Strategy Guide
This guide is for Lords just starting out in Castle Night. It walks you step by step through what to do in your first few days, how to handle defense battles and cavalry charges, and how to grow your generals and gear. Whenever the game's rules change, this page is updated too.
▶ Play Now1. Day One: Where to Start
- Choose your Lord. Once you pick one of the six Lords, you can't change. If you're new, the Bowmaster Ihyeon, with his long range, or the Guardian Seora, with her sturdy castle, is the easiest pick. If you want to build lots of towers, the Engineer Dogyeong is a good choice.
- Clear Expedition 1-1. The first expedition, “Night at Wolha Castle,” teaches you to move, build towers and use skills. Clearing it earns you crowns and experience and raises your Lord level.
- Farms and lumber camps first. Without food you can't set out on expeditions, and without wood you can't build towers or palisades. Build these two first and assign workers to them.
- Check the raid warning. The top of the screen shows when and from which direction the enemy will come, such as “Raid from the south in 2 days.” Build palisades and towers on that road first.
2. Defense: Tower Defense Where Your Lord Fights Too
Your Lord earns the gold. Defeated enemies drop gold on the ground, and it flies to your Lord when you get close. Stand on a tower spot (the dotted square) while carrying gold, and the gold flows in to raise a tower.
Archer Towers and Cannon Towers. Archer Towers fire quickly at one enemy at a time; Cannon Towers are slow but blast whole groups at once. Cannon Towers suit spots where several paths meet, and Archer Towers suit long, straight roads.
Enemies stick to the roads. The Heukcheol army follows set paths to your gate. They don't attack towers up on the hills, so the basic plan is to send your Lord down to the road to block the enemy while your towers fire from the side.
Save skills for the rush. Lord skills like Arrow Rain and Moonflash have long cooldowns. Hold them for when the hulking brutes (Armored Soldiers) or enemy captains show up.
3. Charge: Grow Your Cavalry and Break Through
- Pick the right number gates. As you ride, gates marked with numbers appear on the left and right. Choose gates that add riders, like “+8” or “×2,” and avoid ones like “−3.” Even a red gate improves when you hit it with arrows, so start shooting it from far away.
- Dodge the Heukcheol archers' arrows. Archers take aim at your cavalry from afar and loose red arrows. Watch them come and step left or right, and you won't lose a single rider.
- Scout cavalry are fast. Scouts on black horses rush in faster than other enemies, and a collision costs you 2 riders. Shoot them down first.
- A fortress waits at the end of a Hill Charge. At the end of the winding hill road, an enemy captain holds the fortress gate. The more riders you have, the more streams of arrows you fire and the harder each arrow hits, so building up your cavalry at the gates is the surest plan.
4. Troop Matchups: Cavalry → Archers → Spearmen → Cavalry
Lords, generals and enemies all have a troop type. With the advantage, you deal 30% more damage; at a disadvantage, you deal 15% less.
| Troop type | Strong against | Weak against | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐎 Cavalry | Archers | Spearmen | Ganghwi, Gwangsu, Cheonmu, Wolsa · Heukcheol Scouts · cavalry captains |
| 🏹 Archers | Spearmen | Cavalry | Haerang, Yeonhwa, Seokdam, Sohyang · Heukcheol Archers · archer captains |
| 🔱 Spearmen | Cavalry | Archers | Seorin, Mujin, Baekho, Geumo · Heukcheol Foot Soldiers and Armored Soldiers · spear captains |
A Lord's troop type depends on their gear: on horseback they count as Cavalry; with a Bow, Longbow or Crossbow, as Archers; and with a Spear, Glaive or Twin Swords, as Spearmen. If the generals traveling with you all share the same troop type, the formation bonus raises their attack by another 15%.
Heukcheol Foot Soldiers and Armored Soldiers are Spearmen, so archer generals handle them well. Spear generals are the answer to Scout cavalry, and cavalry is the answer to Heukcheol Archers. If a raid warning shows an enemy captain, check that captain's troop type and switch your companion generals to match. Every captain's troop type is listed in the Heukcheol Army Codex.
