Game guide

Your first season

What Sigilhold is, how a season runs and what to do each visit

The game in one minute

You grow a Keep, level a band of heroes, and fight with your alliance over a shared map. Battles play out on their own, but every decision that wins them is made by you beforehand: who fights, in which row, where and when. Tactics decide fights, not spending.

Every hero is unlocked from the first minute for everyone, and every level has a ceiling (level 10 for buildings, level 10 for heroes) that a free player reaches within the season. After that, two players at the ceiling are equals.

A season

A season lasts 28 days, then a one-day Interseason where the map is frozen, rewards are handed out and the next season starts by itself.

Starts fresh each season:

• Your Keep and every building level
• Heroes, their levels and your squads
• Food, Iron and Gold
• Nodes on the map, respawns and elimination
• Season score and leaderboard places
• Alliance level, perks and join or leave waits

Carries over:

• Your account, username and banner
• Cosmetics, trophies and achievements you have earned
• Your alliance: its name, tag, members and roles
• Lifetime stats and past placements

Your Profile page and the season banner show the same lists before a season ends.

Achievements are kept for good. Each one is on your profile, where every player sees it with how it was earned. They are honours only: no stats, no resources, nothing about your squads.

The game is in beta: every account made now earns the Beta achievement.

Your first orders

A new player is welcomed with a letter and 5 first orders on the Keep, each one a thing you do: raise your Keep, win your first battle, learn the counter, find an alliance, survey the map. The practice yard is a rehearsal: nothing is spent, wounded or recorded. You can skip the guide at any time.

After them, or if you skipped them, the Keep always names one next step: an upgrade you can afford, the Barracks when your heroes have outgrown it, the next campaign stage once your stamina is full, or what the next thing is waiting on. Hide for now folds it away until you tap Show the next step.

A good visit

The game is built for a few short visits a day, not for watching a timer.

• Start the next building upgrade in the Keep.
• Fight a few campaign stages for hero XP.
• Look at the map: did anything change hands?
• Read alliance chat and orders, then answer an order or commit to a rally.
• Send an attack, or move a garrison to where it is needed.

Between visits, notifications tell you when an upgrade is done, a hero finishes training or heals, your Food or Iron storage is full, a march arrives or your land is attacked. The game offers them after your first upgrade or march; turn them on or off, and choose what you hear about, in Profile & settings under More.

News from the team (a new season, a fix, a change to the rules) arrives as an announcement: a letter that opens when you next look in. Close it and it is gone for good, on every device.

Under the Sigilhold name at the top left, the header says how many players are online: everyone who was in the game in the last 2 minutes. It counts players only, not who they are or where.

Your Keep can never be attacked. A bad night on the map costs you ground, never your progress.

Tell us what you want

More › Suggestions is where you tell the team what you would add or change: a feature, a fix, anything. Keep it short (up to 200 characters); you can post 3 a day.

Every player sees the board and can upvote the ideas they want most, once each and never their own; tap again to take an upvote back. The team reads every suggestion, most upvoted first.

Keep and resources

Food, Iron and Gold, the six buildings and upgrade costs

Three resources

• Food comes from your Farm. It trains heroes in the Barracks, heals wounded heroes at once, sends attacks and rally waves, and pays to change a specialization. Its prices grow with your heroes’ levels, so Food stays a choice all season: level, heal, attack or rethink.
• Iron comes from your Mine. It pays for every building upgrade.
• Gold is earned in the game; for now, from campaign stages you clear for the first time. It finishes an upgrade or a heal at once, and your alliance needs it for perks. Gold is only ever earned by playing; it is never sold.

You start each season with 240 Iron, enough for your first upgrade, and 300 Food, enough to send your first squad on 4 attacks.

Resources build up on their own while you are away, until your storage is full. Storage is set by your Keep level: 800 of each at Keep L1, rising to 2,113,446 at L10. Tap a resource at the top of the screen to see its rate and when it will be full.

Six buildings

Each building goes to level 10, and no building can be higher than your Keep. You upgrade one building at a time, the same for every player.

Upgrade costs and output

Every building costs the same Iron and time to reach a level. Farm and Mine make the amount below per hour at each level; a new level’s output starts when its upgrade finishes.

