Kingmaker Strategy Guide

Best Practices

Time Management

Time is an often overlooked resource and should be thought of as valuable. Fast-Traveling to a Waypoint is done instantly and can save you important time that can be used to continue exploring and improving your build. This is especially useful when found near a Golem or Cauldron as you will visit these incredibly frequently.

Hunting Items

As you look for specific items for your build, it is important to be aware of ways to increase your chances of finding them by knowing the items' tags and what locations can contain those items.

The Traveling Merchant always has exactly 5 Rare and 1 Heroic item. Each one also maintains whether the specific slot is an item or a weapon after rerolls. As such, if you are looking for a Heroic Weapon, one of the best ways to find it is rerolling at a merchant who has a weapon in the Heroic slot.

Challenging Bosses

Bosses can be viewed by pressing Tab, and can be challenged early in the game's escape menu. It may seem like you should maximize your chances against each one in order, but really you should challenge them as early as you are able to. Defeating them early grants more item slots, which is crucial for having enough space for efficient collection and crafting.

Challenging them early will not waste that week or cost you extra time. After they are defeated, an arrow will appear at the end of your day-counter to indicate that a boss battle will not trigger at the end of that week, since you already defeated them. It is possible to defeat multiple bosses in the same week, causing multiple arrows to pile up.

There are certain items that are strong for early fights despite being weak in the endgame. These are typically ones that give you big singular benefits without needing to be combined with anything, such as Cracked Bouldershield and Royal Helmet. Getting Woodcutter's Axe as a first item means you can try and fight immediately and probably win, gaining a full cycle and 2 item slots immediately. It can be good to pick up one or two of these from a merchant early on. Don't get too attached to these items though, as many of them don't combine into the type of engines and combos that you'll want to create for in the endgame.

Managing resources

Your movement, item slots and events are resources just like health and armor, use them wisely. Try to obtain waypoints as often as possible, as you will frequently return to them. Important events may appear via the Scrying Pool on the opposite side of the map, so having a nearby waypoint is essential.
Find a waypoint close to a Golem and a Cauldron, and return to them whenever you need to upgrade items.
Try to use horses when traveling to specific events. For example, in a weapon pile area you will almost always receive the Anvil option, and similarly the Hero's Grave option in the graveyard.
If your build relies heavily on diamond items, delay acquiring heroic or rare items as long as possible, since they can block important item slots needed for upgrades with the Golem.
- In such cases, if you find a tent or shop with the items you need, take note of it and return later in the run to purchase them.
- The same can be said about Large Golem and Potion Maker, use them as late as possible, to push your last item you don't have slots for upgrade or when you get a diamond potion
- Save your gold until later stages, then spend it once you have sufficient upgrades or when you believe further upgrades are unlikely, as purchased items will occupy your slots.
- If you are saving gold, be cautious of crows in weapon pile areas, as they steal gold. One way to deal with them is to take the stun edge, which prevents them from attacking and allows you to eliminate them before they can steal.
Shops will always have one of the following configurations:
- 3 rare weapons, 2 rare items, and 1 heroic item
- 2 rare weapons, 1 heroic weapon, and 3 rare items
- 1 rare weapon, 4 rare items, and 1 heroic item
Use this knowledge strategically, spend restocks on shops with more weapons if you need weapons, or on shops with more items if you need rare or heroic items.

General tips

If you get the Junksmith, you can add another edge, but only once, save it for your main weapon. Note that if you use 10 gold to get another edge, it will change the first edge.

Builds

Name	Preview	Description	Bundles
King's Cocktail		Leverage high damage output at Battle Start to defeat your opponent before they have a chance
Roasted Purity		Gain an insurmountable amount of health and sustain it while ramping attack with Purity
Ice Spear		Collect lots of water items, gain a large burst of purity, then use a Sangria and Rose loop to remove conditions
Wood Basics		Use the basic wood items as a backbone to fuel Twisted Root, and then double it.. twice
Bramble Bow		Gain huge amounts of thorns and health each turn. Outlast non-striking enemies with exhaustion
Lemontree Scaling		Fast and tough with quadratic attack scaling
Fish Bomb		Deal massive damage every time riptide triggers
Spiny Snappers		An alternative to fish bomb. Instead of being countered by Crimson Cloak, you're countered by non-strikers
Swifstrike Blitz		Make a dozen large attacks on the first turn
Armor Doubling		Multiply your effective armor many times over
Bubblegloop Debuff		Debuff your opponent with Acid and Poison while building your armor
One hit KO		Attack is doubled when enemy has armor, attack is doubled again with petrified edge