SW Guide

Basics about Siege Wars

Siege Wars is a guild PvP session that anyone of any level/class can participate. This is the only thing we can do as a complete guild, without level restriction, where every single person can contribute to help with the win and get rewards even if we lose.

Here’s a guide on what to do and how to do it…

Siege Wars occur every night at 20h CET and can last for a maximum of one hour. Registration is open on the previous day at 22h CET. In DarkZone, most members are able to help in the registration process, so do your part, and help us participate in this fun event.

To help, check with leaders if your guild ranking allows for you to help in registration, and shortcut the macro below. You should start spamming it at 21h59 CET and stop only at 22h01 CET, to make sure you are actively contributing towards registration at the right second.

/script for i=1, 500, 1 do GuildHousesWar_Register() end

After the battle is scheduled and ready you can see who we’re playing against by clicking “G” to bring up the guild interface and then click on “Battles”. You should check this every night after 22h CET, to see if we have siege war on the following day.

At the designated time (20h CET), to enter the battle, open the Guild Interface (G), click on the “Battles” button and choose the “Enter battle” button to join. You need to be out of the castle or out of your house to be able to enter the battle.

The goal during a siege war is to protect your home castle’s Honor Crystal and at the same time, try to destroy the enemy’s Honor Crystal. The two guilds’ castles are separated by 2 bridges, a large piece of vacant land (with two crystal towers), and two more bridges. To get into the other guild’s castle you must destroy one of the castle’s outer gates. Once this is done you will have access to the enemy’s exterior castle grounds. Then you have to destroy their interior gate which will then give you access to the interior of the castle. Once inside you would proceed to the upper level and destroy the Honor Crystal.

Gates are stated by position, North gate, South gate, Main gate, and Honor crystal gate. To avoid confusion try using these names when giving instructions.

When you first get into the map, you will see a giant crystal in front of you. This is your Guild Honor Crystal and if you lose it, you lose the war. Depending on the amount of towers that are taken when your crystal falls, the time for you to reclaim it changes. If 0-5 towers are taken by the enemy, the crystal must be retaken within 5 minutes, or your guild will lose. If all 6 towers have been captured by the enemy, when your Honor Crystal has been taken, your guild loses immediately. At the end of the game (one hour) the team with the most towers wins the War.

There are two types of currencies in Siege War: Merits and Crystals. Merits and Crystals are shown in the Siege Wars Menu, a window that resembles a crystal that is on the top right of your screen when you enter the battle (more on this in next section).

During a Siege war, your character will not attain any death debt or repairs for dying. If you die during a siege, you can immediately resurrect (resurrecting will bring you back on top of your home castle) if a healer is unable to resurrect you. You can also use a Big Angel’s Sigh (buyable with diamonds from Item Shop) to prevent nasty effects that you will get after dying during the war, but don’t worry, once the war ends just speak with the Guild Maid (next to the vault inside the castle) and she will cleanse all effects.

Upon completion of a siege war you are rewarded with a couple of things, depending on if your team wins or loses and how much contribution you made to the team. First, even if your guild loses you get a Guild Contribution package, an equipment package, and some honor badges. The honor badges can be used to get titles that give special bonuses to your character. If our guild wins a war, in addition, you will also receive talent orbs and experience orbs, and even more packages and honor badges.

Siege Wars Menu

There are two modes to the Guild Siege Menu: simple mode, where there is no background, and advanced mode, which can be activated by shift + right clicking the gem. Advanced mode is HIGHLY recommended.

In the center of the menu is the crystal that shows your side. Under the guild name is a number, with a sword next to it. This is the number of guild members that are participating. Under the number of guild members participating, is a crystal icon. This shows how many crystals your guild has, as well as the enemy. Note that Crystals are gained equally in proportion to Merits. This means that for every Merit a player picks up, 1 Crystal is added to the stockpile. In the middle, under the crystal, is a timer that counts down to the end of the war. Under that is a total of your Merits. This is not a guild score, this simply is a quick reference to show how many Merits you have in your backpack.

Underneath all this is the Morale Bar. Morale is gained when you capture a tower or the opponent’s honor crystal. Because there are 2 Honor Crystals and 6 towers, there is never more than 10000 morale at any time. Towers are worth 1000 morale, and Honor crystals are worth 2000 morale. When morale drops to 0 (through loss of all towers and the Honor Crystal) the guild immediately loses the war.

