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The King Is Watchingis a Roguelite, meaning that you’ll retain some progression between runs, rather than a Roguelike, where each run truly stands on its own. Because of this, you’re likely to have a ceiling in your first run of The King Is Watching; you won’t be capable of greatness.
Greatness comes with upgrades, and those upgrades are many. You earn upgrades by completing runs (whether you’re successful or not), and the choices you make in those upgrades is going to dictate how quickly you’re going to progress. Good upgrade choices mean you’ll move fast; bad upgrade choices are going to keep you where you are.
First Upgrades You Should Get
These upgradesshould be prioritized over all others, because they’re either going to provide a huge bonus right away, or provide a constant bonus that acts as the backbone for higher performance from then onward.
Tile Seals
Tile Sealsincrease the production on tiles that they’re installed on by a certain percentage. This means you’ll get those resources quicker, and so be able to use those resources quicker.
These upgrades show up in the Red and Yellow upgrade trees.
It’s a good idea to grab the first of these available in both trees.
Banish The Nobles
Your Kingdom has a perimeter of tiles that are unusable and occupied by utterly useless Nobles. Getting rid of them should be another priority, as it’llfree up more slots in your Kingdom, giving you more options.
You can banish Nobles in the Red upgrade tree in a few different places; it’s not terribly expensive to get any of these, and the upgrades along the way are all at least somewhat beneficial.
Upgrades Into The Future
Once you’ve got these baseline upgrades, you’ll havea good footing and have more of an idea of how you’d like to build your Kingdom in each run. This is also where we’re going to branch out more with upgrades, getting some more expensive ones, and diversifying our choices.
Advisor Slot
Advisorsgive you passive bonuses throughout your run, and there are a ton of them to choose from.
But, to field more than one Advisor at a time, you’llneed more advisor slots. The first two of these are pretty cheap to get in the Blue upgrade tree, and you should grab them when you can.
From here, feel free to branch out and look at the advisor options. Many of these advisors are going to be tailored toward specific Kingdom build ideas, and useless for others.
Troop Limit Upgrades
Troop Limit upgrades are going toallow you to field more troops at a time. When it comes down to it, this is the most important thing you can possibly do in the game, aside from having more powerful troops.
Magic School
Magic Schools arebuildings that slowly generate spells for you when active. Most spells individually aren’t terribly impactful, but when you’re gaining spells at a regular click, using them consistently can make a big difference.
Once you’ve got the Magic School,try and keep it active as often as you can manage. This will be difficult in the early game because you’ll be mostly focused on generating resources and growing your army, but once you’ve expanded your gaze, Magic Schools can be very beneficial.
Once you’ve got the Magic School unlocked, the Spell Damage upgrades, also in the Yellow upgrade tree, are going to be more valuable.
New Buildings
Once you’ve got some new Advisors and these other upgrades,new buildings should be next on your list. These are spread throughout the different trees, and these new buildings do different things.
Because you’ll already have the foundational pieces that you gain by default, none of these are buildings that you need to blitz to immediately. But,the more of them you get, the more options you’ll have.
New Kings
Which leads us to our next upgrade, new Kings. These new Kings are located in the Green upgrade tree; there are six of them to unlock, and they’reall going to have different abilities and different costs.
Between this, your building choices, and your Advisor choices,you’re going to have a lot of build diversity potential. This is where it helps to get creative and figure out some synergies between different mechanics, because a lot of doors are going to open to you here.
Troop Upgrades
Lastly, we’ve got troop upgrades. These are also in the Green upgrade tree, and they’re themost expensive upgrades there are.They increase your troops' health and damage by a percentage for each skill, and make a tremendous difference, regardless of the build that you choose to create.
These would be a higher priority, but because they’re so expensive and at the end of the tree, they should generally be saved for last.
