Ni No Kuni II Kingdom Building Guide

Once you begin chapter 4 in Ni No Kuni 2, you can start building your kingdom. There’s a lot that goes into kingdom building in Ni No Kuni 2, so we’ve put together this handy Kingdom Building guide to make sure you know who to put in each facility, what the facilities do, and when you can build new facilities. We’ll be adding additional kingdom building tips for specific facilities in separate articles coming soon. These additional Ni No Kuni 2 kingdom building tips will go more in-depth on certain facilities to make sure you know everything there is to know about how to build a kingdom in Ni No Kuni 2. Keep checking back as we add more and more about Ni No Kuni 2 kingdom building.

Kingdom Building Basics

You can’t start building your kingdom until after you’ve completed chapter 4 in the game. Once that’s done you’ll start with just the castle and a few plots of land to expand. The different facilities you can build on these plots of land must be manned by citizens you recruit to your kingdom, and can provide you with items, currency, the ability to purchase better weapons and armor, new Higgledies and more.

Kingsguilders (KG – Currency)

When you gain access to kingdom building, you also get an additional currency to use. Building and upgrading facilities and conducting research will require Kingsguilders (KG). You earn KG over time based on the facilities you build, the citizens manning those facilities, and how many times the facilities have been upgraded. There’s a limited size to your coffer, so make sure to access the Kingdom Management menu and transfer your KG from the coffer to your main fund (which has no limit). You can check how much KG you earn per hour by selecting Evermore Castle from the Facilities menu.

Stores

Once you have a few stores built, you’ll start to earn various items over time, just like you earn KG over time. Similar to the KG coffer, there are only a set number of items you can hold in the store, so you need to access the Kingdom Management menu and transfer them to your inventory if you want to continue getting new items. The items you receive are based on the stores you’ve built, the citizens manning those stores, and the level of the stores (how many times they’ve been upgraded). If you check on the citizens manning a specific facility there’s a blue bar to the far right of their name. When the bar is full they deliver items to the store. If you move them elsewhere before the bar fills, any items they collected will be lost.

If you access any of the facilities that add items to the store, such as the Ranch or Farm, you can press Option (Start) to see the items that can be added to the store. You won’t always get every item, but if an item is not listed here, you won’t be able to get it in your store. The more you level up a facility, or build more of that facility (such as the Fertile Farm and Flourishing Farm), the higher your chances of getting the more rare items that are listed in each facility.

Citizens and Swift Solutions

Most citizens can be recruited to your kingdom by completing side quests. Whenever you get to a new town, check the map for exclamation points that indicate a side quest is available. Speak to the person at the exclamation point to begin the side quest. While there’s usually no indication that person will join your kingdom if you complete the side quest, more often than not they will or the completion of the quest will lead to someone else moving to your kingdom.

During main story quest 4-4, A Night at the Library, Swift Solutions will appear on the Goldpaw town map. He’s marked by a penguin head on the map, so you shouldn’t have much difficulty finding him. Speak with Swift Solutions and he’ll offer you a multitude of side quests that give you Tokens of Gratitude that you can spend to unlock citizen side quests. Swift Solutions moves around to various locations, so always speak with him if you’re in need of new citizens.

Unlike normal side quests that result in a new citizen moving to Evermore, you have to talk to the citizen in question after completing a Swift Solutions side quest. To be clear, once a Swift Solutions side quest has been completed, the person in question will appear as an exclamation point on the town map. You must speak with them, then they will move to your kingdom.

Facilities

Each facility you can build goes on a specific plot of land. As you upgrade your kingdom your land will expand and you can build more facilities. Once a facility has been built, you need to assign citizens to it. Select a facility and choose Personnel to select which citizens will man that facility. Some citizens will show “Suitable” next to their name, which means they are the best candidate for that facility.

If you don’t see any suitable citizens, or need more staff members, ideally you want to select the citizens with the highest number to the right of their name on the Personnel List screen. This indicates their IQ, which is essentially how proficient they are at whatever skills are needed for that particular facility. Research requires a set IQ, which means you cannot conduct research unless you have the proper staff manning the facility.

You can level up facilities to unlock more personnel slots and conduct more research. Each facility has a different requirement for leveling up. Some will require the kingdom to be at a certain level, while others will require a citizen with a specific ability. As citizens stay in a facility, they gain experience and can be leveled up to learn new abilities that may be required to upgrade the facility.

