Home › Docs › Combat

Troops and heroes

Every trainable troop in Pixel Kingdom Wars with cost, time, points and role, plus elite writs, research, heroes, hero gear, and why your army is ammunition.

Your army is what you bring to a raid: fourteen trainable troops, two recruitable heroes, and the gear those heroes wear. Troops are trained in the BARRACKS, housed in ARMY CAMPS, leveled in the ALCHEMY LAB, and spent in battle. This page covers what each unit does, what it costs, and how heroes and gear change a fight.

Pixel Kingdom Wars is in devnet playtest. SOL and KEEP mentioned here are test-net tokens with no real value.

Quick facts

• 14 trainable troops, all paid for in SHARDS; troop levels go 1–20 via research.
• Army size is measured in points: each Army Camp adds 20 points at L1 up to 180 at L20, and camps stack.
• Troops deployed in a raid are consumed, win or lose. Training refills the army.
• Five elite troops (Mage, Dragon, Gloamfang, Hexbarrow, Direwyvern) need a one-time training writ per account.
• Two heroes, Vex and Theodor, recruit at Keep level 5 for 3,000 / 10,000 KEEP (or a Hero Contract item).
• Hero gear is live in combat: ten Warden pieces, one per slot, fixed percentage modifiers, Gold Forge drops only.

Your army is ammunition

Every troop you drop onto an enemy field is gone when the raid ends, whether it lived or died. Survivors do not walk home. That is why the economy of an army is really the economy of your Barracks and Camps: how fast you can refill, and how much you can hold.

Why: Raids are instant and you can fire off up to 6 free ones a day (see Raids and loot). If troops came back, there would be no cost to attacking and no reason to think about which units to commit.

Two buildings set the limits:

• Army capacity is the sum of your completed Army Camps' capacity points: 20, 35, 50, 54, 58, 63, 68, 73, 79, 85, 91, 99, 106, 115, 123, 133, 144, 155, 167, 180 by camp level L1–L20. Four L20 camps hold 720 points.
• Training queue is the sum of your completed Barracks' queue points: 10 at L1, rising by 5 per level to 105 at L20. You need at least one Barracks to train at all; the server answers "training queue is full" or "army camps are full" when you hit either limit.

A building under construction counts for nothing until its job finishes. The number of Barracks and Camps you may own grows with your Keep (1 each at Keep 1–4, 2 at Keep 5–10, 3 at Keep 11–16, 4 at Keep 17–20) — see Base building.

Training and research can be finished early for KEEP using the same speed-up curve as building jobs (2 KEEP per 30 seconds remaining, plus a quadratic term that makes long jobs expensive).

The troop roster

All stats are level 1. Pts is the army-capacity cost, Cost is SHARDS, Time is training seconds. Speed is in tiles per second.

Core troops

Heavy and elite troops

\* needs a training writ (see below).

Wall policy tells you how a troop handles walls: break smashes the blocking wall, burrow goes under, over shoots or flies over when in range, and follow prefers an existing gap, otherwise trails a breaker's breach and only chews wall as a last resort.

Two units appear in battle but can never be trained: the BARROWLING (Hexbarrow spawn, 40 HP / 8 DPS) and the defender-only WYRMLING (60 HP / 20 DPS, flying) that a Dragon Nest hatches. The Barracks refuses both.

Tip: Flying troops (Dragon, Direwyvern) are untouched by Cannons, Mortars and Lasers but are exactly what Air Defence, Archer Towers, Tesla Towers, Mage Towers and Air Mines exist for. Scout first — see Defenses, traps and walls.

Elite writs

Training or researching a Mage, Dragon, Gloamfang, Hexbarrow or Direwyvern requires that your account has consumed the matching training writ once.

• MAGE TRAINING WRIT — 5,000 KEEP in the Shop.
• DRAGON, GLOAMFANG, HEXBARROW, DIREWYVERN TRAINING WRIT — Gold Forge drops only; never sold for KEEP, but tradeable on the item market for SOL.
• Using a writ unlocks that troop for your whole wallet permanently, on every base you own. If the troop is already unlocked, the writ is refused and kept — sell it instead.
• Wallets created before 2026-08-17 that met the old Keep-level gates (Mage and Dragon: everyone; Gloamfang Keep 8; Hexbarrow Keep 10; Direwyvern Keep 14) keep those troops without a writ.

Gold Forge drop odds per deed per day: Dragon writ 1.20%, Gloamfang 0.80%, Hexbarrow 0.50%, Direwyvern 0.30%. These odds are still being tuned. Details in Gold Forge and Items, gear and inventory.

Research: the Alchemy Lab

The ALCHEMY LAB (build tray: ALCHEMY LAB; unlocks at Keep 2, one per base) researches troop levels 1–20. Tap it and choose UPGRADE TROOPS.

