What is the maximum keep level in Iron Realms?

Keep level 45 — base 40 plus a one-time Ascension. Troops cap at tier 13. Both are reachable without spending money.

Is Iron Realms free to play?

Yes. Iron Realms is free to play in any browser with no download and no account required. Every building, troop tier and Seat of Power is reachable without spending money — purchases 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 pre-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.

The Keep & Buildings

Quick answers

What is the maximum keep level in Iron Realms?: Keep level 45 — base 40 plus a one-time Ascension. Troops cap at tier 13. Both are reachable without spending money.
Is Iron Realms free to play?: Yes. Iron Realms is free to play in any browser with no download and no account required. Every building, troop tier and Seat of Power is reachable without spending money — purchases 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 pre-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.

The Keep & Buildings — Iron Realms — The Keep & Buildings in Iron Realms.

Your keep is the heart of everything. Its level is the master gate: nearly every other building can only rise as high as your keep, and the keep itself is the piece you will stare at for months, so it grows visibly grander as you climb.

The building set

Building	Gives you
🏰 The Keep	Your seat. Raises every other limit. Grows taller and gains regalia as it levels.
🌾 Farm	Food production.
🪵 Sawmill	Wood.
⛏️ Quarry / Iron Mine	Stone and iron.
🛡️ Barracks	Trains and houses troops.
🎯 Training Yard	Rally capacity — how large an allied host you can lead.
🏹 Archery Range / 🐎 Stables	Ranged and cavalry troops.
📚 Maester's Academy	Research — the tech tree across five disciplines.
🍺 Tavern	A free levy of sellsword troops, once a day. (Commanders are recruited for renown at the Hall of Heroes.)
🐉 Dragon Pit	Houses and grows your dragons.
⚓ Harbour	The crossing. Opens at Keep 10, berths 800 on the water per level, and lays 10 keels a level — its own panel is the shipyard. Nothing sails east without one.
🏪 Depot / 🤝 Embassy / 🗼 Watchtower / ⚕️ Hospital	Storage, diplomacy, vision, and the wounded.

Your stores have a lid

Each resource is capped at max(200,000, six times your next Keep upgrade's food cost) + 50,000 per Depot level. The floor rises automatically with your ambitions — you can always afford the thing you are building toward — but anything produced past the cap is discarded. The Depot is no longer only raid protection; it is headroom, and on a long offline stretch it is the difference between banking a night's harvest and throwing half of it away.

Level milestones

Keep 15 — a second Farm, Sawmill, Quarry, and Mine plot unlock. Your economy roughly doubles.
Keep 18 — the ambitious early-game target, and about ten hours on the live curve. This is also where the Long Night opens; Keep 20–21 (sieges, the siege table) lands inside the first two days.
Keep 45 — the summit. A months-long campaign and the highest seat in the realm. The keep tower stands at its tallest, crowned with gold.

Visual tiers & regalia

Buildings do not just get taller — they visibly earn their keep:

Level 10 — gold pennants rise at a building's corners.
Level 20 — a gilded ring circles its base.
Level 30 — bright corner finials crown it.
The keep itself gains a gilded girdle (15), corner spires (25), flanking banners (35), and a blazing golden star above the spire at 45.

Prestige & Ascension

Reaching a building's cap is not the end. Prestige levels let key buildings keep climbing past their maximum for continued gains, and Ascension lets a maxed keep raise the realm's whole ceiling — the endgame is endless by design, so there is always a next rung.

Tip: keep a builder busy at all times. Enable Auto-queue upgrades in the Keep panel so a slot never sits idle while you sleep.