Prison

Prison is one of the game's buildings. It is unlocked at Kingdom Level 35

Here PVP battles happen where you can win, or lose Gold and Resources. Because of this, the nature of the gameplay is severely altered after you reach Kingdom Level 35. Many players react somewhat badly to it, see Strategy below for mitigation techniques. The effect of Prison in game dilutes somewhat after towers and skills are upgraded past level 31, with further dilutions on levels 41+ and 51+

Mechanics

This is a PVP battle similar to the Fighting Pits, and you get a similar reward of Gold and Honor Star for victory or defeat. The difference is, your soldiers are really killed here (like in the Boss Clash) and you must keep a steady flow of recruiting from the Barracks to replace them.

Territories

• You can select your opponents on a map with 9 maximum choices
• If you see the person's portrait, then that player is free and you will fight him or her. If you see the portrait behind bars, it means he or she is captured, and you will fight the captor.
• The players capture situation is only updated as territory lists change. So if a player is captured the number of soldiers can be wrong if the capture has happened after your territories have loaded up.
• Below the portrait you'll see a helm besides a number. And if you mouseover the number, you will see "Stationed Troops: xx". The number on the helm is the number of troops stationed on the defense, and will be the same as the mouseover number if the player is free. If it is captured, it will be the number of the captor's soldiers. Use this and the captor's Battle Power to decide the best target to attack.
• They can be invulnerable by a visible shield. This is done through the use of the Invisibility Charm or Invisibility Shield that are bought in the Marketplace
• In the Opponent list all players will be of a Kingdom Level which is your Kingdom level -3 ~ +1 (+2 for KL 35, also level 120 players can see players from 113 onwards). Since your Battle Power is not directly linked to your Kingdom Level, this method allows very unmatched pairings, with some players being more than twice as powerful as others. The opponent list is changed every 30 minutes. You can speed up this cooldown, as all others, with diamonds (approx. 1 diamond each 5 minutes left).
• Currently level 120 players do not show up in prison territories.

Arrests

• You can make 8 arrests a day for free. This is part of your Daily Tasks. After this, you can buy up to 4 extra captures for 10 diamonds each.
  • Upon a successful arrest, you take your opponents natural resources (amount and type are random, although somewhat based on the opponent's type and amount of resources). This is the key of many a player's distress.
  • Failure to arrest does not count as one of your 8 arrests a day, nor will it affect your natural resources.
  • The resources you can win or lose through this are limited to: Gold, Earth Essence, Air Essence, Water Essence, Rainbow Ore, Fairy Wood, Black Gold. Thus the most valuable of your items are safe.
  • You will gain a set amount of Gold (a bit less than 10 times your Kingdom Level) plus about 10% of however much gold your arrested prisoner has.

Note: There are three categories of prisoners:

• Poor: This person doesn't have much gold (0 - 1499)
• Average: This person has average gold (1500 - 4999)
• Rich: This person has a lot of gold (5000+)

Resources amount (All kinds of resources, even unstealable ones)

• Scarce: This person doesn't have much resources
• Average: This person has average resources
• Plentiful: This person has a lot of resources

Cells

There is a maximum of 4 cells in your prison. You cannot have more prisoners than cells.

• The first two are free, and are unlocked when you unlock the Prison
• Third cells costs 20000 Gold, 50 Notch Rock and 2 Dark Soul Crystals to unlock. On Facebook you need to hire 3 friends to help you to unlock the dungeon cells.
• Fourth cells costs 100 diamonds to unlock

Prisoners

• After a successful arrest, you will have a prisoner on one of your cells. You can collect a ransom from your prisoners once every hour. The reward from ransom is:
  • Fixed: 50 Gold, 50 Honor Stars
  • 50% chance for 1x Tear of Shiva
  • 5% chance for 1x Grindstone
• You will lose your prisoner:
  • You can voluntarily release your prisoners at any moment.
  • After 3 ransoms, the prisoner will automatically be freed.
  • Your prisoner can break free through a battle with you (the same as you can jailbreak from another player's prison). This may cause you to lose soldiers without notification (these soldiers are lost from the ones deployed on the castle).
  • Other players can steal your prisoner(s) through a battle with you. This may cause you to lose soldiers without notification (these soldiers are lost from the ones deployed on the castle).
  • You cannot keep a prisoner longer than two days in a prison cell. After 48 hours, they will automatically be freed.
• Capturing prisoners adds 1/20 of their Battle Power to you. The more prisoners you capture, the higher your battle power becomes. Your battle power will be adjusted accordingly when prisoners are released.
• You can station troops on the defense. The placement of these troops follows the same formation rules as Fighting Pits battles. These defensive troops are placed in the castle from your reserve of soldiers (recruited at the Barracks) and a percentage of them are lost in the battles. The formation of the troops from the castle does not need to be the same as the one you use in the Fighting Pits.

Being captured

• You can be arrested by other players. This can happen only when you're offline, so you can mitigate this not logging off. You defend from this with soldiers deployed on the castle. If you're online your battle log shows that you've been captured, but you do not, in fact, suffer the consequences.
• If you have been captured, all your BP benefits from your prisoners are halved. Furthermore, you cannot capture more prisoners until you break free. If you try you will fight your captor, same as if you tried to jailbreak.

Strategy

Do NOT enter Kingdom Level 35 until you have built-up your Battle Power. You should have at least 1 hero at level 35, and you need your barracks at level 34 and your camps above 30. This will allow you to be above those who blindly break into level 35. It will take some time to level-up those buildings, but it is worth the wait, currently I am 3-4 times more powerful than those around me with double the troops. Unlocking a 2nd Hero Training slot will be a great help.

