Upgrading
Upgrades improve the health points and defendibility of structures. This can be the difference between holding off the enemies banging on the gate and them breaking through. Anyone in the nation can begin or complete upgrades at nation held locations. Upgrades use the following materials: logs, planks, nails, limestone, lime mortar, clay, gneiss, granite.
Visit the Architect's Table to begin upgrades. Upgrades cannot begin while there is a siege in progress, until 3 minutes after a siege ends. If any buildings are on fire, those fires must be put out before upgrades can happen.
If a structure will not let you upgrade, it is probably because the Bastion needs to be upgraded first. The bastion building needs to be of equal level with the structure you're trying to upgrade.
At Guild Provinces, guilds can upgrade structures up to their guild level. A level 3 guild can have level 3 structures, for example.
There is a weekly title called Architect for the person who upgrades the most. They are able to buy Upgrade Points for no charge. Usually the person with the Architect title will go to locations and dump in lots of points so they are ready to use whenever needed.
Upgrading Structures
Upgrading structures offers excellent experience points, but is resource intensive.
Walls, gatehouses, and towers have 6 levels of possible upgrades. Each upgrade level improves the Health Points of the Structure. Level 4 and above are immune to fire damage.
1. Palisade - Weak, basic wood structures with walkways and limited cover, offering poor protection.
2. Wood - Wooden structures without roofs. Towers and bastions receive ballistas at level 2 and they persist at all higher levels.
3. Strong Wood - Strong wooden structures with roofs on walls, gatehouses and towers, offering decent protection.
4. Weak Stone - Non-flammable stone structures without roofs, offering good protection.
5. Stone - Non-flammable stone structures with roofed walls, gatehouses, and towers, offering excellent protection.
6. Strong Stone - Non-flammable stone structures with roofs on walls, gatehouses, and towers, offering the very best protection.
Upgrading Buildings
Bastion upgrades allow other building and structure upgrades to occur and provide a stronger bastion building with upgraded defenses like burning oil.
Guardhouse upgrades improve the level of the guards.
Inn upgrades increase the level of the Herbalists workshop, where food is cooked and alchemy is done.
Lumber mill and mine upgrades improve the quantity and quality of materials found there.
Farm upgrades increase the number of beehives, but does not change the quality of the soil.
Upgrade Visual Guide
1. visit the Architect's Table
2. Choose what to upgrade.
3. visit the scaffold.
4. Put materials in the scaffold and click upgrade.
TIP: It is not generally a good idea to set up a lot of scaffolds and put a few planks in each one, and a few stone and a few nails here or there. It's best to set as many scaffolds as you can fully complete within a couple minutes or so, and then set more upgrades. Once you put items in a scaffold, those materials are basically "floating" inside the scaffold until the upgrade is complete. You cannot get the materials back, and if a siege begins, those items are going to remain there and possibly be wasted if the upgrade never gets completed in the event that you lose the siege. Upgrading takes a lot of materials. Carry nails, logs, planks, lime mortar, stone, and clay with you in large quantities when doing upgrading projects.
Downgrading
When a location is capped by an enemy force, all walls, towers, and gatehouses have a 15% chance to downgrade. All farms, mines, inns, guardhouses and lumbermills and bastions will downgrade 1 level upon capture.
Structures that are set on fire and burn down or are destroyed by siege equipment will disappear entirely and rebuilding must start at level 1.
Downgrades may happen once every two hours due to captures. Downgrades do not happen during Nightlock at all.
Also see: Sieges | Gathering Resources | Bastion | Bastion System
