[PLAYER GUIDE] Castle Skins and Marching Animations (Update October 2025)

This guide reflects the author’s personal experience and the game’s content as it exists at the time of writing. Future updates may alter features or introduce new content.

How do Castle, Marching, and Truce Skins work?

Together with Talents, Lord, Gea,r and Badges, Castle, Marc,h and Truce Skins are a main component of any battle preparation for both events, PvP and PvE. To access them, you need to click on your castle and then on “Appearance”. This works both on the world and on your castle map.

A marching animation or castle skin you own can be permanent or just for a set amount of time, but don’t worry: Once you get a limited-time skin, you don’t have to activate it directly; instead, you can wait for the best time to use its buffs for a good cause. Truce skins at the moment only exist with permanent versions.

The buffs Skins give are split into two categories: “Collection Bonus (Red)” and “Active Bonus (Blue)”. As the names imply, the active bonus is just in use when you have that specific skin or animation selected. Because you can only have one skin for March, Castle, and Truce active, you will have to select your active one wisely depending on the situation you are in. The collection bonus applies as soon as you unlock the skin, so it can be useful to get a skin just because of a nice collection bonus.

And in case you are wondering: you don’t need to have a truce active to profit from the truce skin.

A castle skin (not marching animations or truce) can also be used just for the looks without affecting the buffs another skin may give to you. This can be done just because you like the look of a specific skin or to deceive your opponents into thinking you are something you are not in reality. A spear player could use an infantry castle skin (together with changing lord and gear), hoping to attract cavalry players who would easily get countered.

Skins are divided into three (or four) ratings to make them easier to evaluate. As with most things in the game, the rankings are SS, S, A, and B. SS-skins of marches, castles, and truces are the rarest and very hard to get, but also have the best buffs attached to them. S-level is sort of a middle ground with many good buffs and easier availability. A-level is the easiest one to get, with many skins available for relatively low cost. Only castles have A-level skins. B-level refers to the skins you have from game start: The default skins.

How can I level my castle skins?

Unlike marching animations or truce skins, castle skins can be leveled to increase their buffs. There are two ways to level a castle skin: one is to increase the collection bonus to add attack buffs, and another is to improve the active attributes.

How to increase the collection bonus

To increase your collection bonus, you first need to actually own the castle permanently. If you do so, in the bottom center of the exterior screen is an enhance button. Depending on the rating, you will need different types of “crystal essences” and get different buffs. While A-rated skins can just be upgraded twice, the other castle skins can be upgraded to level 4. The first level requires 10, the second 20, the third 30, and the fourth 60 essences, no matter the rating. Upgrading a castle skin will give you the following buffs:

There are some exceptions to this rule. Six SS-castle skins and a few A-castle skins, which you can mainly get through the big events like UC and AoW give total health, total defense, or fever attack buffs. As those buffs can stack, the potential from this system is high. When you max out all skins, you would get, for example, 200%+ spear attack permanently. The numbers for cavalry and infantry are similar. Bowmen don’t get a lot of love here, so when you search for bow attack, you will be very limited. To find out which buff a castle gives you, you can click on the magnifying glass at the top of the collection bonuses.

How to get Crystal Essences

The A-level “Rare Crystal Essence” is the easiest one to get. Most players who play this game have more of them than you could ever need. You can get them for free in the Narrow Sea shop and from the recruitment pass. When you still need them in higher quantities, you can buy them with BD as well, but that’s not really needed.

The “Epic Crystal Essences," which are used for S-level skins, are already very hard to get without spending. You can be lucky and get them in the seven-pointed star event (castle wheel), but it is not possible in any quantity. By far the best option and so the only one I would suggest, is to get the “Crystal Essences Trade Fair” pack, which appears every Monday. From that one, you get 20 Epic Essences for 50 BD, 4 times more efficient than any other option. 

The “Legendary Crystal Essences” for the SS castle skins are in a similar spot as the Epic ones. They are just available F2P via the seven-pointed star event. Again, if you want to buy them, I would suggest “Crystal Essence Trade Fair”, this time the second stage, which gives you 10 Legendary and 15 Epic ones for 200 BD. They are also in Treasure Minting, but they are not cheaper there.

How to increase active buffs?

