Lords Mobile Early Research Priority Guide: What to Upgrade First

To build an efficient account in Lords Mobile, prioritize the Economy and Monster Hunt trees in your Academy before investing heavily in military combat. Maxing construction speed, gathering efficiency, and energy regeneration provides the speedups, gems, and crafting loot needed to reach Castle Level 25. Avoid the Defense tree entirely during early development, as wall upgrades inflate profile might without offering practical defense against enemy rallies.

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Early Academy Research Priorities

The following table outlines how to sequence early research categories based on their immediate return on investment:

Research Tree	Priority Level	Core Technologies to Target	Primary Progression Benefit
Economy	High	Construction Speed, Resource Gathering, Resource Weight	Reduces building timers; accelerates tile gathering queues
Monster Hunt	High	Energy Recovery, Max Energy, Monster Hunt I–III	Generates gems, speedups, and guild gift chests
Military	Medium	Training Speed, Army Size, T2 and T3 Troop Unlocks	Increases march capacities; expands Darknest capabilities
Familiars	Medium	Pact 1, Pact 2, Merging Speed	Unlocks passive turf talents and development boosts
Defense	Do Not Research	Wall HP, Trap Capacity, Trap Defense	Consumes gold and time; creates inflated, vulnerable might

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Maximize the Economy Tree First

The Economy tree establishes the operational foundation for reaching high-level Academy milestones. Without economic research, building timers quickly stall kingdom growth.

Max Construction Speed: Research Construction Speed immediately whenever your Academy levels up. Because construction timers compound across every turf structure—including Manors, Barracks, Infirmaries, and Resource buildings—shaving percentage points off build times saves substantial speedups.
Upgrade Resource Gathering and Weight: Upgrading Gathering Speed allows marching queues to clear resource tiles rapidly, reducing the window where gathering troops can be attacked on the kingdom map. Higher Resource Weight allows smaller troop contingents to clear high-level tiles completely, keeping the rest of your army available for Darknest rallies or turf defense.
Defer Passive Resource Production: While passive food, timber, and ore production provide continuous trickle yields, active tile gathering provides a much higher hourly return for active players. Reserve passive production upgrades for downtime between major milestones.

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Upgrade Monster Hunt to Fund Account Growth

Monster Hunt research is the primary source of speedups, gems, and hero gear materials for developing castles. Unlike military stats, which only apply during turf or wonder battles, Monster Hunt upgrades return value every time you spend hero energy on the kingdom map.

Unlock Monster Hunt II and III: Push your Academy to unlock Monster Hunt tiers as soon as requirements are met, allowing your heroes to hit higher-level map targets.
Level Energy Recovery and Max Energy: Increasing Max Energy prevents energy pools from capping while you are offline, while faster Energy Recovery increases your total daily monster swings.
Reduce Hunt Costs: Leveling Energy Cost Reduction and Consecutive Hunt reduces the total energy required to finish off damaged monsters.
Distribute Guild Gifts: Every map monster your alliance defeats sends a Guild Gift chest to every member. Accelerating your guild's hunting capability increases collective speedup and shield income.

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Why You Must Skip the Defense Tree

Beginners should bypass the Defense tree entirely during early development. The Academy provides extensive upgrades for Wall HP, Trap Building, and Trap Defense, but these investments do not scale against real player attacks.

Even modest solo attacks and basic rallies wipe out upgraded wall traps in a single engagement, rendering invested research time and gold wasted. Furthermore, wall research contributes "bloated might"—it inflates your account's public might score without giving your army the combat stats required to defend against attackers. High might with weak armies attracts opportunistic enemies.

Instead of researching wall defense, protect your kingdom through operational habits:

Keep your Leader and top-tier troops inside the Shelter around the clock.
Send excess troops into 8-hour Darknest ghost rallies to keep them off the turf during offline periods.
Maintain an active Peace Shield during hostile kingdom events.

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Target Utility Upgrades in the Military Tree

Before reaching Castle 25, deep investments into specific troop attack percentages (such as pure Infantry, Ranged, or Cavalry Attack) yield low returns because early army sizes are too small to benefit from high multipliers. Focus military research on capacity and basic unit tiers:

Training Speed: Reduces the speedups required to replace lost forces.
Army Size: Directly increases march capacity for resource gathering, Darknests, and sheltering limits.
Troop Unlocks: Progress through Tier 1 (T1) and Tier 2 (T2) units. T1 Ballistas offer low healing costs and high carry weight for farming, while T2 units handle baseline gathering defense. Unlock Tier 3 (T3) troops to contribute to guild Darknest rallies, but avoid mass-training T3 armies early due to high hospital healing costs.

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Unlock Pact 1 and Pact 2 Familiars

Once the Monster Lab, Mystic Spire, and Gym structures are built, invest in the Familiar tree to unlock Pact 1 and Pact 2. These early tiers require relatively low research timers and provide permanent development buffs:

Territe (Pact 1): Provides passive construction speed increases.
Engineer (Pact 1): Boosts passive resource generation.
Magmalord (Pact 2): Improves gathering speeds on the kingdom map.

Leveling these early familiars through Gym training and Pact merging establishes the foundation required for advanced Pact 3 familiars later in progression.