When it comes to building up your city, the first part is earning all the cool stuff from quests and events to make it spiffy and give you the good things in FoE life. The second part is maintaining them. Some items are going to fall out of favor for newer, better things, some things remain static, and then other things do best if you bring them up to current era with you. Basically, is it in your best strategic interests to raise that era-specific building up to current era, or not? That’s a tough decision that can take a lot of thought (at least at first), and will ultimately be influenced by your personal play style, but once you make the decision how do you bring the building up?

There are two main ways to accomplish this: Renovation Kits and One-Up Kits. The third way is a little more outside-the-box, but worth keeping in mind as well, and that would be specific building upgrades. We’re going to start with the main two ways though, and then we can review that odd-ball third way because it specifically might impact plans on when you age up.

Renovation Kit

The Renovation Kit is arguably one of the most important resources in the game, and as such is also one of the harder ones to obtain. You don’t see them often, and you will want to be frugal with when you use them (as in don’t just bring things to current age willy-nilly).

Specifically, this kit will take any building it is applicable to be used for and bring it up to your current era. So if you won an event item, lets say the Mikawa Bridge since that’s the most recent event that happened (Spring 2020), and you planted it while you were in EMA. So this bridge is giving you EMA goods because that’s the era it is. Now, in sixth months we’ll say, you’ve moved up in era twice and you’re now LMA. Your Mikawa Bridge is still producing EMA goods for you and you’d honestly prefer if it were making LMA goods. This is what the Renovation Kit is for. If you use the Renovation Kit on the EMA Mikawa Bridge while you’re in LMA it will move the Mikawa Bridge into LMA. This will immediately change its production to be for LMA items. The Mikawak Bridge is only an example, the Renovation Kit will work in the same way on any applicable building.

One-Up Kit

Unlike the Renovation Kit, a One-Up Kit will only move your applicable building up one era at a time. If we return to our example, the EMA Mikawa Bridge that we want to bring to our current era of LMA, it would take two One-Up Kits (as opposed to one Renovation Kit) to make that happen. That’s because the first One-Up Kit would bring the bridge from EMA to HMA, and the second kit would bring it from HMA to LMA. This makes the One-Up Kit a little less powerful than the Renovation Kit, but it also makes it a bit more versatile. Since the One-Up Kit won’t automatically bring an item to current era it means that you can have some control over how far forward you bring a building. This is particularly helpful if you tend to have a play style based around negotiations and you want to leave some Sleigh Builders (for example) behind one era. If you don’t already have some back there (or don’t have enough), a One-Up Kit might be a better solution than a Renovation Kit so you can control how far it goes up in era to get what you need. So basically, like its name implies, a One-Up Kit moves an applicable building up one era each time you use it, until you reach current era (at which point you cannot use the kit anymore because you cannot push something past your era).

Upgrade Kits

The third way to bring an item to current era, and the way that requires the most foresight and planning, are upgrade kits that are specific to the building you’re looking to work on. For the most part if you’re going to be upgrading a building from level 1 to its max level, you’re probably going to do it in short order and that means this won’t apply unless you plan for it. If you’re working on a Settlement, or perhaps a Statue of Honor on the other hand, this is something you’ll see without perhaps intending to. As you use an upgrade the item in question will move to the current era you’re in. We’ll take Yggdrasil for our example here, because lets face it the Vikings Settlement takes f.o.r.e.v.e.r. If you started the Viking Settlement while you’re in EMA, you’ll want to plant Yggdrasil ASAP for its benefits because even at Level 3 it’s pretty awesome. Vikings is going to take you a few months to get through though (you need 15 completed settlements to get your Level 9 aka Max Level Yggdrasil), and you might not want to stay in EMA that entire time. If you have moved to LMA by the time you finish that last Viking Settlement, then when you apply the final Yggdrasil upgrade to your beautiful tree of goodies, it will become LMA. That’s because when you use a building upgrade, it will make the building match your current era. It doesn’t matter what era it presently is in. This is a great work-around to the Renovation and One-Up kits if you need to save one and have it as an option. It’s also something to be mindful of if you’d rather leave something in a specific era to not age-up before you’ve done what you’ve set out to do.