Increasing active buffs is a lot simpler than the collection bonus. You just have to collect more castle skins of the same ranking. You reach the maximum active bonuses for A-level castle skins when you have 10 A-level skins permanently. For S and SS, it is 5 each. What you gain from leveling the skins this way can be very different from one skin to another. Some increase the stats that are already on the skin, and on other skins, you get total health and defense in addition to the regular buffs.

Where can I get castle skins and marching animations?

There are many different places where you can get castle skins. Now I am going to talk about the main sources for them.

• Normal F2P methods

There are a few ways to get some specific castle skins F2P. Four castle skins, “Port North of the Neck”, “Watcher’s Oath”, “Glorious Keep”, and “Solemn Even” have been available for free in the anniversary events in the last few years. When you haven’t played at that time, you will sadly be unable to get them. I am sure there will be another castle skin every other anniversary event, so make sure to pay attention in March of the year to maybe get a free castle skin.

Except for the anniversaries, you can get another two castle skins from the Fiery Crystal Shop. Although they need some time to farm on the mines, they are helpful, if for nothing else than to improve your active buffs on other A-level castle skins.

• Grinding F2P

There are some more ways to get castle skins and even marching animations F2P, but these require a lot of time and effort, and so will not be done by everyone.

The first event that helps you with castle skins and animations is “Return to Westeros” (RtW), an event that appears about 4 times a year. Usually, it seems to be in December, March, June, and September, but it is not a fixed schedule. In there, you can bring back accounts that left the game to get some rewards. You also get rewards when they do dailies. When you are able to get 100k points that way, you can buy a “Rare Exterior Selection Chest”. 

This chest allows you to pick one thing from 22 different castle skins and 10 different marching animations. These mostly consist of A and S-level skins and allow you to get everything a F2P player and even low and mid spenders could ever ask for. As this event requires you to do dailies on 5 accounts for 30 days or have powerful friends to call back during the event, it is something that may require hours upon hours of work. 

In addition to RtW, you can also get this chest from the “Seven-pointed star” event for free. Each time the event comes up, you get 13 pointed stars for free, which means after about 16 events, you can get this chest.

In theory, you can also go even further and wait until you have 1000 stars so you can pick one of the very rare castle skins that are for sale in that event as well, but the amount of events needed for that would take years, and so it isn’t really a valid option for F2P.

When you do want to spend, you can spend 10 BD per pointed star to get one of the skins faster. When you are willing to wait until the Black Friday/Christmas season, you will be able to get pointed stars for 5 BD instead of 10. The best SS castle skin to get for 1000 stars is probably the Sunken City skin for its 30k army size.

• Recruitment Pass (P2P)

When you are willing to spend some BD to get castle skins, you can buy the “Hero Decree” stage of the Recruitment Pass for 100 BD.

Using the “Exterior Redemption Orders” you get there will allow you to pick 1.5 A-level castle skins per month, and you can also get a few S and SS castle skins when you are willing to buy the pass for 10 months.

• Limited Sales

In “Limited Sales,” you can also get the “Exterior Selection Chest” and some other castle skins. 500 BD a piece is quite expensive, but when you need skins and animations in high quantity, this event helps a lot. It is only something for people who value speed more than efficiency.

• Seven’s Treasure

Another event where you can get some castle skins and marching animations is the “Seven’s Treasure” event. During this event, you basically get “Maiden Relic’s” (dears) for every time you spend BD. The ratio here is 5 BD for 1 relic without discounts. This makes the castle skins here quite expensive in a vacuum, but because you get a lot of other stuff from buying the packs, it is still not a bad deal to get some additional rewards.

• Golden Celebration

In “Golden Celebration,” you can get three specific castle skins, all three being S-rated. As this event is partly based on luck, to get a 100% chance to get the skin, you would need to spend 3470 BD to get all rewards on the board.

• Treasure Minting

The event to get some of the best castle skins and marches in the game is called “Treasure Minting,” which appears every two months. As it is luck-dependent, giving exact prizes for the skins is hard, but using averages, it's about 10-12k BD if you buy scrolls directly, half as expensive when you slowly buy the first stages of the specific pack for the event. As it is the only place to get these skins, you will be forced to just try it out. Since the coins are saved, you don’t have to worry that you have to get a skin in one try.

