often win with enough investment.
This is arguably the fastest and easiest King to complete all difficulties with. Once set up, your castle becomes a literal minigun of destruction.
King of Stone
Fortress defence turned into an offence.
- Build around Universal Defenders and Cauldrons.
- Use the Castle Speed Upgrade Decree, then combine the Venom and Overwork decrees for absurd damage.
- Standard Temple spamming works fine, but the key lies in balancing defender density and castle upgrades.
Once stabilized, your base melts enemies before they reach your walls.
King of Nature
Balanced growth through regeneration and procreation.
- The Spreader perk helps stabilize the early game.
- Temples are optional but highly beneficial in mid-game.
- RNG plays a large role here — especially if you rely heavily on Procreate cards.
- Expect a difficult mid-game curve, but once ecosystems stabilize, you’ll snowball fast.
Not the easiest run, but satisfying once optimized.
King of Nothing
Pure base growth and early upgrade rush.
- Early game is harsh — prioritize Castle upgrades immediately.
- Deploy temporary troops to survive the first few years, then replace them.
- If RNG offers the Random Cards Decree, take it — it often provides the flexibility this King lacks.
Focus purely on leveling your base and using Wildcards efficiently. Late game, your base damage outpaces everything.
King of Greed
Infinite mercenaries, infinite money.
- Spam Mercenaries with one central Mob unit for synergy.
- Avoid “Migration” — unnecessary when you can brute force unit count.
- The Supplies Decree floods your hand with cards — use it to spam mercenaries endlessly.
- Upgrade the Castle constantly — more money = more mercs.
- Pair this with the King of Spells Offering Trick for early tile upgrades.
By mid to late game, expect thousands of units and unstable performance on low-end systems.
Caution: Avoid King of Stone as an enemy — his Ballistas can annihilate your army in one volley.
King of Nomads
Core Idea: Controlled chaos through unit multiplication.
- Early game is extremely RNG-dependent; use Feast decree to stabilize.
- Two Mob units are enough — adding more hurts scaling focus.
- Before boss fights, move Warlord, place a Cemetery between unit tiles, and multiply your army.
- Moving and returning the Warlord with Migration doubles the Mob count each time.
- Using Immigrant perk grants 4 Migration cards per expansion — exponential growth.
- Temples are optional — Gigantify or Free Decrees also work.
Avoid King of Stone early. His Ballistas can nuke your entire swarm before you even act.
Once stabilized, expect swarms of 2,000–13,000+ units in long runs.
At high difficulties, 9 Kings becomes a test of resource manipulation, decree exploitation, and system mastery.
Most victories aren’t earned through raw strength but through clever manipulation of card interactions and perk scaling.
Mastering tricks like the Development Decree chain, Earthworks duplication, or Offering conversions will make even the toughest Kings feel manageable.