Research

Conducting research at a facility allows you to get more out of the facility. For example, if you conduct certain research at the Weapon Workshop you will have access to purchase new and better weapons. Research generally requires that the personnel manning each facility has a minimum IQ, which means you’ll need to move people around in some cases so you can hit that IQ number and conduct research. As you upgrade a facility, new research topics will become available to you. While research is in progress you can spend more KG to increase the speed, but if you close the game the research will pause until you start playing again.

Citizen Skill Levels

• Beginner
• Veteran
• Master

Citizen IQ is directly related to their skill level. Citizens generally start as Benginners, as the experience bar under their name slowly increases. Once the bar is full you must go to where that citizen is employed and press Option (Start) on their name in order to level them up. If you do not do this they will remain at their current level and stop gaining experience points.

Kingdom Building Tips

Building Up Currency (KG)

Almost everything you do when it comes to kingdom building requires Kingsguilders. The more facilities you have built, and the more you upgrade these facilities, the more KG you’ll earn per hour. However, if your game is off, you won’t earn any KG. Therefore it’s important to not only upgrade and build facilities as often as possible, but also to leave your game running for as long as possible. While you won’t earn any KG once your coffers are full, that’s better than not earning any KG at all while the game is off. Just remember to clear out your KG coffer often so it doesn’t stay full.

Facility Shops

• General Store
• Higglery
• Outfitters
• Spellworks
• Tasty’s Cookshop
• Weapon Workshop

Several facilities you build have normal shops like you’d find in any other town. For example, the Weapon Workshop allows you to upgrade your weapons from the Kingdom Builder menu, but if you walk up to the Weapon Workshop you can access it like you would a normal shop. Here you can buy weapons just like you would at any new town you visit. The difference is that the weapons available are directly related to the level of the facility. Increase the level and conduct research to improve the items available to purchase.

In cases where only a single person mans a facility (General Store and Cookshop), if you remove the personal assigned to that facility, the shop associated with the facility will be closed until someone is there to man it. That means if you move Floyd from Tasty’s Cookshop to a different facility, you won’t be able to buy anything from the Cookshop until you place Floyd or someone else back at the Cookshop.

Facility Priority

Some facilities should be a high priority for building and upgrading, while others aren’t as important or can even be ignored for the most part. High priority facilities should be your main focus. Anything at medium or low priority is going to be more personal preference than anything else. For example, the Explorer’s Guild adds quality of life improvements such as increasing movement speed in the overworld map. This isn’t necessary by any means, but for people who want to get places faster, it may be a higher priority.

If you’re looking to make your time with Ni No Kuni 2 as easy as possible, focus on the Weapon Workshop and Outfitters facilities. While character level determines how much HP you have and certain skills unlock when you reach a specific level, your damage out and defenses are heavily geared toward weaponry and armor. The higher the damage output on your weapons, the easier fights become. The easier the fights, the more difficult the enemies you can go after, and sudddenly you’re taking down enemies many levels above you and earning big XP and itemrewards for your trouble.

Below you’ll find a table of facilities unlocked at Kingdom Levels 1 and 2 and what we recommend for priority. You should always build each facility, if only to get closer to leveling up your kingdom, but after a facility is built, when you upgrade it and how many personnel you add is completely up to you. Our table is just a suggestion of how you should prioritize the facilities.

Facility Personnel

Under most circumstances you should assign anyone marked “Suitable” to their specialty facility. However, if you want to do research you’ll need a minimum IQ level for the personnel at that facility. Sometimes it’s better to leave a low priority facility empty so you can move that citizen to another facility to bring the IQ up and conduct research.

For example, if you want new and better weapons, you’ll need at least two or three citizens in the Weapon Workshop. Until you have Fitch, Ah Chu and Nu Bi, three citizens who are all “Suitable” for the Weapon Workshop, you may need to move other citizens over to the facility so you have enough IQ to conduct research. If grain and vegetables aren’t as important to you, move a citizen from the Verdant Farm to the Weapon Workshop.

Not every citizen can be used at every facility. Each citizen is rated in four categories: War, Ingenuity, Spritecraft and Conjury. Most citizens excel at one category, but have very low ratings in other categories. The potential personnel list for each facility will only show you citizens who have a rating above zero in whatever category that facility requires. For example, the Higglery requires a rating in Spritecraft, so anyone who has a zero rating in Spritecraft will not be listed under personnel for the Higglery and cannot be placed at the Higglery.

