Castle sieges

Overview

A castle siege is an open-world event. Castles stand dormant — visible and solid — until one comes to life, and then any players nearby can besiege it.

Castle sieges are still in development and not yet open to players. The rules below describe how sieges work in the current development build.

Activation

Now and then the server checks dormant castles. A castle can wake only when a player is nearby, its cooldown has finished, and there is room under the limit on how many sieges can run at once.

The battlefield

• When a castle wakes, cover appears around it: stone barricades and weaker wooden spiked fences, about two tiles wide. Both block movement and arrows, deal no damage, and are never repaired. The approach to the gate always stays clear.
• Players damage the castle itself directly. Its own soldiers and arrows never harm it.
• Archers on the battlements loose telegraphed volleys of arrows. They don’t home in, and they never hit the castle’s own soldiers.

The garrison

The castle sends out soldiers in delayed waves from a limited reserve: the Castle Footman, Heavy Knight and Halberdier. When the castle is down to a quarter of its strength, the Castle Captain arrives with an escort and rallies the soldiers around him.

Every soldier carries real equipment of its type, with a rarity of Common to Uncommon (Uncommon to Rare for the Captain). Defeated soldiers give experience and your own personal loot, and their weapon and shield may each drop.

Victory

When the castle falls, SIEGE SUCCESSFUL is announced, and every eligible contributor receives a one-time payout of experience (adjusted to their own level) and gold. Just standing nearby earns nothing. A contributor who was offline at the moment of victory is paid when they return.

No new waves or volleys come after victory, but surviving soldiers keep fighting. Once the fighting has stopped for a minute, they leave the field without loot. The ruined castle stays standing until it resets to intact and dormant, and its cooldown begins.

Abandoning a siege

If everyone stops fighting for three minutes, the castle starts to reset. Participants are warned in chat at 60 and 30 seconds. Rejoining the fight cancels the reset. If it completes, the castle returns to full strength with no rewards.