Scouting & Intelligence

Quick answers

Is Iron Realms free to play?

Yes. Iron Realms is free to play in any browser with no download and no account required. Every building, troop tier and Seat of Power is reachable without spending money — purchases buy speed and cosmetics, never a higher ceiling.

Does spending money make you stronger in Iron Realms?

No. Nothing purchasable raises your power ceiling. A charter audit runs on every build and fails it if any offer would sell power. During the pre-alpha nothing is for sale at all — better than that, the store gives its goods away: everything in it is free to take, once a day per item, while the realm is being built. When payments do open, spending will compress time only: it clears timers, it never raises the summit.

How long does it take to max a keep in Iron Realms?

Keeps cap at level 45 and troops at tier 13 — the same summit for everyone, and it is a campaign: about seven months of steady play at half an hour a day, counting keep 45 and the nineteen plots that gate it. The Fair Play ledger inside the game reads that figure straight out of the shipped constants, so it is never a month behind the build.

The lord who knows the enemy composition picks the counter and wins. The one who marches blind donates an army. Intelligence is the cheapest advantage in the game.

Scout before every serious strike

A scout report reveals the defender's troops, defensive bonuses, and roughly what you will face. That tells you which troop type to lead with and whether to bring — and screen — siege. Scouting has its own button rather than a march you have to arrange around it. Scouting a Seat of Power is free, so there is no argument for marching blind.

The report's fidelity scales with your scout level: low returns a fuzzy estimate, high returns exact garrison counts. That difference matters most precisely where the stakes are highest — a 4-star seat garrisons 3,200 infantry, 1,900 archers, 1,400 cavalry and 500 siege, and "roughly a lot" is not a number you can plan a rally around.

What a scout cannot tell you — and you must work out yourself

Two of the biggest modifiers on any assault are not in the report at all:

• Star rating — +8% defense per star, so a paramount seat fights at +32% and the Iron Throne at +40%.
• Terrain — up to +20% in mountains, +15% hills, +12% forest, 0% on plains, and the same ground slows your approach.

Read those off the map before you commit. A three-star castle in the mountains defends at +44%; the same castle on plains defends at +24%. Same scout report, completely different war.

Warging — the free scout

Slipping into a beast costs no troops and no march, on a fifteen-minute cooldown. The trade is range against clarity: an eagle reaches 50 tiles but reads the land only in tallies; a direwolf reaches 18 and misses nothing.

The correct pattern is eagle to find, direwolf to read. Most lords burn the cooldown sending a wide bird at a target whose position they already knew.

Deny intel with anti-scout

Watchtower levels and anti-scout research obscure your true strength from enemy scouts. A rival who cannot read your keep has to guess — and guessing attackers make the mistakes you punish. This is the cheapest defensive investment in the game, because it costs an attacker troops while a Cloak the Walls — eight hours, a day or three days from the Council Market — costs you gems, not research. Your Watchtower level only sharpens what you see of them; there is no anti-scout study to research.

The watchtower as an alarm

Your watchtower warns of incoming marches and, at higher levels, their size and timing. That warning is the difference between shielding in time and waking to a sacked keep. Pair it with the scout alert so the raven reaches you when you are not looking at the map.