• Solo play will only get you so far. Cooperation is key.
• A friendly and helpful community always eager to help.
• Building and decorating your city is enjoyable.
• Both humans and elves have their differences in appearance and gameplay.
• Battles require tactics and preparation. Auto-combat won’t get you so far.

Elvenar is a free-to-play fantasy city builder game by InnoGames, the same developer of Forge of Empires, Grepolis, and the long-lasting Tribal Wars. You play as the ruler of humans or elves. Humans have a typically medieval architecture and use engineering to prosper and fight off enemies. Elves are friends of nature and overflow with magic in both their buildings and their creatures. Despite the differences, you will have to achieve the same goal with the chosen race: prosper and grow.

You can do this free of charge, but you can take some shortcuts to stardom if you wish to take advantage of available in-game purchases.

Elvenar is a beautiful game, even more so if you have an architectural flair in you. Navigating its fantastic user-friendly interface is quite easy. A tutorial teaches you about buildings, researching, and scouting while quests keep the interest going.

The bigger and better the building, the higher the costs and time to build it. You can spend diamonds – bought with real currency – to speed up the construction or hire new builders to create more stuff simultaneously. But you don’t have to, and since the game has no PVP, you don’t run the risk of annihilation in the hands of someone who decided to invest their savings.

Spend Your Currencies Wisely

Aside from coins and diamonds, other currencies consist of supplies, Knowledge Points, and sought-after relics.

You use Knowledge Points to research new buildings. You can research manufactories that provide supplies over time, barracks to train new units, or expand your city size to place more facilities. At first, no building or research requires relics, but you will be saving and trading them to amplify your city before you know it. Relics are planks, steel, marble, and so on.

There are also Culture buildings that improve the City’s overall culture. The higher the culture, the higher the bonuses, hence more coins and supplies. Bread and circuses at its finest.

Cooperation is Key

Unlike other building games, Elvenar doesn’t have a PVP system. So if you are afraid that playing without investing money will leave you behind and others will shun you, don’t worry; the game thrives on peacefulness and collaboration between players.

Fellowship is the guild system of Elvenar. You can join one as soon as the basic tutorial ends or create one. Some fellowships allow you to join instantly, where others require applications. When part of a Fellowship, you can participate in tournaments, adventures, and other collaborative events. You can also visit your fellows to give them bonuses and earn some coins in exchange, and they can do the same.

Scout the World to Uncover Points of Interest

When you access the world map, you can scout your surroundings. After a while, you will gain insight into the field, uncovering others players and provinces. Inside a province, you find Encounters that you can complete in two ways: either negotiating by spending resources or, if you lust for blood, you can attack the hostiles. You earn items such as relics, knowledge points, and rank points if you win an Encounter.

Winning all Encounters unlock the Province Expansion in the buildings menu, which increases your City’s construction area.

Scouting gives you access to other players’ cities. You can help them as in your Fellowship and earn some coin in exchange. It also warns them of your help so they can retribute the favor. So don’t be shy and help away!

Combat is Both Profitable and Fun

For the warmonger in you, Elvenar has a solid battle system. Units have a star above them, indicating their rank and a class, which is strong against two classes, neutral against their own, and weak against two. In total, there are five unit classes.

If you’re in haste, you can select auto-battle. But as hostiles get mightier, it’s better to jump into the brawl manually. And you should, because the battle system is pretty enjoyable and lots of fun. Your army is placed on one side of the field and the enemy on the other. The battlefield is divided by grids, where units are positioned and can move around. Melee units have to get close to attack, and ranged units can shoot at a distance according to their attack range status. Some units have special abilities on their attack, like reducing enemy attack damage by half.