Citizen Skills

Each citizen has a specific skill. For example, Pi Chi, suitable for the Outfitters facility, has the skill Nimble Fingers, which is required for some of the research you can conduct at the Outfitters facility. Some research will require just a citizen with Nimble Fingers, while advanced research will require a master level (maximum experience) citizen with Nimble Fingers. Because some research requires citizens with a specific skill, you need to keep an eye on the skills each citizen has so you can move them around when those skills are required for research elsewhere.

Kingdom Upgrades

You’re going to need to upgrade your kingdom in order to gain new land and build more facilities. The main things that will be holding you back from leveling up your kingdom are number of citizens recruited and total facilities built. It’s not overly difficult to reach the number of facilities required, just build them as you have the KG to do so, whether you plan to staff them or not. However, finding citizens can be a much more daunting task.

In order to get the citizens you need to level up your kingdom, you’ll need to complete as many side quests as possible and move forward with the main story as well. You can get to level 2 before you reach chapter 5 in the main story, but you’ll need to progress quite a bit before you can reach level 3. It’s will take a lot of time to complete all of the required side quests, and you’ll have to move on in the main story to get to a point where more side quests are unlocked. Don’t just focus on kingdom building and ignore main and side quests, or else you’ll find yourself lacking the citizens you need to level up your kingdom.

Level 1 Facilities

Level 2 Facilities

Level 3 Facilities

Kingdom Level 1 Facilities

Barracks

• Priority: Medium
• Suitable: Bai Gon, Gao Jia and Kimmy

The Barracks help to improve your Skirmish abilities. You can increase your Might level, get new Shock tactics, get bigger boosts from command posts and fill your Guts Gauge faster. There are Skirmishes you need to win to progress the main story, and others you’ll need to win to complete side quests, so it’s not a bad idea to put some KG and personnel into the Barracks. However, if you don’t care much about Skirmishes beyond what you’re required to do, you don’t need to devote too many resources to the Barracks.

Bazaars

• Priority: Medium
• Suitable: Persha, Price, Morgan and Phorkys

You cannot perform research at the Humble Bazaar, but building it adds cloth, thread, cotton, string and buttons. All of these items can be used to create and enhance weaponry, so they do have some value. You won’t get the super rare items, but adding more Bazaars and leveling up these facilities will make it easier to obtain the items you need to create and enhance powerful weapons.

Castle

• Priority: High
• Suitable: Evan and Roland

You can’t change the personnel at the Castle, nor can you conduct any research. Selecting the Castle allows you to increase your treasure coffers so you can hold more KG before having to move it to your wallet, level up your kingdom, and check out some stats on your kingdom. Aside from leveling up your coffer and kingdom, there isn’t much else to do here unless you’re curious about how well your kingdom is performing.

Everyday General Store

• Priority: High
• Suitable: Gerel

The Everyday General Store is exactly what it sounds like. You can purchase normal use items that you would find at almost any general shop in the game. However, as you upgrade this facility you’ll earn a discount on items you buy here and add to the products offered at the store. You should make this a priority if your find yourself needing a lot of items while you’re battling in the wild or completing quests. If you don’t use many items, then the General Store shouldn’t be a high priority for you.

Explorer’s Guild

• Priority: Medium
• Suitable: Khunbish, Hoi Den, Tabbias, Leander and Filippos

The Explorer’s Guild allows you to make quality of life changes to the game. Nothing you do here will give you better attack power or anything, but it way make the game generally more enjoyable. For example, you can use the research here to increase the movement speed of your party in the overworld map, or increase the storage capacity of the store in the Kingdom Builder menu. How much you value these improvements will determine where this falls on your priority list.

Farms

• Priority: Low
• Suitable: Munokhoi

There’s no research to be carried out at the various farm facilities. Once you have the Verdant Farm, you’ll start to see grains and vegetables show up in your store, that you can then transfer over to your inventory. The more farm facilities you have, the higher the chance of getting grains or vegetables, and the items you get will have a higher chance of being rare.

Fish Markets

• Priority: Medium
• Suitable: Pontus

You cannot conduct research at the various Fish Markets, but building them does add fish, seafood, shells and corals to the store. These items are important in the creation and enhancement of various armor and weaponry, so while this doesn’t need to be a priority, you shouldn’t completely ignore the Fish Markets.

Higglery

• Priority: High
• Suitable: Auntie Martha, Leander and Candy

Building a Higglery allows you to create and enhance your Higgledy. While many Higgledy are found in the wild by accessing Higgledy Stones, there are quite a few that can only be obtained by creating them using the Higglery. Research at the Higglery allows you to create better Higgledies, reduce the cost of any Higgledies you purchase, increase the amount of experience points Higgledy earn and more. In addition, the only way to level up your Higgledies is through the Higglery.

