The Night Shift
Closing the app doesn't stop the game, it stops you. Timers keep running, marches keep walking, and a few things quietly wait for a finger that isn't coming. An overnight plan is the work of turning as much of the second kind into the first, and the cost of getting it wrong is almost never a lost battle — it's a queue that emptied at three in the morning.
Part 1 · The Night Shift
If you read anything, read this
- Measure the gap first. Six hours and ten hours are different nights. Everything below is sized against the number of hours you're actually gone.
- Overshoot, don't undershoot. A job that's still running when you wake has wasted nothing. A job that finished at 2 a.m. wasted the rest of the night. Gathering is the one exception — there, a march that outlasts the tile is the waste.
- Change bonuses before you queue anything. Every bonus locks in when a job starts. Swap gear, swap talents, activate the captain, then press the button.
- Spend the tar down and close the portal. A full tar bank stops producing, and a shield with an open portal isn't a shield.
Almost nothing here is about being attacked. A bad night costs you an empty queue at three in the morning — nothing taken, nothing built, and no sign in the morning that it happened.
Staying un-raided is one section of this, and the Academy already teaches it. The rest is about what your account gets done between now and morning, which is a bigger number for most players than anything an attacker could take.
Three clocks
Everything in your city is on one of three clocks, and knowing which is the whole game here.
| The clock | Runs while you sleep? | What's on it |
|---|---|---|
| Runs without you | Yes | Construction, research, troop training, equipment crafting, tar, food and silver production, Sacred Potions, gathering, and any march already walking. |
| Needs a finger | No | Clan help, collecting chests, refreshing missions, spending event energy, and re-sending a march that came home at 2 a.m. |
| Only exists while you're away | Unfortunately | Attacks on your city, a half-explored crypt someone else finishes, troops sitting on a tile that can be attacked there, and chests that expire. |
The whole argument sits in the gap between the first two clocks. An overnight plan is the act of converting as much of the second clock into the first as the game will let you. Everything on the third clock is what's left over, and that's the part the safety section handles.
The gap you actually have
Before any of the advice applies, three questions. They change the answers more than your level does.
- How long are you gone? Not "overnight" — a number. Six hours and ten hours want different jobs queued.
- Can you be attacked? Starter shield, open kingdom, a declared war, or a Clash window are four different nights.
- What is this week for? Growth, gear, rebuilding an army, event score, or holding ground. This is what decides who gets a captain slot.
An overnight is a length-matching problem
The order it goes in
Order matters more than the contents, because several of these steps undo each other if you run them backwards. The whole reason is one mechanic: bonuses lock in when a job starts, not while it runs. Anything that changes a bonus has to happen before anything that starts a job.
- Empty the Temple and check food. Bodies in the Temple eat food every hour, and negative food raises training costs while zero food stops training outright. Do this before you queue training, not after.
- Repair your equipment. Damaged gear gives no bonus at all, and it doesn't tell you. Eight hours of a production set that quietly isn't working is the cheapest mistake on this list.
- Swap to the production loadout and the growth talent preset. Before anything is queued.
- Activate the economy captain, then queue that job. Aurora then the build, Farhad then the research, Helen then the training. Each switch has to come before its own queue.
- Ask for clan help on everything you've queued.
- Spend the tar down, in one-shot clears. Leave nothing standing at a half-filled bar.
- Send the gathering marches, sized to the gap rather than to the tile.
- Deposit your Gold Ingots and bank surplus resources as unopened items.
- Close the portal.
- Park the army in the clan fort, then raise the shield — in that order, because a shield can't go up while reinforcements are sitting in your city, and the fort send needs a captain who is free to make it.
Steps one to five are a growth account's whole night. Steps eight to ten are an exposed account's. Most people need both, which is why this is one list rather than two.
The captain problem
Captains are the binding constraint overnight: each one can only be in one place, and three different jobs want them. The received wisdom is that this forces a hard choice. It mostly doesn't, and that's the most useful thing on this page.
Aurora, Farhad and Helen are usually described as paying out only while they're sitting in the city — which would mean the captain speeding up your overnight research is a captain who can't be mining. The bonus locks into the job the moment that job starts. Queue the build with Aurora active, then send her out; the shortened timer stays shortened. If that's right, you get the economy bonuses and the marches, and the choice below is much smaller than it looks.
