Kingdom Management is Ni no Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom’s defining and most complex feature. For most, there might not be much reason to engage in it: the story doesn’t require you to invest too heavily in it and it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the various mechanics involved.
However, those who are willing to make the plunge will be greatly rewarded: not only does a properly-developed kingdom provide benefits that are unavailable anywhere else, but it just makes the game easier in general.
What Is Kingdom Management?
Kingdom Management is a feature unlocked at the start of Chapter 4 which will allow you to build a kingdom from the ground-up. To access it, all players have to do is visit Evermore by fast-traveling there by pressing Triangle while on the Trip Door Map. Once there, simply press Triangle and you’ll be brought to a menu where the process can begin.
Is Kingdom Management Important?
In a word: yes.
Not only do you have to do it to some degree in order to beat the game, but those who put in the time to expand Evermore will find themselves having a considerably easier time completing content compared to those who don’t.
To name a few advantages, a properly upgraded Evermore has better equipment compared to those offered in other towns when you first visit them, you can get materials that are better than what would be obtain at your current point in the story , your party can gain bonus experience points and you can even purify cursed equipment that certain enemies may drop after battle.
Getting Started
In order for Evermore to become the thriving kingdom that Evan envisions, he’ll need two things: Citizens and Kingsguilders (KG).
Citizens are the backbone of the country, as they’re the ones who will be operating the facilities, doing research, collecting materials and accumulating kingsguilders for the kingdom. There are all sorts of ways needed to recruit them, but the easiest is by purchasing leads at Swift Solutions or checking Leafbook.
Meanwhile, the kingsguilder is the national currency of Evermore and is required to do just about anything related to national affairs, whether its building facilities, research or getting buffs for Skirmishes.
The Kingsguilder
The phrase, “You have to spend money to make money” describes how KG works perfectly.
Simply put, in order to gain more KG, you’ll have to increase Evermore’s Influence and the way you increase Influence is by building and upgrading facilities. How do you do that, you ask? Spending KG.
In other words, as you use KG to build and expand your country, you will gain an increasing amount of KG in return. Thankfully, this is an automatic process and doesn’t require much work on the player’s part. The most you’ll have to do is be sure to check your coffers every so often since they can only hold a set amount (which can be upgraded).
Building Evermore
When Evermore is first founded it will look pathetic compared to the other nations of the world: it’s small, the roads are barely paved, the castle will mostly be made of wood and there will be more trees than buildings.
That’s why you need to use your KG to make facilities, increase your influence and make more KG in return. These facilities come in all shapes and sizes, and have their own unique uses, but they can all be divided into four unique categories:
*Note: “n/a” means that the facility has the same function as the one above it
Ministry of War:
- Evermore Weapon Workshop: Research, build and improve weapons
- Evermore Barracks: Research methods to help in Skirmishes
- Evermore Elite Barracks: n/a
- Basic Training Ground: Research ways to gain more exp
- Officer’s Training Ground: n/a
Ministry of Ingenuity
- Evermore Outfitters: Research, build and improve armor/accessories
- Institute of Innovation: Research ways to improve the kingdom more efficiently
- Institute of Higher Innovation: n/a
- Ship-Shape Shipyard: Research ways to improve your seafaring abilities
Ministry of Spiritcraft
- Higglery: Research, create and improve Higgledies
- Explorer’s Guild: Research ways to improve your exploration abilities, and expand your material storage
- Expert Explorer’s Guild: n/a
- Kingmaker’s Catherdral: Improves Lofty’s capacity to help in battle
Ministry of Conjury
- Evermore Spellworks: Research, learn and improve spells
- Hubble-Bubblery: Improves battle rewards, and research ways to improve your supply of restoratives
- Hyper Hubble-Bubblery: n/a
- Dimensional Lab: Research QoL upgrades for Dreamer’s Mazes
- Multi-Dimensional Lab
Other Buildings
In addition there are an assortment of buildings which fall under the miscellaneous category:
- General Store: Buy and sell restoratives and materials
- Tasty’s Cookshop: Cook and buy food
- Sympohium: Listed to music/Large Influence boost
- Dispellery: Remove curses from dropped equipment
- Mining Camp: Collect ores, wonderwater, crystals and prisms
- Hunting Lodge: Collect bones, furs, feathers and leather
- Bazaar: Collect ingredients, cloth, thread, cotton, string and buttons
- Fish Market: Collect fish, seafood, shells and corals
- Lumberyard: Collect lumber, resins and fungi
- Farm: Collect grains and vegetables
- Ranch: Collect meat, dairy products and eggs
- Garden: Collect fruits and flowers
- Sage’s Salon: Grant bonus exp to citizens who reside within
- Aranella Square: Large Influence boost
- Goodfellows Inn: n/a
- Evermoria Gardens: n/a
Using/Upgrading Facilities
Once your facilties are in place, it’s time to use them. First, you’ll need to choose a citizen and place them in a building so they can research upgrades. In theory, you could use anyone you want, but certain citizens are better suited for specific jobs. Let’s use Li Li as an example:
Here we see that she has a rating (referred to in-game as IQ) of 45 in Spiritcraft and 100 in Conjury, meaning that she’ll be below average in facilities belonging to the Ministry of Spiritcraft and excel at ones belonging to the Ministry of Conjury. Furthermore, her ability, Dispeller’s Eye, means that she’ll perform even better than usual (marked by a star) at Evermore Spellworks and the Dispellery. Meanwhile, her 0s in both War and Ingenuity makes her useless in any building that requires either stat.