Hubble-Bubblery

• Priority: Medium
• Suitable: Leander, Thaumas, Thetis, Da Xing and Mylas

The Hubble-Bubblery allows you to earn better rewards for battles. You can increase the amount of money enemies drop, how many blue MP and green HP balls enemies drop and more. You can also increase the wares sold at the Everyday General Store with some of the research done at the Hubble-Bubblery. There’s no real down side to prioritizing the Hubble-Bubblery, but if you ignore it you’re not really missing out on a lot either.

Hunting Lodges

• Priority: Low
• Suitable: Batu, Min Ti, Helena and Lycorias

With a Hunting Lodge your store will start to acquire bones, furs, feathers and leather. These items are used in creating new armor and other items. Throughout most of the early game armor isn’t quite as important as taking down an enemy quickly, but the deeper you get into the game the more good armor can really help you during battles. Once enemies start really dishing out the damage, you’ll want to pay a little more attention to the Hunting Lodges so you can get some of the items you need to make new and better gear, as well as enhance your existing gear.

Lumberyard

• Priority: Low
• Suitable: Niall, Chi Pi and Keeley

Adding a Lumberyard facility to your kingdom allows lumber, resins and fungi to be added to your store. No research can be done at Lumberyards, but leveling up the facility and adding additional Lumberyards will increase how much material you get in stores and how rare those items are.

Mining Camps

• Priority: Medium
• Suitable: Tani, Yung Mein, Bao Wao, Proteus, Cindy May and Kent

The more Mining Camps you have and the more you level them up, the more ores, wonderwater, crystals and prisms will be added to your store. Many of these items are required to level up weapons and other items, so this should be at least mildly important to you. While you won’t get the super rare materials that some weapon upgrades require, you’ll get an abundance materials that are useful for upgrades. You cannot conduct research at this facility.

Outfitters

• Priority: High
• Suitable: Pi Chi, Fai Do, Crispin, Bracken, Yip-Yip and Eli

Much like the Weapon Workshop, the Evermore Outfitters facility offers you a place to buy and improve your armor. As you continue to do research here you can lower the cost of new armor and even gain the ability to unlock new skills hidden in powerful armor that you’ll come across after the early portions of the game.

Ranches

• Priority: Low
• Suitable: Chingis and Muriel

The Ranch facilities add meat, dairy products and eggs to your store. The more you level up the facility or add more ranches, the more products you’ll see in the store, and the higher the chance you’ll see rare items. You cannot conduct research at the Ranch.

Spellworks

• Priority: Medium
• Suitable: Li Li, Hau Ling, Leander and Triton

If you like to play mage clases (Evan, Leander), you’ll want to prioritize the Spellworks. You can put research into learning new spells for combat, as well as spells that help you traverse the world map and even open those pesky blue chests. Aside from leveling up, this is one of the few ways to learn new spells.

Tasty’s Cookshop

• Priority: Medium
• Suitable: Floyd

Tasty’s Cookshop is a one man operation. You only need to assign Floyd to run the shop, and you cannot conduct research here. Instead, any new recipes you find while traveling will allow Floyd to make new dishes that you c an purchase from him.

Weapon Workshop

• Priority: High
• Suitable: Fitch, Ah Chu, Nu Bi, Peleus and Bracken

The Weapon Workshop is where you can buy and enhance your weapons. The more you level up this facility, the better weapons you can make and the more you can enhance weapons you already own. Some research here will also lower the costs of upgrading your weapons to make it a bit easier. Once you get later into the game you’ll also be able to unlock extra weapon skills with some of the research done at the Weapon Workshop. It should be a high priority for all players.

Kingdom Level 2 Facilities

Aranella Square

• Priority: High
• Suitable: N/A

Once your kingdom reaches level 2, one of the first things you should do is build Aranella Square. While the main purpose of Aranella Square is to give you a big influence boost, you cannot build the Institute of Innovation, Goodfellows Inn, or the Fresher and Freshest Fish Markets until the Square is in place. No citizens can be assigned to Aranella Square, but you’ll still need to build it so you can access the other facilities and continue to expand your kingdom.

Basic Training Ground

• Priority: High
• Suitable: Long Mein, Oz and Drew

The Basic Training Ground facilities allows you to increase how fast you can earn experience. The various research options allow you to increase party member experience, Skirmish experience, citizen experience and more. As you might have already guessed, this should be a top priority for you. The faster you earn experience the easier almost everything else in the game becomes.