The Atlas follows that reading, and the claims list says so plainly, because it's one source against two that describe it the other way. It is also the easiest thing on this page to test yourself: queue a long build with Aurora active, note the finish time, send her out, and look again.
| Claim on a slot | Pays in | Requires |
|---|---|---|
| Economy captains at home | Faster construction, research and training, all night | Being active before the queue starts. Whether they must then stay is the open question above. |
| Mining marches out | Resources, capped by what the troops can carry | A tile that outlasts the gap, and troops with capacity rather than punch |
| Carter crypting | Gear materials, gems, silver packs, experience | Tar spent down, and one-shot clears so nothing is left stealable |
This gets asked constantly and the answer is filmed: three captains can gather simultaneously. The two-march limit people remember is real, but it belongs to the lava fountains during Trials of Olympus, not to ordinary nights. Stror is the gathering captain; Tangle is the usual second, and his march speed makes him the natural third.
There's no ranking here, because the right answer changes with what the week is for. The stage table at the end is where it gets answered. One slot does have to stay free, though: somebody has to be available to send the army to the fort, and that's the last thing you do.
Hero, gear and talents
Three things, and one of them is the plan everybody tries first and can't actually have.
A defensive hero keeps working while you're asleep, and a captain doesn't. That's the real difference between the two. Matemhain rebuilds walls in thirty seconds and hands your engineers +200% strength and health. Alrick forces any attacker into a minimum four-hour march, and protects the city even when he isn't standing in it. Ulrik puts every incoming hero march on a flat four hours regardless of distance. All of that works with the app closed.
The gear swap is the cheapest upgrade on this page and takes about ten seconds. Premium accounts get four saveable loadouts; the usual pair is one army-strength set and one silver-and-food-production set, with the production set going on overnight. The Honored Ruler set is the one people name for it — 30% silver and food, 30% construction speed, 30% research speed. Talents work the same way: veterans keep a combat build, a crypt build and a growth build, and leave the growth preset on overnight.
The night hero you can't have. The obvious plan is a combat hero by day and a defensive one by night, and the cooldown forbids it. Hero changes are capped at one every 20 hours and each one costs a Change Avatar item, so a daily rotation needs two swaps per 24 hours and you only get one. Worse, the window drifts four hours later every time you use it — so even a once-a-day swap walks around the clock and stops lining up with your bedtime within a week.
What to send
Mining
Player-built mines outlast the ones the game scatters, by a lot. Over an eight-hour gap that's the whole difference between a march still working at dawn and troops that finished at 1 a.m. and stood there. You can have two of your own on the map at a time.
- Yield is capped by carrying capacity, not by how long you're gone. An overnight march is sized by who you send.
- Spearmen carry most — 250 against an archer's 100 — but archers are the defensive unit, which makes them the natural peacetime gatherers. Roughly 3,000 to 5,000 troops clears a 2M tile depending on your carrying-capacity research.
- The more precious the resource, the slower it gathers. A gold tile and a lumber tile of the same level are not the same night.
- Distance is paid twice, out and back, against a march limit of about two hours. Ayrin removes the limit.
- Troops on a tile can be attacked there, and whoever wins takes everything they've gathered so far. A rich tile in a busy neighbourhood is a target with your name on it.
The trap worth naming: a tile that empties at 1 a.m. is six hours of three captains doing nothing. Overnight mining wants the longest-lived tile you can reach, not the richest one.
What to send
Crypting
Two facts point the same way, and together they make crypting a before-bed job rather than a morning one.
- The Tar Workshop stops at its cap. Going to sleep on a full bank throws away eight hours of production you already paid for.
- A half-explored crypt can be finished by anyone, and they get the chest. Overnight is exactly the wrong time to leave a bar part-filled.
- One large hit clears far more than the same tar spread across small ones, so the way to empty the bank is also the efficient way to spend it.
So: crypt before bed, in single clears, and leave nothing standing. The Crypting guide covers how to find your one-trip level, which is the number that makes this possible.