Finish now completes an upgrade at once for 1 Gold per 5 minutes still left, rounded up. The price shrinks as the timer runs.

Heroes, levels and wounds

Classes, training, specializations, the level cap and how healing works

Every hero is yours

All 12 heroes are unlocked for every player from the start. There is nothing to pull or buy. What makes your roster yours is which heroes you choose to level, because Food and Barracks time are limited.

Each hero sits a little above or below their class in each stat. Each level adds 10% of the level-1 stats, so a level 10 hero has 1.9× their starting stats: stronger, but never out of reach.

Levelling

• Heroes earn XP from campaign stages: every hero in the squad gets the stage’s XP when you win, including heroes who fell.
• Barracks training turns Food and time into one level for one hero.
• A hero’s level can’t pass your Barracks level. XP earned above the cap is kept and counts as soon as the Barracks catches up.

Specializations

At levels 3, 6 and 9 each hero picks one of two perks, on the hero's page. One is usually raw power; the other answers a counter or makes the ability come sooner. Neither is always right: pick for what the hero will fight.

The page draws them as a tree in copper: from the hero's sigil through each level, with your picks lit up as the hero's path. A level waiting for a pick says Choose one, and the counter at the top says how many picks are made and how many wait. Any perk can follow any other; the lines only show your path.

• Your first pick at each level is free. Changing it later costs the Food that trained that level: 360 at L3, 4,977 at L6, 68,797 at L9. You can change any time; a squad already marching fights with the picks its heroes have when the battle starts.
• The level that counts is the one the hero fights at, so a Barracks cap holds a pick back too.
• Opponents never see your picks before a fight. The battle report names every hero’s picks, on both sides, once it is over.

An archer squad against an infantry wall: give your archers the perk that cancels the Infantry counter, and let one hero carry the damage.

Wounds and healing

A hero who ends a battle below full HP is wounded, and a wounded hero can't march or fight a campaign stage until healed. A wounded hero already guarding a place still defends it, at the HP they have healed back to. Wounds heal on their own: a hero who fell is back in 2 hours, and a lighter wound heals in proportion.

Heal now pays for the time still left, rounded up to the minute. With Food, the price of a hero who fell grows with the level the hero fights at, and a lighter wound costs its share. With Gold it is 1 Gold per 5 minutes for any hero (24 Gold for a hero who fell). Both prices sit next to each wounded hero in the Barracks and on the hero's page.

Wounds are what stop endless attacks. Plan fights so you are not left with every hero healing when your alliance needs you.

Squads and formation

Rows, who hits whom, and building a squad that holds

Building a squad

A squad is up to 5 heroes in three rows, with up to 3 heroes in a row. The Vanguard needs at least one hero. You keep 3 squads, can give each a one-word name, and the same hero may stand in more than one squad (but can only be in one place at a time). Your squads sit at the top of the Heroes page, saying what each is doing; tap one to open it in the Squad Editor.

Who hits whom

• Infantry and Cavalry attack the front-most row that still has a hero standing.
• Archers attack the rear-most row that still has a hero standing.
• Raider is Cavalry but goes for the Rear like an archer.

That is the puzzle: your Rear is safe from melee but open to enemy archers and Raiders, and once your Vanguard falls, the next row becomes the front.

In the squad editor, Preview battle fights your squad against a campaign stage you have reached or one of your own squads. It is a rehearsal: nothing is spent or saved.

How battles work

Rounds, counters, damage, terrain and replays

An auto-battle you set up

Battles fight themselves. You make every decision before the fight (who goes, in which row, where and when), then watch the replay. Nobody needs to be online at the same time.

• A battle lasts at most 12 rounds. If both sides still stand after round 12, the defender wins.
• Fatigue sets in at round 8: every hit deals 150% of normal damage, then 50 points more each round (350% in round 12), and heals and shields shrink by the same factor. Fights end in a result, not a timeout.
• Each round, every living hero acts once, fastest (highest SPD) first.
• A hero uses their active ability when its cooldown is ready and their ability order says so; otherwise they make a basic attack.
• There are no critical hits. Damage varies by only ±2%, so the same two squads fight the same way almost every time.