I’ve mentioned “applicable buildings” a couple of times when talking about the upgrades, because not all buildings can be brought to current era. Applicable buildings are typically special buildings won in events or that can now be purchased in the Antique Dealer. It’s easier to state what cannot be upgraded honestly: Great Buildings and anything that you can build in your “Build” menu. There are also a couple of special quest items, like the Monastery, that cannot be upgraded as well. Everything else however is free game, and you’ll know it can be upgraded because when you go to use the item a little star will appear over the building. This is the same for both browser-based and mobile players, but in my personal opinion the stars are easier to see on a computer. When you’re just using an upgrade that is for a specific item, like the Statue of Honor, only buildings that can accept the upgrade will appear. In general though, no stars = no upgrades.

Likely the biggest question you have at this point now is: Should I upgrade the building? This is a really important question and there is no perfect answer. All I can offer are some general guidelines on how to decide what needs to be upgraded, and what does not.

Flow Chart for Upgrades

  • Determine your play style: do you fight a lot, do you negotiate a lot, or are you somewhere in the middle?
    • If you fight, does the item in question give you an attack boost?
      • If yes, will the attack boost increase if you upgrade the item? Hint: Check the item on the FoE Wiki page to determine this. Depending on if you’re moving one era or multiple eras will change whether you want to use a One-Up Kit or a Renovation Kit, though multiple One-Ups can be used if you lack a Renovation Kit. Another Hint: Don’t start upgrading with multiple One-Ups (should you lack a Renovation Kit) if you cannot reach the era you need to get the additional boost.
        • If no, then it’s not worth raising the building for that reason, save your Renovation or One-Up Kit.
      • If no, then it’s not worth raising the building for that reason, save your Renovation or One-Up Kit.
    • If you negotiate, does the item in question give you goods?
      • If yes, are they in the correct era of your need?
        • If yes, then it’s not worth raising the building for that reason, save your Renovation or One-Up Kit.
        • If no, then what era do they need to be?
          • If only one era higher, a One-Up Kit will suffice.
          • If more than one era higher, a Renovation Kit is best, but multiple One-Up Kits will do it as well depending on what you have.
  • Regardless of play style, will increasing the era of this building give you more of something you need? Hint: Check the FoE Wiki page if you’re unsure.
    • If yes, then what era does it need to be?
      • If only one era higher, a One-Up Kit will suffice.
      • If more than one era higher, a Renovation Kit is best, but multiple One-Up Kits will do it as well depending on what you have.
    • If no, then it’s not worth using a Renovation or One-Up Kit on the building in question.
    • Is it a Hall of Fame?
      • Yes, then upgrade it if you can for more GP to your guild. This would probably be final priority for me personally, but if you have kits to spare this is super helpful to helping your guild out.
    • Is it a Champion Retreat?
      • If yes, do you need champions for your current era?
        • If yes, upgrade it.
      • If no, then save your Renovation or One-Up Kit.

That’s probably not a perfect flow-chart for everyone, but it will likely cover 99% of bases. If you have a different stat that isn’t covered up there, perhaps a defense boost (for example), then just follow the same idea from the attack boost area. Coins and supplies from the goods area. It can be pretty plug-and-play-esque to help determine your use of upgrade supplies. Keep in mind as well that you’re not just increasing one stat on a building when you upgrade, you’re increasing all stats on the building. This means if it gives you more population, then it could offset your happiness. Or if it costs more population you might not have enough in reserve to allow for the upgrade to happen. Similarly it might increase the amount of happiness it gives or takes away (building dependent). Look at all the stats before you make the move just in case you might unbalance your city. So long as you’re not drastically messing with population (or so long as you have plenty of happiness in reserve) you should be fine, but it’s always a good idea to measure twice and cut once as they say.

So where can you find these magical Renovation and One-Up Kits? A couple of places: Daily Quests, The Antique Dealer, Event Quests, and Guild Expedition Prizes/Relics mainly. They may show up in other places in the future (since you never know with Inno), but right now those are the main ways to earn these kits. That’s why they’re so valuable; it’s not necessarily easy to get your hands on them.

Once you get used to it, upgrading buildings in your city is pretty simple. You’ll get a feel for it, and you’ll just know which buildings are most important to you. You can also check your inventory to make sure you have enough Renovation and/or One-Up Kits to be able to upgrade everything that you need to before moving up in era, which is really good planning if you’re into that sort of thing (I see you out there winging it haha). Seriously though, you just might kick yourself if you don’t plan ahead well enough in this area and you fall short and have to play the waiting game to get the item you need. Patience, it’s not for everyone, but this game can require it.