Patch Notes

From Aether Kingdoms Wiki

Summary of the game changes in each patch, newest first. Each section links to the full patch notes on aetherkingdoms.com. Unit and building pages list the changes that affected them in their own Changelog section.

Beta 3.11

2026-10-12 - An Advisor to help you manage your Kingdom & Artifact changes - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Monuments now give 5 Prestige (was 10) on first completion. The 5 Prestige per week when completed remains unchanged. This will not affect servers where monuments already spawned.
  • Artifacts will now spawn 2 weeks after Monuments activate.
  • Artifacts will generate their first Prestige 3 days after capture, after which it'll generate 1 Prestige per day. This will make conquering artifacts to delay the opponent more worthwhile.
  • Artifacts will spawn on day 119, 3 weeks earlier than before. That means they will spawn on Plains 2 at Thursday 15 October 2026 14:00 UTC
  • After Artifacts have spawned on Plains 2, we will change the spawn day to 112. That means Hills 1 will see the Artifacts spawn 2 weeks after monument activation.

Beta 3.10

2026-09-30 - incoming attacks management, system messages and reports improvements - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Food on trade routes is now uncapped (well, capped to the storage capacity). All other rules for trade routes still apply. This change should make moving armies around your Kingdom have much less effect on your supply lines.

Beta 3.9

2026-09-21 - New map renderer and features, attack units buffs and premium info - full patch notes

Balance changes

Beta 3.8

2026-09-09 - Fullscreen map, more statistics and unit art polish - full patch notes

  • No balance changes.

Beta 3.7

2026-08-31 - Server timeline, new research cost formula and a lot of fixes - full patch notes

  • No balance changes.

Beta 3.6

2026-08-18 - Repeating village projects, barbarian balance and village bonus page - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Settled villages and claimed tiles now increase their building levels on a weekly counter instead of monthly. For resource fields and the Town Hall this means +1 level every 2 weeks, and for the Warehouse and Food Cellar +0.75 every week, rounded down.
  • Barbarian stats were tuned to lower their attack and smoothen the curve. Defensive stats were lowered slightly and shifted from cavalry to ranged defense. Barbarians are now roughly equal in strength against ranged and cavalry, while being slightly stronger against melee.
    • Axeman: lowered attack from 20 to 18
    • Guardian: lowered attack from 16 to 12, lowered melee/ranged/cavalry defense from 20/16/24 to 18/14/22
    • Shieldmaiden: lowered attack from 24 to 22, lowered melee/ranged/cavalry defense from 56/28/42 to 52/38/24
    • Warden: lowered attack from 22 to 20
    • Outrider: lowered attack from 28 to 26
    • Chieftain: lowered attack from 80 to 76
  • The noble cap has been increased from 5 to 6.

Beta 3.5

2026-08-12 - Delayed attacks, objective spawning and combat balance changes - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Reduce swordsman cost and defensive stats. Slightly more expensive than archer/horseman for attack power, but much better attack/food.
  • Slightly modify archer stats and a small discount (-10 iron). Bring it on par with new horseman cost/attack.
  • Reduce cav archer melee defense slightly, and range defense more. Also slightly reduced its stone and iron cost. It has a comparable cost/def while bringing it on par with the cataphract in terms of cost/attack. It also should counter itself less as a defender.
  • Slightly increase horseman attack, reduce horseman defensive stats, and slightly reduce its wood cost
  • Slightly reduce lancer attack to mirror the defensive rebalance of other cavalry.
  • Increase knight attack, reduce defensive stats, reduce its cost. This places is between the archer/horseman/swordsman and cavalry archer/cataphract in terms of cost/attack.
  • Slightly increase cataphract attack, reduce defensive stats.

Exact values from the game data

Beta 3.4

2026-08-02 - Combat updates, report to simulator and sitter permissions - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Rewards from PvE kills are buffed from 20 of each resource per consumption killed to 25 of each resource, to compensate for the additional farming losses.
  • Sitters can now send reinforcements to all Empire villages, instead of only own villages and objectives.

Beta 3.3

2026-07-20 - Faster map and more mobile improvements - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • New and respawning players get 2 builders per day the server is live.
  • New and respawning players now get 200 culture per day instead of 120.
  • The task rewards for the categories villages settled and events completed is now capping out at 1000 Aether.

