Any% route

ISLAND ROUTE: 1-2-1-3-4-5-1-2-3

There are a few ground rules for running this category. Two things are important here; the first being upgrading the home base every time it's off cooldown, and the second important thing is to rush the cliff portal. Nothing else matters. Here's a quick 10 point guide to actually running every island:

1 - Go to the centre of the island as soon as you land, hire the two blokes in the centre of it.
2 - Hire one builder man and one archer out of the two vagrants, in the order archer-builder.
3 - Run all the way to the left of the island, hiring and remote hiring(1) everyone while paying off the greed wave.(2)
4 - Pick up all coins on the way there, then the gems on the way back. IMPORTANT - we do not need many gems for this run, so if you are on island 2 you need EVERY chest. Island 4 you need 1 chest and island 5 you need 1/2 chests, depending on whether you want the unicorn or not. I would recommend it, but if you don't end up using it then it's still faster to stay on griffin.
5 - Do the same for the right hand side - make sure you remember which side the cliff portal is on!
6 - Upgrade the camp as fast as possible, try to get 1 as soon as you start on the island and then one when you have gone down one side of the island. If you want extra efficiency, use the later upgrades of the camp (which have a longer cooldown) to explore, and cut trees down on the first few days.
7 - Continue to amass wealth and hire archers, leave 1 villager without a job in your base for the knight upgrade (assuming you brought knights from previous islands). Make sure they are both on the cliff portal side!
8 - If you have 2 knights on the right side, and plenty of archers for them and basic defence on the other side, you are ready to assault. The bomb costs 20 coins, going into the portal takes 5 coins and blowing the bomb takes 5 coins. Make sure you have a full purse of cash (not gems!) for the attack. What comes next is rushing the portal(3).
9 - Once you make it out, start investing money by putting it all into trees, or banking. Banking gives interest at a maximum of 8 coins a day (100 coins in the bank) or 7% up to 100 coins. Trees are a more active way of making money, since you can try to double the money on any given tree, but it takes up builders time, which is needed to build the boat.
10 - Sail away!

Now, time for some glossary stuff: 

(1) Remote hiring is leaving a coin in the camp. From what I have noticed, there is usually a vagrant spawn every morning and evening, something like that. Generally 1 coin will do the trick, saves a lot of time when hiring in the future.

(2) Paying off the wave is probably the most important feature of this run. All it involves is giving the greed some coins to allow your monarch to continue travelling and to also allow any villagers to get to the base. I don't know entirely now many there are on each wave, perhaps someone could count, but the important ones are as follows:

	ISLAND 1
DAY 1 - 2 GREEDLING
DAY 2 - 3 GREEDLING
	ISLAND 2
DAY 1 - 1 GREEDLING

After this, you should be able to do it by seeing how many there are.

(3) Portal rushing is much simpler that it seems on paper. By the point you start doing this, you are on island 4 - this means 3 portals to take out and 1 cliff portal with 4 spawners in it. What you need to do is run ahead of the knights who you are leading, then lead them to the portal. Make sure the knights are attacking the portal as well. They should take out the portal in 1 or 2 greedling spawns. The counterattack wave comes now, either on your side or the other side. either way, you rush ahead to see the next portal, if it's coming your side hide behind the knights and stun them so that the knights can clear the wave easily. carry on doing this until you get to the cliff portal, and remember to keep your knights full health throughtout.
Now you are inside the cliff portal, you need to push ahead yet again and put the knights between the first and second pillar(?) of the spawner. This will allow the archers to mostly shoot the spawner and kill it quickly whilst also shooting the greedlings. Carry on with this, keep 1 knight alive - luckily doesn't have to be both, because the archers will keep attacking the spawners if their knight dies, but try to keep both alive. After this, just light the bomb and run the hell away.

Finally, here are some tips for early islands which do not necessarily follow the same guide. start of the game, run to the camp, hire both and go left as per usual. Cut down trees closest to the left hand side, because of the kingdom logo it will extend really far, giving archers a place to hunt rabbits. You will ideally require on the left hand side 2 coin chests and the boat. if you don't get this, time to restart. Build the boat as soon as you can, takes 10 coins and you can be gone in 2 days/8 mins. There are also 3 vagrant camps, aim to pay off the waves on both left and right to get maximum hireage. If you do this, with remote hiring, you should have 3 builders and as many other archers as you can. When the boat has been built, set off as fast as possible. You should get all four archer spots taken up, ring the bell and leave. 

Island 2 is much the same, just run around finding all the gem chests for island 1, get the stag asap and the scythe statue and you should be good. Build the coat asap, cut down trees, get money, leave for island 1. Next, Island 1 - go to the boat after getting griffin and archer statue and leave as fast as possible. Island 3, just build wealth and build the boat, upgrade the camp when you can because you want a fast finish. Then, island 4, you can finish the game using the guide above. 

Two things - upgrading camps and rushing portal. Good luck, and have fun!

