Truegold & T11 Troops Guide: Building Levels, War Academy Costs & Spending Priority

Quick take: Truegold unlocks at TC30 and works through your building levels, TG1–TG8. That's a different system from T11 troops, which come out of the War Academy and run on their own resource, Truegold Dust. The most common mistake is spending TG too early on the wrong buildings. Skip the Infirmary for most accounts, lean into troop buildings and Embassy first, and hold your bigger TG spends for KvK prep or Strongest Governor when you can swing it. This guide breaks down both systems and the best use of TG at each stage.

Truegold buildings and T11 troops are often treated as one progression line, but that framing causes bad spending decisions. Truegold (the resource) levels up your existing buildings. T11 troops sit behind a separate unlock, the War Academy, and run on a different material called Truegold Dust. They also show up much later than most players expect. Getting this distinction straight early will save you from sinking TG into the wrong thing, which is the most common regret I hear from players once they're past TC30.

Two Different Systems, Not One

Truegold building levels (TG1–TG8): Spend regular Truegold (and Tempered Truegold from TG6 onward) to push your Town Center, Embassy, Command Center, Infirmary, Barracks, Range, and Stable past level 30. Your existing T10 troops get steadily stronger as their training building climbs these tiers.

T11 "Truegold Troops": A separate tier, covering Truegold Infantry, Archers, and Cavalry, unlocked through the War Academy. That building won't even show up until your kingdom is well past TC30, and it runs on Truegold Dust and Gold rather than the Truegold you're spending on building levels.

If you've been banking Truegold assuming it eventually buys you T11 troops directly, it won't. What it does is make your TG-level troops stronger in place, which is still a genuine power spike, just not the one you might be expecting.

Truegold Building Levels: TC30 to TG8

Truegold opens up once your Town Center hits level 30, not before. Make sure your Embassy and Academy are at level 30 too, since your Town Center can't take its first Truegold upgrade without them.

Exact timing shifts a bit server to server depending on how aggressively your kingdom pushes, but these are the checkpoints to expect. For the complete unlock list, see the Kingshot Server Timeline guide. Use the Kingshot Server Timeline tool when you need exact calendar dates for your own kingdom.

What You're Actually Paying at Each TG Level

Costs climb fast, so budget for it. Each TG tier breaks into five sub-stages (TG1-1 through TG1-5, and so on), and the per-stage cost climbs at every tier, with Tempered Truegold (TTG) entering the bill from TG6 onward. Here's the full cost to clear each tier, building by building:

Add it all up and clearing TG1 through TG8 on those seven buildings runs 26,280 Truegold plus 788 Tempered Truegold in total. For exact upgrade planning at your own level, use the Kingshot Truegold Calculator.

Keep in mind that's per building, not per account. Doing this across Town Center, Embassy, Command Center, Infirmary, and all three troop buildings multiplies that cost roughly sevenfold. That's really why TG always feels scarce. It's not that any single stage is unreasonable, it's that you're paying that cost seven separate times.

The War Academy building levels on the same TG1–TG8 track as the troop buildings above (355 / 535 / 630 / 750 / 405+25 TTG / 486+37 TTG / 486+54 TTG for TG2 through TG8, nothing at TG1). That's the building's own level-up cost, separate from the Truegold Dust you spend inside it on T11 troop research, covered next.

Where Your Truegold Actually Comes From

The building to watch for is one many players overlook: the Truegold Crucible, which unlocks around TG4–TG5. It converts basic resources (Bread, Wood, Stone, Iron) into a random amount of Truegold. The cost per conversion rises each time you use it that day, but the number of conversions available grows as your kingdom ages, and it costs nothing to build once unlocked. This is your best recurring source once it's live, so use it every day without exception.

Beyond the Crucible, here's where the rest of your TG income should come from:

• Watchtower Intel missions: a steady daily trickle that grows as your kingdom ages, available once you hit TC30
• Daily missions: clearing the top reward tiers adds more on top of Intel
• Event rewards: Armament Competition, Strongest Governor, KvK, and similar events regularly include Truegold in their reward tiers, so prioritize these when they run
• Kingdom of Power / alliance shop: buyable with event currency, worth grabbing every restock
• Direct purchase: if you're spending at all, weekly Truegold packs offer noticeably better value per dollar than one-off bundles

One thing worth flagging if you're newer: don't confuse Truegold with Truegold Dust. Dust is a completely separate material used only for War Academy research, more on that below. Stocking up on one won't help you with the other.

