Patch Notes

Patch #15: King of Time (New cards, perks, decrees, and gamebreaking stuff)

It's time for the 9th king and our biggest patch yet. And it's only the beginning.

You've given us time. And now, we're giving you the King of Time. The 9th king that will finally make 9 Kings to live up to its name, and that will unlock dozens of new combos for your strategies and unprecedented ways to break the game. Seriously, it's our most ambitious (dare I say reckless) update yet.

Who is the King of Time?

A multidimensional gentleman who travels through the ages in search of more kingdoms to conquer, the King of Time joins our roster to break time continuum and the game like never before. His kingdom lies in the fringes of time, somewhere between magic, sci-fi, and steampunk technology. Which one is it? Only time will tell.

A deck where timing is key

Time is one of the unfathomable variables of 9 Kings. And with this deck, we want to explore how far we can take it. Some cards reward you for being fast, some cards reward you for being slow, but most importantly: some cards will allow you to bend time and travel across the years.

Time traveling

That's right: you can now time travel. Thanks to the Portal card, you can go to a previous year while keeping your kingdom's progress, allowing you to relive key events in broken ways. Portals are not easy to use, but when you get it right... you'll be able to stack more building buffs, trigger dozens of diplomacy events in a row, get extra royal decrees, maybe travel to a negative year (???). Tomes like Rewind will also allow you to regain some cards you've played in the past. Regression will allow you to bend time in a different way. Not to mention the decrees that will take things to the next level as always. The possibilities are endless and, as usual... quite scary for us devs to balance the game. But we think it's gonna be super fun and we can't wait to see what you're gonna do with that big new layer of freedom.

Timing in battle

Troops and enchantment of the King of Time play with the timing during battle. Cards like Adrenaline will make a unit faster the longer it stays in battle. Hourglass is a tower that rewards long battles with massive effects while also giving you wiggle room to mess with it with attack speed buffs. Bastion is a base card that will make enemies travel back to the beginning of the battlefield, giving you the time you need to survive another year. Warper will bend space to summon troops during battle (can you believe we're about to hit 100+ cards and didn't have a proper summoner yet?).

Amplification of effects

One of the most fun things of 9 Kings is finding new synergies between plots. And this deck brings a couple of cards to help you go crazier with those synergies. Amplifier is a building that will replicate every buff it gets to adjacent plots, while Orbiter is a troop that benefits from adjacency like no other. As if we didn't have enough ways to snowball things already.

Perks and decrees

The King of Time introduces, initially, 5 new decrees, 9 unique perks, and 9 broken decrees. Broken decrees are a new mechanic that comes with time traveling. The decrees and perks will introduce a new range of mechanics exploring the boundaries of the new deck design and some other gaps we've noticed in the game. More will follow.

Bane enemy kings

With 9 kings in the game, we believe it is time to give you some agency when picking your enemies. So we're introducing Banisher, a new rainbow perk. When equipped, it will trigger a new screen before the game starts that will allow you to banish a king from the next run. This means they won't appear as enemies nor in diplomacy events. Banisher perk is unlocked when you beat king difficulty.

Balancing & RNG

There are two main types of feedback when it comes to game progression: for some players, the base difficulties are too easy; for others, the harder ones feel too unfair and RNG-reliant. With the addition of new cards and perks, base difficulties were, indeed, easier than intended. On the other hand, the steep curve on higher difficulties also made the game more RNG than we want it to be.

In this patch, we’re implementing meaningful tweaks to address both issues:

1) Game difficulties are now slightly more challenging. We increased the enemy cap and made King of Nothing a bit stronger as an enemy, which should make things more fun to watch and raise the bar a little. Since we know some players just like to chill, Peasant difficulty remains unchanged.

2) The first years of a run are now easier on all difficulties. This means more openers will be viable even on higher difficulties, allowing you to explore new builds. You’ll be able to survive the first few years even with an unlucky hand (or with a card that’s strong later on but weak early in the run). These changes, along with the Banish perk, will hopefully help address your feedback on the RNG side of things. Randomness is part of the fun, but now we wanted to give high-end strategy fans a bit more control as well. Please let us know how the balancing feels. We'll keep improving!

Bonus: some ugly ducks have been buffed and will hopefully make new builds viable (see the list below)

A lot of new achievements (19)

Again, having 9 kings in the game means that a bunch of achievements we always planned are now viable. We have a total of 50 now! The final number of achievements will be decided based on your reception, but we already have plenty of fun new ideas to bring to you when timing is right.

Patch summary:

New content:

• NEW KING: King of Time
• NEW CARDS (10): Bastion, Orbiter, Warper, Portal, Hourglass, Amplifier, Rewind, Regression, Adrenaline, Temp Null
• NEW PERKS (9): Physicist, Destructive, Wise, Manipulative, Agile, Exiler, Invoker, Horologist, Brutal
• NEW RAINBOW PERK (1): Banisher
• NEW DECREES (5): Oddity, Megaminion, Devolve, Flux, Big Bang, Wormhole
• NEW BROKEN DECREES (9): Enrage, Recovery, Provisions, Nullify, Punctuality, Fastforward, Interest, Loot, Redo
• NEW ACHIEVEMENTS (19): Timerelapse, Mega Mega Minions, Nobel Prize, The Enemy of My Enemy is my Enemy, King of Kings, Your Grindness, Agnostic, Wall Street, Suburban King, For Scraps, Meh, Whatever, Babylon, Self-Sufficient, Spoiled, Cold Cold Heart, Flash Mob, Stardew Kingdom, The Spire Slays, Global Warming.
• New battlefield, visuals, and FXs

Updates & Fixes:

• You can now see how many free re-rolls you have left.
• Nature's Fertility decree has been buffed (from 3 to 5 Procreate cards).
• Enemy base count and enemy cap have been increased.
• All difficulties (but Peasant) are now more challenging.
• Enemies are weaker in the first years of battle (making more openings viable).
• XP gain increased for all difficulties.

