PVP · Frontier Clash · 5v5¶
PVP is five versus five. It builds on the existing first-person combat, gathering, crafting and capture systems, with its own town-battle map. Choose PVP · 5v5 on the sign-in screen. PVE · Campaign retains the original map, quests and persistent saves.
Join the fight¶
Find a public game searches for a match in progress with a bot slot, then an existing waiting room, then starts a new room. A new room shows both team rosters and a 2-second countdown. Sign in and join. There are only two teams: Blue and Red. Choose Blue or Red on this screen before continuing; your choice is remembered. You replace a bot on that team. Public matchmaking finds an active room with a seat on your chosen team, then a waiting room, then creates a new round if capacity permits. A private lobby tells you when your selected team is full so you can choose the other side or another game. Choosing a different team before rejoining leaves your old seat with a bot and takes a seat on the selected side; each seat retains its own health, inventory and cooldowns. Each team has five seats. Bots occupy every unfilled seat, and a bot takes over immediately when a player disconnects. Reconnecting prefers your previous seat while it is still bot controlled. New arrivals can take any bot seat. Taking a seat keeps the character's current health, inventory, equipment and cooldowns. A match uses temporary characters; campaign belongings and territory stay in PVE.
Blue starts in Greyfen; Red starts in a new fortified Sunken Bell town, with houses, cobbled streets, lanterns, a complete stone perimeter, an open road gate and its bell landmark. Layered hills and a smoking volcano with animated molten rivers and drifting cooling crust extend the skyline beyond the walls, including at shorter view distances. Abbey bronze fragments have a visible pile of salvaged bell sections at their gathering point, with clear access. Both towns have two destructible archer towers and a capturable rope standard. Five frontiers between them start neutral. Blue must clear Reedwatch and light its signal, as in PVE. Personal deaths wait 15, 30, 45 and then at most 60 seconds, resetting each round, with three seconds of protection; attacks during that protection cannot damage opponents. Towns are otherwise vulnerable. After eight seconds without combat, characters near their own spawn recover health if no opponent is nearby. Corpses briefly collapse and fade without blocking players.
Choose Create a private lobby to receive a 10-character code on the waiting screen and HUD. Friends choose Join with a lobby code. Private matches are excluded from public matchmaking. Players can join after the countdown and replace bots; nobody has to wait for ten humans. Private codes last across rematches and expire after the room has been empty for ten minutes. Empty public rooms expire after two minutes. Empty rooms pause to conserve the host. The initial host allows two simultaneous match rooms; when both are occupied, join one with space or try again later. Match rooms and codes reset on a server restart.
Capture first; craft optional upgrades¶
The five neutral frontiers are Reedwatch → Ironroot → Fenline → Mirewatch → Blackwater Sluice. Blue advances in that order; Red advances in reverse. Both towns remain separate victory objectives.
- Follow the war map to your next frontier and clear defenders and opposing players.
- Stand directly in front of the mechanism, wheel or signal and hold F for six seconds (controller X). Every PVP capture and recapture is free: no crafted item, resource or supply pack is required. Signal interactions ready their staff animation automatically.
- Keep advancing, or gather materials to improve your equipment. Moving, damage, enemy contesting or releasing F interrupts a capture.
C opens the forge. Choose a weapon or armour to see its next upgrade; each weapon also shows its class training. PVP has three menus: War map, Crafting, and Team. Team shows both colour-coded rosters and three illustrated bot orders. The map keeps its existing artwork and layout, with a compact destination card and one main navigation button on the right.
| Upgrade | Weapon damage | Armour protection | Materials per slot |
|---|---|---|---|
| Honed | +8% | 6% less incoming damage | 2 iron ingots + 1 timber plank |
| Masterwork | +16% total | 12% less incoming damage total | 2 masterwork alloy + 1 timber plank; requires Honed |
Upgrades replace the previous rank, equip automatically, survive death and reset next round. Armour multiplies your normal field protection. Weapon upgrades multiply class-training damage; they do not change attack speed, mana cost or ability cooldown. Bow and staff receive the same percentage, preserving their existing relative damage. Everyone retains the same useful starting kit.
Open C → Crafting and choose a weapon or armour from the five illustrated slots. The forge shows the next upgrade, its damage or protection benefit, and how many materials you carry versus how many you need. Select a material to see gathering locations or refining choices, then return to the upgrade. The upgrade button stays beneath the materials; completed gear automatically shows its next tier.
