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Base building

How your Pixel Reign base works: the 30×30 plot, land expansions, builders, every building type, costs, timers, Keep gates, and count caps.

Your base is a 30×30 plot of land with a buildable square in the middle, a Keep at its heart, and a ring of open ground around it where attackers land. This page covers how that plot works: what you can build, what it costs, how long it takes, and the Keep-level rules that decide when each piece unlocks.

Everything described here is enforced by the game server; the app only draws what the server says is there. Prices in ETH and KEEP are devnet test tokens during the playtest — they have no real-world value.

Quick facts

• The plot is 30×30 tiles; you can build only inside the centered claim, which starts at 14×14 and grows to 26×26 with six land expansions.
• Every base starts with a level 1 Keep and a one-time gift of 5,000 SHARDS. Nothing else is pre-placed.
• You start with 1 builder and can buy up to 5 more (6 total) for ETH. One builder = one job at a time.
• Walls never use a builder: they place and upgrade instantly.
• Every level-1 building takes 60 seconds to build. Upgrades follow one ladder, 10 minutes (L1→2) to 72 hours (L19→20); the Keep and Gold Forge take that ladder ×1.2, and traps keep a shorter curve of their own.
• A building can never be upgraded above your current Keep level (the Keep itself excepted).
• Moving buildings is free and instant. Placing one is permanent — there is no sell, remove, or demolish.
• Two server-stored layouts per base: HOME (free) and BASE (unlocked once for 500 SHARDS). See Layouts.
• Gold Forge, extra builders, and land expansions require a Land Deed (paid land); everything else is open to free players.

Your plot and claim

The plot is a 30×30 grid of tiles. The buildable claim sits in the middle and is 14×14 for a new base. Everything outside the claim is the attacker deploy ring: at full expansion it is 2 tiles wide, and with fewer expansions the empty ring is simply wider.

Placement rules are simple:

• A building's whole footprint must sit inside the claim.
• Footprints cannot overlap another building, including one that is still under construction.
• Footprints cannot overlap an uncleared obstacle (a tree, stump, or rock — see Obstacles).

The Keep (2×2) comes with the base and is auto-placed at the center of the fresh claim. You never build it. Everything else you place can be moved. Layout editing is free and instant, and a whole run of walls can be dragged together.

Why no removal? The server exposes place, move, upgrade, repair, clear-obstacle, and speed-up — and nothing else. What you build stays built, so think about placement (especially 2×2 footprints) before you confirm. You can always move it later.

Land expansions

Each land expansion adds one full ring of tiles around your claim; the deploy zone and boundary move outward with it. There are six in total. Each purchase has a Keep-level gate and a ETH price, paid through your linked wallet. You must own a Land Deed before buying any expansion.

The purchase is a server-priced deposit intent: the game checks the Keep gate when you start the purchase and again when the on-chain payment is verified, then credits the ring. If you abandon a free base, its expansions reset to zero.

See Land deeds and the globe for how deeds work and Deposits, withdrawals and 2FA for the payment flow.

Builders

Builders are your bottleneck. Every base starts with one; you can own up to six. Builders 2 through 6 are bought one at a time, in order, with ETH, and the purchase is permanent. Like expansions, they require a Land Deed.

One builder handles one job. The jobs that occupy a builder are:

• New construction
• Upgrades
• Clearing an obstacle
• Repairing a spent trap

If every builder is busy, the game refuses with "all builders are busy". The app shows your free-builder count as reported by the server.

Two things do not use a builder:

• Walls — placement and tier upgrades are instant.
• Troop research in the ALCHEMY LAB — it has its own single-research queue.

Jobs finish on their own timer, and the base picks up completed jobs the next time it is read or changed. A building under construction occupies its tiles immediately, but it is not part of your defense and does not add camp or barracks capacity until the job completes.

Tip: If you abandon a free base, its builder count resets to 1. Extra builders belong to the base you bought them for.

Speeding up a job (FINISH)

Any running job can be finished instantly for KEEP. The price depends only on the time remaining, counted in 30-second units:

• Let u = remaining seconds ÷ 30, rounded up.
• Cost = u × 2 + ceil(2u² ÷ 9000) KEEP.