Resources

If you are captured, you can lose a part of some of your resources. Thus stockpiling resources used to upgrade your towers, skills, etc, becomes a little more difficult. You can adjust for this in several ways.

1. Do not log off. If you're online, you do not seem to suffer the negative consequences of being captured
2. Don't stockpile.
   • To do this, you should try to live with the barest minimum amount of the items that can be stolen (reminder: they are: Gold, Earth Essence, Air Essence, Water Essence, Rainbow Ore, Fairy Wood, Black Gold)
   • Don't collect your crops or Supply Station runs until you're ready to spend them.
   • If you have access to the Black Market, use it freely. You cannot wait for the goods from the Supply Station. Better to pay gold than to have critical resources stolen.
   • Don't claim Level Taxes if you aren't planning to upgrade yet. Let the energy accumulate, then claim them all and burn the resources on upgrades as soon as you can.
   • As soon as you can upgrade something, do it.
   • Jewel Crafter, Augmenting, and Castle Technologies, and Barracks are good places to burn your excess gold, should you have to spare.
   • Of course, don't think of spending a single diamond on any resources that may be stolen unless you are buying it precisely to upgrade something at that very moment.
   • Consider selling everything that can be stolen before you go offline if you know there's virtually zero chance of not being captured. That way you get a little extra gold + the satisfaction of depriving your captor of their much valued bounty.
   • Play the system! If you fail to heed the Strategy tips above, then expect to land in Prison and be stolen-from.. But you can build-up your Battle Power and Troop-count BEFORE entering level 35 and become immune to this type of attack.
   • Try to budget and plan your income and expenditure for each particular session you play. All income that is of a random nature (prison, tavern, chest opening, chest digging, resources from taxes etc...) should be taken at once. That random income should be balanced with fixed dependable income (Supply Station, Mysterious Store, Daily Rewards, Kingdom Taxes) in such a way that allows you to upgrade everything you need with zero leftovers. It takes a lot of skill to manage your resources in such a fashion but this is what makes the game fun!
3. After your towers are level 31+, forge all Rainbow Ore. Same for the rest. This way, after all towers and skills are level 51+, you can only lose negligible amounts of leftover resources.

Battles

• Take a look at your opponent's Battle Power before rushing into a battle, especially if your target is captured. Some battles can be very one-sided. But see the number of soldiers deployed too.
• Always keep your soldier reserves high. Over 200.000 soldiers is very recommended. Recruit often, since your recruitment limit is low (~50.000 soldiers/hour) due to the Barracks cooldown.
• Check often, both in Barracks and Castle, your deployed soldiers. You can lose soldiers in several ways and you will not be notified.
• Arm yourself with prisoners from the Prison to increase your own Battle Power before tackling the Fighting Pits
• If you know that you're no match for those trying to capture you, consider setting your castle soldiers to zero (that's right - let them capture you). Instead, focus on depriving your captor of any resources they might gain from your capture. This will not only save you gold from having to deploy soldiers for defense, but having a reputation for no resources to capture will act as a huge deterrent to any captor who is trying to gain resources.

For arresting

• Look for players that have been debilitated through previous battles. The number you see below the territory, where it says "stationed troops", indicates the number of soldier that player has stationed on the defense. This can be very low or even 0, thus being easier or even trivial to defeat. However, if the player is currently captured, this number has no relationship with the real number of soldiers, which are the captor's. Take into account that you will earn less Honor Stars from weakened enemies, because the Honor depends on the number of soldiers lost in battle.
• Ransom your prisoners as soon as you capture them. It's very probable your prisoner will jailbreak or be stolen before you can do it again. As a general rule, do not count on ransoming each prisoner more than once. If you get more, you are lucky.
• Know who is likely to keep gold and natural resources in their account when they log off. Players that do this give the most bounty and should be the ones you go after. Most often these players are massively premium and have very high battle power and soldier numbers. But remember that even the best defenses can eventually be worn down by several attacks, that don't count against your daily limit of arrests until you finally succeed.

If you are captured

• Option 1: You play the prison to get Honor Stars. Try to jailbreak as often as you can, because:
  • You will earn some Honor Stars even if you lose
  • Your captor can be weakened and with less soldiers than his or her Battle Power suggests. What's more, each of your attempts to jailbreak will further reduce the number of soldiers you battle against. You may even end that capturing your captor.
  • It only costs you soldiers (thus, Gold) which are replaceable.
• Option 2: You play the prison trying to minimize its cost. Remember, there are not many restrictions placed on a captured player. Only try to jailbreak if freedom is somehow beneficial to you.
  • You need the increased Battle Power for the Fighting Pits
  • You have gold to spare (remember those soldiers you're sending to battle have a cost)
• If your captor is very strong, be patient. Remember you won't be held for more than 3 hours by the same player. It will often be much less. You already lost whatever you lost and while you're held, you won't lose more. It's a kind of protection.
• If all else fails and you are truly sick of prison, you can purchase invisibility for diamonds or simply keep your account logged in forever and you will never be captured.

Soldier management

• When you attack in order to capture/jailbreak, your soldiers are reduced from those deployed in the barracks. This may interact with the Boss Clash, so if you are doing both at the same time, make sure you keep them at max.
• When you are attacked (somebody tries to capture you, jailbreak from you or steal your prisoners), your soldiers are reduced from those deployed in the castle.
• You can opt to keep soldiers in the Castle at max to defend yourself from these attempts, but unless you're frequently checking, repeated attacks will reduce this advantage and you will ultimately lose your prisoners. Plus, this won't stop players whose BP is much higher than yours.
• You can alternatively opt to keep soldiers in the Castle at 0. You save gold and time spent on recruiting (this can be as much as 100.000 soldiers in an active day), but your prisoners will be stolen even more frequently.