Automating Academy research in Viking Rise

Research is slow, constant, and the easiest thing in the game to forget about for three days. It's a good fit for a bot precisely because it needs attention roughly once every few hours and never at a convenient time.

This guide assumes you've completed Viking Rise bot setup.

This one works the moment you turn it on. It starts on the Economy tree, so everything below is a refinement rather than a requirement.

What the action does

One pass opens the Academy, works along the chosen tree looking for something it can start, and starts it. A research that's already running is left alone — unless you allowed speed-ups, in which case it spends them on the timer instead.

Setting it up

Research Tree picks Economy or Military, and the bot progresses that one only. Economy is what a fresh copy of the action uses if you never open the dropdown.

Upgrade Academy? decides what happens when the tree is blocked. Research nodes are gated behind Academy level, and when everything the bot can reach needs a higher Academy, the game offers a Go button leading to the Academy's own upgrade. Ticked, the bot follows it — including working back through any building the Academy upgrade itself depends on. Unticked, the pass just ends cleanly.

Use resources tops up from your inventory when a research is short. Use speedups spends speed-up items, in two places: after starting a research, and on one that was already running when the pass began.

Assist is always taken and isn't a setting. If you're in a tribe, the game offers free help on a running research. It costs you nothing, so the bot always takes it, whatever the speed-up box says.

How it picks a research

It reads every node's progress and takes the first one that isn't finished, working the top row first and left to right. If nothing on the visible part of the tree can be started, it scrolls along and looks again.

There are two different kinds of "can't start this", and the difference matters:

• Locked means the node is waiting on another research. No amount of Academy level opens it — only finishing what it depends on. The bot leaves it alone.
• Gated means the node is waiting on Academy level. That's the case Upgrade Academy? exists for.

Troubleshooting

Nothing starts and nothing is reported wrong. A research is already running. The Academy runs one at a time, so a busy queue is a clean skip. Tick Use speedups if you'd rather it shortened the timer.

It says the tree is blocked every pass. Everything reachable needs a higher Academy. Tick Upgrade Academy? and it will raise the Academy for you; leave it unticked and you need to raise it yourself.

It upgraded something that isn't the Academy. The Academy upgrade had its own prerequisite, and the bot followed the game's chain back to whatever was actually startable. That's the intended behaviour — it makes progress instead of stalling.

It's researching the wrong tree. The dropdown is per copy of the action. Switching it doesn't cancel anything already running on the other tree; that finishes on its own.

I run this and Upgrade Building together. They can both want the Academy. Research only touches it when the tree is genuinely gated and you ticked the box, and you have two builders, so they rarely collide.