Niko

Quick answers

Who is Niko in Iron Realms?

Niko is a striped grey Bengal who wanders the world map. Tap him and he is worth 200 diamonds — once a day.

How often can you catch Niko in Iron Realms?

Once per day, counted in UTC so the reset is the same moment for everyone. A second tap the same day is politely refused. He is findable again after the day turns.

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.

Somewhere on the world map, a grey Bengal — silver coat, charcoal stripes, a ringed tail carried high — is going about his business. He picks a spot, pads over to it, sits a while, then picks another. He keeps to land — he has no interest in the Narrow Sea — and he pays no attention whatever to the war.

Catching him

Tap him. He is worth 200 💎 diamonds, and the Chronicle notes that he allowed it.

He is small, so the tap target around him is generous — he is catchable on a phone, not just with a mouse. His eyes carry a faint glow, which is the part of him that reads at map distance; when he has already been caught today the glow dims and his label drops the bounty, so his whole state is one look.

Once a day

The limit is one catch per lord per day, and the day is counted in UTC — so the reset happens at the same moment for every lord in the realm rather than depending on where you happen to be standing.

A second tap the same day is not an error. Niko has simply had his fill of scratches, and says so.

The limit is kept by the server, not by your device. Diamonds are the currency the storefront sells, and a limit held in your save would be one reload away from being farmed — a currency that can be minted for free is not a currency. This is the same principle as the Fair Play Ledger: the things that would be unfair if they were loose are the things held tightest.

Offline play has no server to ask, so there the limit is kept locally.

Finding him

There is no tracker and no quest arrow — that would make a cat into a chore. He wanders the whole map, so the honest advice is that you will meet him while you are doing something else, which is roughly how cats work. Scrolling the map looking for him is a perfectly good way to spend a minute; so is ignoring him until he turns up.

He is drawn on every graphics quality setting. Hiding him on a low-end phone would hide 200 diamonds a day along with him.

He is not the only cat

His twin Allie Blu wanders the same map in a colder coat. She is worth 25 diamonds rather than 200, she is markedly easier to catch, and — the part that matters — her daily cooldown is separate from his. Catching Niko never costs you her.