Low Level Players (below Level 55)

There is not much the low level players can do as far as attacking and defending, but your participation in the wars is critical to our success! The more active players in a siege war, the better our chances of winning because we will be able to gather more merits and crystals in a shorter amount of time allowing us to build proper defenses and offensive tools so we can take down the enemies.

All low level players should immediately proceed out of the gates and immediately begin gathering merits and crystals. Just stay there gathering and don’t stop. Then regularly go to the guild leader (or other pre-designated player) and initiate a trade to give them the merits you collect, which will allow them to make the necessary purchases. If nobody has come to you to retrieve your merits and you have more than 100, simply announce in chat that you have XX merits.

Resources

On the map, outside of the castles, there are 6 Crystal Extraction Towers: Northwest=Anand, SouthWest=Bellin, Center south=Hilot, Center north= Knin, Northeast=Buruk, Southeast=Asachi.

When the game starts, each guild owns 3 of these; 2 immediately outside their castle, and 1 on the large piece of land between the bridges. These towers are used to harvest merits and crystals. Both are the money used during a Siege War to purchase upgrades. To collect resources, an individual would go to one of these towers and click on it. Then, as long as the player doesn’t move, they will begin harvesting. This is a slow process but a necessary one. After enough are collected, the guild can purchase an upgrade (crystal extraction towers) to make the extraction process quicker. This is part of strategy and a decision for the guild leadership to make, as are all purchases during a siege war.

Merits can also be gathered by players by destroying balloon monsters on the grounds outside the castle. They are by default non-aggressive so they won’t attack you when you run by them. Also, if you kill an enemy guild member you will receive merits for that as well.

Merits are used to buy almost all defensive and offensive towers and traps and are in HIGH demand in the beginning. Very few things can be bought without Merits.

Another resource required during the war is Crystals. Crystals are earned evenly with the number of merits gained by your team. The difference is that the crystals go directly into your guild’s pot whereas the merits are put into individuals’ backpacks. So, when you get merits, you are helping the guild get crystals as well. On the other hand, if you spend crystals you take it from everyone, so our spending of this resource is limited to certain people as we need to keep it organized. This is key to survival in the beginning as well as for a victory in the end. Never think it’s just 200 Crystals, no big deal, because it is!

The Herald of the Guild and Designated Builder

This is a leadership choice, and the ones to have these two functions should be announced in advance of the start of the siege war.

The Designated Builder will be in charge of upgrading several bonuses at the castle’s buildings that will apply to all guild members during the war and allow for better items to be purchased, and it is to this person that all merits should be given (if you are not using them to trap our towers) AFTER the Herald is in place.

The first person to gather 1000 merits and return to the castle honor crystal will gain this mode, and this should be achieved within the first 10 minutes of the war.

The following stats are given to the player: +10,000 HP, +25% Defense, both magic and physical, +25% Attack, both magic and physical and +100% size.

The Herald also receives the following set of skills:

Summoning Tornado, cooldown: 8 Minutes. This skill channels the power of the Tempest through you, going straight forward and damaging all enemies caught by its deadly blast. Very useful for killing enemies attacking our gates, clean fields of traps, or attack an enemy gate.

Thunder Force, cooldown: 6 Minutes. This skill buffs the entire guild with increased speed.

Raise Morale, cooldown: 6 Minutes. This skill allows you to buff the entire guild with a superbuff that causes their HP to be restored every second for 5 seconds.

Fearless, cooldown: 3 minutes. This skill makes every guild member evade the next attack within 15 seconds. During this time, however, the Herald cannot use ANY abilities.

Ironblood Army Spirit, cooldown: 5 Minutes. This skill raises critical hits of the entire guild by a large percentage.

Summon Guild Honor Guard, cooldown: 15 minutes. This skill calls forth a giant Guild Honor Guard to fight by your side! The only bad part about this skill is that it MUST be used next to a tower, with the exception of the Honor Crystal Tower.

