Viking Vengeance in Kingshot: Empty Your City to Score

Twenty waves of Vikings, once every two weeks, and most alliances play it backwards by hunkering down at home. The scoring rewards the opposite. Here is how the points work, and why the best thing you can do for your alliance is send your army somewhere else.

Where this event is played

Viking Vengeance does not happen in a menu. It happens out on the kingdom map, where your alliance sits clustered together and every player's march slots are pointed at somebody else's city.

The Kingshot kingdom map during Viking Vengeance, showing an alliance's cities clustered together and a marching panel with all six march slots reinforcing allies at their coordinates — This is what the strategy looks like from the map. The panel reads **Marching 6/6**, every visible slot says **Reinforcing** with an ally's coordinates, and the cities behind it are the alliance sitting clustered together. Nothing is being held back at home.

How the event is structured

Your alliance faces 20 sequential waves. Waves 1 to 9 and 11 to 19 attack individual members' cities. Waves 10 and 20 attack the alliance headquarters instead. Your leadership picks the difficulty on a scale of 1 to 11, where 11 is the hardest and pays the most.

Kingshot Viking Vengeance event panel showing wave 8 of 20, a level 8 Viking Marauder, the countdown to the next wave, and the target line reading All Members — The event panel tells you everything you need mid-run. **8/20** is the wave counter, and the raider's level tracks it: wave 8 sends a **Lv. 8** Viking Marauder, wave 11 a Lv. 11. The line to watch is **Target: All Members**. On waves 7, 14 and 17 that target is not all members, which is the whole reason being online matters.

Take the highest difficulty your alliance clears cleanly and repeatedly, not the one it might barely survive. Your own reward tier is tied to how the whole alliance performs, so one member playing it wrong holds everyone back.

Points follow kills, and that changes everything

This is the mechanic the entire strategy hangs on. Defense points are awarded per kill, to whoever made the kill. Every player defending a city appears on that city's battle report with their own kill count and their own points.

Kingshot battle report table listing alliance members with their individual kill counts and defense points from a single Viking Vengeance wave — One wave, one city, and **a queue of players scoring from it**. The list runs past the five shown here. Defense points track kills almost exactly: 3,639 kills pays 32,053 points, 2,812 kills pays 24,769. Nobody on this list is defending their own city. They are all reinforcing someone else's, and that is why the numbers are this high.

So a city with a big home army is not a strong city, it is a greedy one. Those troops take kills that would otherwise have been shared among every reinforcing ally. If everyone empties out and garrisons each other instead, the alliance roughly doubles its total score for the same troops.

Empty your city, and know which troops to leave

Send all infantry and cavalry out to reinforce allies, and leave only archers at home. The reason is the targeting order: Vikings engage infantry first, then cavalry, then archers. Archers sitting at home barely get into the fight, so they steal almost nothing from the people garrisoning you. Infantry left at home does the opposite.

There is a second consequence of that order worth knowing. The defending troops strike first, not the attackers. With enough infantry stacked in a city, the defenders can wipe the Viking force out before it swings back, which is why well-reinforced cities take almost no losses and need barely any healing.

Only keep infantry or cavalry at home if you genuinely have more troops than fit into all of your marches. Your three strongest heroes stay in the guard station, where they buff everyone defending your walls, and lethality joiners lead the marches you send out, the same crew from the Bear Hunt guide.

The headquarters waves: 10 and 20

Twice per event the Vikings skip player cities and go for the alliance headquarters. The HQ has a fixed number of garrison slots, so these waves are a race: the members who get their marches in are the members who score.

Kingshot alliance headquarters defence screen showing garrison slots filled at 10 of 15, total squad capacity, and the defender squad list with each member's troop count — The headquarters fills to a hard cap, here **10 of 15 governors** holding nearly 968,000 troops between them. Send the moment waves 9 and 19 end, because once the slots are gone you cannot score this wave at all. Wave 20 is the hardest of the event, so go infantry-heavy for it.

Waves 7, 14 and 17 skip offline players

On those three waves the Vikings simply do not spawn against players who are offline at that moment. If you are away, your city is skipped, nobody reinforcing you scores, and you take your allies' points down with you.

You can audit this afterwards. You get one battle report in your mail per battle you took part in, so count the reports for wave 16 and then for wave 17. If wave 17 is short by one, an ally you were reinforcing went offline and that entire garrison scored nothing.

Playing the schedule

Before wave 1: recall map troops, post coordinates in alliance chat, form groups of three to six players sitting close together, and pre-load each other's garrisons. Activate deployment-capacity buffs before you send.
Waves 7, 14 and 17: reinforce confirmed-online members only. Garrisoning someone who is offline during those waves scores exactly nothing.
Waves 10 and 20: send the second waves 9 and 19 finish. Slots are limited and they fill fast.
Knocked out twice? Recall everything and spend the rest of the event garrisoning other people. Your scoring never stops, only the attacks on your own city do.

Three habits to drop while it runs: no healing between waves, no putting out fires, and no leaving infantry at home. Extinguishing costs gems and changes nothing until the event ends.

Frequently asked questions

Should I keep troops at home to defend my own city?

No. Defense points are paid per kill, and a kill scores for whoever made it, so troops sitting at home take kills away from the allies garrisoned with you. Send infantry and cavalry out, leave archers at home, and keep your three best heroes in the guard station.

Is my city safe if I send everything away?

In practice yes. Even on difficulty 11, a city reinforced with roughly 200,000 to 300,000 troops at tier 8 or higher survives all twenty waves. Heroes and stat bonuses shift that, but an empty city with good reinforcements is far safer than a full city with none.

Can I still score after losing twice?

Yes. The Vikings stop coming to your city, but every kill your troops make while reinforcing allies keeps counting. Recall everything and spend the rest of the event in other cities.

Can I heal during the event?

Better not. Healed troops reappear in your own city and start taking kills from the players reinforcing you. The one sensible exception is right before the headquarters waves, 10 and 20, when you want maximum troops in the garrison.

Which waves matter most?

Waves 7, 14 and 17 skip anyone who is offline, so being logged in during those pays directly. Waves 10 and 20 hit the alliance headquarters instead of player cities, and wave 20 is the hardest of the event.

Last verified 15 August 2026.