PvP

Anywhere outside town, someone can come for you. Losing costs less than you expect, and winning can take a trophy off them that carries their name forever.

Every place outside The Heartlands has other players in it, and any of them can end up fighting you. You do not pick the fight and neither do they. The world puts you together, and there is no setting that turns it off.

A zone needs at least 2 people in it before anything can happen, so a quiet zone is genuinely quiet. You never see anyone until they are already in front of you.

Losing costs less than you think

Your gear is never taken. Nothing you are wearing can be lost, broken or stolen.

What happens is that you are left standing on 10% of your health. Nothing heals you between fights except a potion, so the whole cost of losing is the couple of potions it takes to get back on your feet. There is no gold penalty, no damaged equipment, and no period where you cannot play.

Two smaller things. Ending your session during a fight counts as losing. There is no way out of a duel already underway. Closing the game does not work either, because your fighter carries on without you.

You also cannot be pulled into a duel while you are fighting a boss, in either direction.

Winning takes a copy, not the item

When you win, their gear may echo to you. You receive your own copy of a piece they were wearing, stamped permanently with their name and their reputation on the day you beat them. They keep the original. Nobody is ever stripped of anything.

That stamp is the point. An item echoed from a feared fighter is a trophy, and it stays one through everyone who owns it afterwards.

Not every win produces one. Each piece they are wearing is decided separately, and the chances are the same in every zone.

Two things improve them. Magic Find, exactly as it does against monsters. And focusing a piece of what they are wearing, which works here just as it does on a monster: better chances on the piece you tapped, worse on everything else, and only while you are watching.

The one exception is the very best items. A legendary can be echoed off its owner 3 times. After that it has faded and can no longer be copied, and a copy can never itself be copied. A fully faded legendary is arguably the better story. It has been beaten out of its owner three times.

A win also pays 1 token, which you spend at the Gravekeeper on kill effects, titles and frames. They buy appearance and nothing else. No power is on sale for winning.

Your rating is a reputation, not a skill score

Everyone starts at 1,000. It goes up when you win and down when you lose, and how far depends on who you did it to.

Beating someone well below you pays close to nothing. Losing to them costs you a great deal. So you cannot climb by hunting people who cannot fight back, and parking at the top eventually stops paying at all.

The same rule protects newcomers. If a fully geared veteran ambushes you in a starting zone, the fight is expected and the rating you lose is small. If you win anyway, you take an enormous amount off them.

Guest accounts do not fight other players and do not appear on the leaderboards. Claiming the account keeps your character and opens both.

Taking control

A duel is the one fight in the game that accepts input while it is happening. Everywhere else, what you are wearing is the whole play.

You do not have to take control. A fighter left alone defends themselves competently. But it is the largest advantage available to someone who is watching.

Potions. Left alone, your fighter drinks at 50% of your health when it gets low. Take control and you decide when, each drink is a full heal, and you get up to 5 of them. Nothing drinks for you any more.

Foresight. Every so often your opponent throws a committed strike, a heavy blow you are shown coming. Two lights leave the top of the arena, travel in opposite directions, and meet at the bottom. Tap anywhere as they touch and the blow is turned aside entirely, with part of it thrown back at them.

The answer is graded on timing, and the grades are far apart.

• A press at the moment the lights meet turns the blow aside completely.
• A press before that lands a glancing answer, worth roughly a quarter as much. Reacting to the lights appearing lands here.
• A press early enough to miss both bands does nothing, and still starts the recovery.

You will not be shown a cue you cannot answer. If the lights are there, so is the answer.

You cannot answer every blow, whatever you do. The recovery is what keeps this a series of choices rather than a button to hold.

Against a greatsword every swing is a committed strike, so Foresight covers far more of the damage coming at you. Against a dagger, only some of it arrives in blows you can answer.

Reading the other player

Their nameplate tells you what kind of opponent you have. Nothing at all means nobody is there, and they are fighting on their own. A small dim mark means they are watching but have not stepped in. A slow red pulse means they have taken control and are timing their own potions and answers.

If it changes mid-fight, you will see it happen.

You are not shown their potions, or whether their answer is ready. Knowing they are awake is enough. Knowing their exact state would turn a fight into a readout, and would make the people who are not watching worth hunting.

Potions count for less here

Every potion you have brewed counts at its weakest strength in a duel, however good the bottle was. Gear is what decides fights between players, and brewing is not a way around it.

The Echo Arena

There is one place where you pick the fight: the Echo Arena. You stake gold, choose an opponent off a board, and fight a copy of their fighter. It pays Glory and tokens, never gear, and its ladder is entirely separate from your reputation out here.

It is a whole play mode with its own page. The Echo Arena covers tickets, the Challenge Board, streaks and what a week on the ladder pays.