Once you have the citizen at the proper facility, it’s time to start researching (or leave them to their own devices if they’re at a resource-generating facility). To be successful, you’ll need to make sure that everyone collaborating on the research has a collective IQ that matches or exceeds the research subject, while also ensuring that one or more of the participants has the appropriate ability (if it’s required). You’ll have something like this if you’ve done everything correctly:
After your citizens have completed all available research (or you want them to collect better materials if they’re at a resource-generating facility), then it’s time to upgrade your buildings. Most facilities have a cap of Level 4 which allows more citizens to be assigned there, as well as provide access to new research subjects/better materials. However, in order to upgrade facilities beyond a certain level, your castle will also need to be upgraded.
Upgrades to your castle are considerably harder to achieve compared to facilities, requiring a certain amount of citizens and facilities. However, its more than worth it, as everything in your kingdom improves as a result: your facilities can reach higher levels — thus providing access to more research, more land to build more buildings and more chances to increase Influence — thus allowing for even higher KG generation.
It’s wise to upgrade your castle asap, but it’s not the end of the world if you can’t (or don’t for some reason). Even if there’s nothing to research, citizens will gain exp so long as they’re residing in a building (place them at the Sage’s Salon for even higher gains) and eventually level up, increasing their IQ and potency of their skill, eventually allowing access to research which needs Master of “X.”
Are There Any Facilities That Should Be Prioritized?
Obviously, your castle is the most important part of Evermore and should be upgraded posthaste, but there are others which are also pretty important.
You can’t go wrong with focusing on the General Store first. Being able to buy various materials on-demand is huge when you have to worry about forging/learning/creating and upgrading equipment, spells and Higgledies. It’s far simpler to buy materials (they’re pretty cheap too) than it is to explore or fight and hope the materials you need appear. This is also the case when fulfilling quests or activating Higgly Stones — it’s easier to buy the materials than hope they appear as loot.
Next are resource-generating facilities. Though what your receive is random, if the facility is upgraded even once then you can be sure that it won’t be worthless. Furthermore, if it is upgraded as high as the game will allow asap then the quality of the materials will likely exceed that of the materials currently available to you from other sources. This means that you can forge higher level equipment earlier than you’re supposed to, as well as fulfill certain quests and activate certain Higgly Stones earlier than usual.
Third are the two Institutes of Innovation. With the ability to lower the costs and boost the speed of things like construction, resource accumulation and research, its presence makes the development of Evermore far smoother and less costly. The only reason why it’s not listed as the top priority is because its not available until Evermore reaches Level 2 and it doesn’t provide the same game-breaking ability as access to higher-end materials do.
Lastly, there’s the Evermore Weapon Workshop and Outfitters. When upgraded, both have a better and wider selection of equipment than that of stores in other kingdoms. Under normal circumstances, this is useless to you without the appropriate materials, but the presence of an upgraded General Store and resource-generators makes it completely viable. Outside of the dependency on other facilities to make these two reach their full potential, the other reason why they’re ranked “last” is because you can set the Tactic Tweaker to provide a boost to rare equipment, making higher-tier gear from your shops not as essential during the early to mid stages of the game.
All in all, you can pretty much pick whatever you want and be successful but these facilities, in particular, proved to be very helpful throughout the course of the game.
Further Tips
Aside from what was mentioned, there are a few things to take note of:
— If you’re anything like me and want to fully immerse yourself in Kingdom Management from the get-go, then be prepared to visit Evermore a lot. By the time I reached Chapter 6, my KG generation was so high that my castle’s coffers could fill in half an hour.
— Resource-generating facilities come in groups of five, each offering better materials as their number increases (facility number, not number of facilities). Consider transitioning your citizens to the second or third resource-generator within a given group once your castle reaches level 2, then do the same with the fourth and fifth resource-generators once your castle hits level 3.
— You can press the Options button while on any resource-generating facility to see a list of which materials it provides.
— As mentioned before, KG and material accumulation is an entirely passive process. In fact, you don’t even have to be actively playing for the process to continue. So long as the game is running, then you’re good. How do you think I reached 9.9mil KG?
— Ship-Shape Shipyard is worthless. Only invest it as much as the story demands, then ignore it until you need Influence.
That’s it for Kingdom Management in Ni no Kuni 2. As stated at the start of the guide, you don’t have to spend an abundance of time doing this, but it’s more than worth it if you do.
Need help with something else? Head to the Royal Handbook to find more Ni no Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom guides.