Beta 3.2

2026-07-12 - Mobile improvements and bugfixes - full patch notes

  • No balance changes.

Beta 3.1

2026-06-30 - Empire updates, bugfixes and improvements - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Aether Deposit duration is increased from 1-2 hours to 2-4 hours
  • Hostile Outpost and Native Ambush tier duration is decreased from 2-4 hours to 1.5-3 hours. This doesn't affect the final tier's duration of 24 hours.
  • The maximum level of resource fields (Forester, Quarry, Iron Mine and Farm) is increased from 27 to 30. It's not efficient to upgrade them this high, but it's theoretically possible with the Storage Depot, so we're enabling the option.

New features and changes in Beta 3

2026-06-11 - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Added a new Task category: join an Empire. 10 Aether each is awarded for joining an Empire with at least 3 and at least 10 members.
  • It's no longer possible to land more than 4 siege attacks on a target from the same village in a single second. Any sieges over 4 that land in the same second will be shifted up a second by the server.
  • Newly claimed tiles now get +2 resource field levels per month, from level 3 after 1 month up to level 10 after 5 months of playtime.
  • Events now spawn fully around a village, instead of missing some spots.
  • Fewer events now spawn when there's fewer villages in an area. 3 or more villages in a 10x10 area gives the maximum spawn rate.
  • Empire size now goes up to 30 members. This may be increased to 40 depending on how Beta 3 develops.
  • The Quarry to level 6 task now rewards 4 builders, was 2.
  • Events now have a higher chance to spawn different units if not all are available to spawn yet. This will lead to overall more evenly distributed unit types at events.
  • Walls will no be set to level 0 after conquest.
  • Exchanging resources with Aether at a 1.5:1 rate now has a cap for 10 Aether of 3.000 resources + 1.500 per week. This was 5.000 + 5.000 per week.

Beta 2 Patch 8

2026-06-04 - Over 1000 players tried AK and beta 3 announcement! - full patch notes

  • No balance changes.

Beta 2 Patch 7

2026-05-18 - Next server start, statistics dashboard and balance changes - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • The maximum queue size for each village was expanded from 6 to 10 to reduce the pressure of needing to log in a lot.
  • On selecting a spawn direction, there's now the option to select a random spawn. Selecting a random spawn gives an additional 40 Aether on top of the 50 base Aether awarded on registration.
  • Players spawning in will now spawn 3 to 5 fields apart instead of 2 to 3
  • Early tasks that take a bit longer to achieve have their rewards increased. In total they'll give around 200 more Aether and more of the other rewards as well.
  • A new task category was added for upgrading 15 resource fields to levels 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 15. Levels 4 and 10 rewards Culture, the other tiers reward Aether.
  • The task category for Events completed rewards militia for its 2nd tier. The number of events completed required was lowered from 20 to 10. An extra task was added for completing 25 events, awarding Aether.
  • The first two army size tasks were increased from 20 to 30, 50 to 70, and 100 to 150 to account for the free units.
  • Added a task to create a Settlers unit before the 2 Settlements task, awarding 200 Culture.
  • Increased the base Culture to settle a second Village by 500 to 4000.
  • Decreased the base Culture to tier up to a Town by 700 to 9500.
  • Decreased the base Culture to tier up to a City by 1700 to 16000.
  • The PvE defender kills milestone now equals the PvE attacker kills milestone, since the new event types removed the kills disparity.
  • Changed the archery range requirement for the cavalry archer from 11 to 10. You still need a city to make them.
  • New players spawn with a maximum of 5000 culture.
  • Changed the start day at which new players spawn with a free Settlers unit from 18 to 25.
  • Science and culture rewards from resource events now scale weekly instead of monthly.
  • Reduced spearman cavalry defense from 36 to 32, ranged defense from 16 to 12.
  • Reduced longbow melee defense from 36 to 32, ranged defense from 28 to 24.

Beta 2 Patch 6

2026-05-03 - Map rework, new building pixel art and more - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Cancelling ongoing science and culture projects is now free of Aether cost. This includes a builder refund.
  • The Gathering warband event no longer awards Aether on the last wave.
  • The Native ambush event was changed to work like the Native outpost event. The ambush now has between 5 and 7 stages. Instead of growing in size every stage, it now gives an increasing Aether reward per stage. The chance to spawn a next event is 30% at stages 1, 3 and 4.