5. Generals: Recruiting, Levels and Stars
The 7 story generals join one by one as you progress through the expeditions (Seorin 1-3, Haerang 1-8, Mujin 2-1, Seokdam 2-6, Ganghwi 3-3, Yeonhwa 4-3, Baekho 5-2). The 17 recruitable generals are found at the Recruitment Office in your territory's War Hall.
Recruiting. One recruit costs 1 Recruit Token or 12 crowns. The odds are Common 60% · Rare 28% · Epic 10% · Legendary 2%, and at least one Epic or better is guaranteed within 20 recruits. You earn Recruit Tokens by clearing a stage for the first time (3 tokens for the 8th stage of each chapter) and by repelling a territory raid.
Stars (promotion). Recruiting a general you already have gives you 10 shards instead. Collect shards to raise that general's stars from 1 to 5; each star raises their stats by 12%.
Levels. Generals gain experience every time they fight alongside you and win, and each level raises their stats by 12%. A general's grade (Common, Rare, Epic or Legendary) sets the multiplier on their base stats.
Companions and posts. At first, 2 generals travel with your Lord, rising to 3 from Lord level 4. Post the rest, two to a spot, on your territory's roads (South Gate, South Field Road, South River Pass, West Pass, East Pass), and they will guard that spot every night.
6. Gear: Weapons, Horses, Helmets, Armor and Charms
- Weapons (Smithy): Bow, Longbow, Crossbow, Spear, Glaive and Twin Swords. Each type has its own range, attack speed and area of effect, and gets stronger with higher grades and upgrades (up to +10).
- Horses (Stable): From the Pony all the way up to the Cheollima. Riding a horse makes you faster, raises your HP and turns your troop type into Cavalry.
- Helmets, Armor and Charms (Smithy): Helmets add HP, armor reduces damage taken, and charms add attack and shorten skill cooldowns. You earn gear the first time you clear the 4th and 8th stages of each chapter, and you can also craft it at the Smithy.
Damage reduction stacks up to 60%, and skill cooldown reduction up to 40%. Raising your stats evenly pays off better than pushing just one.
7. Running Your Territory
| What to do | Tips |
|---|---|
| Resource sites | Build Farms (food), Lumber Camps (wood), Quarries (stone) and Silver Mines (silver). A site needs as many workers as its level to produce at full output. As your Lord level rises, you can build more sites on open ground (up to 12). |
| Houses | Building houses lets more workers move in. If you're short on workers, your resource sites run at only half capacity. |
| 10 wall tiers | Wood Palisade (1–3) → Stone Wall (4–6) → Stone Fortress (7–10). The higher the tier, the longer your gate holds out. Expanding your Castle Grounds brings empty village lots inside the walls. |
| Village buildings | The Smithy (weapons and gear), Stable (horses), Barracks (charge riders), War Hall (recruiting and assignments), Arsenal (research) and Market (trade) open up in turn, followed by the Academy, Infirmary and Beacon. |
| Rest periods and expeditions | There is a 2–4 day rest period between raids. Each expedition takes one day in your territory, so when a rest period is long, go on several expeditions in a row. |
8. Raid Prep Checklist
- Have you built palisades on the road the warning points to?
- Is there a tower on every tower spot covering that road? (Tier 2 towers unlock only after every tower spot has a tier 1 tower.)
- Have you posted generals on that road?
- Every 4th raid is a Great Raid led by an enemy captain. Have you posted generals strong against that captain's troop type?
- Is your wall tier high enough to withstand the size of the enemy force?
Repel a raid and you earn silver, crowns and Recruit Tokens; if the enemy breaks through, 30% of the resources in your storehouse are looted. Losing a raid doesn't end the game, though — just reinforce your walls and towers during the next rest period.
9. Common Sticking Points
- 1-5 Siege of Bukgwan: The Heukcheol Warlord appears for the first time. He's a cavalry captain, so a spear general (Seorin) is a good match. Put a Cannon Tower at every point where paths merge.
- 2-5 Retake the Snow Camp: The archer captain Seolgung shoots from long range. The fastest fix is to charge in first with a mounted Lord or a cavalry general.
- Hill Charges (○-4, ○-7): The captains guarding the fortresses have a lot of HP. Build up plenty of riders at the gates, and save your Lord skills for when the captain appears.
For more on generals, see the Generals Codex; for enemies, the Heukcheol Army Codex; and for the plot, the Story page.