Hero orders

In the Squad Editor, tap a placed hero to give them two orders. Rows decide which enemies a hero can reach; orders decide whom they strike and when they spend their ability. Nobody sees your orders before the fight.

A taunt still pulls single-target attacks, whatever the target order says.

The counter triangle

Infantry beats Archer, Archer beats Cavalry, Cavalry beats Infantry. Attacking a class you beat deals ×1.25 damage; attacking a class that beats you deals ×0.8. Everything else is ×1.

Damage

Every hit is worked out the same way:

• Start from the attacker’s ATK, times the ability’s percentage (100% for a basic attack).
• Times the counter multiplier and the terrain multiplier.
• Times the row multiplier of the target, for melee attacks.
• Reduced by the target’s DEF: damage × (1 − DEF ÷ (DEF + 200 × the target’s level growth)), where level growth is 1 at level 1 and 1.9 at level 10. More DEF always helps, but each point helps a little less, and a hero blocks the same share at every level.
• Times fatigue, from its round on.
• Then a roll between 98% and 102%.

Buffs, passives, alliance attack perks and your Wall change ATK and DEF before this is worked out.

Stances and approaches

In the Squad Editor every squad also has a stance for when it defends and an approach for when it attacks. Each approach beats one stance and loses to another, and the side that guessed right deals +5% damage for the whole battle. Nobody sees the other side's choice before the fight, and a defender can change its stance at any time.

A march keeps the approach its squad had when it was sent.

Terrain

Every place on the map has terrain, shown on its sheet, so where you fight matters as much as who fights. Fortresses and capitals are always fortress terrain.

Weather. Each region has one weather a day, shown on every place's sheet for today and tomorrow. Rain weakens Archers, Mud weakens Cavalry and Frost weakens Infantry: that class deals 15% less in every battle there that day. Clear days change nothing.

Campaign battles are fought on plains, in clear weather, with no stances.

Replays and reports

Every battle leaves a report you can replay round by round, from the march report, the rally screen or the campaign. Skip to the result at any time; skipping costs nothing. Watching how you lost is the fastest way to learn.

Hero roster

All 12 heroes, their passives and their abilities

Abilities

Every hero has a passive that is always on and an active ability that fires on its cooldown. This list is the same one the battles use.

Specializations

Each hero's two choices at levels 3, 6 and 9. A cooldown never drops below 1 round.

Campaign

60 stages for XP and your first resources

Stages

The campaign is 60 stages against computer squads, fought from your Keep. Every 10th stage is a boss with a squad built to teach one counter; its lesson is shown before you fight.

• First clear pays hero XP, Food, Iron and Gold. Stage 1 pays 20 XP, 40 Food, 20 Iron and 5 Gold; stage 10, the first boss, pays 101 XP, 203 Food, 101 Iron and 25 Gold.
• Replaying a stage you have cleared pays its hero XP only.
• Enemies field 3 heroes at first, 4 by the first boss and a full 5 from stage 11. From the second chapter they also hold an edge: +10% attack and defence, +20% from stage 21. Your level alone won't carry a stage: read the enemy's formation and bring its counter.
• Only a win costs stamina (1); a loss costs none, only its wounds. You hold up to 24, and get 1 back every 20 minutes. Stamina is never sold.
• Before a fight every squad shows as a card saying whether it is Ready, Marching or Wounded, and how many of its heroes counter this enemy. A squad with a wounded hero, or a hero out on a march, can’t fight a stage: the game names the hero, the time left, and offers a ready squad, a heal, or a swap that opens that squad’s formation in the Squad Editor. A squad guarding a place can fight.

The map and marches

Places, attacks, garrisons and how land changes hands

Places and regions

The world is a web of places connected by roads, split into named valleys (regions) like “Ember” or “Thistle”. A place is named by its valley and number, such as “Ember 8”. You get a starting place when you join, and your Keep sits in its own valley beside your home region, outside the map’s places. When every starting place is taken, the world grows a new valley in the nearest open spot beside the others, joined to them by one road; nothing already on the map moves.