What can be taken while you're gone
The Academy teaches S.M.A.R.T. and this page won't re-teach it: Shield up, Mines empty, Army in a clan fort, Resources under the cap, Tokens unopened. What follows is the three things it doesn't say.
This is the one that catches people, and the game's own help pages are blunt about it: an attacker can come through an open portal and the shield does nothing. They skip your walls entirely and fight your army directly, and if they win they take building resources, food, silver and Gold Ingots. The official advice is exactly this page's advice — close your portals before you log off.
- Bank the surplus as unopened items. The Warehouse protects a growing amount and no more; anything above it is loot. Resources still sitting as items in your inventory can't be taken at all.
- Deposit your Gold Ingots. It makes you a poorer target, and in K318 it's also the rule — holding more than three days of accrued ingots counts as withholding.
- Troops in a clan fort can't be killed in an attack on your city, and one click sends the whole army, hero and captains together. Walls are not a substitute against a strong attacker.
A food deficit doesn't sit still overnight. Negative food raises training costs, zero food stops training, and bodies in the Temple keep eating every hour either way. Eight hours of that turns a small shortfall into a morning spent fixing it. Clan chests, on the other hand, are fine — they last 20 hours, so sleeping through them costs nothing. It's a missed day that costs you.
During Clash for the Throne all of this changes, and it changes enough to be its own article. Defending in your own city loses 25% of every troop type present against an attacker's 10%, which turns the usual advice inside out.
Where you are in the game
The honest answer to "what should my night look like" is that it depends on two things: how exposed you are, and what the week is for. Read down to your stage, then across to what you're chasing. Each cell answers one question — who gets the captain slots.
| Where you are | Growing | Chasing gear | Rebuilding an army | Holding ground |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under the starter shield | All of them at home. Load every queue. | One out with Carter once the tar bank is worth spending. | Helen at home, training queued deep. | Nothing to hold. Use the peace. |
| Newly exposed, small | Economy captains still win — build times are short and a slot at home turns over several jobs. | Carter out. This is where crypting starts paying. | Helen home, food checked first. | S.M.A.R.T. starts mattering. One slot stays free for the fort. |
| Mid, blueprint-gated | Queues now swallow the whole night, so loading them is cheap in slots. | Carter out, and a mining march for the materials. | Helen home, the rest out. | Portal closed, ingots banked, army parked. |
| Late, army-first | The production loadout is worth more than a mining march. | Carter out; epic tar is the constraint, not slots. | Food is the whole problem. Production set on, Helen home. | Fort and shield are routine. The ingots are the target. |
| Kingdom open or Clash | A wartime night, and a different article. | A wartime night, and a different article. | A wartime night, and a different article. | Shield, fort, portal — in that order, before anything else. |
The pattern down that first column is worth naming, because it's counter-intuitive. Early on, your captains are better off at home, since a short build finishes and needs re-queueing. Later, they're better off out, because a single job now runs longer than you sleep and holding a slot to watch it buys nothing.
Part 2 · The Pre-Sleep Run
First · nothing is queued yet
- Empty the Temple — bodies eat food every hour
- Check food is positive, and fix it before queueing any training
- Repair damaged equipment — a broken set gives no bonus and says nothing
- Swap to the production loadout
- Swap to the growth talent preset
Then · load the queues, in pairs
- Activate Aurora, then start the longest build you can afford
- Activate Farhad, then start a research job that outlasts your sleep
- Activate Helen, then queue training as deep as it will go
- Start an equipment craft if the Forge is free
- Request clan help on everything you just queued
Then · send what's going out
- Spend the tar bank down in one-shot crypt clears
- Check no crypt is left standing at a part-filled bar
- Send the gathering marches — longest-lived tile, not the richest
- Send troops that carry, not troops that fight
Last · close the doors
- Deposit Gold Ingots
- Bank surplus resources as unopened items
- Close every portal
- Send the army to the clan fort
- Raise the shield — after the fort send, not before
Part 3 · The Register
Claims
What runs, and what locks5 claims
Hero and captain bonus effects lock in at the moment a march starts. Bonuses added or expiring mid-transit change nothing.
Equipment bonuses lock at march departure too. Swapping gear mid-march does nothing.
