Settlers of Kalguur is without a doubt one of the most complex league mechanics ever introduced in Path of Exile. They introduce an entire town to manage and promise substantial rewards if you manage it well.
Since the introduction of leagues, we have been focusing on building up Kingsmarch town, maximizing the use of each building, hiring the best workers we can, and exploring how to get the most rewards.
Through this guide, I will share everything I have learned, from how to quickly grow your town, to maximizing your shipping rewards, and even a little about the automated map device. Without further ado, let’s get started!
How To Quickly Upgrade Kingsmarch?
First, I want to talk about how to effectively progress when upgrading Kingsmarch. It is important to upgrade everything as quickly as possible, as this will allow you to generate more resources faster, and enable you to cash in those resources for better rewards.
Early on, you will be limited by various resources, forcing you to upgrade a few buildings in a certain order. But once you start grinding the map, those resources will no longer be an issue. This also means you’ll have more freedom in terms of upgrading your town.
Gold Farming
From now on, the main bottleneck to unlocking everything will be primarily Gold, with Dust also being a significant bottleneck to maxing out Mapping and Disenchanting.
At this point, your priority should be to max out Mining. When Mining reaches its highest level, a bonus is provided, allowing you to gain Gold when you collect Ores on a map - equal to the number of Ores you collect. It’s not a huge Gold gain, but it will give you an extra 1-2k Gold per map, which combined can help you unlock the rest of your town faster.
If you really want to max out your town quickly, and your main bottleneck is Gold, then I recommend farming Synthesis Maps, which are also the best way to max out Kingsmarch quickly. Each map gives about 15,000 Gold on average and takes less than 3 minutes to complete.
You can get these maps in bulk and get hundreds of thousands of Gold in a short period of time. Plus, there’s quite a bit of premium POE Currency you can get from grinding maps!
Disenchanting Dust
Once you have control over Gold, the next major bottleneck is Dust.
As we will discuss in Shipping section, Dust is a very important resource and you will need quite a bit of it to maximize the power of Mapping and Disenchanting.
You will not be spending any Dust on Mapping until Disenchanting is maxed out. The reason for this is that the last upgrade to Disenchanting unlocks the ability to disenchant unique items.
This is a very important upgrade because unique items disenchant into much more Dust than rare items do. The amount of Dust you gain is proportional to the item level, so make sure to put in high level rare items during Disenchanting, then disenchant any unique items you find once you have disenchanted to the max.
Dust will still be valuable during the final stages of Settlers of Kalguur, so you should set your loot filter to show all unique items and pick them up.
Hiring Workers With High Traits
At this point, you will find that it is really just a matter of grinding for Gold. Not just for upgrading buildings, but also for hiring workers. The last upgrade for Tavern lets you hire workers with Traits up to level 10 and gives you the opportunity to do an “Enhanced Reroll”.
Each reroll costs 22,000 gold, and Trait may be raised to level 10. But without using Enhanced Reroll, you will almost never see a Trait higher than level 6. Of course, even with Traits, levels 9 and 10 are extremely rare.
So it goes without saying that having a full team of level 10 workers in your town will be a long-term goal for a league.
How To Maximize Rewards?
Once you have everything maxed out, and your town is generating resources, there are two different ways to cash in the actual rewards: Shipping and Map Devices.
Shipping
I’m going to talk about Shipping first. The way Shipping works is that each shipment has a “Shipment Value”. This Shipment Value determines the quantity and quality of the rewards you receive. As for the type of rewards you receive, it depends on the resources you ship and which port you ship them to.
For example, if you deliver 500,000 Shipment Value worth of crops to Kalguur, you’ll get a ton of currency. 1,000,000 Shipment Value will earn you twice as much.
Higher-level resources contribute more to Shipment Value, but there’s a cap on Shipment Value, which is determined by the crew’s Trait level. I must warn you, though, that as Shipment Value goes up, past a certain point, you’ll start to accumulate risk, which is not what you want.
Note that the final Shipment Value isn’t just the sum of all the resources you shipped. There are two very important multipliers here that multiply Shipment Value, giving you even more rewards.
The first is Thaumaturgic Dust. Just sprinkle some on each order and watch your cargo skyrocket in value. Just 55 Dust is enough to double your Shipment Value, and around 8,000 Dust is enough to triple it, which is absolutely crucial!
The second important multiplier is Quota Bonuses. Each port has a list of resources they want, and if you meet that quota, then the specific resource you used to meet the quota will receive the listed multiplier.
Quotas start out fairly weak, but once you meet them a few times, the port will upgrade and Quota Bonuses will apply to more resources. It is so important to meet your quota that you shouldn’t even ship unless you can meet your quota. You’re better off waiting or you’re just wasting resources because you’ll get much less in return than you would have otherwise.
Automated Mapping Devices
The other fundamental way to get bonuses from Kingsmarch is with automated mapping devices. When fully maxed out, you can run up to three Atlas Devices at once.
Note that you need to be running a top level Atlas to run a T16 map, and the risk of worker death is unavoidable. Because of the constant threat of death, this may not be worth it until we get better traits.
And one thing you have to understand is that if you want to keep those three Atlas Devices farming, you absolutely need to invest a lot of money in Enhanced Reroll and hiring. I think maxing out Atlas runs seems unattainable at the moment, considering they have at least a 1% chance of dying on every map. I kind of wish GGG would increase the odds of getting high-level Atlas Runners. It’s ridiculous right now.
Boss Encounters
Finally, I wanted to quickly cover the bosses you can fight. We’ve only encountered 2 of them so far, but they’re both pretty simple. For Verisium Boss, you just have to dodge attacks for a short period in the shrinking arena.
For Bandit, who kidnaps your Atlas Runners, you just have to dodge a few Burning Arrows. If you have a strong build, don’t forget to grind on T16 map. These bosses won’t be much of a danger to you at all. So don’t be afraid to fight them if you feel you’re up to it!
Anyway, hopefully these tips can help you build your Kingsmarch better! See you in the game!
