KoDP Tips

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Here is a list of important advice every new King of Dragon Pass player should heed.

Don't forget to take a look at the tips on A Sharp's website, too!

Getting started[]

King of Dragon Pass is a fairly complex game. You may want to familiarize yourself with certain aspects of it, like:

The terms used in game.
The User Interface
The in gameseasons
The pantheon of gods, that will have a huge influence on your clan's well being and your decision-making.

Clan Ring[]

Your clan ring is the line of people at the bottom of your screen. They will be your advisors throughout the game.

Always always always reorganize your clan ring at the beginning of every game. The default picks are random and they usually aren't very well suited for the job. You can choose your own advisors by clicking the Reorganize button on the Clan screen.
Always listen to your clan ring (by clicking on their faces). They will have something to say about every single thing, whether you're planning on throwing a feast or forming a tribe, and most of the time, they have important advice to give.
Never forget that your clan ring aren't mindless statistics-spouting machines. They have quirks and foibles, and over time you may notice trends in their advice. Don't follow it blindly. In particular following a trickster's advice is generally a bad idea.
The gods that ring members worship affect the amount of magic you can allocate at sacred time. Peace clans may only ever allocate one magic to war, so having more than 1 war themed ring member is generally a waste.
Ring members that worship the hero quest gods can increase their main stats relatively easily via hero quests, compared to worshippers of minor gods like Barntar, Odayla, etc.
Ring members, supposedly, are more effective at exploring than non ring members according to the manual.

Heroquesting[]

Heroquesting is an important part of the game, where your quester will enter the realm of the gods in order to reinact old myths. Not only do they give you bonuses, you are required to perform a certain number of them in order to beat the game.

Read the myth associated with the heroquest you wish to perform. The myths aren't only there to give you background lore, they are an integral part of your heroquests' success.
Be sure you have fully learned the myth (in the game, by sacrificing for Mysteries). In the iOS version, this can grant in-game hints (which simply help refresh your memory of the myth — you did read it, right?).
It isn't a good idea to perform several heroquests in one year. The points you allocate magic to during Sacred Time only improve the odds of success of that year's first heroquest. Wait 2 or 3 years before attempting another heroquest.
- You can still stand a pretty good chance to finish a hero quest successfully if you use a ring member of the same god and have 3 magic allocated to hero questing. Some hero quests are also much easier to complete than others, for example making the storm tribe is much easier than orlanth and aroka.
In general, don't quest without preparation. Magic at Sacred Time, appropriate ring members, and sacrifices to the gods beforehand all aid in quest success. In particular, a worshipper of Eurmal on the ring is invaluable.
Don't expect to succeed at quests all the time. Sometimes you will fail, and not be exactly sure why. Your people don't know either. They are the most dangerous undertaking in the game.
Because of this, you are not expected to heroquest often.

Tips From The KoDP Twitter[]

If you wish to end another clan's tribute to you, send another emissary, choose Demand Tribute, and demand none.
When making your tribe, offering gifts before negotiating can soften up any clan before making any demands of them.
Resolving feuds means fewer enemies, and a greater chance your search parties will not be attacked.
If a scene offers you the chance for an emergency heroquest, you won’t be penalized if you’ve already quested this year.
Don’t stress over “best” choice. May be none; usually >1 way to resolve situation; other options may create an interesting story.

General tips[]