• Trapper base stats have been buffed.
• Bomber base stats have been buffed.
• Static stacks now deals twice as much damage.
• Supplies decree has been rebalanced and the 9 cards you get will now replace your current hand.
• Enemy King of Nothing has been buffed.
• Treant's attacks are stronger, base damage area is smaller.
• Mitigated the "Ghost Raptor" bug (monitoring for a final fix).
• Gamble decree bug where you'd only get two cards in year 34 has been fixed.
• Fixed a bug that caused issues when loading a game in year 33.
• Palace now deals 999 damage instead of Infinite (this is part of the bigger ongoing attack speed design rework).
• Attack speed system cap is now visible. Disclaimer: this was already a system limitation taking place in the backend, as many of you have noticed. Since the battles happen in real time, there are thousands of calculations being made per second in the game, and there’s no sustainable way for attacks to go beyond a computer’s FPS. We have decided to properly structure this and be transparent with players, incorporating it into the game design. When you hit the attack speed cap, all attack speed buffs the plot gets will now be visually converted into damage so you can properly strategize with more clarity. Worth noting, this change also is crucial to make our upcoming game mode work properly and fairly. Please share your thoughts as we improve this together.
• Updated game engine's (Unity) version.

Hotfixes (as of 10.8, 3pm EST)

• Traveling to year -1 should now work properly in all scenarios.
• Critical damage buffs are now properly calculated.
• Agnostic achievement is now being triggered properly.
• Boared to Death achievement is now being triggered properly.
• You can now properly make peace and wage war with all kings with Banisher decree equipped.
• Regression + Portal now work properly.
• Illuminism lettering won't linger on screen when you double-concabulate a portal to a blessing year (yes, if you didn't understand a single word of this fix, you're not alone)
• Punctuality broken decree won't give you Bastion cards if you're playing with another king.

What's next?

The King of Time is the 9th king. But we're only getting started. With a solid foundation, we'll finally be able to really expand the game beyond it's core. A lot more content will come soon and you can expect a patch with new decrees & cards in the coming weeks. But our main goal right now is introducing you to the new game modes. As we keep balancing out the current kings, we'll finally be able to bring you new experiences to you that are bigger than any deck. Challenge and Ranked modes will hopefully take 9 Kings to a new level.

Stay tuned. For now, we hope you have fun bending time and breaking the game like never before.

Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters

We've been reading through all your Steam reviews, and we appreciate the feedback we've been receiving. It's really important to us! Please continue sharing your thoughts, so we can know to focus on for each upcoming patch and make 9 Kings the best game it can be.

After downloading the patch, please start a new run, as your previous run won’t have the updates stored and they may cause conflicts. If you experience any issues, please email us at [email protected].

Please join us on Discord and Reddit. You can also find the 9 Kings wiki page here for information on the game! Love, Sad Socket team

Love,

Sad Socket team

Patch# 14: Rainbow Decrees, Nothing Makeover, QoL!

Thu., 21st. August 2025

This is a very cool patch that will help us strengthen the foundations of 9 Kings. Our three main topics: Decrees, the King Of Nothing, and performance. We heard your feedback, took notes on what's been fun, and with your help we believe our first patch after the biggest patch ever will also be a big deal.

The headline: we're bringing 15 new decrees (!!!) to the game and a new decree tier altogether. King of Nothing is getting very needed improvements and new mechanics. And the game's performance should be tighter than ever.

Nothing Makeover!

It was also time to give King of Nothing some well-deserved love. 9 Kings is growing fast, and the least we could do is give him his own pool of decrees. Soldiers and Paladins now have special effects. And Archers and Castles got crazy unique decrees. Spoilers: you can shoot double (or quintuple?) arrows. You can now throw flaming boulders. And much more. We hope you'll stop ranking one of our fav kings in the lowest tiers now >:(. Every king shall be S-Tier one day!

• Soldier now gets +1% damage for every unit added to the troop.
• Paladin now gets an HP boost for every DMG boost it gets.
• Decree: Fireball
• Decree: Twinshot
• Decree: Freshmen
• Decree: Armory
• Decree: Development

Rainbow decrees!

Enter a new kind of decree that will add a new gameplay layer to your runs. We're talking about game changing effects with diverse trade-offs, like Gambling (which now also belongs to this new category). Rainbow decrees can appear at any Royal Council event. We're starting with a total of 5 unique ones. More to come soon!

• Decree: Longtermism
• Decree: Wishing Well
• Decree: Refraction
• Decree: Payroll

Universal decrees

Following the pattern of the new perk system, classic decrees you're already familiar with are now called Universal decrees. And we're also adding more of those!

• Decree: Rebirth
• Decree: Catharsis
• Decree: Weakspot
• Decree: Supplies

Performance

This is also a VERY meaningful part of this patch. We had a bunch of performance improvements lined up but rolling them out in the same patch as the King of Nomads could've been a bit too risky. So now it's time! The game should be more optimized than ever and hopefully we'll hear less and less about crashes. Please keep us posted. This is still a work in progress.

• Improved spell attacks performance during battle (i.e Static, Combustion).
• Improved high unit count processing performance.
• Improved stat application cycle performance (you should feel the difference specially when playing late game buff-heavy builds, like Lab Rat/Reinforce builds).
• UP NEXT: a solution for the attack speed cap on crazy high speed builds. We'll talk more about this soon.

QoL/Balancing/Fixes

Thanks to your reports, we were also able to spot new bugs and address balancing/QoL issues.

• Move Speed is now shown on plot tooltips.
• Tooltip visuals/colors improved for readability.
• Stat buffs are now visually displayed when you get a decree.
• Subtly nerfed enemy Defender.
• Spores now properly attack in the first year after loading a game.
• Spores now work properly after Migrating a Mycelium plot.
• Fixed an exploit that doubled your Mob count every time you loaded the game with Populate decree.
• Pagoda's Imps now properly target the closest enemy again.

As always, after downloading the patch, please start a new run, as your previous run won’t have the updates stored and they may cause conflicts. If you experience any issues, please email us at [email protected].

Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters

We've been reading through all your Steam reviews, and we appreciate the feedback we've been receiving. We'd love to continue seeing more of your thoughts! It helps us know what to focus on for each upcoming patch.

