Gold Era Begins: Season Reset, 8 Races, Full Rebalance

Update October 1, 2026

Welcome to the Gold Era

The season reset just ran. Every empire is back to level 1, every clan is gone, and the board is clean for everyone, new and returning players alike. This has been a long stretch of work behind the scenes, so this post covers everything since the last update: the reset itself, a full races and classes rework, two rounds of price rebalancing, and a long list of combat and economy fixes.

Every player who was here for it received the new GOLD badge, marking the start of DarkThrone's Gold Era.

What the reset gave you

Level 1, fresh start
15,000 gold in hand, 350,000 gold banked
150 citizens (450 for supporters)
250 turns
12 hours of starting protection

Accounts, names, races, classes, badges, friends and settings all carried over. Only the season's progress was wiped.

Choose your race

Races got a full rework ahead of this reset: community feedback was that race bonuses should feel thematic, not just a reskin, and every playstyle deserved two options. There are now 8 races, each granting a 6% bonus:

Offense

Undead: relentless armies with offensive power that keeps rising, endlessly, from the grave.
Giants: towering brutes who overpower anything foolish enough to stand in their way.

Defense

Goblins: expert defenders who build impenetrable fortresses and outlast their enemies.
Ents: ancient tree guardians, slow to rouse but nearly impossible to bring down once rooted.

Income

Humans: masters of trade and industry, building fortunes through steady, relentless commerce.
Dwarves: master miners whose halls overflow with gold before a single citizen sets out to work.

Intel (spy)

Elves: silent and old, relying on ancient magic to see what others cannot and go where others should not.
Halflings: quick witted and quieter footed still, natural scouts who are never quite where you last saw them.

Classes still do what they always did, but their bonus moved from 5% to 4%: Fighter (offense), Cleric (defense), Thief (income), Assassin (intel). Match your race and class for a 10% specialist, or split 6/4 across two stats. We also fixed a quiet bug where a race or class with an intel bonus was granting its full percentage to both spy offense and spy defense instead of splitting it between them, worth double what it should have been.

OGAC is active

Our anti-cheat system, OGAC, is live and watching every account starting today. It's forbidden to use bots, scripts or automation, to run multiple accounts for an unfair advantage, to exploit bugs or glitches, or to let someone else play your account around the clock. Violations are reviewed by staff, with consequences ranging from a warning to permanent account closure.

Buildings: 10 levels instead of 5

Every building (Fortification, Armory, Mine, Spy Academy, Barracks, Housing, Mercenary Camp, Siege Workshop) now has 10 levels instead of 5, with the old level 5 becoming the new level 10 at the same final cost. This spreads progression out so every level feels like a real step forward instead of a straight cost double.

Fortification keeps its own level requirement on a clean schedule: player level 10, 20, 30, and so on up to 100 for level 10. Every other building is gated purely by Fortification's level (building level N needs Fortification level N-1), so keeping your Fort ahead of the rest matters more than ever. Armory gear tiers were also remapped to a clean 1-to-1: Armory level N now unlocks gear tier N.

Prices that make upgrading worth it

Unit, armory and battle upgrade prices were rebalanced. Higher tiers used to cost roughly double the previous one for the same relative value, which made upgrading feel pointless. Top tiers are now meaningfully better value than tier 1, so saving up for the next step actually pays off.

Mercenary Camp

5 levels instead of 3, matching every other building.
A camp of level N now supplies any tier up to N, and you choose which. Switching is free and takes effect immediately.
Supporter auto-buy now steps down to the highest tier it can afford outright instead of leaving a random leftover mix, and can optionally spend from your bank so you don't have to leave a night's gold sitting exposed on hand.
Fixed: switching tiers used to silently rewrite the price on units you had already bought that day. Now only the unsold portion of the day's stock changes.
Fixed: clicking a tier sometimes did nothing visible. Each tier is now its own one-click action with immediate confirmation.
Fixed: an upgrade no longer bumps the same day's mercenary limit. A bigger camp counts from the next daily refresh.

Combat fixes

A winning attacker could sometimes lose more units than the defender. This was reported by several of you and is now fixed: an attacker's losses can never exceed a hard ceiling tied to what the defender actually lost.
Training defense always counts again. Against a much stronger attacker, extra defense used to stop helping entirely past a point. It now always makes a measurable difference, however small.
NPC attacks now properly count toward your daily damage protection, where before they were invisible to it and could push real casualties past your daily cap unnoticed.
Fixed a case where defenders with no defensive units at all were being billed casualties twice on the NPC attack path. A new flat daily ceiling now also protects larger armies from being bled down over many hits in one day.
The diminishing-returns curve on repeated gold steals was recalibrated (100/90/80/70/60% instead of the much harsher 100/60/35/20/10%), so hitting the same target more than once in a day still feels worthwhile.
Battles now log enough detail to be fully replayed, which is what let us verify every one of the fixes above against real fights rather than just theory.

Gold protection

Gold protection is now income-only, 5 seconds after a tick lands. Withdrawal protection was removed on purpose: withdrawing is a deliberate act you choose the moment for, so it didn't need its own shield. We also found and fixed a bug where sale protection had been protecting nothing for days, since armory and battle upgrade sales already pay into Salvage Funds, which were never stealable to begin with.

Settings, your account, and your data

Settings reorganised into 13 clear sections instead of one long scrolling page.
A personal account activity log (Settings > Activity): every sign-in, failed sign-in, password or 2FA change, and every settings change you made, with a one-click "sign out everywhere else" if something looks off.
Self-service account deletion, with a 30-day grace period. Signing back in during that window cancels it.
Fixed: two settings (email notifications and theme preference) were being silently reset every time you saved any other setting on that page.

No bots this season

Every single bot and NPC account is paused for the launch of the Gold Era. No bot targets to farm, no bot attacks to defend against: this season starts 100% player versus player. We'll revisit bringing them back if and when it makes sense for the game.

Smaller things worth knowing

Gold protection status on the attack list now updates live instead of needing a page refresh.
The rankings page dropped its raw stat values and the "View All" drill-down, showing only rank position from here on. We are still updating that page to a new version.
Quick Attack hit lists were cleared for everyone, since old targets pointed at pre-reset levels that no longer mean anything.
All 15 supported languages are now fully translated, including the bbcode toolbar labels in clan and message compose boxes.

What's next

This is the start of the Gold Era. Build your empire, pick your race and class, and we'll see you on the battlefield. Thank you for playing!