Allocating magic to children or mysteries in sacred time seems to make no difference : it is very easy to go into overpopulation without allocating magic, and mysteries almost always succeed even with only about 10 goods sacrificed.
The main problems early on are food, herds, trade routes, treasure and increasing the effectiveness of ring members.
- Getting enough food can be quite challenging as you need enough farmers to work the land, but you can't get enough due to children forcing your clan to split up. You will usually need to compensate via sacred time magic and temple blessings.
- One way to increase the amount of goods you produce early on is to get 4 special crafting materials ASAP by exploring your tula. However, this tends to take a while to do.
Maxing out trade routes and getting the unique crafting resources via exploring should enable you to make lots of goods, very quickly. This is increased if you can get the trading market down to "weekly" frequency (check the trading window). 10-20 goods as gifts for most random events should be enough, although more doesn't hurt.
When mass buying treasures from other clans, simply pick the closest one with the best relations to you. Treasures are generated when you send a trade mission, so you can simply keep sending them till all treasures run out and the clan starts selling generic spirit fetches.
Sacrificing to chalana arroy to heal wounded ring members is generally better than waiting for them to heal naturally, especially if sacred time is round the corner.
Highly skilled leaders and large exploration parties are needed to get treasures from some hostile locations in dragon pass. Even then, there is a very high chance of failing, i have only been able to reliably get the treasures by using characters with stats so high that they cannot be obtained without cheating, or exploiting the recruitment mechanics to get very large (50+) weapon thane parties.
The maximum number of weapon thanes that you can have depends on your total clan population. However, you can instantly hire more weapon thanes if some of your weapon thanes are injured, allowing you to temporarily get a much larger number of weapon thanes.
- An easy way to get a lot of extra weaponthanes at once is to send all your weapon thanes on a far off exploration mission at the start of earth season. Your chances of being raided are very low at this time, and you can instantly hire 10 more weapon thanes.
Raiding is not profitable at all. You generally get less than 100 goods worth of cattle, and goods are very easy to obtain. Cattle raids are much more profitable as cows are harder to obtain and keep.
Try and keep at least one feuding clan next to your tula so that you can raid them for land when necessary, as you cannot claim land on your own. The only way to get more land is to steal it from another clan.
If you desperately need to kill off useless nobles but don't want to risk angering the trolls, send them out with no thanes and the minimum of 3 footmen, during dark season, travelling quickly.
Save often. Keep one save at sacred time, one save for the current year, and a backup save everytime you make a decision that you are not sure of.
If you wish to drag out the game as much as possible, form a tribe but avoid doing 2 of the 9 hero quests as finishing 7 of them including the making of the storm tribe will trigger the end game sequence of events.
- At about year 1370, you should get a event advising you that the king/queen of the horse spawn has been changed. As long as you use cheat engine to set the game year before this event triggers, you can complete all hero quests after forming a tribe and not trigger the end game events.
  - Select to add address manually, input Opal.r32+DE9E4 and 14629 for the default starting year.
- Alternatively, use the cheat engine table here to set your hero quests to unperformed. As long as you do not complete the required number of hero quests, you will not trigger the horse spawn change of leadership event even after 1370.
- To avoid overpopulation, you will generally have to resort to using cheat engine to keep your population artificially low, or simply split the clan off when needed.
The default exploring marker usually gets shifted incorrectly after forming a tribe, so that you will not be exploring your own tula in the default position. You generally need to move it around a bit to find the right spot to search your own tula. Press M to see the exact boundaries of your tula.
To get lots of magic early on, complete as many hero quests as you can. Ring members high in magic may also help. Waiting a year between hero quests still gives you a decent chance of completing it, but at least 2 years is the best.
Sending emissaries to ask for heroquest myths is very risky. Chances are you will be told myths that you already know but have no associated hero quest (such as "how things began").
When being raided by non-orlanthi, such as horse spawn or trolls, you can decrease their numbers by killing enough of their raiding parties. The minimum they will have is approximately 70-80 members each time. Taking captives then killing them seems to be much more effective than "kill as many as you can". However it's best to make peace with them as much as possible because you don't receive any benefits for being raided and they can raid you 2-3 times a year.
The Magnet of Mostal is extremely beneficial. It reduces a lot of the bad luck in the game (such as your forces losing a battle even wtih a 10-1 advantage). You may wish to find the dwarves as soon as possible to get it.
Not all treasures are useful. For example, treasures that allow you to sacrifice easier are pointless because it is almost impossible to fail sacrifices in the first place.
The larger your tribe, the more helpers you get when performing hero quests. Current season does not appear to affect the number of helpers. The downside is that forming a large tribe is usually harder, and you cannot raid your tribe mates unless you are feuding. Tribes do not help to prevent instant game over events from pissing off beast folk, dragon newts, etc.
- Exception : You can raid them if you get carls complaining that you do not have enough land. This did not even reduce the relationship with the clan when I tried.
Early on, make it a priority to run the Chalana Arroy Heals the Scars heroquest with the goal of making peace with neighbors. This will end all current feuds and generally improve relations, thus heavily reducing the likelihood of other Orlanthi raiding you.