Mysteries of the Realm

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 of many months at half an hour a day. We are not quoting a month count right now: the 2026 economy rebalance moved production, training and research costs, and the Fair Play ledger inside the game reads the current figures straight out of the shipped constants.

Beneath the war for the map runs an older Westeros — heart trees that remember, a hill where a woman dreams true, faceless men who take a face for a price, and beasts a lord can wear like a cloak. None of it is decoration. Every system on this page has numbers attached.

The Old Gods and the godswood

Your godswood accumulates devotion — up to 240, regenerating at half a point a minute, which is a full pool in eight hours. Spend it on a blessing (40 devotion) or a greater boon (90). Blessings run four hours:

• 🌾 Blessing of the Harvest — +12% gathering yield
• 🐺 Blessing of the Vanguard — +12% march speed
• ⚔️ Blessing of the Warrior — +12% training speed
• 🔨 Blessing of the Mason — +12% construction speed
• 🔥 Blessing of Fury — +8% troop attack
• 🛡️ Blessing of the Warden — +8% troop defense

Note the split: the four economic blessings are +12%, the two martial ones +8%. That gap is deliberate and it runs through the whole game — the gods speed your masons more readily than they sharpen your swords.

Offerings of grain, timber and stone refresh on a four-hour cycle and scale with your keep level, so the godswood rewards checking in rather than clearing once.

The faiths

Swear your house to one of four faiths, each a permanent +5% in its own domain, with rites on a twelve-hour cooldown (the twenty-hour clock belongs to the godswood's greensight, not to the rites):

• 🌟 Faith of the Seven — construction. Father, Smith and Crone bless the raising of walls and towers.
• 🔥 The Lord of Light — troop attack. For the night is dark and full of terrors.
• 🌳 The Old Gods — gathering. The heart trees remember; the wood gives freely to the faithful.
• 🌊 The Drowned God — march speed. What is dead may never die.

Warging — seeing without marching

Slip your mind into a beast and scout without risking a sword. Fifteen-minute cooldown, and the choice is a real trade of range against clarity:

Beast	Reach	What it sees
🐺 Direwolf	18	Detailed — misses nothing, but runs on padded feet and stays near
🐦‍⬛ Raven	34	Counts only — rides the wind far, reads the land in tallies
🦅 Eagle	50	Counts only — circles over half a kingdom; widest eye, coarsest sight

Use the eagle to find where the danger is and the direwolf to learn what it is. Sending the eagle at a target whose position you already know wastes the cooldown.

The ghost of High Heart

A dwarf woman on a hill of stumps dreams true and pays in prophecy — twenty-five of them across five omens: Dreams of Blood, Fire, Frost, Gold and Shadow. A pity counter at 12 means a long unlucky streak still resolves. The dreams read as lore; the omens are the mechanic.

The Faceless

A price paid to the Many-Faced God thins a garrison by 25% for twelve hours. It is the cheapest way into a seat you could not otherwise crack — see Seats of Power — and it costs gems rather than swords.

Trial by combat

Let the gods decide. Name a champion — a hedge knight (prowess 0.42, unheralded but game), a sworn sword (0.55, steady and disciplined), a household knight (0.66, well-armed and blooded), or better — and stake the outcome on his sword. One-hour cooldown, Elo-rated from 1,000.

Hostages, ransom and weregild

War here has a price list. A captured lord is leverage — up to 60% of it — priced from his value, with ransom starting at 1,000. Executing a hostage costs 80 honour. And weregild, the blood price, starts at 800 and rises 300 per degree of severity, restoring 20 honour when paid. You can always buy your way back from an atrocity. It is never cheap, and the ledger remembers.

Valyrian steel

Twelve named blades exist in the world, each sworn to an ancient house and each worth +14% to +20% on a single stat — above anything the forge can make. They cannot be bought or crafted, only won from the deepest camps and the great seats. See The Lord Profile.

Dragon eggs

The rarest find of all. You may hold three at once, in eight aspects — emerald-veined, bronze-banded, midnight-black, frost-pale, ember-flecked, storm-grey, copper-swirled, sea-green. An egg needs 48 hours of warmth. Deeds hurry it — 4 per capture, 1 per hunt — but they can supply at most half the bar, so no amount of campaigning hatches an egg in under 24 real hours. Fighting halves the wait; it does not remove it. See Dragons.