Updates & News

What is new in the realm. Iron Realms is in active development — the game you play today is sharper than it was last week, and this page tracks the headline changes.

The hall defends together — and no ship is laid without a harbour

Allied Seats of Power in one region defend each other. Every allied holding in the region beyond the first adds +5% to the defender, to a ceiling of +30%. The seat under attack counts itself, so the second holding is the first that pays. The figure is the server's and both the holder and the attacker can see it; a Resident-held seat raises no wall for you.

🤝 Help the hall. One press takes sixty seconds off the longest-running build of every ally in the hall at once, up to thirty minutes in a press, then rests four hours. An empty hall is refused before the rest is written, Residents are skipped, and it never spends the recipient's own helps.

A veteran in another lord's saddle. Lend one commander to a bannermate for an hour. While lent you cannot field them in either march slot; the borrower fights them at 80%; one loan per lender; and there is no recall — the hour runs.

The betrothal panel keeps its promises. Breaking a betrothal now costs the 30 renown the panel always said it did. A sealed pact is +4% per pact to a ceiling of +12%, on attack only — defence never sees it.

The east keeps the promises it made. A won reave rolls once for a relic at grade II or below, a won sack at grade III or below, each once per lord per door per 24 hours. The bands above a cap are trimmed rather than redistributed, and pity does not advance on a capped roll. A blockade names the alliance banner, never a lord, and re-reads its strength live so a peace shield raised after the order is honoured. The crossing refuses in order — harbour, hulls, a fleet already at sea, berths — and an eastern seat asks the same before it changes hands.

Renown counts what it pays. Camp renown and the 25-per-star a captured seat pays now count toward your career renown — the figure the renown achievements and the Allegiance career line read — and spending camp renown no longer lowers it. No amount changed: a third of its level rounded down from a level-8 camp, 25 per star, 40 per keep level.

The harbour lays the keels. Ships were laid from the foot of another panel that had never read your harbour level, and the server's shipyard was alone among the navy's routes in never asking about the harbour either — so a Keep-3 lord with no harbour could lay a war galley. The Harbour is the shipyard now: 800 berths per level from Keep 10, ten keels laid per level, and the harbour asked before the count so a lord with neither hears the reason that matters. The cap binds on laying and never trims a fleet afloat.

The open sea stops wearing the coastline. The surf field is baked in map space and was being uploaded as if it were a picture, which flips it — so every lookup returned the distance to land at the mirrored latitude and the sea wore a reflection of Westeros. At one coordinate from the report the true distance to land is 21.15 map units and the mirrored lookup landed on a shore at 0.00: full-strength surf in open water. The white X and the ring of white hexagons were the continent and its isles, upside down. Foam is now bounded to the map's own extent, and both halves are pinned by a test that rebuilds the bake.

Two data rights, performed. Your data export now includes your visit records — each column named on the privacy page, capped at the most recent five thousand with the total and the truncation both stated in the file — and erasure now unlinks every visit record from you, the row surviving as an anonymous view for the aggregate counts. Full story in the newsroom.

One fleet, one sea — and an alliance that can reach another

The navy is the server's. Hulls were a number your own browser kept, which was tolerable while ships did nothing but sit in a panel and stopped being tolerable the moment ships decided who could take a city. Ships are built through the shipyard, on a timer, into a ledger no client can author — every write a compare-and-set, and an unreadable ledger refused rather than wiped. Your harbour still sets the berths: 800 per level, from Keep 10.

One fleet cannot be in two places. The raiding fleet and the fleet that carries a host east were the same hulls answering to two systems that never consulted each other. There is one fleet now, and the panel says where it is.

Ten coasts take a raid; six take a blockade. An alliance may pool its hulls and sit them off a coast held by a rival alliance, throttling that seat's trade — the first time one alliance can act directly on another. Five rules make it a siege rather than an eviction, all server-enforced: the throttle is capped at one half and no fleet size changes that; it is broken by massing ships rather than by waiting, so there is no timer to sit out; a peace shield stops it dead; you can blockade neither a seat your own banner holds nor an unheld one; and the row names the alliance, never a lord.