Please join us on Discord and Reddit. You can also find the 9 Kings wiki page here for information on the game! Love, Sad Socket team Love, Sad Socket team

Patch #13: King of Nomads (New cards, perks, decrees, visuals & audio system)

Fri., 1st. August 2025

Yes, the 8th King is finally here. And it's exponentially expanding the game.

This is a moment we're all waiting for. It's our biggest patch yet, our shift to 0.8, and most importantly: it's time to introduce you to the King of Nomads.

Who is the King of Nomads?

Taking over the barren snowy fields of the north, the reptilian nomad army belongs to nobody and no land. Their fierce warriors will pillage the other kingdoms while their steed tramples their armies. TL;DR: Get ready for a ruthless winter, lizards, dragons, and a bit of good old Khan destructive energy.

A deck of movement

With the King of Nomads, we're adding an important layer of movement to the game. It's a deck that enables you to reshuffle your board, rewards placement & displacement of plots, and encourages you to experiment more with the dynamic nature of the game. We've been tracking everything that's missing from the current core gameplay so that we can address them at every new card added, The King of Nomads is coming in to fill some of these core spaces.

The nomadic spells

You've asked for it: Migration is a powerful card that will finally allow you to move your plots. This mechanic adds dozens of new possibilities to the game - including moving your base around! Of course, in a challenging way. Swords and Shields are simple yet key cards we've been missing for a very long time, and that will encourage new strategies both in early and late game plays. Plus you can also freeze your opponents now with the Frost enchantment.

The troops

We're introducing a solid mix of new troops to synergize with everything else that's already on the table. Raptor is the first card that actually changes other troop's combat behavior, while Mob introduces a very ambitions playstyle. Last but not least: yes, the Nomads base card, Warlord, is also a troop. We hope you have some fun with it.

No buildings?

King of Nomads has a troop-focused deck. However, the deck does have two building cards that create synergies with the movement-focused mechanics. Camp card is an incredibly powerful building that encourages you to place new cards in your kingdom. Dragon's Den is an epic summoning building that thrives on destruction. Occupy new plots, let go of old ones: this is the king of ephemeral.

Perks and decrees

The King of Nomads introduces, initially, 5 new decrees and 9 unique perks. They bring new mechanics to the table, which will result in new ways to break the game... which will result in some more healthy headaches for us devs.

The design behind the king

The King of Nomads, much like the King of Time, is coming to the game to fill a few spaces we've always planned to fill. Allowing you to move your plots around changes the game completely. You can alternate buffs across a single run, change your strategy in the middle of the game, and make powerful new combos. Even Blessings become more relevant and viable with that card on the table.

Design wise, we want you to feel like you can create a massive domino effect by synergizing all your right choices in a run. In that sense, a card that rewards destroying plots was also long due. Dragon's Den helps us start making sure that destroying plots unfolds in multiple new strats beyond the effect of a destruction card itself.

Simple cards like Swords and Shields were also very necessary additions to the mix: the intentional simplicity behind them is key to open new fun strategies and complex ones alike.

Last but not least... a base that's a troop is something we wanted in the game from day 1. And depending on how this goes, it might open new routes of experimentation for our current base cards as well. We're stoked that Warlord is finally here!

Anyway, we're already giving a lot of spoilers here. We can't wait for you to try the king out yourself and see everything else you can do with his deck, decrees, and perks.

Patch summary:

• NEW KING: King of Nomads
• NEW CARDS (9): Warlord, Mob, Raptor, Dragon's Den, Camp, Frost, Swords, Shields, Migration
• NEW PERKS (9): Immigrant, Reptilian, Jurassic, Leader, Aggressive, Defensive, Khan, Cold, Rebellious
• NEW DECREES (5): Pillage, Smithy, Frostbite, Cryoflame, Settlement
• NEW ACHIEVEMENTS (3): Double Double Double Dragon, Mass Migration, Mountception
• New battlefield
• Custom king background visuals

Several other improvements:

Our core focus in July was the King of Nomads. But, as always, we're also addressing your feedback in this patch. Here are the other 0.8.0 updates:

• Overhauled audio system to prevent volume bursts and SFX distortion.
• All kings got custom background visuals!
• Base cards can now be moved.
• King Selection will now always start on your latest played king.
• Crownmaxxing achievement is now triggered when you breeze through level 9 straight to level 10.
• Midas Touch now works with Bomber and all other explosive attacks.
• Compendium screen now has UI animations and can be navigated with controller/keyboard.
• Converter plot damage now also displays the damage caused by its insta-kills.
• Mycelium created from Pollinator perk can now start on level 4.
• Fixed a bug that caused loaded games to restart on year 1 with a random card. Shout out to our Discord community for figuring this one out (the culprit was Cloned cards)
• Fixed a bug that randomly caused "ghost Boars" to get stuck on their plots.
• Fixed a bug where Summoner perk and Warhorns decree were giving 100% critical chance to target troops.
• Fixed a bug that caused Warden perk to give your Stronghold +1 level every time you loaded a game.
• Fixed an exploit that allowed players to gain XP multiple times in year 99.
• Fixed a lingering blurred screen when quitting the game in year 99.
• Fixed cursor attack preview area size. It's now properly synced with the actual effect area.
• New audio effects implemented.
• Battle pop-ups now fade faster to improve combat visibility.
• VSync preferences are now stored in between game sessions.
• Fixed the scrolling of the language selection dropdown in the options screen
• Fixed soundtrack issues after "Chaos Up" screens in Endless Mode
• Animation-related performance improvements.
• Localization fixes

You can expect a follow-up patch addressing your feedback very soon. Not to mention the new content that's already in the oven.