• Summer Dance

Another event to get some rare exteriors, this time marching animations, is the “Summer Dance” (also called the Corolla event). For 5000 Corollas, you can get one of the 5 marching animations. The cost should be around 4k BD, again cheaper with packs, but again the Corolla will be saved for the next event, so you can slow grind it as well. Since the marches are rather weak compared to others like the ones from Treasure Minting, they should not be a priority. 

• Ranking rewards

One last source is the ranking rewards of big events. AoW, SoW, and UC all give castle shards for the top alliances and top eliminators of the highest league/vanguard. From personal experience, I can say that this is possible to do F2P, but punching up to get into one of the top 16 alliances can be hard F2P. Once you get 100 shards, you can unlock those skins.

• Truce Skins

Truce skins have their own sources. Two are available in the Truce Skin shop for Truce Skin Exchange Vouchers you can get from the Valor shop and Angler’s Feast. The rest of the Truce skins are in the Lucky Streak event, although the spending required for that event is hard to guess.

Which castle skins and marching animations do I need?

Depending on your account level, troop type, and priorities, you will need different skins and animations. Here is a list of some things you should prioritize. 

Expedition Damage increase

One of the most important things in the game is to kill Rebel Leaders fast. Both for your gear and for the whole alliance you are part of. To make this easier and more convenient, stacking Expedition Damage is important.

Two castle skins can help you here. “Watcher’s Oath” is F2P but was only available during the anniversary event in 2021, so when you didn’t play at that time, you could get “Dunes Fort” or better “Last Hearth”. Both are available in the Recruitment Pass, and Dunes Fort is also in the Experior Selection Chest, and so is also available F2P. Dunes Fort at level 0, you get 20% damage increase, and at 10, 32%. Last Hearth always gives 5% more damage than the Fort. Getting 10 A-level skins is essential to get the best bonus here. 

As march skin you will need “Kingdom Elite,” which you can get from the Selection Chest as well. Here, you get another 20% damage increase.

Upgrading your city

When you are still working on getting your research or buildings done, or you may want to train troops, skins can help you there as well, although no animations will.

Getting Research, Training, or Building speed from castles isn’t very efficient, as you only get around 10%, but it is still an improvement. 

For Research Speed, I would suggest “Northern Pine,” which gives 10% research speed and is F2P, as you can get it from Fiery Crystal Mine. The other Crystal Mine skin, “Garden Keep”, will help you with a 5% building speed collection bonus. 

The only training castle skin that will be useful is “Ancient Capital”, if you don’t have the anniversary skin from 2025, “Solemn Even”, which you can get from the Recruitment Pass and the selection chest. The 5% training speed active bonus is not much, but the 5000 Single Training Quantity makes training higher amounts of troops a lot more convenient.

Fighting (Infantry)

As a first castle skin for infantry, I would suggest “Dornish Tree,” which you can get from the recruitment pass, and adds 17.5% infantry attack. Once you get a selection chest you don’t need for Expedition Damage, I would then get “King’s Glory”. That will add some attack and a lot of defence. From Seven-Pointed Star, you could then get “Gates of Fate”, but I wouldn’t suggest it as “Sunken Cities” army size is still better for infantry only, then Gates of Fate.

In addition, you, of course, should start to farm every castle with an inf attack as an upgradable collection bonus. 

The first marching animation from the selection chest should be “A Dance of Snowflakes”. From the “Seven-pointed star” event, you can then get “Black Stag’s Anger” when you are doing rallies. This one is an endgame march through.

Fighting (Cavalry)

Cavalry castle skins are a bit in a strange spot right now. Mainly because of the new Mentor-Apprentice System. As a mentor there, you can get the “Sacrifice of Eternal Winter” skin for 7 days each week, which is better than any A or S-rated cavalry skin. This means once you have a 100,000 personal score, you can get this castle skin. Before that, I would suggest getting “Silent Prayer” from the Recruitment Pass if you missed the “Port North of the Neck” skin from 2022's anniversary event. Like with Infantry, I would not suggest “Ancient Vow” as the permanent SS-skin you should use. Instead, you should pick “Sunken City”.

In addition, you, of course, should start to farm every castle with cavalry attack as an upgradable collection bonus. 

The first marching animation from the selection chest should be “Light of Honor”. From the “Seven-pointed star” event, you can then get “Black Stag’s Anger” when you are doing rallies, and “Song of Triumph” from the “Summer Dance” event when doing solos. The latter two are endgame marches through.