A sacked Free City never trades again — not for the lord who burned it, not for the rival who wanted it. A sack is how you make sure nobody has a city, not how you take one, and nothing in the game brings one back. The eight hours belong to the burner, not the city: the eastern seaboard watches for their sails that long before they may burn another. And the defence a sack must beat is the city's own accumulated wealth, so the cities worth burning are the hardest to burn.

Trade pacts pay, at last. The arithmetic existed and nothing called it, so a lord could cross, form a pact, hold the city against rivals and earn nothing. Patronage now pays on the hour to the patron alone, accruing from when you took the city rather than from when it was founded. Caravans take two hours and buy nothing until they land. The Residents send their own and bid against you. Full story in the newsroom.

The Residents get a room, and the game's nouns speak five languages

Thirty Residents talk in the hall, hold land and ride to war, and the only way to learn any of it was to catch one speaking and think to tap the name. There is a roster now, grouped by temperament, with the all-of-them switch and a per-lord mute — and a silenced Resident dims rather than disappears, because a census that omits the people you quietened cannot tell you that you quietened them.

And the nouns are translated: forty-four of them in five languages — building names, seat-buff phrases, seat tiers. A German lord no longer opens the Keep to find “Hafen” described as a “Harbour”.

The coast stops being a staircase

Land and sea were decided by a yes-or-no test per vertex, so every shoreline in the world was a cliff of more than a unit and a half. The transition now runs off the true distance to water: the measured worst step across the whole coast fell from 2.56 units to 0.99. The North stops being blown out white, and three heads-up display collisions at 390 pixels — invisible at every desktop width — are fixed and pinned at an iPhone viewport.

The east opens — 191 contestable holds

Every seat in Essos can be taken. The realm counts 191 contestable holds rather than 170, and Braavos and Volantis join King's Landing as the world's only five-star seats. Holding one does everything holding does — buffs, hourly tribute, walls that heal, a Castellan to name — but it is stormed, never claimed, and the capture is arbitrated by the server. Eastern seats are still worth no throne points: the Iron Throne is a Westerosi title.

The sea is the price. Every crossing costs hulls — more on a beaten retreat, scaled by how full the decks were, never your last ship — and the toll is printed on the battle report beside the haul it paid for. Eastern camps pay three times a western one, double the gems, and drop Valyrian steel no hunt in Westeros has ever dropped. Camp strikes across the water are gated by the same crossing that gates gathering, which they were not before: a lord with no harbour could walk a host over the sea.

Eighteen seats promised a scout bonus and granted nothing. Seventeen of them western and reachable today. That, and three more dead stats, are wired — and a test now reads every stat any seat grants against what the game consults and fails the build on the difference. Full story in the newsroom.

Essos is the eleventh region

The east had three region objects — the Free Cities, the Rhoyne and the grass — deliberately kept out of the map's own list while that list was a fact about the Seven Kingdoms. They remain, as districts, because a Sarnori ruin is not a Free City and filing it under that banner would put a wrong answer on its card. What is new is that the continent has a row of its own, so the map has eleven regions: nine kingdoms, the Wall, and Essos.

Like the Wall, it answers to no crown: no Crown Council chair and no regional charter, so the council is still nine seats and its quorum still five. Both filter on the same flag rather than on a list of names, which is why adding a continent cannot accidentally enfranchise one.

The Seats of Power register now carries the east. Twenty-one eastern seats existed on the map, resolved by a tap and opened a real panel — and were missing from the one screen that calls itself the register, because it was built from the western roster alone. They are in it, grouped under Essos. They no longer say “Unclaimed” either — an eastern seat is reached by ship, so an unheld one asks the question a lord standing off that coast actually has, and tells you whether your harbour and hulls could carry a host there.

Twenty-eight castles, and a tenth region

The realm held 142 seats and holds 170: twenty-three canon holds the map had never placed, and five more that arrived with the decision that made them possible. That decision is the tenth region — the Wall is no longer three castles filed under the North but a region of its own, with Castle Black at its head. It takes no Crown Council chair and grants no regional charter, so the council is still nine seats and its quorum is still five. Six seats also flew the wrong banner and now fly their own. Full story in the newsroom.