Hotfixes (0.8.04):

• Demon's Altar no longer has its stats erased when Migrated.
• Swords no longer cause Defenders damage to go NaN.
• Overwork now properly works with Camp.
• Camp now works with Migration, Echoform, and Slime.
• Pop-ups now properly display Smithy stat bonus.
• Warlord is no longer destroyed by Unify.
• Fixed immortal frozen Raptors.
• Mothership now properly moves with Migration (shoutout to anyone who saw our infamous vending machine placeholder asset)
• Critical buff is now properly applied by Camp.
• Dragons now properly apply poison.
• Eyeglass now properly applies critical effect.
• Dragons with Cryoflame will only fly around during battle.
• Quarry now works with Warlord.
• Fixed a glitch with Pagoda's Imps targeting behavior.
• Fixed a bug that caused units to stand still when you only have a Demon's Altar on the field.

Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters

We've been reading through all your Steam reviews, and we appreciate the feedback we've been receiving. It's really important to us! Please continue sharing your thoughts, so we can know to focus on for each upcoming patch and make 9 Kings the best game it can be.

After downloading the patch, please start a new run, as your previous run won’t have the updates stored and they may cause conflicts. If you experience any issues, please email us at [email protected].

Please join us on Discord and Reddit. You can also find the 9 Kings wiki page here for information on the game! Love, Sad Socket team

Love,

Sad Socket team

Patch #12: New Rainbow Perk, Buffs, VSync, Misclick Prevention & Fixes

Fri., 4th. July 2025

Max your perks BEYOND level 3, finally enjoy VSync, and take dozens of buffed cards and perks for a spin.

In this patch, you can max your perks BEYOND level 3, finally enjoy VSync, and take dozens of buffed cards and perks for a spin.

We've been super stoked to see all the positive feedback around the new perk system. But of course, there are also issues we want to address and with your help we'll make things just right. As we mentioned before, a revamp changes a lot of things. And we're now starting to tweak those that need to be tweaked. We also took the time to buff some ugly ducklings all over the game. Our ultimate goal is to make every king, card, decree, and perk equally relevant or die trying.

List of changes (0.7.94):

NEW FEATURES:

• NEW RAINBOW PERK: Nationalist (All adjacent king perks are applied +1 time)
• The game now supports VSync (toggle it on in the options menu)!
• Misclick prevention: if you click the wrong card and move your mouse away, while still holding the button, the selection won't compute (finally!)

BALANCING/FIXES:

• King I difficulty was attenuated (enemy stats will now scale a little bit slower)
• Base cards gained a small initial stat buff to improve early run balancing.
• Base cards now get a little attack speed boost when leveled up.
• Vampirism enchantment now properly works with all troops.
• Echoform and Slime now properly load very high stats when duplicated.
• Very high stats are now properly loaded after saving & quitting (please start a new run)
• Eyeglass decree now gives troops and towers 20% raw critical chance.
• Bunker decree is now working properly.
• Critical chance boosts now work with troops that had 0% critical chance.
• Treant base initial damage was doubled.
• Trapper troop was considerably buffed.
• Imp troop damage was buffed.
• Mangler tower attack speed & level up stats were buffed.
• Archer troop attack speed & level up stats were buffed.
• Hunter perk now gives Trappers +20% damage (was 10%)
• Bellicist perk now gives troops +10% critical chance (was 5%)
• Berserk perk now gives Nothing troops +10% attack speed (was 5%)
• Recruit perk now gives Soldier +10% to all stats (was 5%)
• Sorcerous perk now gives Warlock +20% attack area (was 10%)
• Butcher perk now gives Mangler +20% attack area (was 10%)
• Explosive perk now gives Bomber +20% attack damage (was 10%)
• Goon perk now gives Thieves +20% critical damage (was 10%).
• Castellan perk is now working properly with Pagoda and Stronghold.
• Admiral perk is now working properly.

MISC:

• Critical chance now displays "%" properly in the tooltip.
• Added a small delay to the arrows from Sentinel perk, making the doubling visually perceptible
• Fixed a bug that caused a crash if you had Warden perk level up your castle beyond max level.
• Localization fixes in Ukrainian, Turkish, and Portuguese

*Reminder: you'll unlock the 4th Rainbow perk by getting a king to level 12. If you're already past level 12, the perk will already be unlocked after downloading this patch.

Dev's note

These tweaks are an important first step in this new journey of balancing. The new Rainbow perk (Nationalist) is intended to add even more build options and address feedback from players who missed the ability to further boost individual perks. With this perk, the max number of points you can have on your board more than doubles compared to the original system, allowing you to max out key perks BEYOND level 3 while also encouraging strategic thinking to make the most out of your board.

You'll notice how ONE single Rainbow perk can exponentially increase your options, and hopefully understand why we're not throwing everything at you at once! For now, we feel we're getting to a sweet-spot of max perk points in a single board. The next perk addition will pivot from the additive-support formula and bring some game twisting mechanics to the table.

It's also important to note that the more perks we add, the fewer "meta" strategies we want there to be in the game. Experimentation is the soul of 9 Kings and we want to make the perk system live up to that.

Anyway: we'll keep tweaking numbers and trying to improve any system that might be feeling underwhelming compared to others. We started off with the least used perks from the current patch, but know that we'll consider revamping some entirely, while, of course, adding more.

As always, after downloading the patch, please start a new run, as your previous run won’t have the updates stored and they may cause conflicts. If you experience any issues, please email us at [email protected].

Your feedback REALLY matters

As we always say: the reason the game is EA is so we can build it together. We're listening and improving every day. So if you're REALLY angry at us because of something we tweaked, we hope you give us your feedback and some time to address it before hating us forever (!!!). Change will always make some people happy and some people angry, but we promise you we'll keep chasing that sweet spot for everyone if you give them a shot!

Coming next

Expect more balancing and QoL updates in the upcoming days. The 8th king is coming soon!

Please join us on Discord and Reddit. You can also find the 9 Kings wiki page here for information on the game! Love, Sad Socket team

Love,

Sad Socket team

Patch #11: Meta-progression Revamp

Tue., 1st. July 2025

Total overhaul of the perk system, 80+ perks, no more level cap

This patch might be the most meaningful one we've ever dropped. We listened closely to your feedback, banged our heads on the wall for a month to come up with the right solutions, and the result is a total revamp of the game's meta-progression system. With 52 new perks for a total of over 80, and a huge design improvement.