• Cost in SHARDS is level × 400: 400 for L1→2, 800 for L2→3 … 7,600 for L19→20.
• Time grows from 2 h (L1→2) through 2 h 30 m, 3 h 8 m, 3 h 56 m, 4 h 58 m, 6 h 15 m, 7 h 50 m, 9 h 50 m, 12 h 20 m, 15 h 30 m, 19 h 26 m, 1 d, 1 d 6 h, 1 d 14 h, 2 d, 2 d 12 h, 3 d 4 h, 3 d 23 h, up to 5 d (L19→20) — exactly the labels the Alchemy Lab shows.
• A troop's level can never exceed the Alchemy Lab's own level, and only one research runs at a time.
• Research does not occupy a builder.
• Each level multiplies HP and DPS by a tapering step: ×1.20 for L2 and L3, ×1.25 for L4 and L5, then ×1.18, ×1.15, ×1.13, ×1.11 and finally ×1.10 toward L20.

Why: The steps taper so a maxed unit is strong but not unbeatable — a similar taper (×1.25 for the first four steps, then the same ×1.18 → ×1.10 tail) applies to building HP, so a late-game defence and a late-game Troll stay in proportion.

Heroes

There are two heroes. Each is recruited by placing their building from the HEROES build tab at Keep level 5, and each base can host one of each.

• If you own a HERO CONTRACT: VEX or HERO CONTRACT: THEODOR item (3,000 / 10,000 KEEP in the Shop from Keep 5, tradeable), placing the altar consumes it instead of charging KEEP. Buying a contract requires paid land; recruiting directly at the altar for KEEP does not.
• Hero levels 1–20 are bought with KEEP: Vex 2,500 for L1→2 up to 277,900 for L19→20; Theodor 2,200 up to 244,600. Levels belong to the base, not the building.
• Tiers every five levels rename the hero — Vex: Shardborn, Awakened, Moonsunder, The Nephilim; Theodor: Latrine Duty, Bench Pressed, Grease Baron, The Tsiodora.

Vex is the raid leader: melee, 1.0 tiles/s, targets the nearest thing, and his Crimson Dash pierces walls. Theodor is the tank: melee, 0.7 tiles/s (slower than any troop except the Hexbarrow and Direwyvern), walks straight at defenses and pulls fire so your troops do not take it.

Skills at a glance

Skills unlock and scale with hero level. The engine runs all of them; a few numbers are marked as placeholders in code and may change.

• Vex: Crimson Dash (L1) — a 200–400% DPS line that pierces walls. Moonsunder Wave (L6) — a travelling crescent that bleeds defender troops. Degen Awakening (L11) — 10 s of +40/+60% damage and lifesteal. Double or Nothing (L16) — once per battle, a coin flip: heads revives him at 50% HP, tails refunds half his recovery time. Omega Shardstorm (L20) — a once-per-battle 300% nova with a 2 s stun.
• Theodor: Cheek Quake (L1) — area stun plus a taunt that drags defenses onto him. Snot Rocket (L3) — a blind. Cannonball (L5) — a leap with a damage-over-time parting gift. Skill Issue (L8) — an always-on aura that retargets defenses and cuts his incoming damage by 20–40%. Belly Bounce (L11) — 5–12% self damage reduction (its reflect and knockback are not live). Brown Note (L14) — deletes 1–2 wall segments and gasses defender troops. Rage Quit (L17) — once per battle, fakes death at 60% HP for 3 s. Silent But Deadly (L20) — once, a 250% nova with a 3 s fear and a 10 s poison cloud.

Knockout and recovery

A hero who dies in a raid goes into recovery and cannot be deployed until it ends: Vex 10 minutes at L1 plus 5 per level, Theodor 15 plus 6 per level. You can finish recovery early for KEEP. A recovering hero also does not defend your base.

Heroes defend too

When you are raided, any recruited, available hero stands guard at its altar with full stats: 5-tile aggro, 8-tile leash, and Theodor taunts within 6 tiles. Wall your altar in like any other asset — in a raid it is an ordinary destructible 2×2.

Hero gear

Gear is live in combat for both attacking and defending heroes. There are ten Warden pieces, exactly one per slot, each with fixed modifiers (no random rolls). All are Gold Forge drops — none are sold for KEEP — and any unequipped copy can be sold on the item market for devnet SOL.

How it changes combat:

• Effective hero HP = base × hero HP bonus; basic attacks scale with hero damage; skills scale with hero damage plus ability damage. Move speed, wall damage, first-hit reduction, incoming damage reduction and the allied-troop bonuses are all applied inside the battle simulation.
• Totals per hero are capped after summing all pieces: hero HP +40%, hero damage +30%, ability damage +15%, cooldown reduction +20%, move speed ±15%, incoming damage reduction +10%, first-hit reduction +25%, wall damage +50%, allied troop HP +15%, allied troop damage +10%.
• Warden set bonus: equip 9 pieces on one hero and your non-hero troops gain +8% HP (shown as "+8% NONHERO TROOP HP ACTIVE").
• You may own up to 2 of each piece (1 of the Banner) and equip copies on different heroes. Equipped gear weighs nothing in your backpack. Loadouts are per base, and they are frozen into the raid when it starts.
• Known cosmetic issue: battle HP bars ignore the gear HP bonus, though the real HP is applied.

See also

• Raids and loot
• Defenses, traps and walls
• Base building
• Gold Forge
• Items, gear and inventory
• Campaign and PvE
• Glossary and FAQ