Fighting other players

In short: How player fights work here -- where they are allowed, what a death costs, how battle power and gear decide a duel -- plus the two places with their own rules: the Arena and the Prison.

Where: anywhere but the Market and the newbie village. The Arena (a guard in Twin City takes you there) is the place to spar without losing anything. How: switch your PK mode and click the other player. In Capture mode you can only strike someone whose name is flashing blue; in PK mode you can strike anyone. What decides it: your class, your gear, how close you are standing, and how often your weapon can swing. In that order.

A duel on Aurenfall is not the same fight as hunting. Against a monster you hit with everything you have; against a player only a fraction of that lands, defence works differently, and — the part most people are surprised by — you have to be in reach.

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Reach: the thing that decides most fights

Your weapon reaches exactly as far as it says it does.

So a Trojan or a Warrior has to close the distance, and a Taoist or an Archer has to keep it open. That is the whole shape of player-versus-player here.

How a melee class closes: you jump. A jump is instant and covers far more ground than a step. Learning to jump onto a caster — and, if you are the caster, learning to jump away again — is the single most valuable skill in a duel.

Flying beats melee outright. While an Archer is in the air with Fly, nothing whose weapon reaches less than 5 cells can touch them at all — not a sword, not a club, not a shield-bearer. Only a bow or a spell reaches them. That is the Archer's whole defence, and it is why an Archer who keeps moving is so hard to finish.

How often you can strike

A duel is fought at your weapon's own speed — not the quicker rhythm you hunt at.

Cyclone makes you swing three times as often while it lasts. It is the biggest single change to your rate of fire in the game.

What lands

Four things shape a blow at another player, in this order:

1. Defence reduces it by a percentage. Against monsters defence is subtracted; against players it divides. That keeps a fight the same shape at every level — defence always matters, and it never reduces a blow to a rounding error.
2. Only part of what is left lands — 16%. Weapons and spells at the top of the game roll numbers several times a player's whole health bar.
3. Battle power swings it — 2% for each point of difference in gear score.
4. Your class adjusts it — see below.

And before all four:

• A skill hits harder than a plain blow, but not three times harder. Hercules, RapidFire and Dash are worth pressing, and against a player they are capped at one and a half normal blows. Against a monster they still hit for everything they are worth.
• Attack buffs are capped at double. Intensify, Stigma and Superman are all worth casting, but together they cannot multiply a blow by six the way they used to. Against monsters, Superman still multiplies your damage by ten.
• A bow does a third against another player. A bow is a hunting weapon; against armour it is not what it is against a beast. The Archer is paid back in rate of fire, reach, and Fly.
• What your gear carries, a duel now carries too. A frozen arrow freezes a person; a poisoned weapon poisons one; Reflect turns a player's blow around exactly as it turns a monster's; and a Warrior's Dash charges a player, stuns them and shoves them a step back. Until recently all of that quietly stopped at the edge of PvP.
• Missing is real. Your accuracy against their dodge decides whether the blow lands at all — and accuracy comes from Dexterity on your gear. A Warrior who carries a shield gives up the second weapon that would have carried it, and misses close to a third of their blows as a result. A Taoist has none at all — but a spell never misses, so it costs them nothing.

The five classes

Trojan > Warrior > Fire Taoist ≈ Water Taoist > Archer in raw attack power — but that is a ranking of blows, not of who wins. A Trojan who cannot reach the Taoist does not get to use the hardest blow in the game, and an Archer who keeps flying is very hard to finish however small each arrow is.

What it feels like, in fully enhanced gear

Read the Trojan's row and the Fire Taoist's row together: if the Trojan gets to you, you have two blows. If he does not, he has to survive four of yours. That is the fight.

Being frozen, burned and poisoned

• A freeze takes your controls. For up to two seconds you cannot step, jump, swing or cast, and your auto-attack holds — it picks straight back up when the freeze lapses. The client draws no ice on you, so watch for the line in the top-left corner: that is the only warning you get.
• You cannot be frozen twice in a row. For four seconds after a freeze ends you are immune to the next one. Without that rule a bow firing twice a second with a freezing quiver would simply hold you still until you died, which is a lock rather than a fight.
• Poison and fire burn for five seconds, taking about a third of the blow that laid them, every second. Poison shows as a glow, and it does not stop you doing anything — it just has to be outlasted. If it finishes you, the kill belongs to whoever laid it, even if they have walked away.
• A stun does not carry through death. Everything on you clears when you fall.

Arrows are spent in a duel

An Archer pays for every shot at a player exactly as they pay in the field: one arrow per shot, hit or miss, three for a Scatter. Run dry mid-duel and the bow simply stops — so carry spare quivers before you go looking for a fight.

The special quivers are worth the small packs they come in:

Dying

• You drop 10% of your experience, some silver and a few bag items. If you are wearing a Praying Stone blessing, and your killer is not, you lose no experience at all.
• If you are red or black named, you also drop a worn piece of equipment.
• The Arena costs nothing — no loot, no experience, no PK points, and you get up where you fell.
• Throwing the first blow turns your name blue for a few seconds, and the city guards hunt anyone flashing blue. That is true whoever you hit — striking a red-named killer flags you exactly as striking an innocent does. Only hitting someone who is already flashing costs you nothing, because that is answering a fight rather than starting one.
• Guards stand at every gate between the cities as well as in the squares, and the soldiers patrolling the fields count as guards too: outside PK mode no blow, spell or Scatter fan will touch one, and in PK mode striking one flags you blue like striking an innocent.
• Killing someone who was not attacking you earns you PK points, and your name goes red, then black, as they pile up. Killing a red or black player earns none — hunting a killer is never itself a crime, so it can never turn you into one.

