Before the recent big patch, kingdoms could all be unlocked by spending like 5000 gold per kingdom, no quests necessary. Now you have to complete all the quests in a group of kingdoms before other kingdoms are available to unlock. So I guess you have to complete all the quests to unlock all the kingdoms now, even though formally quests were unimportant for making the best use of time in the game. I don't know what the best way to handle these changes is. I guess you can look up beginner guides for the most recent patch number (5.0? I can't remember). Unlocking kingdoms gives you more banners to choose from for your teams which is good. And you do want to pour all your money into leveling up your kingdoms, each 1-5 (focusing on one kingdom at a time) and after that all kingdoms one level at a time to 10 (all kingdoms leveling equally because of how expensive it gets). PvP is the best way to farm gold, guild seals (important for chests), and give double experience points. As for resources, I recommend setting Khetar as your home kingdom for early game because it gives the most souls which is important for leveling up troops. When you get Valkyrie you'll be able to farm as many souls as you need just using her in PvP and other battles since she's such a great Mana generating troop that also gives souls, but you can search any of your troops that have the word souls to use in soul farming (some of these will have to have an associated trait called necromancy unlocked and these should be used with any troops that gain souls whenever they cast their spell), say in explore mode where the enemies aren't too hard. Souls can be hard to come by early game. I would invest in Dwarven Gate with souls and traitstones. Alchemist I think is also worth leveling up since he is a good Mana generator type troop. Early game I found troops that convert a chosen Mana color to a specific color were great, especially if they only cost 10 Mana. Right now you don't have a great damage dealer but some to keep an eye out for include Lady Ironbeard and Rowanne as I mentioned earlier. You can look up Tacet on YouTube for beginner teams though. When you join a guild you'll gain troops much faster from all the keys you'll get