Tourneys
Quick answers
- Is Iron Realms free to play?
- Yes. Iron Realms is free to play in any browser with no download. Play offline with no account, or sign in to join the live realm. Nothing is for sale during the Alpha; when purchases open they will 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 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.
Between the wars, the realm keeps its pastimes — the lists, the hunt, the Citadel's riddles, and trial by combat. They are a change of pace from the map and a steady source of earned spoils. Every reward listed on this page comes from play. None of it is for sale.
The Hand's Tourney — riding the lists
A jousting bracket of eight tilters, so three rounds stand between you and the champion's purse. Win a tilt and you advance; lose one and your run ends there. Your prowess is set by your realm's power, capped so a maxed lord is favoured but never certain.
- Entry fee — 3,000 food and 1,500 iron, paid from your own stores.
- Cooldown — the lists re-open every 3 hours.
- Per tilt won — 8 gems, 30 iron, 15 renown.
- Champion (all three tilts) — a bonus 40 gems and 75 renown on top, for 64 gems and 120 renown from a clean run.
- Finalist (two of three) — a bonus 25 renown.
The fee and the cooldown exist for one reason: they are what stop the champion's purse being farmed into infinite gems. Ride the lists eight times a day and the gems are real but bounded — which is why the tourney can pay in a hard currency at all.
The Hunt — ride out for meat and hides
Send a hunting party into the wild. Bigger parties bring back more, and the quarry depends on where you ride: elk, snow bears and boar in the North; stags and pheasant in the Reach; sand foxes and desert hares in Dorne. Roughly 8–20 food and 2–6 wood per hunter, plus renown.
Two things are worth knowing. About one hunt in eight goes wrong — a gored hunter, a sudden storm, quarry that slips the nets — and halves the take. And hunting in the North is the only place the party brings back iron, because that is where hides are traded for goods.
The Citadel's Riddle — lore for research
A maester sets you three riddles drawn from a pool of fourteen, with the answers shuffled each time so the run cannot be memorised. Payment is per correct answer and scales with difficulty:
| Difficulty | Research | Gems |
|---|---|---|
| Squire | 40 | 5 |
| Knight | 90 | 12 |
| Maester | 180 | 25 |
Plus 3 renown per correct answer. A perfect run of maester-grade riddles is the single best research payout available outside the study itself — which makes the riddles quietly one of the highest-value pastimes in the game for anyone pushing a long research track.
Trial by Combat — let the gods decide
Name a champion and stake the outcome on his sword. Champions range from a hedge knight — unheralded but game — through a sworn sword and a household knight to the realm's finest, with prowess rising at each step. The gods will not be summoned again for an hour after a trial.
Making the most of them
- The tourney is on a 3-hour clock and the trial on a 1-hour clock. Both tick whether or not you ride, so a lord who opens the panel at each login collects far more over a week than one who binges them on a Sunday.
- Come to the lists with power, not hope — prowess tracks your realm's strength, so pastimes reward the same building you were doing anyway.
- Hunt in the North if you want iron out of it. Hunt anywhere else if you want food.
- Watch the calendar: event windows layer on top of pastimes rather than replacing them.