My territory on the map takes you to your own land, never an ally’s: first to the places joined to your newest capture, then, each time you tap it again, to your next group of places, saying which one you are on (“2 of 3”).

Attacking

• You can only attack a place next to one your side already holds. That makes fronts and borders.
• An attack is a march: 15 to 30 minutes depending on the road’s length, less with your alliance’s March speed perk. The battle is fought when it arrives.
• Every march is visible on the map to everyone: who is marching and where, never which heroes. The player who holds the target, and anyone guarding it, is warned the moment it is sent. There are no hidden attacks.
• Your War Room limits how many attacks you have on the road at once (one, plus one each at L3, L6, L9).
• Every march needs at least one hero, and a wounded hero can’t march.
• An attack costs Food to send: a quarter of what healing its heroes from a fall would cost, by their levels (15 Food a hero at L1, 14,725 at L10). The price shows before you send. Moves, recalls, retreats and reinforcements are free.
• An attack or a move on the road can be recalled: it turns round and takes as long to walk back as it had been out. A squad committed to a rally, or reinforcing against one, goes with the rally and can’t be recalled.

Holding land

• A place is defended by the garrison its side has stationed there. Beat the garrison and the place changes hands; an unguarded place falls without a fight.
• The squad that takes a place stays and guards it.
• Garrisons carry their wounds. A garrison defends at the HP its heroes have healed back to, so a squad that just won a hard fight is easier to take back.
• Your Wall gives your garrisons +2% DEF per level (+20% at L10).
• Moving a garrison is a march too. It walks the roads to its new place, and the place it left is unguarded meanwhile. A move from your Keep takes the shortest march. Moves are not attacks: they warn nobody and use no War Room slot.
• A beaten garrison falls back along the roads to the nearest place its side holds that nobody guards, or goes home if there is none.
• A hero is in one place at a time: at home, guarding one place, or on one march. The game tells you before you move a hero away from a place they guard.

Respawns and elimination

Lose your last place and you get a fresh starting place, up to 3 times a season. The map shows how many you have left once you have used one.

After that, losing your last place eliminates you from attacking on your own: you can still join your alliance’s rallies, and an Officer or Leader can give you a place of the alliance’s to get you marching again.

Score and winning

How a season is won and what the leaderboard counts

Holding wins

Score is earned for every hour you hold a place, not for taking it. The alliance with the most score when the season ends wins, so holding land for weeks beats a last-minute grab.

An alliance controls a region while it holds the region’s capital and more than half of its places. The capital alone is not enough, and a player outside an alliance never controls a region.

The leaderboard ranks alliances, players and regions. Your own score counts even if your alliance is behind, so there is always something to climb.

What a rank wins

When the season ends, the standings at that moment are final and every place on them wins something that is yours for good. It never makes a squad stronger. Frames and banners carry the season’s name, like the Season 1 Elite frame, and an alliance’s trophy goes to every member.

• Your rank is at the top of every screen, where the season’s name was, over the phase and the time left. Tap it for the leaderboard.
• The leaderboard puts your standing first: your rank of how many, what it would win if the season ended now, and how many points the place above you is ahead. Lines in the list mark where each prize ends.
• Crossing one of those lines, up or down, gets a notice. When the season ends, a letter says where you finished and who won.
• A Champion or Elite frame is a title beside your name, in chat, on your profile and on the leaderboard, in every season after.

Alliances

Members, shared land, joining and leaving, and perks

Together

• An alliance holds up to 30 members: a Leader, Officers and Members.
• Land is shared: every member can guard any place the alliance holds and march from it (an eliminated member launches their own attacks only from places they hold themselves, but can still join rallies), and teammates’ places show as Ally on the map.
• Income is not pooled: a place’s Food and Iron go only to the member who personally holds it.
• Places you hold when you join become the alliance’s at once.
• Alliance chat is private to members. World chat, beside it, is open to every player in the season. The Chat button counts new messages in both.

Joining and leaving

• Lock-in: 3 days. After you join or found an alliance you can’t leave it for 3 days.
• Rejoin wait: 1 day. After you leave, you can’t join or found one for 1 day.
• If you are removed, or the alliance ends, neither wait applies.
• You take your land with you. Places you personally hold, including ones granted to you, leave with you. Squads left guarding land that is no longer their side’s go home.