Fighting (Spearmen)

As a first pick for spear, I would suggest “Rose of Highgarden” from the Recruitment Pass. This can then be upgraded with “Cloudtop Rainbow” from the selection chest. “Sunken City” should again be the first pick from Seven-Pointed Star.

In addition, you, of course, should start to farm every castle with spear attack as an upgradable collection bonus. 

The first marching animation from the selection chest should be “Splendid Light”. From the “Seven-pointed star” event, you can then get “Black Stag’s Anger” when you are doing rallies. This one is an endgame march through.

Fighting (Bowmen)

Just like with the collection bonus, Bowmen have it hard with castle active bonuses as well. The only Bow exclusive skin is “City of Judgement,” which you can get from the exterior selection chest. When advancing further in the game, “Sunken City” should be the target for Bow players as well.

In addition, you, of course, should start to farm the few castles with bow attack as an upgradable collection bonus. 

There is no bowmen marching animation, so bow players have to use endgame total attack ones like “Ironborn of the Old Ways” from Corolla or “Black Stag’s Anger” from the “Seven pointed star” event for rallies

Fighting (Synergy)

When you have built up a good synergy with good weapons, it may be time to invest in “Treasure Minting” to get one of the castle skins focused on synergy. 

When you are using the “Female Setup,” you should get the “Majestic Holy” castle skin or “Majestic Holy City” when you use cavalry with your female setup. As march, you should get “Oath of Unity”.

When you use the “Crit/Bleed Setup,” you should get the ship “Silence” or “Castle of Triumph” when you use an infantry crit/bleed setup. As march, you should get “Oathkeeper”.

When you use “Weakness Setup,” you should get the “Water Garden” castle skin or “City of Divine Wisdom” when you use the spearmen weakness. As march, you should get “Tranquil Protection”.

Those castle skins will help a lot to increase your synergy damage and are essential if you want to compete with other strong players.

Army and Rally Size

Some castle skins give passive army size, which is very powerful. Here is a short list of skins that do so and where to get them:

• 10k from City of Stars (Recruitment Pass Seven Pointed Star)
• 10k from City of Titans (Recruitment Pass, Seven’s Treasure or Seven Pointed Star)
• 10k from Grand Keep (Recruitment Pass or Selection Chest)
• 5k from Beacon of Light (Recruitment Pass or Selection Chest)
• 5k from Heart of the Grass Sea (Lord of Lords [not permanent])
• 10k from Keep of Kings (Recruitment Pass, Seven’s Treasure or Seven Pointed Star)
• 10k from Winds of Winter (Kings Landing Merchant)
• 10k from Dragon’s Crown (AC Ranking Rewards)
• 10k from Icebound Keep (Seven’s Treasure or Seven Pointed star)
• 10k from Ancient Vow (Seven Pointed Star)
• 10k from Revival of Winders (Seven Pointed Star)
• 10k from Dragon’s Peak (UC Rewards)
• 10k from Blue Winter Rose (SoW Ranking Rewards)

The same thing applies to rally size, and although it is not as strong as army size, it is still an important buff:

• 10k from Shadow of Valyria (Recruitment Pass or Selection Chest)
• 10k from Gates of Fate (Seven Pointed Star)
• 10k from Keep of Kings (Recruitment Pass or Seven’s Treasure)
• 10k from Winds of Winter (R’hllors Trial [not permanent])
• 10k from Dragon’s Crown (AC Eliminations [not permanent])
• 10k from City of Titans (Recruitment Pass, Seven’s Treasure or Seven Pointed Star)
• 10k from Icebound Keep (Seven’s Treasure or Seven Pointed star)
• 10k from Ancient Vow (Seven Pointed Star)
• 10k from Revival of Winders (Seven Pointed Star)
• 10k from Dragon’s Peak (UC Rewards)
• 10k from Blue Winter Rose (SoW Ranking Rewards)
• 10k from City of Stars (Seven Pointed Star)

Conclusion

There are a lot of castle skins and marching animations in the game, and many ways to get them. While some can be gotten from many different events, others require one specific event. It is important to know beforehand what you need to get what you want. It is also very powerful to farm castle skins you don’t even want to have active. The passive buffs alone make many skins worth it.

Special thanks to Chronicler HotepRa for creating and sharing this guide with the community.