Building Proper Defenses

One of the big decisions for leadership to make at the beginning of a siege war is whether to save the materials gathered to build up defenses, or whether to use all resources toward attacking the enemy. If you attack the enemy right away without building defenses, and they attack you, then you might be in a world of hurt. It’s always best to start with defenses and evaluate the enemy as you proceed.

Next to your towers (yours, not the enemy’s!) you will find two clickable “Banners”. These are actually SHOPS! There you can buy some of the traps listed below.

There are several items we can purchase to defend with. The main one used is the flame tower. A flame tower has a range of around 250 (longer range than any player skill/spell) and deals good damage to enemies. Electric Towers are similar to flame towers but they inflict electric damage on enemies instead of fire damage. Healing Tree Towers are used to heal any object by a % of their health. Placing 2-3 of these at each crystal tower will help keep our towers, guards, and defenders healed and effective for much longer.

The traps called Treachery are to be placed by every crystal tower. These traps are used to knock down opponents and works NO MATTER their level. Four-five per castle crystal tower, as well as many around in the trees, hidden, and in points in which enemies tend to sneak and attack. This will cause a chain of knockdowns while the towers and guards are bombarding them. Treacheries can be placed in hidden spots around our castle (not inside unless they have broken down our gates). Note that there is an elevation range in which the treacheries can hit players from below or above, use this to your advantage while hiding them.

Sea Washed Stone is a trap that silences anyone within range for a few seconds. 1-2 of these should be sufficient on each tower or in their areas. Another less useful is Eye of True Knowledge, get only one or two here and there, all they do is reveal and stun any hidden rogues that pass by.

Illusion Towers make all other traps/towers, including itself, invisible to enemy players until hit. An upgraded version makes players around it invisible to enemy players.

Catapults can be built on top of the walls at the corners of the castle. The catapults would need to be manned by players and they are effective at delivering AoE damage around the impact zone of where their fires impact. They are helpful in defending the local towers near the castle as well as helping to defend the exterior gates, but are also VERY vulnerable to ranged attacks.

In addition to what items can be purchased, it’s important to keep in mind that priests/druids can cast heal on gates, flame towers, etc… so if we are under attack, it’s beneficial for healers to help protect our defenses and gates.

Taking over a Tower

You will notice that the crystal towers have 3 NPCs in front of them: 2 guards and 1 Boss guard. Those 3 NPCs are on your team as long as you control the tower. If an enemy gets too close, the NPCs will rush them and attempt to kill them.

On the reverse side, if we are attempting to take over a tower, we will have those 3 NPCs to deal with. If you beat them, you can click on the tower and it will begin the process of taking it over. This takes about 30 seconds and if you are interrupted, the process stops and you need to start over. We want to take over the towers because then you “own” more of the map and then you earn crystals for your team quicker.

Enemy Gates

The gates of a castle are very strong structures. Upper level characters, depending on how much damage they can deal, may or may not be able to chip away at a gate. For this reason, it’s important not to waste a bunch of time playing with those enemy gates. We need to have a strategy going in and stick with it. It’s important to agree on which gate we will attack and have all resources attacking that one gate.

One optimal way to attack a gate is to use the battering rams that can be purchased in the Arsenal. A battering ram would need to be driven across the map to the enemy’s castle. This task alone is a tough one. It’s easy for the catapult to get stuck or destroyed during the navigation. Once made, one or more persons would “enter” the ram to drive it. Once the ram is in position, you would target the gate and then attack. There are several available vehicles, each level bringing added power and allowing for more players to use it at the same time.

Other alternative is to combine efforts with the Herald of the guild, who can summon a Tornado to help deal a large blow to the gates.

The most effective vehicles are Dual Catapult and Fearless Lion Ram.

Dual Catapult is a ranged siege with heavy splash AoE damage. For max 4 passengers, with each one getting a special ability to handle. They are not to be driven side by side but in columns or single file line to cover each other. Reason being is they have about 45 degree angle to the left or right in which they can aim so covering someone directly beside you becomes impossible.

Fearless Lion Ram is able to take a beating and with enough passengers heal itself a lot. 4 players are required for the heal so that is the goal per ram. These are to be driven in front of the catapults unless told otherwise. Good for taking out traps/towers so the catapults don’t have to turn/aim to kill those and can focus on players/long range firing.

Guide is written by Juliogomes, many thanks Julio for this amazing guide 🙂