What to Upgrade First (Building Order)

The building priority is pretty clean once you see it laid out:

1. Town Center — start here, since it gates everything else; the Kingshot Building Priority Guide covers the normal TC path before Truegold
2. Barracks, Range, Stable — push troop buildings early because they are what actually make your troops stronger
3. Embassy — keep it moving in parallel; it's a hard prerequisite for your next TC tier, so don't let it lag too far behind
4. Command Center — worth bumping up after troop buildings and Embassy, especially if you fight often, join Bear Hunt rallies, lead rallies, or need more deployable squad capacity / march size

Skip the Infirmary, at least for most players. More healing capacity feels safe, but batch healing covers most of what that extra space would give you. If you're ever hit hard enough for Infirmary capacity to matter, a few extra thousand slots usually won't be what saves you. Every bit of TG you put into Infirmary is TG you didn't put into troop buildings or Command Center, and that trade is rarely worth it.

One exception worth knowing: if you're consistently running long stretches of consecutive full-march attacks (think back-to-back KvK castle hits) rather than leaning on alliance batch healing, a little Infirmary investment can actually help. For most players, put it last on the list, or skip it entirely.

Which Troop Type to Upgrade First

Once you're into the troop buildings, the default order is Infantry first, then Archers, then Cavalry.

Infantry-first is the safer default because it improves your frontline before you chase damage. Archers are the flashier upgrade, but they perform better once Infantry is solid. If you're mainly a rally joiner rather than a host, flip this: your troops merge into the host's formation, so raw DPS from Archers ends up mattering more than your own survivability.

One more nuance: once you've built out Gen 4+ Cavalry-focused heroes, bump Cavalry's priority up. If you're already sitting on a strong Cavalry hero, don't blindly leave it for last; check your own roster before locking in the order.

T11 Troops: The War Academy Path

This is the part many players get wrong by treating it like a normal troop tier upgrade. Think of it as a separate long-term research path.

The War Academy won't appear until your kingdom is roughly 220 days old, and only once your Town Center is already at TC30. The Kingshot Server Timeline guide shows where War Academy fits in the full unlock order; use the Kingshot Server Timeline tool if you need the calendar date for your kingdom. When it does show up, it brings a new research tree and a new resource, Truegold Dust, which is what unlocks Truegold Infantry, Truegold Archers, and Truegold Cavalry, collectively known as T11 troops.

Getting Truegold Dust

• Gold exchange: inside the War Academy, you can trade Gold for Dust on a daily reset, roughly 5,000 Gold per Dust, capped around 20 exchanges a day
• Truegold exchange: trade regular Truegold for Dust too, though at a much steeper ratio, with its own daily cap
• Weekly commission tasks: milestone rewards that hand out both Dust and Gold
• Direct purchase: Dust packs and a weekly Dust card are generally the better-value option if you're spending

Plan for Gold to run out before Dust does, almost every time. If you're aiming to unlock more than one T11 troop type, budget your Gold carefully. The research nodes get expensive fast, and Gold is the resource that actually stalls most players, not Dust.

Be Honest About the Timeline

Manage your expectations here. T11 isn't a quick unlock. Even a single troop type realistically takes several months of research once the War Academy is live, on top of already needing 220+ days into your kingdom and TC30. If you're newer and seeing "T11 troops" thrown around as a near-term goal, recalibrate. Treat it as a mid-to-late endgame target, not something to race toward in your first few months past TC30.

Once it's unlocked, you can promote your existing T10 troops directly into T11 instead of training from scratch. Time this around an event where the promotion itself earns power-progression points, so the troops you'd be training anyway double-dip on rewards.

Tempered Truegold: TG6 Through TG8

Once Gen 5 heroes arrive (roughly kingdom day 310–320), TG6 through TG8 building levels open up. If you are planning hero banners around that window too, pair this with the Hero Tier List. TG6 through TG8 also require Tempered Truegold on top of regular Truegold, which becomes the main bottleneck on the building side because Tempered Truegold can't be bought directly with real money.

You'll get it almost entirely through Super Refinement at the Truegold Crucible, plus a couple of free units from the Golden Glaives event when it runs. Refinement results are randomized, and the cost climbs with each refinement you do that day, though the first refinement of each day comes at a 50% discount.

Do not chase higher refinement tiers for bigger discounts, even though the instinct is tempting. Run the math on expected Tempered Truegold per Truegold spent and the return actually gets worse the higher you push. Tier 1 refinements return roughly 0.145 Tempered Truegold per Truegold spent, dropping to around 0.086 by Tier 2, and lower still beyond that. Do a modest number of cheap refinements every day and spread them across the week to keep catching that daily discount, rather than grinding deep into one day's refinement tiers.