Want the numbers behind all this? How PvP Is Balanced shows what a rung of +N is measured to be worth, why a caster's gear ladder differs from a fighter's, and what we deliberately left out of PvP.

Things worth knowing before your first duel

• Bless is the best defence in the game and nothing shows it. Seven points of it on each worn piece takes nearly half off every blow, physical and magic alike. See the Ethereal on the Market.
• Exactly two gems raise attack: Dragon for a fighter, Phoenix for a caster. Every other gem does something else entirely — see the table at the end of this guide.
• Health is Vitality. One point of Vitality is worth eight of anything else.
• Every rung of +N is worth buying. A +12 ends a +8 in a single blow; a +6 needs a dozen or more the other way. Lesser gear is not a slower fight — it is not a fight.

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The eight gems

Each gem does a different job, and only three of them touch a blow at all.

• Socket the right attack gem. Dragon does nothing at all for a Taoist and Phoenix nothing for a fighter. It is the most expensive mistake a player can make.
• Fury is worth most to whoever has the least accuracy. A Warrior carrying a shield gave up the second weapon that would have carried it and misses close to a third of its blows; a few Fury gems fix that. A Taoist has no accuracy and needs none — a spell never misses.
• Tortoise adds up all the way. A full set of super Tortoises takes 72-84% off every blow on its own, and the Bless attribute stacks on top of that — the only limit is that a blow always costs you something. It is a real wall of a build, and it costs you every socket you might have spent on damage: expect to take a tenth of what is thrown at you, and to deal about a third of what an attack build deals.
• Kylin and Tortoise are also materials — the Wuxing Oven takes gems for the +HP attribute and Ethereal takes super Tortoise gems for Bless. A gem being useful in a socket and useful at an NPC are not in conflict.

The Arena: fighting without consequences

Entry: talk to the Arena Guard in south-east Twin City, or step on the swirl portal right beside him. For whom: anyone who wants to fight other players with zero risk. Reward: none but glory -- the arena is for duels, sparring and settling scores.

The arena is a walled fighting hall where player-versus-player combat is completely free of consequences. Test a build, practice against a friend, or brawl with your whole guild -- nothing you lose in there follows you out.

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The rules inside

• Switch to PK mode to fight. Click your PK-mode button until it reads PK, then you can attack (and be attacked by) any player in the arena -- including your own team and guild mates. (The client only sends an attack in PK mode; stepping into the arena is your consent to duel, and here PK mode carries none of its usual penalties.)
• No PK points. Kills in the arena never add PK points, and your name never flashes blue -- you leave the arena exactly as innocent as you entered it.
• No experience loss. Dying in the arena costs no experience, and your killer gains none from you.
• No item drops. You never drop silver or items when you die in the arena, no matter how many PK points you carry outside.
• Revive where you fall. After a death you rise on the spot -- no walk back from town, so the next round starts immediately.

Getting in and out

1. Find the Arena Guard in the south-east of Twin City. He explains the rules and teleports you in; the swirl portal next to him leads to the same place.
2. To leave, step on the swirl at the arena's southern gate -- it returns you to Twin City, right beside the Arena Guard.

The Prison

Two ways in: a sentence handed down by a GM, or Captain Li in Twin City, who walks anyone down for 1000 silver. Inside: nothing drops from a body — not even a red name's gear — and nobody may trade. Out: the Jailer, whenever you like — unless your name is in his ledger.

Most players will only ever hear about the prison. It is worth knowing what it is, because one day you may want to walk into it on purpose.

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Going down on purpose

Find Captain Li in Twin City and pay him 1000 silver. He takes you straight down.

There is nothing to buy there and nothing to hunt. What the prison offers is a floor where nothing can be taken off you:

• A body drops nothing. Not silver, not bag items, and not the worn piece a red or black name forfeits everywhere else in the world.
• Nobody can trade. Trade requests are refused on that map, and there are no booths.

Put together, that means a killing in the prison cannot be turned into profit. It is the one place a hunted player can sit while their PK points cool off, and the one place two people can settle something without either of them risking their gear.

What it does not protect is your experience. A death in the prison still costs you the usual tenth of your progress, and still hands it to whoever killed you. If you want a fight that costs absolutely nothing, that is the PVP Arena, not this.

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Leaving

Talk to the Jailer and ask him to let you out. He drops you back in Twin City, free of charge, as often as you like.

City scrolls do not work down there and there are no portals — the Jailer is the only door. That is deliberate: the prison is a room you choose to be in, not a shortcut across the map.

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Serving a sentence

If a GM has jailed you, the same room is not a choice:

• You are put in the cell at login, and every way out is refused until your time is up.
• The Jailer reads the remaining time off his ledger in days, hours and minutes — ask him.
• The clock runs whether or not you are online, so logging off neither dodges a sentence nor makes it last longer. When it expires you are walked back to Twin City on the spot.

The no-loot and no-trade rules apply to you exactly as they do to a visitor. A sentence costs you time, not property.

How our version differs

The Arena: fighting without consequences:

• In classic Conquer Online the arena building hosted seasonal events and ranked fights. Ours is (for now) a pure free-for-all duel hall -- events may come later.
• Outside the arena all the usual PK rules still apply: unjustified kills flash your name blue (city guards will hunt you down), cost PK points, and red/black names drop gear on death. Cities are NOT safe zones on Aurenfall -- the guards are the deterrent; only the Market and the newbie village are fully protected. The arena changes nothing about the outside world.

Where to find them