A star means something now

A seat's rating used to turn on whether anyone had picked a colour for the holding house, which put 121 of 170 seats at one star. It is read off what the seat grants and whether its house has words, and the spread is now 38 / 54 / 63 / 14 / 1 — 78 seats worth three stars or better against 15. Stars pay: a seat's own bonus multiplies ×1 to ×2.5 with its rating. They also cost: the three-star garrison is re-baselined from 2,550 to 1,600 because that row is sixty-three holdfasts now rather than five castles, and no seat was ever rated down, because a seat's wall ceiling is computed from its stars.

A thousand-deep stamina bar, and camps that pay renown

Stamina holds 1,000 and regenerates at 2 a minute: the cap buys forgiveness — a lord away for a working day banks eight hours and twenty minutes of it — and the rate doubles the day's total to 2,880. Costs are unchanged, so a full bar is fifty strikes on a level 30 camp where it was five. Camps pay renown from level 8, a captured seat pays 25 × its stars, and a keep level pays 40.

The store delivers what it prints

Eleven rewards across the catalogue were printed on the cards and never granted — four speed-up bundles, five cosmetics and two builder slots — and three cosmetics did not exist at all, two of them the entire product of their SKU. All eleven are granted, seven new packs join them, and the one-time Ransom of Kings appears on a published one-in-twenty-five rate rather than a roll: same goods every time, no countdown, no stock number.

The realm was black, and so was the sea

Two separate rendering defects, both visible on a phone. 1,642 instances across fourteen pools were multiplied to zero by two colour systems switched on at once — the seats' keeps, the camp markers, the rebel holdfasts, the resource markers. And three materials wrote their own output without encoding it, which is why the sea was a black starfield on every device below the top quality tier. Both fixed, both proved in a rendered frame, both now guarded in source.

The harbour was standing in the godswood

Its plot sat one unit from the heart tree, so the weirwood grew through the quay and the Godswood Shrine's tap target was underneath a building from Keep 10. It has moved to the seaward flank, all four second plots have stopped overlapping, and the courtyard now grows from one number with the name chips spaced in screen terms.

Two new guides

The Navy and the Crossing is the whole sea in one place — three hulls, ten reave coasts — six western, four eastern — the alliance armada and its published blockade ceiling, and the harbour arithmetic. Essos is the far shore: what is there, what a lord may do with it today, and, at the same length, what they may not.

The first crossing

The harbour is the twenty-first plot in the city: it opens at Keep 10, every level puts 800 berths on the water, and a gathering party can sail east from it. A refusal names which of the two you are short of — harbour or hulls. Four eastern ⛏️ deep workings join the four western ones, six eastern creatures stand on a board of 120 camps, and twelve more eastern seats stand along the Rhoyne and in the northern grass. You cannot take an eastern seat yet; the east stays uncontestable, no throne points are at stake there, and no date is promised. Full story in the newsroom.

Update, 2–3 September 2026: the crossing opened (The first crossing) and on 3 September every eastern seat became contestable, taking the realm to 191 holds. No throne points are at stake in the east still, by design. The block is left as it was written, because it was true on the day of its release. Essos has the current picture.

Update, 5 September 2026: superseded by The east opens, above. Every eastern seat can be taken by a lord whose harbour and hulls can carry the host; no throne points are at stake there still, by design. The block is left as it was written, because it was true on the day of its release. Essos has the current picture.

Trade with the Free Cities

Each of the nine Free Cities trades goods for goods with the lord who holds its pact — send what a city wants, receive what it has. The pact belongs to whoever has invested the most, ever; a tie goes to the incumbent, and the ledger never decays. The first payment waits two hours for the caravan, and the rule is already written for the day the east can be taken: a sacked city trades with nobody.

The Crown votes, and the paramounts set charters

Seven crown policies, each raising one stat and charging another, are voted on by the council of the nine paramount seats; five voices carry a policy and five kill it, and a vote cast whenever you next log in counts the same as one cast at once. Each paramount sets one standing charter for their region from seven, worth six to ten per cent on one stat for every keep in it — always a gift, never a tax.