Beta 2 Patch 5

2026-04-19 - Next servers, reworked tasks system and new research tree - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • The base culture values were increased to account for the new task rewards and to slightly reduce the time to a second village. A second Village now costs 3500 culture. Tiering up to a Town costs 10,200.

Beta 2 Patch 4

2026-04-07 - Statistics, more balance and a wiki! - full patch notes

  • No balance changes.

Beta 2 Patch 3

2026-03-29 - New defensive events and more army rebalancing - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Swordsman
    • Melee defense 32, was 45
    • Ranged defense 20, was 27
    • Cavalry defense 26, was 36
  • Cavalry Archer
    • Melee defense 124, was 108
    • Ranged defense 84, was 120
    • Cavalry defense 62, was 72
  • Horseman
    • Melee defense 20, was 24
    • Ranged defense 36, was 42
    • Cavalry defense 28, was 36
  • Knight
    • Melee defense 60, was 72
    • Ranged defense 84, was 108
    • Cavalry defense 72, was 84

Beta 2 Patch 2

2026-03-20 - Redesigned Archer and Horseman units and overall army rebalance - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Combat events now reward Aether based on the size of the event. This makes clearing larger events more worthwhile.
  • The NPC Human faction has seen some changes to their defensive profile, making it more consistent in defensive strength across the board.

Beta 2 Patch 1

2026-03-07 - Catching up on changes and improving the game - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Cataphract saw very little use, even in the endgame. The cost of cataphracts was reduced to make them more appealing.
  • Buying troops for Aether now costs 1.5x the Aether as compared to buying balanced resources with Aether. This stays consistent throughout the server too, instead of getting worse over time.
  • Buying resources and army with Aether now scales weekly (or faster depending on speed) instead of monthly, smoothing out the curve.
  • Multiplied all unit attack and defensive stats by 3 to allow more nuanced balancing changes.

Beta Patch 10

2026-01-24 - Capstone research, map export and engine stability - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Siege attacks now only do wall and building damage if the attacking army is larger in size (based on consumption, not number of units) than the village population.
  • Research cost scaling based on Kingdom size was reduced slightly.

Beta Patch 9

2025-12-23 - Sitter functionality - full patch notes

  • No balance changes.

Beta Patch 8

2025-12-16 - Landmarks launched and defense coordination - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Reinforcements at objectives now eat 50% food.
  • Armies on the way to an objective that gets captured by another empire now bounce.
  • Attacks on objectives now have a speed of 4 fields per hour, similar to a siege attack and nobles.
  • Reduced culture scaling and add different scaling for settling a Village and tiering up to a Town or City.
  • The minimum fake size for objectives is 100 for Natural Landmarks, 200 for Monuments and 300 for Native Artifacts.
  • The minimum fake size for villages is now 100 for a Village, 200 for a Town and 300 for a City, or lower if the population is below the threshold.

Beta Patch 7

2025-11-28 - Events and conquest balance & more responsive app - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • The scouting formula has been tuned
  • Kingdoms can no longer have more than 5 Nobles on their Kingdom in total. This hard cap allows 2 Kingdoms to capture a City together, but not a single Kingdom to capture a Town or City alone in a single trip.
  • Science and Culture rewards from supply events are now multiplied by the months passed in the server, to scale better with Kingdom development and stay worthwhile.
  • Conquering a settlement now reduces the level of each building by 1. This also applies to friendly conquest.
  • Conquering a settlement now requires the attacker to have culture for that tier of settlement to lower loyalty. For example, to conquer a Town you now need the culture available to upgrade to a Town.
  • Resources gained from PvE kills are lowered from 40 to 20 per consumption killed.
  • Lowered Mining deposit and Point of interest event durations from 6-12 hours to 3-7 hours.
  • Lowered Incoming native attack event duration from 3-12 hours to 3-7 hours.
  • On failure, now has a 50% chance to turn into a bigger defend event, a 45% chance to turn into an outpost, and 5% chance to disappear.
  • Defensive event scaling of additional army added when transitioning to a next event was reduced.
  • Native outposts spawn their events earlier. The defensive event spawn was moved from stage 3 to stage 1, and Gathering native forces from stage 5 to stage 3.

