A Beginner's Guide to 9 Kings' New Joker Mode and Rainbow Cards in 1.0

9 Kings left Steam Early Access and launched into version 1.0 today, and the jump is a big one: Sad Socket's card-drafting kingdom builder now ships with four full game modes, more than 130 cards, over 140 decrees and a brand-new sandbox called Joker Mode. If you are coming in fresh off the 1.0 launch, the sheer number of systems can be overwhelming. Here is how the core loop actually works, what changed with the new Rainbow cards, and how to get the most out of Joker Mode once you unlock it.

How the Kingdom-Building Loop Works

Every run of 9 Kings starts the same way: you pick one of the nine kings, each with a different starting deck of buildings, troops and spells, and begin growing a single capital from a humble village into a sprawling citadel. Cards you draft get placed onto plots around that capital, and each plot you fill either produces resources, trains troops or casts a passive effect on your kingdom.

Combat is handled automatically. On a set cadence, rival kings march on your lands, and the army you have assembled from your plots fights theirs without direct input from you — your job is building the right combination of units, buffs and terrain before the fight starts, not controlling it during. Beating a rival king lets you loot cards from their unique deck, so the kings you choose to fight (rather than make peace with) directly shape what tools you have access to for the rest of the run.

What's New in 1.0's 130+ Card Pool

The game originally shipped with 81 cards; the 1.0 patch notes put the current total above 130, with the growth concentrated in Rainbow cards — the rarest, most build-defining tier, playable regardless of which king you picked. The update adds nine brand-new Rainbow cards: Reflector, Reactor, Factory, Leech, Great Hall, Singularity, Accumulator, Mantra and Hound, on top of the 27 that were already added in the pre-launch Patch #30. New players should prioritize picking up any Rainbow card they can afford early, since they tend to scale a build far harder than a king-specific card of the same rarity.

Decrees and Perks: The Real Difference-Makers

Decrees and perks are the two systems that quietly decide whether a run spirals out of control in your favor or the enemy's. 1.0 adds more than 30 new decrees, bringing the total past 140, and standardizes the math: every king now has exactly nine unique decrees, while the universal and Rainbow decree pools settle into multiples of nine as well. Decrees are permanent run-wide rule changes, so reading what one actually does before taking it matters far more than with a single card.

Perks follow a similar structure in 1.0: nine per king, nine Rainbow perks, nine multiplayer-only perks and eighteen universal perks, for more than 110 total. New players should treat perks as the layer that fixes a build's biggest weakness — if your run is struggling with gold income or unit survivability, look for a perk that directly patches that hole rather than one that is simply the flashiest option on offer.

Unlocking and Using Joker Mode

Joker Mode is 1.0's headline addition, and Sad Socket's own patch notes describe it as "a much-requested custom mode that allows you to customize your deck and game rules." It unlocks once you have beaten every one of the nine kings at least once, after which a new character — the Joker — becomes playable. Inside Joker Mode you build your own nine-card deck by hand-picking cards from across all nine kings' pools, then set your own ruleset: starting gold, number of lives, available re-rolls, which enemy kings can appear, and whether certain events are disabled entirely.

Joker Mode is also the gateway to Daily Mayhem, a Quest Mode spin-off that generates one random challenge a day with its own preset deck, decrees and win condition. It only unlocks after you have cleared all 81 base quests on any difficulty, so treat Quest Mode as a long-term project rather than something to rush through before trying Joker Mode.

For a first Joker Mode deck, keep the deck close to a proven single-king strategy rather than mixing nine unrelated cards — the mode's appeal is precision, not chaos, and a focused nine-card deck will out-value a grab-bag every time.

Singleplayer, Multiplayer and Quest Mode Still Matter

Joker Mode sits on top of the three modes that were already in the game, and 1.0 touches all of them. Singleplayer keeps the dozens of difficulty levels that made 9 Kings' early access run popular, letting you push a single build further as you climb each tier. Multiplayer pits your kingdom against builds submitted by other players asynchronously, with a ladder to climb toward being crowned king of kings; 1.0 adds new multiplayer-only perks and more than 300 cosmetic vanity items — haircuts, eyes, faces and backgrounds for each king — so the mode now has a real cosmetic progression track alongside the competitive one. Quest Mode sends you across the nine lands to solve 81 unique, mechanics-bending puzzles, and finishing all of them on any difficulty is the only way to reach Daily Mayhem.

Tips for Surviving Your First 1.0 Runs

• Pick a king whose starting deck leans on one resource (gold, troops or spells) rather than spreading thin across all three; focused builds are easier to pilot while you are still learning plot placement.
• Don't automatically declare war on every rival king. Making peace with a king whose cards don't fit your current build denies that threat for free and lets you focus resources on the kings actually worth looting.
• Read every decree's full text before confirming it. Because 1.0 standardized each king at nine unique decrees, there are now several decrees per king with very similar names but opposite effects.
• Use the new random-pick die (introduced in 1.0 for single-player) if you're not sure which king to try next — it's a fast way to see more of the roster without decision paralysis.
• Save your first Rainbow cards for whichever plot is already the backbone of your kingdom. A Rainbow card slotted into a build's weakest point usually underperforms compared to one stacked onto its strongest.

9 Kings' 1.0 update is built around giving you more ways to "break the game," in the developer's own words, rather than a straightforward difficulty increase — which means the biggest early mistake new players make is playing too conservatively. Once you understand how decrees, perks and Rainbow cards stack on top of each other, experimenting aggressively with a build is usually the fastest way to learn the rest of the game. Full details on every new mode, card and decree are in Sad Socket's own 1.0 patch notes on Steam.