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.

Kingdom vs Kingdom (KvK)

Quick answers

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.

Kingdom vs Kingdom (KvK) — Iron Realms — Kingdom vs Kingdom (KvK) in Iron Realms.

Alliances war within a realm; kingdoms war between realms. Kingdom vs Kingdom matches your whole kingdom against another on a fourteen-day cycle — the largest arena in the game, and the only one where a lord who never opens a rally still moves the scoreboard.

How the cycle runs

Kingdoms are matched for a 14-day season with its own shared scoreboard.
Every enemy host you rout is worth 4 points to your kingdom's total. That is a flat rate — a small lord routing a small host scores exactly as much as a giant routing a giant.
Seats held, objectives taken and battles won all feed the same pool.
The realm with the most at the season's close takes the honours.

Why the flat rate matters

Four points per routed host is the design decision that makes KvK different from every other war in the game. Seat warfare rewards concentration — the biggest banner takes the biggest seat. KvK rewards participation: fifty lords each routing one host outscore one lord routing thirty. A kingdom of active mid-sized players genuinely beats a kingdom carried by three whales, and that is not marketing copy, it is arithmetic.

Pulling your weight

Field something, always. A host that never marches scores zero, and there is no catch-up mechanic in a fortnight.
Coordinate targets across alliances. Kingdoms score together, so two banners hitting the same front is worth more than four hitting four.
Hold what you take. Seats feed the pool for as long as you keep them — see Seats of Power.
Keep your army trained through peacetime. Fourteen days is not long enough to build a war host from nothing.

Bring your best to the field and your banner to the muster.