Dynamic perks

We're no longer locking you into pre-determined upgrades per king. You now have 9 slots. And you can use them in whichever way you want. The idea is to bring the 9 Kings core design to the meta-progression system. It's a minimalistic dynamic version of the game loop you're here for. The new system can be approached casually if you just want to chill, but that can have a whole new level of depth if that's what you're into.

80+ upgrades

You will now have a limitless pool of perks to choose from, and they will be unlocked as you play the game. Some perks are universal, some are unique to your king, some are Rainbow perks. Think tactically and choose the best 9-combo for your strategy. We're starting with a total of 80+ unlockable perks and we'll keep adding more, and tweaking those that might not quite work yet.

Rainbow perks!

Rainbow perks will twist the game in interesting ways - including your own perk board (like Expander in the screenshot). Once unlocked, a Rainbow perk can be used across all kings, like Universal perks. We'll start with 3 experimental Rainbow perks and we plan on expanding the pool very quickly.

Unique Nothing perks

By the way, old "Nothing" perks are now called Universal perks. This means that our dear King of Nothing now has his own unique perk pool like all the other kings.

Level cap is gone

The 9-level cap is now gone. The community asked for it, and you can now level up forever. Every time you level up, you'll unlock a new perk as long as there are perks available. After that, you can still brag about being level 999 to your friends. The required XP to level up was also reduced by 25%.

A new perk every time you level up

If you're new to the game: you'll unlock a new perk, randomly, every time a king levels up. The unlock system will alternate between Universal and King perks. Every time you hit a level threshold for the first time (level 3, 6, 9, and so on), you will also unlock a Rainbow perk.

Early supporters in mind

If you're a veteran: those who've already played the game will start with one perk per level unlocked. All the perks you know are still available to be unlocked. You'll also likely have more perks than you did before. With the Universal pool of perks, the idea is to make the game less grindy while still keeping things fresh with the king-specific perks.

Difficulty Rebalancing

The game's core difficulties were rebalanced based on your feedback. On lower difficulties, first years got a little harder (Peasant difficulty is now equivalent to Squire, and so on). On the other hand, Endless Mode difficulty progression curve is now 10% less steep on all difficulties. King difficulty, the pure game experience, remains with a similar scaling, although you can now come up with more ways to beat it thanks to the new perk thresholds. It also means you can perceive the curve between difficulty levels with a bit more clarity (the gap between Prince and King being is now slightly smaller, for example)

The best thing about this rebalancing is that we're aiming to address two things we've been hearing from you: on one hand, it can be a little too easy to beat the core game on lower difficulties. On the other hand, some people feel Endless Mode gets way too hard too fast. By making the first years subtly more challenging on lower difficulties, we came up with a new progression curve that makes Endless years a little less abrupt. Don't be mistaken though: we're talking about 10%. It's still exponential ruthlessness. We'll keep tweaking everything according to the community's experiences. We are listening!

An important disclaimer

It took us a while, but we feel we finally cracked a balance between abundance and limitation. We truly believe that what makes 9 Kings special is that it forces you to be creative with a finite amount of resources (the magic number 9). But the 9 on its own wouldn't be any fun if it didn't enable hundreds of creative outcomes. We also really dislike the idea of mindless meta-progression. We want to value your time and make you feel stimulated, while giving you more agency. With this new system, we hope you'll see the 9-grid as a fun challenge, something that encourages you to explore, be strategic, and find the most meaningful perk strategy for your style.

Other Updates

As usual, here are the remaining updates of patch 0.7.91:

• X-Ray now works with base cards
• Slime performance improvement
• Duplicated units are no longer (wrongly) affected by Populate.
• Echoform/Slime will now properly duplicate extremely high stats (PENDING: HOTFIX INCOMING)
• The game will now properly load extremely high stats (PENDING: HOTFIX INCOMING)
• Ruthless can no longer insta-kill bosses.
• Optimized Rainbow army shader
• Dispenser projectiles are no longer underneath buildings (this dev wants to slap himself every time he sees a gameplay video of Dispensers in the last patch)
• Perk art was updated
• There's more coming very soon!

Don't forget to leave a Steam review

Anyway, we're very excited about this system and very eager to hear your thoughts. One of the biggest feedbacks we've got for 9 Kings was the lack of depth for the meta-progression system. And we agree! The game is in early access and hopefully we can keep building it together. We can't wait!

Please join us on Discord and Reddit. You can also find the 9 Kings wiki page here for information on the game! Love, Sad Socket team Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters We've been reading through all your Steam reviews, and we appreciate the feedback we've been receiving. We'd love to continue seeing more of your thoughts! It helps us know what to focus on for each upcoming patch.

Love,

Sad Socket team

Patch #10: Special Army, New Cards, RNG & Endless improvements

Fri., 20th. June 2025

New event, new cards, RNG improvements, QoL, and more!

Patch 10 is bringing a brand-new event to give more protagonism to the Rainbow deck, new cards, RNG improvements, QoL, and more!

Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters

We've been reading through all your Steam reviews, and we appreciate the feedback we've been receiving. We'd love to continue seeing more of your thoughts! It helps us know what to focus on for each upcoming patch.

List of changes (0.7.87):

• New game event: face the Rainbow army! Get Rainbow loot!
• New Rainbow card: Slime
• New Rainbow card: Patronage
• New Rainbow card: X-Ray
• When you lose a battle, you will now always get spoils of your own king (you didn't beat your enemy, after all)
• RNG improvement: Re-rolls will no longer show you the exact same previous rolls
• Rainbow troops now have a multicolored glow
• Added a "disable Endless red filter" option
• Haste now affects Mothership
• Endless enemy scaling is a bit milder (as we've mentioned previously, please bear in mind: endless mode is experimental. We'll keep tweaking it every patch with your feedback)
• An enemy preview is now showed every time you hover on the right side of the battlefield
• Temple now ignores all buildings that have no stats
• Beacon now works properly with Orchard
• Fixed a glitch when using Echoform after leveling up or Unifying the target card in a single year (the Echoformed troop now properly registers the final amount of units)
• Localization updates

After downloading the patch, please start a new run, as your previous run won’t have the updates stored and they may cause conflicts. If you experience any issues, please email us at [email protected].