Dire% guide

This one is a quick one to learn, but the second hardest run to pull off. Firstly, there is only one thing you need to concentrate on in this run - that is the boat. Also, quickly, a few strats to note; firstly, movement in this game works by momentum. If you walk then stop walking, your mount will continue to move. This is the same with sprinting, and the wolf (unlike other mounts) is hard to regain stamina on. What you need to do is spam shift (or whatever the sprint key is) to keep speed high - if you keep the stamina level just above the point where the wolf starts puffing and getting tired, you are in the perfect zone. Of course, when it is night and you have the chance to regain stamina quickly by howling, feel free, but otherwise this is the fastest method of travel.
Next, another point to consider is something I call 'coin geometry'. This is mostly RNG based, so don't be too hung up about it, but this run is based on doing things quickly and storing a lot of money at once. With bad coin stacking, you might drop 5-10 coins into the river when you could have spent those one the boat if you had good geometry. A way to combat this is very difficult, but if you sense one of your coins is falling out of the purse you CAN drop it and pick it back up, though it is very difficult. There are also a few storage methods you can use, one of them being archers/builders/villagers. Dropping your purse to them and picking it back up later costs you nothing. I mention villagers here because it is also sometimes the right option to hire a villager for 1 coin, kill a deer and have it bring 2 coins back - however, this isn't ideal for obvious reasons.
Attacking with the wolf is quite difficult sometimes too. There are a couple of points here where you can make attacking with the wolf more efficient; firstly, try to hit deer on the second/third pounce so you pick up money while still in the animation, thereby making it a bit faster. Secondly, pay attention to the animation of the wolf head - if you are doing the sprint spamming, when you stop you will see the head move up and down, as if the wolf is nodding. Halfway through that animation is when my pounce came off cooldown, so that's when you should try to attack, don't be caught out by greed by forgetting this. finally, if you are attacking the greed, try to catch them all in one pounce, and if you can't drop coins after the first pounce so they can't get behind you and steal the pup. The AI of the puppy is horrible and bad, you need to be cautious otherwise that boy is gone.

Start island 1 by running to the left - I think it's 50/50 with the spawns, but I seem to have most success by running left. Hire everyone you see, grab coins. If the vagrant camps are far away from the base, it might be a smart idea to pay off the wave before leaving, or you can kill the wave with your wolf. Next, you want to do the same but for the right. I generally hired around 8 people so that you get a consistent number of archers and builders.
Next, you need to start building up cash. The way I do it is by systematically running left and right across the map, killing deer as I go, while cutting trees on the way around. You can get away with this for the most part, but on the later islands you might have to stop at the first portal or risk the pup dying. Generally, once you have done this for the first island, you can move onto the second. A good run starts with a late day 3/mid day 4 exit.
Now you have completed island one you have done them all. It's just consistency and efficiency for the rest of the time, and you should aim to have 3 days on every island. I think a theoretical maximum for this run is 1:30, and that's if you have godlike RNG for every single island. However, I would say that it's a good one to get stuck into, if not immensely frustrating.
Finally, on the topic of timings, you should aim to have the framework of the boat started in day 1, the body of the boat started in day 2 and the rudder down by the beginning of day 3 AT LEAST. This helps be a pacemaker for the run, and will help you structure where you are going and when. As soon as you can invest money into the boat, do it and then hunt more deer.

Full game co-op guide for speedrun

I posted this on reddit, just copying here as it is basically a guide for speedrunning the game. My friend and I beat it in 44 days, just before the winter (which would probably slow down every run). Here are some important things we did/learned:

Early game greed waves: So what surprised us the most when we started attempting this was the ridiculous easiness of the greed attacks. Really, the normal nightly attacks are nothing.

No walls and towers: Since these attacks were so easy, improved walls and any towers were not necessary at all. The money needs to go to the boat, archers and upgrades. The basic and further improved walls you get for free with the upgrades. The only wall you will want to make is when you need to get space for the forge to purchase the bomb.

Don't destroy portals: Really, only time you should spend money and time on attacking is when you have the bomb. Go out and destroy each small portal after the other while escorting the bomb. Two weeks ago I asked here whether one could just ignore the portals, but that's not the case. However, since it's so early in the game, the counterattack waves are only slightly stronger than the usual ones meaning that you can happily continue escorting the troops as long as you have a combat mount. This also means that you don't destroy any portals on the seaside and therefore don't create a lighthouse on any island. We haven't once encountered a big boi during the run and were very surprised to encounter three floaters at the very last counterattack of the entire game. They luckily didn't ruin the run.

Only get the most important upgrades: So, obviously the stone and iron are something you need. Other than that, we got the builder statue and the archer statue for stronger walls and more accurate archers.

Mounts: On island two, I got the stag to get more speed during exploration and more income from deer. My friend took the gryffin once we went back to island one. On island four when we did our first attack I switched to the lizard for some extra fire power. Then I switched to the unicorn as soon as possible on island five to get crazy income. In a normal run, I don't think the unicorn is worth that much as you are earning so much money anyway, but it was sooo good to have here. I switched to the lizard again to attack and back to the unicorn after. This switching continued on the remaining islands as we decided to get stables.

Island order (1 - 2 - 3 - 1 - 4 - 5 - 2 - 1 - 3): First bit is logical, just pass these island quickly, then we went back to island 1 for the statue and gryffin. The boat is super cheap anyway so you can be on your way after one or two days. After that you only need to go to four to get iron and we could start destroying the cliffsides. After 5 we went to island 2 for the stable hermit as we were making this strategy as we went along (the unicorn wasn't planned), so you could get the stable hermit on the first visit to island 2. Finish at island 3 or 5 since then you don't need to buy the boat again. We did 5 earlier in the game since 5 will probably be harder to beat. Also the unicorn thing.

Alternative routes might be leaving 5 for last, or going to 1 instead of 2 after 5/4.

Chop trees: When we were nearing the end of each island, we started chopping down every tree there was for that small bit of profit. The fields for bunnies are also nice of course, but by then you'd probably already have those fields up and running.

Nazwa	Autor
Any% route	Captain_Stanhope 4 years ago
Dire% guide	Captain_Stanhope 4 years ago
Full game co-op guide for speedrun	Ivolia 5 years ago