Dungeons
Forty dungeons, each with its own entrance, its own boss and its own loot. They run as instances: the party that enters gets a private copy of the place, and nobody else can walk into it.
Four tiers
| Tier | What it is |
|---|---|
| 1 | the low dungeons |
| 2 | from level 21 |
| 3 | level 40 |
| 4 | raids |
The dungeon window states, for each one, the level it wants, a suggested party, the experience it pays for finishing it, and the cooldown before you can run it again. Those figures are set per dungeon: the rewards run from 3,500 to 25,000 experience, and the cooldowns from half an hour to twelve. Two dungeons are locked to a faction.
A dungeon running an event can have a different cooldown for the duration, and can also cap how many players a run may have, cap the level, or restrict the gear you bring.
Your instance
- It is bound to the party that opened it, and to your character.
- You may destroy your own instance from the window while it is untouched - nothing killed, nothing triggered - within five minutes of opening it, and only while nobody is inside.
- An instance nobody is in is cleaned up after 45 minutes, or one minute after its final boss is dead.
- A corpse left inside does not stay there: it is moved to your faction's graveyard when the last member leaves.
- In a level 40 or raid instance carrying at least one hardcore character, only an admin may teleport in.
Boss fights
Every dungeon's final boss has mechanics of its own. Raids are the exception: they still share the standard set below.
The three stages
A boss gets harder as the fight goes on, and what moves it along is not simply its health.
| Stage | What has to be true | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| First | it still has healing potions left | simple mechanics, while you deal with its allies |
| Second | its potions have run out | harder, more frequent |
| Third | potions gone AND at or below half health | everything it has, until it dies |
Read that middle column twice: a boss at 40% health that still has potions is still in its first stage. Burning through its healing is what advances the fight, not raw damage.
The standard mechanics
One is chosen, it runs for a while, then another is picked at random - and a mechanic can come up again in the same fight. Each has a range, outside which you are not a target.
- Spell AoE under the players - acid fog, blade barrier, cloudkill, incendiary cloud, wall of fire. At most one per player.
- Circle of damage under the players. A warning glyph appears under each player in range; a moment later the glyph goes and the ground explodes. The damage type is rolled once at the start of the fight, so it is the same all the way through and can be resisted.
- A protector. A creature appears near the boss, and while it lives the boss takes no damage and no effects - circling shields show it. Kill the protector first. This one fires once.
- Exploding chasers. One creature, two in a raid, picks a player and follows them until it reaches them.
- Pulsing pillars under the players.
- Ancestral prison (raids only). Once imprisoned, the boss comes for you.
- Mass helpers. Some bosses spawn waves of creatures, repeatedly, up to a limit on how many can be alive at once.
- Damage to everyone in range, every round - a boss-wide damage over time, and resistance works against it.
Some bosses run combinations of these rather than one at a time.
The room resets
Each boss room has a perimeter marked by small fires. Take the boss outside it and the room resets - which stops anyone dragging a boss somewhere easier, and also lets a party in trouble back off and start again.
There is a price for doing it too often: after five resets of the same fight in the same instance, the creatures in it can no longer roll as unique.
When a boss with mechanics dies, everything it made - helpers, pillars, protectors - dies with it.
Berserk (raids only)
If a raid boss is still alive twenty minutes into the fight, it goes berserk: more attack bonus, more damage, more attacks per round. It is usually the end of the attempt.
Voting someone out
A run can vote to remove a member. The yes votes have to beat the no votes and the people who did not vote put together - a silent member counts against the kick, not for it. Someone kicked while offline is put back at the dungeon entrance.