About RNG

This new patch is one of the many structural patches on the way. Thanks to your feedback, we're working hard to finesse the game's RNG, making sure there's a good balance between randomness, agency, and of course... fun. It's a work in progress and your input is very important!

*While we're here: we read someone say out there that the game forces card draws to make sure that cards you "need" don't show up as much. That is not true. Every card in the game from the same pool has exactly the same chance of appearing. And we'll always keep it that way. Furthermore: our main design goal is that there's no such thing as the one card you need in 9 Kings. The more cards we add to the game, the more this will hopefully be true to every possible build!

Coming next

We're now working on some massive updates to the core mechanics of the game. Again, we've been really paying attention to your feedback. Perks will get a total revamp, a new king is being finessed, and that's just the start. Roadmap will be live on Tuesday!

Please join us on Discord and Reddit. You can also find the 9 Kings wiki page here for information on the game! Love, Sad Socket team

Love,

Sad Socket team

Patch #09: New Cards! New achievements! Quick restart!

Fri., 13th. June 2025

It's the one and only 9th patch. And of course it's a big one.

Patch #09... had to be a cool update right? Brace yourselves for some new content, folks.

Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters

We've been reading through all your Steam reviews, and we appreciate the feedback we've been receiving. We'd love to continue seeing more of your thoughts! It helps us know what to focus on for each upcoming patch.

List of changes (0.7.81):

NEW CONTENT:

• 14 new achievements are now available.
• A cool achievement screen is now in-game (track your progress, admire your shiny gold medals)
• New card: Gigantify (Rainbow Tome)
• New card: Echoform (Rainbow Tome)
• New card: Haste (Rainbow Tome)
• New card: Temple (Rainbow Building)
• New card: Ogre (Rainbow Troop)
• Added a credits screen (there's a lot of people we needed to thank)

QoL:

• Added a quick restart button (you asked, you got it)
• Added more volume levels for audio customization
• Navigation issues during Perk selection on computers with peripherals should no longer occur
• Smoother intro transitions
• Faster transitions (Prophet screen, Stat screen)
• Skippable Prophet text
• UI visual tweaks
• UI is becoming keyboard/controller friendly (WIP)

Fixes/Balancing:

• Fixed a localization issue that caused severe lag in some systems (sorry!)
• Spores from Mycelium now properly inherit buffs from Blacksmiths and Beacons
• Flametower is now properly getting movement speed boosts
• Earthworking a level 3 Concabulator will give you 2 Concabulators and 1 Broken Cabulator again
• Trappers now gain a bit of attack speed when leveling up
• Fixed a conflict caused by ending a run during an animation
• Re-enchant now properly works with all enchantments.
• Improved Executioner targeting system
• Fixed visual display of ranged projectiles (they would randomly be invisible)
• Damage pop ups now always display actual damage output of melee troops
• Fixed a glitch that charged 30 gold whenever using Explore/Earthworks during Endless Mode
• HOTFIXED: The Dispenser now processes attack speed properly again

After downloading the patch, please start a new run, as your previous run won’t have the updates stored and they may cause conflicts. If you experience any issues, please email us at [email protected]. We're looking forward to watching you check out what the new stuff does!

UP NEXT: We are posting a full road map next week, so you know exactly what to expect from us. We're working hard and we can't wait to share all our new ideas with you. We've also been reading all your requests. Know we'll address a lot of them in the next weeks!

Please join us on Discord and Reddit. You can also find the 9 Kings wiki page here for information on the game! Love, Sad Socket team

Love,

Sad Socket team

Patch #08: Big Optimizations (pt. 2), Flamethrower, Spire, Fixes

Thu., 5th. June 2025

Some massive changes will help you go farther than ever in endless mode.

8th patch is live! Besides fixing issues you reported and some cool rebalancing decisions, we're implementing part two of our performance updates. This is a huge improvement to the late game, and, performance-wise, we expect all builds to be playable up to year 99 now.

Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters

We've been reading through all your Steam reviews, and we appreciate the feedback we've been receiving. We'd love to continue seeing more of your thoughts! It helps us know what to focus on for each upcoming patch.

Join the 9 Kings Community

Please join us on Discord and Reddit. You can also find the 9 Kings wiki page here for information on the game!

List of changes (0.7.69):

• Animation revamp (this should meaningfully improve performance on all systems)
• RAM usage is considerably enhanced
• Improved attack speed processing during late late game (if attack speed grows beyond the speed of a single frame, it is now converted into damage in the backend)
• Glass Staff's decree no longer caps stats
• Overwork now works with Shrines
• Flametower now moves faster when it levels up!
• Trebuchet and Flametower now properly display stat increase when leveled up.
• Fixed Mycelium summoning speed (it's now faster - and actually 9 seconds - on normal speed)
• Warden perk is no longer re-triggered upon load
• Spire now officially heals walls
• Fixed an issue that caused Mercenaries to slow the game down
• Fixed a glitch that caused Boars to get "stuck" on their plots after a battle
• Fixed a glitch that caused broken Concabulators to work again after loading a game
• Fixed a glitch that caused Dispenser to gain extra buffs every time you loaded the game
• Fixed a Lab Rat save data glitch on very high levels (those Rats love to break the game, don't they)
• Overhaul no longer "levels up" every time you load a run
• Fixed a glitch that caused the game not to load properly when you quit in between game states.
• Got rid of the double Scapegoat glitch in the shop
• Fixed Expansion Tower pivot + other minor visual tweaks

After downloading the patch, please start a new run, as your previous run won’t have the updates stored and they may cause conflicts. If you experience any issues, please email us at [email protected].

And this is it for today. Hopefully, the core gameplay will be stable now, and we can start focusing on new content. There's exciting new stuff coming very soon. Expect a roadmap post next week!

Love,

Sad Socket team

Patch #07: Big Optimizations (pt. 1), Critical hits, Saving, Hotfixes

Sat., 31st. May 2025 - 16:47 CEST

Alright, this is the most important patch yet.