So short jobs are cheap and multi-day jobs get steeply expensive: one hour remaining is 244 KEEP, while 24 hours remaining is 7,604 KEEP (both computed from the formula above). KEEP spent on speed-ups is recycled into the emission pool rather than burned — see Economy: Shards and KEEP.

The Keep gates everything

The Keep is the spine of progression. Its level decides:

• What you can build. Many building types have a minimum Keep level (table below).
• How high you can upgrade. Any non-Keep building may only be upgraded to a level ≤ your current Keep level. Level your Keep first, then everything else.
• How many you can place. Count caps per type grow with Keep level (see Count caps).
• Mine and trap caps, hero unlocks (L5), rallies (L3), and expansions.

The Keep also multiplies your mining income, and from Keep 15 it fires its own long-range gun, adding a second close-range gun at Keep 17. Tapping the Keep opens a sheet that lists exactly what the next level unlocks.

Building roster

Every placeable type, its footprint, its base hit points at level 1, and its maximum level. Traps have no HP and cannot be targeted.

Economy and support

Defenses and walls

Traps

SPIKE TRAP, POWDER MINE, PITFALL, and AIR MINE are each 1×1, have no HP, fire once, and must be repaired before they work again. They level to 20. Full stats, ranges, and trap damage are on Defenses, traps and walls.

How HP grows with level: HP is multiplied per level by a tapering curve — ×1.25 for levels 2–5, ×1.18 for 6–9, ×1.15 for 10–12, ×1.13 for 13–15, ×1.11 for 16–18, ×1.10 for 19–20. Defense damage scales the same way. The HP/DMG preview chips in the building sheet use a flat ×1.25 per level, which is exact up to level 5 and over-states values above it; the battle simulation is what counts.

Build costs, times, and Keep gates

New construction is paid in SHARDS (the currency your Mines dig) with two exceptions: hero altars cost KEEP or a hero contract item, and Mines after the first cost KEEP. The Gold Forge is paid in SHARDS like the rest but also needs paid land. Every new building takes 60 seconds and occupies one builder for that minute; walls are the exception, placed instantly with no builder.

Economy, support, and heroes

KEEP spent on Mines 2–8 is recycled into the emission pool. When you place a hero altar, the server first tries to consume a hero contract item from your inventory and only charges KEEP if you have none.

Defenses, walls, and traps

Upgrades

Upgrades cost SHARDS and occupy one builder (walls excepted). Each building can run one upgrade at a time, and no building other than the Keep may go above your Keep's level. A spent trap must be repaired before it can be upgraded.

Costs rise steeply. The table shows four steps on each curve so you can see the shape; the in-game sheet always shows the exact next price.

Upgrade timers follow one ladder for every building except the traps (owner decision D-085). The KEEP and the GOLD FORGE take the same ladder ×1.2, so the Keep stays the slowest thing in the game and paces everything gated on it. The in-game sheet always shows the exact next timer.

That is 342.75 hours from level 1 to 20 for a normal building and 411.3 hours for the Keep or the Gold Forge. The four traps keep their own short curve, 10 minutes for L1→2 rising to 8 hours for L19→20, because a disposable defense that is spent every raid should not be a 342-hour investment. Walls upgrade instantly.

Upgrades that also cost ETH

Two buildings have deeper upgrade steps priced in devnet ETH on top of shards, paid through your linked wallet:

• MINE levels 2–4 are shards only. Upgrading to L5 costs 0.5 ETH, and each later level adds more: L6 0.65, L7 0.85, L8 1.04, L9 1.22, L10 1.40, L11 1.58, L12 1.76, L13 1.94, L14 2.12, L15 2.30, L16 2.48, L17 2.66, L18 2.84, L19 3.02, L20 3.20 ETH. The prices from L6 upward are provisional and may be tuned.
• GOLD FORGE upgrades cost 0.05 ETH × the target level (L2 = 0.10 ETH … L20 = 1.00 ETH). This ETH goes entirely to the liquidity wallet.

