Achievement Guide 9Kings (54/54)

Steam Community guide by Maggy.

Achievement hunters here we go

Hope you all are having a lovely time with 9Kings and will enjoy this guide to show you how to get every single achievement in this game. I will try my best to update this guide asap if the devs are adding more achievements. Currently the game has 54 to gain.
Most tactics that I'm suggesting can also be done with any other king so I'd say most achievements you'll probably gain just by playing the game, but there are some trickier ones for which it helps to have a guide, hence I thought you may appreciate a comprehensive guide.
If you have any other tips or comments, please feel free to leave a comment below this guide, more than happy to adjust this guide if needed.
And now... let's dive right into it!

Recommended: Any king

His Winningness - Win one game
As the description says, you will only need to win one game on any difficulty (which includes making it to year 34 and kill the enemy's champion + army). Don't worry about getting this one when you try the other achievements as some will anyway require you to win a game.

King of the Hill - Get your base to level 9.
For this achievement to pop up, you have to level your castle to Level 9. Usually you can only level a castle to Level 3 in each game, unless you use specific abilities that you can choose for your king before the game starts.
Hence it doesn't matter with which king you play, but you will need to choose that ability to gain more base levels. To gain XP with a king you simply need to play the game (you gain XP every time you win or loose a game, depending on how far you made it). Some kings as mentioned below might speed this process up, otherwise you can also just simply pick castle cards whenever you see them or buy them at the merchant if available.
Kind of Blood might be easier to play here as as you will always face "yourself" as an enemy too, hence you have easier access to the "Sacrifice" card, which destroys a plot and levels up the plots next to it (so you can place e.g. towers or buildings next to your castle and then destroy them).
King of Progress works also with their "overhaul" card which levels up 2 random plots when you destroy a plot so that might also help levelling the castle quicker.

Edgelord - Put your base in the front FRONT line.

To gain this achievement, you need to put your base in the very first front line. At the beginning, your map does not have the maximum size, hence putting it in the front line you see at the start doesn't count. The map is 5x5 fields/plots big, so your base needs to be in that very first line. Each king has an ability/perk as well that you can level which is to gain a random plot unlocked at the beginning, so you could also just put points in that ability and then re-roll until you get a spot in the front line and then place your base there.

Toxic Relationship - Declare war and peace with the same king in a run.
Can be done with any king, just play a bit, in some years you have the option to declare war on a king and in some years you can declare peace. Just make sure you do it to the same king (so if you declare war with King of Nature for example, you have to make peace with King of Nature too). Once you have done both, it pops up automatically.

Crownmaxxing - Get a king to level 9.
This is basically just playing the game. You'll gain XP whenever you win or loose a game but depends on how many years you have survived. Most XP you gain is when you play at higher difficulty or when you play for maaaany many years (hence you'll get this one eventually, especially if you try out the 99 year achievement later).
Note: If you have already one king on Level 9, then just start a game with them and abandon it, this should count too for the achievement.

Flush... Kinda - Have 5 cards of the same king in your hand.
Can be done with any king, those who give you some specific cards at the beginning through perks/abilities are probably easiest. E.g. King of Greed can choose to start with vaults at the beginning, so you have 3 cards + 2 vaults, should easily give you this achievement quickly. I believe King of Blood also works as they can choose to have kobolds directly at the beginning. Otherwise you'll probably also get it when you buy enough cards of the same king at the merchant.

Piece of Cake - Win the final battle in less than 5 seconds.
Can be done with any king, if you do the speed run tactic I mentioned below in the King of Greed section, you'll probably get this one automatically as coin towers with enough speed to just annihilate everything super quick. Other kings work as well though, they just need to have enough speed, units or abilities, e.g. the powered up lightning from the King of Progress citadel is also quite strong with the right edicts (speed up the lightning).

True Royalty - Beat the game on King difficulty.
Can probably be done with any king, but some may feel easier for you to do and others harder.
To get access to king difficulty, you first have to play through each other difficulty at least once (but it doesn't matter if you do it with the same king or another one): Peasant, Squire, Knight, Lord, Baron, Count, Duke, Prince
The important thing to know here is that the enemies have a lot of health, so it's quite hard especially in the beginning years to beat them on higher difficulties. It helps a bit if your king is already levelled up a bit, so you have some abilities/perks that buff you a bit for each run.