Beta Patch 6

2025-11-19 - New player improvements, Empire PvP reports and Queue improvements - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Buffed longbow ranged defense from 6 to 8. This brings them in line with spearman defensive stats and buffs defenses against cavalry archers early on.
  • The lower tier researches get very cheap every month. After 1 month tiers 1 and 2 will cost 100 and 200 science respectively. After 2 months tier 3 will cost 300 science, and so on until tier 5. Research tiers 6 and 7 never get discounted.
  • Settled villages are now buffed every month. At server start a village has resource fields at level 3 and Town Hall level 1. Resource fields will increase with 2 per month, up to a maximum of 10. The Town Hall also gets +2/month, up to level 5. And every month 3 levels of Warehouse and Food Cellar are added upon settling, up to level 10.
  • Player tasks are now reset for a respawning player that got all their villages conquered or destroyed, so you get that early game Aether again to rebuild faster.
  • Events no longer spawn right next to a village from players who have been playing fewer than 2 weeks.

Beta Patch 5

2025-11-11 - Traderoutes, research tree and balance changes - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Increased the science and culture queue production cost when you have an industrial district. At the old values, these could rival a specialised district. With this change, having a science or culture districts is more appealing.
  • The final duration of Native outposts was reduced from 72 to 24 hours.

Beta Patch 4

2025-11-06 - Traderoute customisation and other improvements - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • The military academy unlocks strong units. Too strong for this early in the game. That's why it's now locked behind a new research: Professional Soldiers.

Beta Patch 3

2025-10-29 - Visual polish and balance changes - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Noble speed was reduced from 6 to 4.
  • The maximum number of Nobles per Kingdom is now tied to the server's age. The maximum starts at 1 and goes up every 2 weeks in the pattern: +1, +2, +1, +2, etc.
  • The Kingdom whose village gets conquered now gets the culture cost of a new village refunded.
  • Reduced event base unit spawn from 6 to 5, reducing the base range from 4-8 to 3-7. This slows the scaling of events with units.
  • Reduced supply event base values by 100 for full events and 50 for stages, slowing down weekly scaling.
  • Unit Aether costs have been increased to match 50% of the resources per Aether granted from purchasing resources directly.

Beta Patch 2

2025-10-22 - Empire Messaging - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Unit Aether cost has been decoupled from their supply value. Purchasing better units for Aether was too cheap early game as an unintentional side effect from balance changes during Alpha 2.
  • Native Outpost events now have a chance to spawn an Incoming native attack at stage 3 and a Gathering native forces at stage 5. This was reversed to allow for a more consistent availability of defensive events.

First week of beta and Beta Patch 1

2025-10-14 - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Horseman speed has been returned from 12 to 14 fields per hour. This is more in line with the small speed buff infantry received in alpha 2.
  • Increased the maximum village queue size from 5 to 6 based on popular request for a bit more downtime in building up a village.
  • Increased the maximum allowed Science and Culture to be added to the queue at once from 2 to 4 times the hourly production of that village. A village that produces 20 Culture/hr could queue 40 Culture, and that's 80 Culture now.
  • Players spawn 2-4 tiles apart now instead of 2 tiles minimum, to add more average distance and variability in spawning pattern.
  • The culture/science queue duration per resource was smoothed out to make lower production increases have a more noticeable impact on the curve.
  • Added 1 stone to Water and 1 iron to Swamp tiles to bring them in line with others on resource count.

Alpha 2 finished and final patch notes

2025-09-27 - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Siege Academy was split from +1 minimum/maximum damage every to levels, into +1 maximum damage for each odd level and +1 minimum damage for each even level. This makes each level feel worthwhile to get.
  • University level 1 output was reduced, while scaling was increased to maintain 81 science/hour at level 10.
  • Marketplace cost scaling was reduced to make the latest levels more affordable.
  • Horseman speed was boosted from 12 to 14, knight and cataphract from 10 to 12 fields/hour. This is to make cavalry more distinct after slowing down siege attacks.
  • The food cost of tier 3 units was reduced while other resources were slightly increased, because costing a lot of food is no fun when you're trying to max out your army.
  • Objective unit spawn rates have been modified to feel more fair based on army sizes during testing.
  • Milestone values were rebalanced after testing a full gameplay round.