Dimensional Lab

• Priority: Medium
• Suitable: Hau Ling, Leander, Speio and Chip

If you plan on clearing all of the Dreamer’s Maze locations around the world of Ni No Kuni 2, investing in the Dimensional Lab should be a top priority for you. Some of the research you can conduct at the Dimensional Lab includes slowing down the Danger Gauge in Dreamer’s Mazes, finding Idols and Doors easier and more. If you’re not interested in the Dreamer’s Mazes, there’s no need to prioritize the Dimensional Lab.

Dispellery

• Priority: Medium
• Suitable: Li Li

Some rare equipment you find will be cursed. In order to get the full potential of these equipment you’ll need to remove the curse. That’s where the Dispellery comes into play. Once this has been built you can use it to remove curses from equipment. No research can be done here, but leveling up the facility will allow you to remove the curses from more rare equipment that you’ll find throughout the game.

Evermoria Gardens

• Priority: Low
• Suitable: N/A

When you first upgrade your kingdom to level 2, you probably won’t need to worry too much about the Evermoria Gardens. You can’t even build the facility until you’ve built the Kingmaker’s Cathedral and found a citizen who has the Inner Peace skill (Hansel). Once these requirements are met, the main purpose of the Evermoria Gardens is to provide a huge increase to your kingdom’s influence, which is mainly needed to upgrade the kingdom.

Goodfellows Inn

• Priority: Low
• Suitable: N/A

You cannot build Goodfellows Inn until you have built Aranella Square. However, you should not be in a rush to build Goodfellows Inn. It cannot be staffed, and there’s no research to do inside. The main purpose for the Goodfellows Inn is to increase the influence of your kingdom, making it easier to upgrade your kingdom when the time comes.

Institute of Innovation

• Priority: High
• Suitable: Chi Pi, Henny, Andrew and Francine

The Institute of Innovation cannot be built until you’ve added Aranella Square to your kingdom. Once you have that in place, and build the Institute of Innovation, you can low the cost of many aspects of kingdom building. For example, one research option allows you to lower the cost of building a new facility by 20 percent, while another allows you to reduce research costs by 20 percent. You can even increase how fast citizen gather materials from various facilities. This should be a top priority if you’re interested in getting the most out of your kingdom.

Kingmaker’s Cathedral

• Priority: Medium
• Suitable: Leander, Speio and Hansel

The main purpose of the Kingmaker’s Cathedral is to increase Lofty’s abilities. The research that can be conducted here increases how often Lofty will throw you green HP ball and blue MP balls during battles, as well as other similar abilities. Lofty doesn’t make a dramatic difference in battles, but having the extra healing and mana can come in handy when you encounter difficult fights.

Market Garden (Minor and Medium)

• Priority: Medium
• Suitable: Yu Kan, Halimede and Hipponoe

Adding a Market Garden to your kingdom will give you various fruits and flowers in the store. You’ll need these items for various quests you come across and to obtain some Higgledy from the Higgledy Stones you encounter across the world.

Sage’s Salon

• Priority: Low
• Suitable: N/A

The only reason to build the Sage’s Salon and station people at the facility is to speed up their experience gain. Any citizen who is placed at Sage’s Salon will earn experience points at a faster rate. Upgrading the facility (which is not cheap), will increase the speed further. The normal speed of experience gain is rather slow, but placing a citizen at Sage’s Salon doesn’t increase that speed very much until you upgrade the facility. Unless you’re in a rush to get some master-level citizens, this should be low priority.

Ship-Shape Shipyard

• Priority: Medium
• Suitable: Ketch and Tiller

You cannot build the Ship-Shape Shipyard until you obtain a ship during chapter 5 of the main story. Once the Ship-Shape Shipyard is up and running you can conduct research to build better ships that sail faster avoid enemies better and more.

Symphonium

• Priority: Low
• Suitable: Nereus

The main purpose of the Symphonium is to listen to music. However, you can’t listen to any music until you find a citizen who has the Perfect Pitch skill. That citizen is Nereus from Hydropolis. Until you find him there’s no use building the Symphonium, so it should remain a low priority until that happens. Once it is built you can walk over to the Symphonium and talk to Nereus who will play any of the songbooks you find throughout your adventures. Unfortunately, as soon as you leave the Symphonium the music stops playing.

For more information and strategies on the game be sure to check out our Ni No Kuni 2 game hub!