Die Hard - Survive until year 99.
To get this, you need to reach and survive level 99 (so continue playing after "winning" on year 34) and it will pop up then automatically. Easiest on peasant difficulty, but still gets quite hard once you come to level 65-78. Once you're done with these though, your strategy will likely have you easily go to level 99 and higher.
There are multiple options in terms of kings on how to get this achievement (e.g. rat stack with King of Progress but each King has their own way), check below my King of Time tactic to also get the 999 Gold reroll achievement, that works pretty easy with portals, shrines/echoform and stacks of rats, trappers and orbiters.

Recommended: Any king (patch#15+)

New with Patch#15

Suburban King - Place 9 copies of the exact same card on 9 different plots.
You will need to place 9 same cards, e.g. buildings or troups on 9 different plots. This can be easily combined with the achievement "The Spire Slays". To get more cards of the same, try using the cloning card from the King of Nature or the trader. Once you placed the 9th card of the same building or troup, the achievement will pop up. All fields can be just Level 1, it's just important to place the same one on 9 different plots/fields.

For Scraps - Earthwork a Broken Cabulator.
This can technically be done as any king you just need to have the King of Stone and the King of Progress as your enemies or luck with the trader. For this achievement to pop up, you need to build a cabulator, then level this one to Level 3 (when that happens, it brakes and levels other plots up) and afterwards you need to use the Earthworks card on this broken Cabulator. P.S. Using the earthworks card on a broken cabulator is anyway pretty nice, not only because of the achievement, but also because you usually receive back 2x Cabulator and 1x broken cabulator cards, so it helps building a new one!

Agnostic - Have one unit with 9 different Enchantments.
Each king has different enchantment cards for troups, so just pick a different one each time the loot comes up. Trader works too at specific years if you have enough gold. If you didn't know yet, you can identify them if you look at the card into the top left corner, there's a symbol of the card-type, e.g. enchantments have a different symbol than troups or buildings.

Babel - Have one card of each king on your kingdom.
You need to place either a troop or a building of each King on your kingdom, but it's completely up to you which ones you choose. The trader which lets you buy cards at specific years helps too. On the top you'll also see crossed swords on some years, that's when you can declare war or make peace with enemy kings, so that's when you can swap them around to get different loot/cards. If you have portal cards from the King of Time you can also try then to relapse and do that event again, which then lets you choose another enemy king if you want to get it quicker.
So in total you will need 9 different cards on your kingdom as there are 9 kings.

Tip from Gynju: For "Babel" achievement the easiest way is certainly King of Greed's quest- Shopping Spree. Just throw a card to pit on first turn then start buying what you need - easily done before year 10 if you are lucky.

Self-Sufficient - Win a run on King difficulty with no perks.
You can either get this in quest mode if you play on "King" difficulty or you play a normal game on King difficulty but take out all the perks/abilities from your king before you start the game.
Note: Doesn't seem to work anymore in quest mode, so you will need to play a normal game on King difficulty. See more tips in this guide on how to play King difficulty.

Spoiled: - Pay 999+ gold for one re-roll.
This one can probably done with any king, however personally I found it quite quick and easy with the King of Time. It can then basically be done in the runs you do for the King of Time for making peace/war with enemy kings and for travelling back in time. I was focussing in the first half of the game to get portals up as quick as I can to travel back and to have an easier setup. Focussing on vaults first allowed me to do some in between rerolls needed for the armies I wanted (or to buy specific cards at the trader). Later in the game I replaced the vaults with shrines and focussed on getting rat armies on to get the gold from them that you need for the high amount of rerolls.
P.S. This build can also be used for the 99 year achievement.
Good to know:

• Beginning: Use the perk with higher chance of rainbow cards and focus on getting King of Greed early as enemy for vaults and later on the card that destroys a field for money per level
• I used trap-builders from King of Stone first as DPS, then orbiters (King of Time) next to them so they can copy enchants, then later I build rat army and focused on them to improve their levels. Note you can place other rat armies next to them, then they level up as well when those do. However I mainly used Echoform here (see below) to copy the "giant" armies.
• Echoform (rainbow army or from trader) use this on the rat army to copy then use the card from King of Greed to destroy the copied armies to gain gold for every level they have. It helps here going back in time to re-fight the rainbow army.
• Shrine: Get this one also early up if possible through rainbow army + trader as it helps you going back in time as well as upgrading your rats every year. Later on you replace vaults with shrines so cloning from King of Nature or Earthworks from King of Stone come in handy here. The Overwork blessing works on Shrines and will double the rate of level growth, but will also increase the Shrine costs (Regression to level 4 helps here, it's a card from King of TIme).
  Numbers:
• For the achievement you need to reroll 100 times, so need about 50,500 Gold for it. That means a rat army with level 1684 you need to destroy or alternatively you can also destroy multiple little ones (e.g. 4x 450 plots or similar) just might take longer then to get the money together. I always destroyed the Echoform-copied rats to have money in between to use so it's not too boring.
• You can re-roll either the trader (that's what I did) or the Edict selection or the diplomacy with kings (war/peace)
  