See Mining and daily cache and Gold Forge for what those levels buy you.

Count caps by Keep level

How many of each building you may place grows with your Keep. The table samples five Keep levels; the Keep sheet in game shows the exact next unlock.

A few exact thresholds worth knowing: the wall cap rises every Keep level (40, 51, 62 … 250); cannons and archer towers gain one slot every two Keep levels; the trap cap is 2 per Keep level up to 20 at Keep 10; mines allow 2 at Keep 1 and one more per level up to 8 at Keep 7; and the ALCHEMY LAB, GOLD FORGE, CLAN HALL, and each hero altar are strictly one per base.

Walls

Walls are the one thing you can build in bulk without waiting:

• 1×1, 150 SHARDS each, placed instantly. Dragging places a whole run in one all-or-nothing spend.
• Tier upgrades are instant and shards only, per segment, up to tier 20.
• HP by tier: 300, 600, 1200, 1500, 1875, 2212, 2611, 3081, 3635, 4180, 4808, 5529, 6247, 7060, 7977, 8855, 9829, 10910, 12001, 13201.
• Cap 40 at Keep 1, rising to 250 at Keep 20.

In combat, walls slow and steer attackers; each troop type has a wall policy — break through, burrow under, fly over, or path around. Details are on Defenses, traps and walls.

Layouts: HOME and BASE

The LAYOUT button in the base dock opens the LAYOUTS editor, where a whole arrangement of your base is saved on the server and applied in one move. Two slots exist: HOME is free, and BASE unlocks once for 500 SHARDS from that base's own balance (UNLOCK · 500 SHARDS); the slots and the unlock travel with the deed. Pick buildings up one at a time or PICK UP ALL (the Keep included), drop them on new tiles — arrow keys or the pad nudge by one tile — and SAVE; wall paint reuses the trayed walls in order. CANCEL sends nothing, save is refused while anything is still in the tray, and a saved layout applies as one transaction that moves everything or nothing. An incoming raid locks the editor (AN INCOMING RAID HAS LOCKED THIS BASE). Layouts only move positions: they cannot build, sell, upgrade or touch resources, traps or jobs.

The Vault and what raiders can take

The Vault does not hold your shards; it protects them. Under the live loot rule, raiders can take up to 50% of your liquid shards and open Gold Forge shards combined. Your highest Vault that is still standing at the end of the fight shields a slice of that: 30% × (level ÷ 20) percentage points — 1.5 points at L1 (48.5% lootable), 15 points at L10, and 30 points at L20 (20% lootable). A Vault that gets destroyed protects nothing, so wall it in. Unclaimed Mine buffers are paid to the attacker only if that Mine is destroyed.

Why: This rule (owner decision D-065) replaced an older "capacity" model. Vault capacity no longer plays any role in raids and is not shown on the Vault sheet.

The full loot math is on Raids and loot.

Obstacles (clearing terrain)

Each base is generated once with trees, stumps, and rocks — 189 obstacles in all — mostly on the rings outside the starting claim, with a sparse scattering inside it. They block placement until cleared, and in raids they are decoration only; the battle simulation ignores them.

Clearing uses a builder and pays back 15 SHARDS when it finishes, so small clears net you a few shards. You can clear only obstacles fully inside your current claim — the game will tell you to expand your land otherwise. Cleared obstacles never come back.

What you cannot do

• Remove, sell, or demolish a building. Placement is permanent; move it instead.
• Build the Keep. It comes with the base.
• Upgrade past your Keep level (Keep excepted).
• Upgrade a spent trap before repairing it.
• Build the Gold Forge, buy builders, or buy expansions without a Land Deed.
• Clear an obstacle outside your claim.
• Decorations and Keep skins are not part of the game; the earlier skin cosmetics were removed and owners refunded in KEEP.

See also

• Getting started
• Defenses, traps and walls
• Mining and daily cache
• Gold Forge
• Raids and loot
• Troops and heroes
• Land deeds and the globe
• Economy: Shards and KEEP
• Deposits, withdrawals and 2FA
• Glossary and FAQ