9 Kings royal decrees are run-changing effects selected during a Royal Council. Some immediately provide cards, resources, or upgrades; others change how a continuing mechanic behaves. The useful choice is the one that improves your current kingdom or enables a realistic next step, rather than the effect with the most impressive description in isolation.
This guide explains the selection process for version 0.9.8, Patch #31. In multiplayer, the decree pool rotates each season, so a decree discussed here is not guaranteed to appear in your current season. Check the lobby pool before building a plan around a particular option.
Find the Royal Council on the calendar
The event calendar shows upcoming Royal Councils during an ordinary run. When the event arrives, you select from the decree options presented. This gives you a reason to think about the kingdom before the screen opens: identify its weak role, accumulated investments, and any effect that would materially improve the next battle.
A Council is different from the Prophet's blessing forecast. The decree you choose can act immediately or alter a continuing rule, while the Prophet announces a later benefit. Do not assume an effect is delayed merely because both systems involve special encounters.
You can encounter more than one Council during a run, and extended play provides further opportunities. Some decrees can be selected repeatedly, but their stack limits differ. Read the offered effect and the game's current restrictions rather than assuming that every useful decree remains available indefinitely.
The card Razing provides another route to a Council by destroying a plot. That trade-off needs a deliberate target. Removing the kingdom's main combat investment simply to see another selection can leave you weaker even if the chosen decree is useful. Plan around a disposable plot when the card and board permit it.
The calendar identifies a Royal Council encounter.
Classify the effect before comparing choices
Read the decree for its target, timing, and duration. A benefit to troops does not automatically include towers. A bonus to active plots can differ from a rule for plots placed later. A reward given once does not provide the same growth as an effect triggered repeatedly.
Use these categories to understand the offered choice:
| Effect type | What to inspect | Practical decision |
|---|---|---|
| Immediate resources | Gold, cards, or rerolls received | Identify the specific purchase or action they enable |
| Immediate board change | Eligible plots and current statistics | Check what exists before taking the effect |
| Continuing support | Trigger, recipients, and future opportunities | Estimate whether the kingdom can keep generating value |
| Transformation | What gets replaced and what survives | Protect investments that the change would remove |
| Future event change | The next encounter or altered reward | Keep the run viable until that encounter |
This classification is particularly important when two descriptions both mention a large multiplier. One may improve a developed board immediately, while another may change a mechanic that your kingdom does not currently use. Their apparent size does not tell you which one solves the next fight.
Read the full text before choosing. Words such as active, new, next, whenever, and every define the relationship. Ignoring one can turn a sensible card combination into a decree choice that does almost nothing for the intended recipient.
Choose support and combat effects by role
Overwork gives support buildings an additional application of their effect. Its value depends on which support buildings are already working and which eligible plots receive them. A Farm or Blacksmith near useful recipients gives the decree a concrete role; an empty support position remains an unfinished plan.
Patch #30 makes Overwork work with Vault as intended. That broadens the supported economy interaction, but it does not mean every building in the kingdom behaves identically. Check the current description of the support or economy card you intend to improve.
Combat effects need an equally specific role. More attack speed can help a tower apply its damage sooner, while more troop HP can give an army time to act. Poison-related effects need a source of poison or the trigger that applies it. A kingdom without the relevant source cannot gain the same value as one already using the mechanic.
Critical chance and critical damage are distinct needs. A critical-damage increase does not itself create more critical attacks. An area increase needs an attack with a relevant area effect. Read the chosen troop or tower alongside the decree so that the intended interaction has both parts.
Do not turn these relationships into a universal decree ranking. The same option can be decisive when its recipients are developed and weak when the kingdom still lacks them. The board you have is the first comparison point.
Spend resources with a named objective
Resource decrees can provide room to correct a weak run, but the reward should have a purpose. Before taking gold or rerolls, identify what you intend to search for: a frontline, an upgrade, an eligible support, or a missing card that completes an existing engine.
Rerolls improve access to choices, not certainty. If the desired card is outside your available deck or seasonal pool, repeatedly rerolling does not make the original plan coherent. Check availability before spending on the assumption that the card must eventually appear.
Gold can have both purchasing and combat value. Mercenary troop count depends on gold held, while Dispenser growth relates to gold earned. A resource reward can interact with those cards differently from how it helps a kingdom that only uses gold for shopping.
Consider the action after the reward as part of the choice. If you take a resource decree and spend everything on unrelated cards, you may gain no useful improvement in the kingdom's failure point. If the reward buys the exact support your existing attacker needs, the same nominal amount can contribute far more.
