Spending Smart
Exchange Shops
What to buy in every exchange shop, from Infinite War and Knight shops to the shell merchant, Benefits shop and Trade Ship.
On this page
How much you get from each shop depends on how much you spend. This isn't about spending more: it's about spending where it's most effective and cost-friendly.
Conjure shop
Covered in detail on the Artifacts page.
Infinite War shop
Buy Obsidian Steel, Raw Energy, Protolith Fragment and Enchantment Crystal. It resets weekly.
Knight shop
Buy Orange Fragments, Titan Crystal and Ancient Relic. You need these for the level 70 unlock of your second Colossus.
- Once you've unlocked Colossus 70, consider Protolith Fragment for your Elder Titan.
- Knight badges carry over between Fortress War seasons, so there's no rush to spend them all.
- After a new season starts, it can take a few weeks for the items at the bottom of the list to unlock again.
Star Palace (Ruins shop)
Buy Polycrystalline, Artifact XP, Birthstone and Lord XP. Unlock higher-level lodes to earn more crystals:
| Lode | Purple crystals / hour | Per week |
|---|---|---|
| Deep Lode 1 | 6 | 1,008 |
| Shallow Lode 3 | 5 | 840 |
| Shallow Lode 2 | 5 | 840 |
You should be able to buy all the Polycrystalline every week. A weekly shopping list that fits:
| Item | Qty × cost | Crystals |
|---|---|---|
| Polycrystalline | 2 × 150 | 300 |
| Purple artifact stone | 5 × 30 | 150 |
| Purple Lord XP card | 5 × 25 | 125 |
| Birthstone chest | 10 × 40 | 400 |
| Total | 975 / week |
You can swap some Birthstone chests for Material chests to help with armor, or skip some of the 10 Birthstones (the chest contents are random).
Merchant ship
The merchant resets for free every 8 hours, and its shell exchange rate changes each time. Compared with gems and Azurite, RSS is free: just run more farms, then trade the RSS for shells.
Since RSS is "free", trade it all. Then stock up on:
- Stamina potions: buy them all, even if your Benefits shop level makes them cheaper there. Stamina means monsters, and monsters mean AZ.
- VIP
- Lord XP
- Any speed-ups
- Elite Teleport: 6,000 shells, or a discounted 1,600 gems. Check your Benefits shop level first; higher levels can sell it for less.
- Beast XP: about 1,000 XP for 90 gems.
- Recall Troops
Exchange your crates
The last tab on the right lets you trade resource crates for items such as VIP and speed-ups.
HOT sale / Weekend HOT sale
Find it in the event menu over the weekend, or open the Pack icon and choose Shop → HOT. Worth buying:
- March speed-ups, if you can afford them.
- 3-day VIP, when it's in the sale.
Benefits shop
It's on the far right of the sale icons. Its level depends on your past spending and slowly rises once you start buying the AZ card and the level 1 weekly orange fragment pack. Higher levels mean bigger discounts, and at higher levels the gem cost per item can be lower here than in the HOT weekend sale.
Free items in the sales shop
Check the other tabs of the sales shop. Depending on the day and your castle level, some items are free.
Trade Ship
As your realm ages, a Trade Ship appears. It opens for lords whose realm is at least 720 days old and whose castle is level 30 or higher.
It usually trades for orange fragments or Obsidian, but sometimes there's a special sale for Crown Artifacts or beast skins. It's also how you can exchange spare orange artifact pieces.
