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.

Titles, Prestige & Ascension

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.

Titles, Prestige & Ascension — Iron Realms — Titles, Prestige & Ascension in Iron Realms.

Power in Iron Realms is remembered. Titles mark who rules now, Prestige marks how far you have come across every season you have ever played, and Ascension is the single door past the keep ceiling. Together they are what stops the late game from being a flat line.

Crown titles — the small council

The realm's ruler appoints eight offices. Each is held by exactly one lord at a time and no lord may wear two chains, so a title is genuinely scarce: taking one means someone else no longer has it. The bonus applies to the holder for as long as they hold the office.

Office	Effect
Hand of the King	+10% construction speed
Master of Coin	+10% gathering yield
Master of Whisperers	+10% troop training speed
Master of Ships	+10% march speed
Master of Laws	+10% tribute from the seats you hold
Commander of the City Watch	+10% scout range
Master of War	+8% troop attack
Lord Commander of the Kingsguard	+8% troop defence

Note that the two martial offices are the weakest of the eight. That is deliberate: the crown's gift should reshape how a kingdom builds, not decide who wins its battles. Eight offices means a king can favour eight different lords — it does not mean any one lord can stack eight bonuses.

Titles of shame

The crown can also brand. The Craven for fleeing the field, Oathbreaker for a broken word, The Pretender for a crown not earned, The Kingslayer for striking down a king, The Turncloak for changing sides, The Usurper for a seat not theirs to take, and The Late for arriving after the battle was decided. They carry no stat at all — they are pure reputation, visible to everyone who inspects you, and they are the cheapest political weapon in the game.

Household titles — a seat holder's patronage

Holding a Seat of Power lets you bestow a lesser title on your own loyal lords, which is how a great alliance turns one captured seat into a network of obligation. Which office a seat can bestow depends on how great the seat is — a greater hall names a greater officer:

Castellan (1★ holdfast) — +3% defence. Keeps the gate and the garrison drilled.
Master-at-Arms (2★ holdfast) — +3% troop training. Drills the levies in the yard, and drills them again.
Keeper of the Rookery (3★ holdfast) — +3% research speed. Keeps the ravens, and reads what they bring before anyone else does.
Seneschal (4★ great castle) — +4% gathering yield. Runs the granaries and the ledgers.
Magister (5★ great castle — the Free Cities) — +4% tribute. Sits the city's own council, and counts what the harbour brings.

One title per seat, and a single lord's stacked household bonuses are capped at +15% per stat — so a seat holder cannot simply pile every title onto one favourite and manufacture a super-lord. Five Castellans reach that ceiling and a sixth pays nothing, while a Master-at-Arms on that sixth seat pays in full: patronage has to be spread to be worth anything, which is precisely the political pressure the system exists to create.

What the land itself gives

Every Seat of Power grants a second bonus that comes from the region it stands in rather than from the castle: the North gives timber, the Vale gives stone, the Reach feeds the realm, the Free Cities pay in trade. Thirteen regions, thirteen different gifts, each scaling with the seat's stars exactly as its own bonus does.

A region's gift counts once, at the best seat you hold in it. Twenty-one holds in the North draw one wolfswood, not twenty-one — so a realm spread across many regions and a realm concentrated in one are genuinely different strategies, and taking a better hall in a region you already hold is still an upgrade. Each seat's card names its region's gift and says so plainly.

Prestige — eight tiers, and they never reset

Prestige is the account-level track. You earn 10 for a quest completed and 30 for an achievement, and the total carries across seasons — it is a measure of the lord, not of the current keep.

Prestige	Rank
0	Landed Squire	Every lord starts somewhere.
100	Sworn Sword	Proven in service.
300	Knight	Dubbed for deeds done.
700	Banneret	Lord of your own bannermen.
1,500	Lord	A seat, a name, a legacy.
3,000	High Lord	Counsel sought by kings.
6,000	Warden	Guardian of a realm.
12,000	Paramount	First among the great houses.

The thresholds roughly double at each step, so Paramount is a genuine long-haul rank rather than something a busy fortnight buys. Each tier unlocks a badge that shows on your Lord Profile.

Prestige is not purely vanity any more. 800 prestige — sitting between Banneret (700) and Lord (1,500) — unlocks a second build slot and a second research desk, the same two things VIP 2 grants. It is the free-play route to them, and it is the single most valuable threshold on this ladder. Every other rank is a badge. (March slots are not among them — those come from your Keep level, two to start and one more every five, plus one for a ranger seated on your council.)

Ascension — the one door past the ceiling

Your keep stops at level 40 by ordinary construction. Ascension is a one-time rite that raises the ceiling by five levels, to the realm's true maximum of 45. It can be performed once per lord, ever — there is no second ascension, no prestige-reset treadmill, and no way to buy another.

The cost is deliberately enormous: roughly 56 million food and wood, 33 million stone and 22 million iron. That is many weeks of a maxed economy, which makes the rite the single most demanding thing in the game and the reason keep 45 actually means something when you see it on the leaderboard.

See The Keep & Buildings for the road to 40, and Endgame & Ascension for how to bank the resources without stalling your war effort.