Week 37 patch notes (Alpha 2)

2025-09-13 - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • The size of an Empire is now limited to 40 players, and you cannot have more outstanding invites than there are open slots within the Empire.

Week 34 patch notes (Alpha 2)

2025-08-20 - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Culture and Science requirements now compute based on the total Tier of your villages, instead of the number of settlements in the Kingdom.
  • Increased event (stage) duration across the board.
  • Reduced the defensive bonus of walls from 5% per level to 2.5% per level. The maximum defensive bonus is now 50%, down from 100%.

Week 25-26 patch notes (Alpha 2)

2025-06-22 - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Changed Armory maximum level from 20 to 15 to bring Crossbow in line with other unit unlocks.
  • Changed the maximum levels for resource fields (forester, quarry, iron mine, farm) from 15, 20, 30 to 10, 15, 27. The result is primarily a squish of the first 5 levels and an increase of the cap by 2 levels, though the ROI is quite steep on those. Overall, the resource fields also became a bit cheaper. Support villages should now be ready sooner with the reduced number of levels and resource cost.
  • Changed the cost for Swordsman from 210 wood, 420 stone, 320 iron, 160 food to 250 wood, 390 stone, 310 iron, 160 food. Making offensive armies will be less intense on the stone, while keeping overall cost the same.
  • Reduced scaling for events and objective troop numbers from 5% per week to 2% per week.
  • Reduced scaling base amount for resource events from 500 to 400.
  • Reduced the number of tiles required for the Land Owned milestone.

Week 23-24 patch notes (Alpha 2)

2025-06-09 - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Increased the culture costs for upgrading to town and city.
  • Removed the multiplier for the town tier on buying resources for Aether. The base increase every 4 weeks is enough to justify the Aether cost already.
  • You can now build the Marketplace to level 30 in every village tier. The increase in merchant capacity for each tier remains unchanged, so there is still a progressive benefit.

Week 21-22 patch notes (Alpha 2)

2025-05-27 - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Changed the Seed Vault to Tier 2 and the Food Preservary to Tier 3. This is in line with their research order.
  • Adjusted the Production cost of most buildings upwards. Troops, Culture and Science queue times are in line with expectations, but the building construction times were much too fast.
  • Adjusted the output curve of Tier 1 and Tier 2 Production, Culture and Science buildings. They produce slightly less at level 1, but with bigger steps afterward to make upgrading feel worthwhile. Depending on your progress, you may gain or lose a few points of output. That's why it's called Alpha :)
  • The Town Hall is now more expensive, especially at Tiers 2 and 3. It was too cheap for its benefits, but still remains one of the cheapest buildings to upgrade.
  • Swapped the armory requirements for Swordsman (was level 10, is now 5) and Lancer (from 5 to 10)
  • Halberdier was changed to require a Military Academy of level 5 instead of level 1, to fit better with other unit unlocks.
  • Unit stats have been updated to provide a better balance between Tier 2 and Tier 3 units, ensuring all units keep relevance.
  • Builders now give 100% Production boost on buildings instead of 20% (1/2 the original building time). Troops, culture and science now provide a 50% Production boost instead of 20% (2/3rds of original queue time). This is to make using builders on buildings feel more worthwhile for the Aether cost.
  • Troop counts for objectives when initially spawning have been reduced.
  • Culture values have been increased. It was a bit too fast.

Week 20 patch notes (Alpha 2)

2025-05-12 - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Reduced the maximum level of the Barracks, Stables and Archery Range by 5 to 15. Unlock requirements for units are also reduced by 5 levels, which smoothes the gap between level 1 and level 10 for the first two unlocks. Building costs have been readjusted to match the lower maximum level.

Week 19 patch notes (Alpha 2)

2025-05-05 - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Population thresholds for claiming tiles on the Town and City tiers were adjusted.

Alpha 2 patch notes week 18

2025-04-28 - full patch notes

Balance changes

  • Events in the first 4 weeks no longer spawn Spearman and Horseman units. They were disproportionally strong against the early game raiding troops.
  • Reduced the chance for an Outpost event to spawn a new Gathering Troops event by 10% to 40%.

Aether Kingdoms Alpha 1 is live!

2024-12-01 - full patch notes

  • No balance changes.
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