We're working hard to live up to the expectations you have on us. And we hope you and the 250k+ (!!!) people playing enjoyed the first week of 9 Kings. In this patch, we're fixing key issues you reported, starting to implement the first part of core performance tweaks, while also improving some core mechanics like the critical hits, late game damage processing, and the run saving system.

Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters

We've been reading through all of your Steam reviews and we appreciate all the feedback we've been getting. We'd love to continue seeing more of your thoughts! It helps us know what to focus on for each upcoming patch.

List of changes (0.7.44):

Gameplay/QOL:

• Critical hits now are displayed in a cool orange color & exclamation marks (have fun, marksmen)
• Fixed a Precision stacking glitch (sit back and watch things go POW POW POW POW)
• Reinforce now shows consolidated stack damage increase numbers
• Fixed some key data storage variables when loading runs
• Fixed a glitch when quitting a game right before a battle starts (it no longer loads thinking you're in battle)
• Perks and Decrees are now applied correctly after loading a game
• Buffed initial Palace attack speed (it's now 0.37/s, and it gets wild with level ups)
• Healing numbers are also hidden when "HIDE DAMAGE NUMBERS" option is toggled
• Shrine now levels up a single plot per year and its effect costs less gold per level
• Fixed an exploit that allowed you to re-use razed tiles (from Razing) with Earthworks or the Exploration decree (very nice catch, community)
• End screen stat numbers are now properly displayed after loading a run
• Fixed the apostrophe character in French

Performance:

• Improved combat performance during late game for high attack speed builds
• Improved the way damage is computed per frame to mitigate overflow during battle
• Improved damage computing on Endless Mode (making it more viable to get to year 99)
• Improved level up processing mechanic (Rats should crash less now when you domino the hell out of them)
• Optimized Orchard performance
• Optimized Achievement detection performance
• Fixed small backend errors

COMING NEXT:

• Animation system revamp (that will improve performance considerably)
• Improved attack speed processing during late late game.
• More balancing tweaks & fixes
• New content

After downloading the patch, please start a new run, as previous runs won’t have the updates stored and it may cause conflicts. If you experience any issues, please email us at [email protected]. We previously posted this patch yesterday but rolled back due to a gamebreaking bug found with Trappers/Scapegoats. Sorry about that!

This update brings very big changes, and your feedback is very important. There are 250k computers running 9 Kings out there, and as much as we try to foresee as many issues as possible, some gaps will only become clear with your input. Optimizing 9 Kings is an ongoing task, and your help is vital to us. That’s why we chose to release the game in EA. We hope you understand and keep helping us build the best game we can.

You can also expect more performance patches and new content very soon!

Love, Sad Socket team

Patch #06: Hot-fixes, Improved Calendar & Preparation for performance update

Wed., 28th. May 2025 - 18:03 CEST

The patch #06 is a very straightforward one. In the next few days, we want to focus heavily on improving Endless Mode's performance, but we wanted to address other core issues you've been reporting before that. We also tweaked the initial order of game events after hearing your feedback.

Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters

We've been reading through all of your Steam reviews and we appreciate all the feedback we've been getting. We'd love to continue seeing more of your thoughts! It helps us know what to focus on for each upcoming patch. Here's the full list of changes (0.7.30):

• Hot-fixed a glitch that caused Converter to get INSANELY OP after the final boss.
• Prophet now appears one year earlier
• First Merchant now appears one year earlier
• First Diplomat now appears one year earlier
• Improved Splicing & Gentrify performance
• Concabulator now only levels up one level of every unit, as originally intended. The megalomaniac Lab Rat domino effect still works normally in all usual situations.
• Broken Concabulator is now a level 1 card (as originally intended)
• Made sure upgrade pop ups don't keep spamming, visually, forever (specially on Reinforce builds)
• Fixed a respawn issue that caused some Boars to not leave their plots.
• You can no longer keep playing on Stats screen after ending a run during a battle
• Added a safeguard for saved data after specific reported crashes.
• If you've had a data issue before this patch, the game will now load a backup file.
• Added a safeguard to mitigate an issue that sometimes made cards to appear before the expansion event was over.
• Fixed a visual glitch that caused you to see through a few pixels in some cards.

After downloading the patch, please start a new run, as previous runs won't have the updates saved and may cause conflicts. If you experienced data loss before this patch and for some reason our safeguard didn't fix it, please email us at [email protected] and we'll provide you with a new save file.

We'll be on the lookout for any possible bugs, and we'll now focus on the performance side of the late game. Expect updates soon!

Love, Sad Socket team

Patch #05: Base cards revamp, Cauldron tweaks, EXPLOSIONS & More Fixes

Tue., 27th. May 2025 - 19:25 CEST

Time for patch #05. In this one, we’re focusing on fixing the remaining core glitches, making major improvements to base card balancing, fixing some explosion mechanics, and giving our beautiful buff Golem King a little love. Performance patches are coming soon.

Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters

We've been reading through all of your Steam reviews, crushing bugs, and we appreciate all the feedback we've been getting. We've reached over 2,000 Steam reviews, and we'd love to continue seeing more of your thoughts! It helps us know what to focus on for each upcoming patch. Here's the full list of changes (0.7.28):

• Increased level-up buffs of all base cards (let's make those castle builds viable!)
• Treant attacks now heal AND cause damage by default. Effect size decreased by 20%.
• Treant healing numbers is now displayed in green.
• Palace level ups now also increase its attack speed.
• Cauldron now properly works with ALL bases, towers, and summon buildings
• Increased Trapper damage
• Trappers now stay in the backline
• Increased Wall HP
• Gunpowder decree now works properly with all AoE units (we're recklessly making everything go boom, keep us posted on any performance issues)
• Improved explosion performance
• Congratulations screen once you beat King difficulty (there are more to go, but hey, you deserve it)
• New kings are now unlocked even if you don't finish your current run.
• Added safeguards to a rare bug that causes troops to stand still before battle (this ain't the time for peace)

After downloading the patch, please start a new run, as previous runs won't have the updates saved and may cause conflicts. Bear in mind, King unlock animations might be triggered again the first time you finish a run after the patch.