TG8 troops versus T11 troops is a real strategic fork once you're this deep in. A maxed TG8 T10 squad with its extra skill can outperform a freshly-unlocked T11 squad in actual fights, even though T11 looks stronger on paper. If you're F2P or a controlled spender, treat pushing TG8 as the more realistic near-term goal. The War Academy is worth working toward in parallel, just don't expect it to be your first finish line.

Realistic F2P Timeline

Here's the rough non-whale timeline, tracking against kingdom age rather than personal effort alone. Compare it with the full Kingshot server timeline, or enter your kingdom in the Kingshot Server Timeline tool for exact dates.

Your own pace will vary with event participation, alliance tech bonuses, and how much you spend, so treat this as a baseline rather than a promise. If your server is moving noticeably faster or slower than this, that's normal. Server age, more than your personal TC level alone, drives most of these unlocks. For the full unlock sequence, see the Server Timeline Guide.

When to Spend: Saving Truegold for Events

Do not spend Truegold the moment you've got enough for the next stage unless that upgrade is actively blocking progress. Building upgrades during KvK prep or Strongest Governor typically earn event points on top of the normal progression reward, which is value you simply don't get spending on a random Tuesday. If you're not contesting top spots in those events and don't care about the political fallout of pushing power, spending steadily is fine. But if you do care about event standings, hold your TG until those windows open up; it's real double-dip value.

Practical rule: keep banking TG as it comes in, and resist the urge to spend it on the first available upgrade unless something is actively blocking your progress. A queued-up reserve heading into KvK prep is worth more than the same TG spent piecemeal beforehand.

Quick Reference

1. Truegold unlocks at TC30, not earlier. Get your Embassy and Academy to level 30 too.
2. Treat Truegold building levels and T11 troops as separate systems. TG1–TG8 strengthens your existing T10 troops, while T11 is a War Academy unlock running on Truegold Dust and Gold.
3. Skip the Infirmary. Prioritize troop buildings, then Embassy, then Command Center.
4. Go Infantry, then Archers, then Cavalry — unless you're a rally joiner or already have a built Cavalry hero, in which case adjust.
5. Lean on the Truegold Crucible as your main daily income source once it unlocks around TG4–TG5. Use it every day.
6. Expect the War Academy around kingdom day 220. It requires TC30, and T11 troops take real months to unlock, so treat it as a late-game target rather than a near-term goal.
7. Save your bigger Truegold spends for KvK prep or Strongest Governor whenever you can. The event points are value you only get during those windows.

FAQ

Does Truegold unlock at TC25?

No. Truegold building upgrades need Town Center level 30, along with Embassy and Academy at level 30. Nothing about Truegold opens up before that.

What's the difference between Truegold and Truegold Dust?

Truegold levels up your buildings, TG1 through TG8. Truegold Dust is a separate material that only matters once you've unlocked the War Academy, and it's what pays for T11 troop research. Saving one won't help you get the other.

Should I upgrade my Infirmary with Truegold?

For most players, no. Batch healing covers most of what extra Infirmary capacity gives you, so that TG is almost always better spent on troop buildings, Embassy, or Command Center. The exception is if you're regularly taking consecutive full-march losses without alliance batch healing to lean on.

When do TG6 through TG8 unlock?

Roughly kingdom day 310–320, alongside Gen 5 heroes. They require Tempered Truegold in addition to regular Truegold, which you'll get mainly through Super Refinement at the Truegold Crucible.

How long does it actually take to unlock T11 troops?

Longer than most players expect, so plan accordingly. The War Academy itself doesn't appear until your kingdom is around 220 days old and your Town Center is at TC30, and unlocking even one T11 troop type after that realistically takes several months of research. Do not treat it as an early-to-mid-game goal.

Should I save Truegold or spend it as I get it?

Bank it when you can. Spending Truegold during KvK prep or Strongest Governor typically earns event points on top of the normal upgrade, which is value you lose by spending early. If you're not chasing event rankings, spending steadily isn't a big mistake, but if you are, the patience pays off.

Is TG8 T10 better than T11 troops?

It's close enough to be a real choice rather than an obvious answer. A fully maxed TG8 T10 squad keeps an extra skill that T11 troops don't have early on, and it can outperform a freshly unlocked T11 squad in practice even though T11 has the higher stat ceiling on paper. For F2P and controlled spenders, treat getting to TG8 as the more realistic near-term target.

If your kingdom has reached the system, Pan's Master Academy skills can add more daily Truegold income through gathering and intel loops, so it's worth reading the Master Academy Guide alongside this one. For gear to equip on your troops, see our Gear Guide. For Radiant Spire formation strategy, check the Radiant Spire section in the Mystic Trial guide.

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