Aurora, Farhad and Helen lock their bonus into a queued job the moment it starts, and can be swapped out immediately afterwards without the shortened timer reverting. Contradicted by two sources describing the same captains as paying out only while stationed in the city; this page follows the snapshot reading and says so.
Equipment crafting runs on a multi-day timer reducible with clan help and speedups. Premium applies clan help automatically; everyone else has to click.
More barracks raise batch volume, not training speed. A filmed test moved a batch from 4d15h to 4d17h going from seven barracks to nine. Training queue research is what raises per-batch volume.
Gear, talents and the hero5 claims
Premium accounts get four saveable equipment loadouts. The recommended pair is one guardsman and army-strength set and one silver-and-food-production set, swapped to production overnight.
The Honored Ruler set gives 30% silver and food production, 30% construction speed and 30% research speed. Named by two creators as the economy set. The quality tier those figures belong to was never stated on camera.
Damaged equipment gives no bonus at all until repaired, and the loss is silent.
Hero changes are capped at one every 20 hours and each consumes a Change Avatar item, so a day-hero and night-hero rotation is mechanically unavailable. The window also drifts four hours later with each use.
With Ulrik, every incoming hero march takes a default four hours regardless of distance. Alrick forces attackers into a minimum four-hour march and protects the city while not standing in it. Matemhain gives +200% engineer strength and health and cuts wall rebuild delay to 30 seconds.
Mining7 claims
Three captains can gather simultaneously. Demonstrated live on camera against a viewer's claim of two; the two-march limit applies to the lava fountains during Trials of Olympus, not to ordinary play.
Total yield is limited by the carrying capacity of the troops sent. Base harvest speed varies by resource — the more precious it is, the slower it gathers.
Spearmen carry 250 against an archer's 100. Carrying order is spearmen, then riders, then archers. Archers are the defensive unit and so the natural peacetime gatherers. Roughly 3,000 to 5,000 troops clears a 2M tile depending on carrying-capacity research.
Game-generated mines hold fewer resources and last significantly less time on the map than player-built ones. No duration is given for either.
A maximum of two player-built mines can stand on the Kingdom Map at any one time. Mine level follows the Capitol in steps of five, from 10 to 45.
Troops gathering at a mine can be attacked there. The winner takes all the resources gathered so far; a defender who wins with losses has their maximum capacity recalculated downwards.
A general march time limit of roughly two hours applies. Ayrin removes it.
Tar and crypts4 claims
The Tar Workshop produces continuously up to a capacity. Production above the cap is lost.
A partially explored crypt can be finished and claimed by any other player.
One large hit clears far more of a crypt than repeated minimum hits totalling the same tar.
Each crypt has a minimum tar cost and a march always spends exactly that.
What can be taken7 claims
An open portal bypasses the Shield of Peace entirely. Attackers arriving through one ignore city walls and engage the army directly; winning lets them plunder building resources, food, silver and Gold Ingots. Any portals still open close automatically after such a loss. The help centre's own advice is to close portals before logging out.
The Warehouse protects a growing amount of resources. Surplus banked as unopened inventory items cannot be looted at all.
Troops in a clan fort cannot be killed in an attack on your city, and one action sends the whole army, hero and captains together. Walls are unreliable against strong players.
During Clash for the Throne, defending in your own city loses 25% of each troop type present against 10% for the attacker.
Negative food raises training costs and zero food stops training. Bodies in the Temple consume food hourly, so an overnight deficit compounds.
Clan chests expire 20 hours after they appear. A night's sleep does not cost them; a missed day does.
In K318, holding more than three days of accrued Gold Ingots counts as withholding. Depositing before sleep is both safety and compliance.
Where this came from
This one is unusual for the Atlas: most of it was already written down. The overnight material existed as one-liners scattered across seven of the Atlas's own guides, and the work was consolidating them rather than discovering them. What the sweep added was the answer to the captain question, a filmed confirmation that three captains can mine, and the official page that makes the portal warning bluntly.
Crypting for Dummies for finding the one-trip level that makes the tar step possible. The Shape of a City for why the queues get long enough to swallow a night in the first place, which is what makes the whole matching problem worth solving.