We'll be on the lookout for any possible bugs, and we'll now focus on the performance side of the late game. Expect updates soon!

Love, Sad Socket team

Patch #04: Quick Fixes, Stronger Spores & Rats, Crash Safeguards

Mon., 26th. May 2025 - 20:15 CEST

Patch #04 brings a handful of quick but important updates.

Here's the full list of changes:

• Increased Sporeling (Mycelium's summon) damage
• Increased Lab Rat HP and damage
• End screen now shows you your difficulty (no more bragging on Peasant difficulty you guys)
• When using Earthworks on a level 3 Concabulator, you will now get two Concabulators and one Broken Cabulator.
• Added a save file guardrail to prevent meta data issues after crashes
• Fixed an occasional bug that caused cards to be displayed before the previous event was over (causing overlapping).
• Fixed a save issue that caused a new game to not start properly after a crash
• Localization improvements
• Font processing improvements
• Fixed a Chinese character glitch

After downloading the patch, please make sure to start a new run, as previous runs won't have the updates saved and it might cause conflicts. If you had a crash issue that messed with new runs, please reinstall the game, the issue should be fixed for good after this patch.

Keep in mind we're also actively working on the performance patch to improve endless mode and playthroughs with a high unit count. Once we address all the reports (we're close), we'll go all-in on making late late game smoother. More news soon!

Love, Sad Socket team

Patch #03: Hotfixes, Balancing, Updated Fonts

Sun., 25th. May 2025 - 16:50 CEST

Patch #03 is a quick one: there were some issues we really wanted to fix asap and gladly we did!

More patches are coming soon, with improved features and also addressing other reports you've given us. We read all of your feedback, thank you for taking the time to help us improve the game.

• Ultragravity decree is now working properly
• Increased Lab Rat damage
• Fixed an issue that caused King of Blood saves to mess with future runs
• Fixed Chinese font display issues
• Improved all other language's fonts
• Some graphic tweaks

The first weekend of 9 Kings has been freaking awesome. We're about to hit 100k COPIES SOLD! If you wanna help us out, make sure to leave your Steam review, share your thoughts in the forums, and stick around. This is just the start!

Love, Sad Socket team

Patch #02: Hotfixes, Performance, Balancing, Timer

Sat., 24th. May 2025 - 21:57 CEST

Hey, everyone!

We've been super stoked about all the feedback we've been getting. Now, here comes a very important patch. Please keep your reviews coming, they're extremely helpful to us.

We're working hard to fix all the unexpected bugs you've been reporting, and hopefully we'll address all of them in no time. We're also working hard to improve performance on late game and you can expect a dedicated performance patch soon. Thanks for all your support!

Here's the list of updates in 0.7.21:

*Please make sure to start a NEW run after updating so that the changes can take effect!

• New players now start with the first three difficulties unlocked
• A timer has been added to the pause screen
• Time scaling has been fixed (you can now properly beat So You Think You Can Speedrun)
• Fixed the main issue that caused high numbers to crash the game.
• Mycelium has been further rebalanced (it's even stronger, spawns a little slower)
• Rebalanced Lab Rat: it has fewer units but it's now MUCH stronger. Rat supremacy lives to fight another day.
• Ongoing Lab Rat performance improvements.
• Rebalanced Converter: spawn's base stats are now in line with Lab Rat stats.
• Improved Blessing plot display (for better visibility)
• Fixed an exploit that occasionally allowed you to "duplicate" a card if you placed it in between two plots (pretty fun one though, ngl)
• Fixed a bug that caused perks not to work on some specific situations (it should be gone for good, but please keep us posted on this one)
• Turned Splicing into a special decree (like Gambling, that can only be picked once)
• Fixed performance glitches (ongoing)
• Fixed a bug that caused the Trebuchet to stop shooting at very high attack speeds.
• Improved an occasional glitch with plot selection
• Localization improvements: We're currently investigating and working to fix problems with display of characters on certain systems, we have made some fixes and will keep working hard to resolve all issues as soon as possible! (对不起！另外也非常感谢玩家 Akelyds 花时间提供详细的反馈，帮我们一起排查这个问题。)

And that's it for day 2. We're rebalancing the game in real time as we gather feedback. Please keep it coming and know this is a work in progress. As you know, some decisions will be made with performance in mind, but we can tweak what's not working at any time, so please let us know your thoughts and leave us a review.

Expect a substantial performance patch for Endless Mode soon!

Join us on Discord, Reddit, and Twitter

Love, Sad Socket team

Patch #01: Hotfixes, Rebalancing, Quality of Life updates

Fri., 23rd May 2025 - 21:53 CEST

It's day one of Early Access. As promised, we'll keep working day and night to improve 9 Kings!

Please keep in mind that leaving a Steam review is incredibly helpful to us. We're reading all of them, working hard, and you can expect a lot of new stuff in the upcoming days!

Here's the list of updates in 0.7.18:

• Scapegoat has been buffed (it now has more HP & gives you 3, 6, and 9 gold per death)
• Mercenary level-up has been buffed (higher HP & DMG boost)
• Mycelium was rebalanced: fewer will spawn, but they're now MUCH stronger.
• Fixed a bug that cause Splicing to over level-up Lab Rat builds
• Disabled excessive pop-up spam when loading a late-game save (Demon's Altar players, we see you)
• Fixed a glitch that caused shop prices to charge you more than intended
• Fixed a glitch that could trigger Blessing animations multiple times
• Fixed a glitch that caused trees to not be destroyed on expansion mode
• Data from "Populate" decree is now properly stored in your game save
• Fixed "Like Sardines" Achievement
• Performance improvements (ongoing)
• Localization fixes

UPDATE: We just posted a hotfix to fix a critical bug that caused some save files to disappear after a game crash. This should be fixed now! Please keep us posted, we promise to not leave you hanging.

We're stoked about all the love and feedback we've been getting. And know that this is a work in progress. Please continue to share your thoughts in a Steam review! We read through everything! Join us on Discord, Reddit, and Twitter

Love, Sad Socket team