Every wait is shown with the time it ends before you confirm.

The Alliance screen hangs your banner at the top with its tag in wax, how many are sworn of the 30 places, and whether the gates are open to all or by invitation. Its Roster is the muster roll: every member under their own crest, grouped as Leader, Officers and Members. Officers and the Leader tap Orders on a member’s line to promote or demote them (the Leader only), kick them, or grant a place to a member who has been eliminated.

To find members, tap any player’s name (in chat, on the map, the roster or the leaderboard) to open their profile: their banner, alliance, places held and attacks won and lost, and their achievements, never their squads or heroes. Officers and the Leader can Invite to alliance from there, and the invite is answered on the Alliance screen.

Perks

Members donate Food, Iron and Gold straight to a perk. When a level is fully paid it rises by itself. Every perk has 5 levels and resets with the season.

• A level costs Food and Iron that doubles each level (800 each for level 1, 12,800 each for level 5) plus a little Gold (50 to 250).
• Each member can give up to 500 Food and 500 Iron a day, and the alliance can take in up to 5,000 of each a day, so a huge alliance doesn’t outpace a smaller active one. Limits reset at 00:00 UTC.
• Attack and Wall perks count in map battles and rallies, never in the campaign.

Rallies and orders

Attacking together, defending together, and planning ahead

Rallies

A rally is your alliance attacking one place together. An Officer or Leader with War Room L5 or higher declares it with a 30 or 60 minute window, and every member is told.

• Up to 5 squads commit, each from a place its side holds next to the target. They arrive together when the window closes, so you can commit and walk away.
• Squads fight in the order they committed, and the rally’s leader can reorder them until the window closes. Who soaks first and who finishes is the rally’s big decision.
• A rally commitment uses a War Room slot and costs Food to send, like an attack.
• You can commit to your alliance’s rallies even if you have been eliminated.

Reinforcing

When a rally is on its way to a place your side holds, its holder and their alliance are told, and each member may send one squad to Reinforce it, up to 4, from places next to it. Reinforcements use no War Room slot and fight with garrison bonuses (Wall and Alliance Wall).

How a rally is fought

• Attackers line up in wave order. Defenders line up garrison first, then reinforcements in the order they were sent.
• Each battle is the front attacker against the front defender, on the place’s terrain.
• The winner stays in with its wounds and fallen and meets the next squad of the other side. A battle that runs out of rounds goes to the defender.
• The attackers take the place only when every defender is beaten. The wave that beat the last defender stays to guard it.
• Both sides can replay every battle of the rally.

Orders

An Officer or Leader can post an order on a place, from 1 to 24 hours ahead, with up to 3 open at once. Orders are seen only by your alliance.

• Attack order: at the go time the game declares a 30-minute rally and sends every squad that answered and stands next to the target.
• Hold order: if the place is rallied before the order ends, every squad that answered and stands next to it reinforces.
• Answer I’m in with a squad. The order shows whether your squad is in place and offers to move it there.
• A squad that can’t go when the order acts (not in place, wounded, no free War Room slot, already marching, or not enough Food to send it) stays put, and you are told why.

Gold and fair play

What money can and can’t do, and bans and mutes

Spending never buys power

• Gold is earned only by playing. It is never sold for money.
• Gold saves you time on your own upgrades and heals, and helps your alliance’s perks. It never skips a march.
• No hero, stat, stamina, build slot or resource is ever for sale.
• Anything ever sold is for looks, such as banners and skins, and changes nothing in a battle.

A player who spends money reaches the ceiling no sooner than one who doesn’t. What wins is how you play.

Bans and mutes

Cheating, abuse and spam are dealt with by the game’s admins, for a while or for good, and every ban and mute is recorded with its reason.

• Muted: you keep playing and can still read chat, but can’t post in alliance or world chat. The chat window says why and until when.
• Banned: you are signed out at once and can’t sign in until the ban ends. The sign-in page says why and until when.
• A ban leaves your places, garrisons, marches and alliance as they were, so you come back to what you had, if rivals haven’t taken it.