The seat war keeps its promises

Reinforce now repairs the walls a rival's storm actually meets rather than a number nothing read. A breach is no longer a licence: a takeover blow that loses no longer takes the seat. And nothing takes a seat but a Takeover blow — three guides had promised a neglect deadline that never fired, and now say so. Sixteen seat names with apostrophes, hyphens or brackets are spelled correctly in every report.

Leader, rally, and Keep 45

The head of an alliance is the Leader, with a 60-minute window to reclaim a banner handed away by mistake. The rally mechanic is rally everywhere it appears, and the 🤝 speed-up on a build is 🤝 Help. A Keep at 40 is told the way through to 45 instead of "maximum level". The Residents receive a daily endowment and thirty distinct voices for twenty-seven lords, the Keep & Market drawer opens again, refusals reach the screen as sentences rather than crashes, and your own keep flies the banner you swore to.

The realm runs three times faster

Construction, training, healing, research and every march are divided by three, and production is multiplied by three in the same change — so the shape of the curve is untouched and only the waiting is gone. Raising the whole city to its ceiling falls from 251 days to 84; the keep alone from 45 days to 15. On the Fair Play chart a free account now reaches the ceiling in 246 days instead of 738, and the gap to a maximum spender is unchanged to the decimal. Real-world cadences — the war window, the daily reset, the deep-vein working day — deliberately do not scale. Full story in the newsroom.

The wilds stop bleeding you

The feral camps now skim only lootable surplus above the same protected reserve a raider cannot touch, never touch a lord who is still under newcomer grace, and take less when they do (a 12% ceiling falls to 8%). A seat held by a Resident is no longer a wall either: its compounded defence multiplier falls from 2.8× to 1.8×. In the other direction, a raided Resident rebuilds about twice as fast.

Deep workings, and a day's work for a maxed lord

Four ⛏️ deep veins — one per resource — run on real time rather than a flat ten seconds: your host stays up to fourteen hours and comes home with a seven-figure haul. A small host fills its wagons and leaves early, so the trip grows with your carry. The card shows the exact hours and haul before you march.

Your banner tier is a position now

The Bannermen panel computed your tier from the size of your alliance, so every member read the same number and the leader was never T1. T1 is the Team Leader, T2 the officer layer, T3 the sworn lords — and the panel now says what the number means.

Essos takes its names

The eastern continent is no longer anonymous ground: the nine Free Cities stand on it, lit, labelled and described, ruled by their own institutions and worth no throne points at all — a magister in Myr does not vote in a Westerosi succession. Sailing there is not open yet; the harbour and the ships are built and tested, and wiring them up is the next release.

Eleven games in the Last Kingdom corner

The fan wing finished its published build list, and each game is a deliberately different verb — reading a line, spending a budget, persuading a hall, committing to a side, knowing when to leave. Ashore is the corner's first real-time 3D game, with animated characters on freely-licensed models.

The realm finds its voices

The cast of Residents grows to twenty-five — including Tucker and DavePacMan, a duelling pundit pair who read the day's real news from opposite ends — and every Resident now carries a crafted personality with settled beliefs, real interests, and a beat of their own on the board. The news desk reads six papers instead of one, the War Council recommends the strongest seating for your keep with a one-tap apply, the muster gains 5k–100k quick-train buttons, and Train max trains exactly what it offers. Full story in the newsroom.

The Sky Trial takes flight

Saddle your dragon and brave the Sky Trial — a dodging mini-game where the sky fills with hazards and the longer you survive, the greater the spoils. Reach it from the Take flight launcher on the world map, alongside the free-ranging survey flight.

The Contested Realm awakens

The rebel lords are no longer scenery. Driven by standing orders, they now raid each other, seize seats of power, and band into free companies while you play. Open the Realm at War board to watch the politics unfold — and send a lord your orders.

Seven-day seasons, real weather

Each season now runs a full seven real days, and the sky mirrors real-world weather — the realm freezes and thaws with the world outside your window.

A tidier map HUD

The world-map controls have been rebuilt for clean play on every screen: one flight launcher, the chat ticker docked above the menus, and no overlapping panels on phones.

Under the hood: fair & secure

A run of behind-the-scenes hardening keeps the realm fair and safe — server-authoritative combat seeding, input validation, auth rate-limiting, and abuse controls. You will not see it, and that is the point.