A useful stopping rule is to stop searching once you find a card that completes the defined role. The aim is a functional board, not an endlessly improving hand that consumes the resources needed for later events.
Understand current economy and destruction decrees
Speculation raises the level cap of Vaults to 99. Vault now upgrades automatically each year, giving the cap increase a clear relationship to the card's ongoing development. However, the decree is useful only if the kingdom has Vaults and enough time to use their growth.
Patch #30 removed an unintended Vault-leveling exploit involving Overhaul and Speculation. Do not reproduce an older exploit explanation as a supported method. A legitimate card combination must work from the current effects, not from a glitch that the patch explicitly fixed.
Rare Goods ensures that every shop has a rainbow card to sell. This changes the offered inventory, but it does not guarantee the exact special card your strategy wants. It can improve access to the category while leaving you to evaluate the individual card's role and price.
Havoc provides a random destruction card whenever you destroy a plot. The reward is tied to a trigger with a board cost. It makes sense to plan disposable plots and useful destruction effects rather than repeatedly dismantling your developed army solely to generate more random cards.
Rebound provides 99 gold when you reach zero gold. Treat this as a threshold effect with its current conditions, not as permission to assume unlimited money. Read the effect and inspect the wallet before planning a sequence that depends on it.
Pillage now interacts correctly with Migration and Extraction, and the Patch #30 hotfixes also correct its Dragon Den interaction. These fixes make current wording and version context important when reading old examples of destruction chains.
Prepare for immediate transformations
A transformation decree can change the board much more sharply than a normal stat effect. Identify every affected plot and what it currently contributes before accepting the change. A kingdom that survives through one enchanted, heavily supported troop may have more to lose than a board of disposable early units.
Check whether the effect replaces units, changes a card's operation, or modifies a specific target type. Do not assume that accumulated enchantments, levels, or support gains survive a replacement unless the current effect states that they do.
The Blood deck provides several reasons to think carefully about death and replacement. Cemetery now produces Skeletons, Pagoda summons Ghosts, and Mangler summons meat trolls. A transformation or summon-related decree described by an older guide may refer to outdated unit names or relationships.
Rebirth is another example of why an old description can be misleading. Patch #29 changes it to give three lives beyond maximum lives. A guide that describes it only as restoring lost lives does not capture that current behavior.
Before a major transformation, compare the resulting kingdom with the next enemy. The effect may solve a weak early board, but it can also remove a developed role you still need. The decision should name both the gain and the investment being changed.
Historical interface illustration; use the current in-game description for effect values.
Check king-specific rules and reworks
King-specific decrees complement their decks, but many effects have changed. Twinshot now doubles Archer projectiles instead of adding one. Freshmen can be selected three times under the Patch #29 change. Bargain is universal rather than a Greed-only option.
Futurism now lets troops level up to 99. That creates a development opportunity, but it still needs actions that actually raise those troop levels. A higher cap alone does not transform a low-level unit into a developed late-game attacker.
Bloodbath links Oblation's population effect to troop damage, adding one percent damage when Oblation gives the troop a unit. That is a specific interaction with the current Blood card, which replaces Vampirism. A decree explanation built around the former healing card misses the intended trigger.
Brickmaster doubles the HP of buildings that have HP. Read the eligibility restriction instead of assuming every building supplies a health statistic. Horticulture adds its current HP increase through the relevant support effect, and the game updates affected card descriptions for several decree interactions.
These examples show why a historical list is a starting reference, not a complete current database. Prefer the live effect and newest applicable changes when deciding what a decree contributes.
Inspect the multiplayer season and review choices
Patch #31 defines a rotating multiplayer decree pool containing 18 universal decrees, six rainbow decrees, and six decrees per king. You can inspect it in the bottom-left corner of the lobby, alongside the rainbow-card pool.
Check that screen before equipping perks for a decree-dependent strategy. A loadout built to chase an absent option cannot use rerolls to overcome the seasonal restriction. Prepare another route that works with the available choices.
After a multiplayer run, use the new kingdom review to inspect both your own board and opponents. Find the decree's actual recipients and ask whether it improved the role you intended. A loss caused by an unsupported damage source may need a different board decision rather than another copy of a defensive decree.
Start a fresh run after updating so the current run data applies. Then make the next Council choice around one concrete need: stronger combat now, a useful trigger already in place, or a realistic event payoff the kingdom can survive to receive.