  
  Tip from Pyxun: There's a better way to make the "Spoiled" achievement, on the quest "Goats", stay with the king of nature and stone, and just survive while you up the goats with farm from the king of nothing, in like 60-70 years you'll have the 50,500 golds
  
  Your Grindness - Get all the 9 kings to level 9.
  This is technically just a grind, it's not overly hard to get all kings to Level 9. Note that you can also select "King" difficulty right away, so since you need to win on King anyway with all kings, you can just start King games see how far you come, but each fail will give you some XP as well.
  Things that give you XP:
• Difficulty level (e.g. King level gives more XP the further you come than peasant level)
• years completed (not sure if there's a cap on Level 99/100 so not sure if it makes sense to go over that)
• quests completed in quest mode (yes, even the ones on "knight" difficulty give you XP for the King that the quest is for)

Recommended: Any king - King difficulty

New with Patch#15

King of Kings - Beat king difficulty with all kings.
King difficulty can be selected from the start (not sure if you have to beat it once for other kings to be selected directly), however if you're a new player, it might make sense to start with some easier difficulties first to get experience.
Questmode
This is probably easiest if you can beat it. Questmode has 3 different difficulties, so you can play all quests on "knight" first, then choose the ones you're very good at in "King" difficulty. If you beat that level, it should also count for this achievement, however I have not tested it. It did work though for other achievements like "Self-Sufficient".
Normal game
King difficulty is quite hard as intended, so you need to find ways to survive the first few critical years (Level 9 for example) but once you have a tactic that rolls, you can just roll with it. To beat King level, you just need select "King" difficulty for your game and then get to level 34 and beat the champion, then you can end the run.
I'm still working on getting some guides/examples per king together, but meanwhile you can roam the community or check for other guides of other community members who might help you beating King level with all kings.
This guide here might be a good start:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3607002598
How I beat King difficulty with all kings in the normal game (see above you can also do questmode):
Note: This one is work in progress, but if you need a tip or guide asap let me know in the comments!

King of Blood

Was a bit unlucky with the edicts, but as I didn't had much gold to reroll I was going for summons instead, focusing at the beginning on getting troups out and demon altars. Later on focussing on Orbiters + Library and bombers. Year 9 is the tricky one, but if you have enough power in this case with cobolds, demon altars and paladins, you can muddle your way through.

King of Nature

Start with elves + boars, the myzel to start with as perk was also very helpful. In my case I was fighting King of Nothing + King of Spells at beginning so I tried pushing for sorcerers and paladins. Paladins scale nicely with forests. Once I got King of Time as enemy, I was focussing on orbiters and put enchants always on sorcerers, edicts weren't great but helped the cause. So muddled a bit through.

King of Nomads

To beat King difficulty I focussed on getting out troops and improving the warlords/Khan. It's probably even easier if you reroll to face the King of time as you can then enchant your warlords while orbiters get the enchants too, but in this case I just rolled with the game as it was. Place mobs next to warlords for continuous improvement and work with destroying fields and place new ones to get the tent in the middle to procc. For some meat shields I used Paladins + replicators (didn't had much gold to reroll for echoform, but warlords don't work anyway with that card).

King of Progress

Put troops down (started with range units + converters), then focus on upgrading base to be strong enough for killing enemies, but once that's the case focus on getting troops strong too, otherwise your base alone can't kill the enemy champion in year 34. First rainbow army I took replicators, second one in year 26 I took echoform to duplicate the orbiters.

King of Stone

Focus on putting troops down to be strong enough to withstand the King of Stone enemy (your mirror enemy) as their ballistas can be quite awful in early years. I focussed here mainly on ballistas + orbiters + trap-troops (+raptors) and also put some warpers down as tanks, otherwise focused on getting walls asap and improving the base. Got shrine from the rainbow army (wanted echoform instead), but luckily everything worked out still!

King of Time