Gather with F, then strike with Space / click (controller X, then A). Recipe cards show the exact named sources and ingredient counts. Two heartwood refine into a plank. Two iron ore, two bog iron or two abbey bronze fragments can each refine into an ingot; choose the source near your side of the map. Two ingots and two silverleaf make one masterwork alloy.
Ordinary PVP crafting uses a 1.9-second rotation. Masterwork alloy requires three consecutive perfect strikes, with a 1.5-second rotation and a 180 ms perfect window per strike. Materials are spent only after success. A missed strike or timeout keeps every ingredient but locks all crafting for 30 seconds. Gathering, fighting and capturing remain available. Moving away, taking damage or cancelling interrupts work without spending ingredients. PVE timing, recipes, quests and controls are unchanged.
Friendly fire is disabled. Use Q / E / R for PVP weapon abilities; Shift+F still toggles fullscreen. Controller bindings remain unchanged.
Win the round¶
After the 2-second countdown, secure all five frontiers once, destroy the enemy town’s two guard towers, then hold interact at its standard for six uninterrupted seconds. Clear enemy players within nine metres first. The standard uses the same visible rope-pulling action in first person and for observers. Moving, taking damage or releasing cancels it. No supply pack is required for the final town capture. Capturing Greyfen wins for Red; capturing Sunken Bell wins for Blue. A full road breakthrough keeps that town unlocked for the rest of the round, even after a frontier is recaptured. The HUD counts frontiers and surviving towers. Points do not decide the winner; after 25 minutes the round continues in overtime until a town falls.
Towers have 240 health each. Melee attacks, arrows and spells damage enemy towers. The visible archer fires real arrows at visible opponents within 32 metres. Equip sword and shield, face the tower and hold block to stop its arrows; blocking spends stamina. Friendly players and towers are immune to friendly damage. Destroyed towers collapse into rubble, stop shooting and remain destroyed until the next round. Arrows already in flight still travel normally.
The result shows kills/deaths, captures, gathered materials and crafted items. A fresh round begins after 30 seconds. Temporary match resources reset.
Work with your bots¶
Open M → Team for the team roster and orders: Push forward, Hold the line, or Gear up. An order lasts one minute. Bots still react to nearby threats, recover health and finish necessary work. At most one bot per team takes an optional equipment job at a time; the others keep fighting and advancing.
Neutral PVP encounters scale for at most two capture-crew members; opposing teams are not counted together as a cooperative raid. PVE encounter scaling is unchanged.
Bots use normal player commands, limited sight, reaction delays and imperfect aim. Usually two raiders move across the map to intercept enemy capturers, while at least two teammates keep supplying and advancing. A team far behind, or without a deeper advance for 90 seconds, uses one raider. After three minutes without a deeper advance, raiders rejoin the capture push until new ground is gained; trading the same frontier back and forth does not reset this timer; an empty road or a supply order suspends raids. Up to three available bots can respond to a visible invasion of their town. Assignments last 12 seconds, use public capture reports and teammate sightings, and do not track hidden player coordinates. Injured bots regroup behind the front when their healing flask will be ready shortly. If that is unsafe or their flask has a long recharge remaining, they retreat toward town. They resume their objective once recovered; when the road is secured, they attack the defending towers and operate the town standard.
Gatherers reserve nodes and separate their approaches. Bots assemble real supply packs through timed gathering, refining and crafting, and search for unseen defenders when captures are blocked. Archers swap to melee under close pressure; mana, stamina and distance affect weapon choice. Human players replace bot seats with the same health, damage, inventory and cooldown rules. A three-human/two-bot team against one human/four bots is supported; competitive balance still needs human playtests.
Bots commit briefly to useful targets, spread pressure between enemies, and prioritise immediate attackers or opponents on the objective. They interrupt unfinished work when attacked, heal before returning to pressure, lead visible moving targets and cancel bow shots blocked by cover. Ranged fighters keep more distance; skirmishers move sideways more, and retreating bots check for walls. Bots hold position once they reach their destination, make room for close teammates, and move again when their objective changes. While travelling, they follow clear sections of a route and move past reached path points immediately. After combat or a changed target, they choose a route from their current position. These behaviours use ordinary player rules.
The nocked arrow leaves the bow as one continuous visible shot and disappears on impact. The bow has a sharper string release, a separate draw-hand follow-through and less movement bob while aiming. A short sound marks full draw. Pressing and holding attack during recovery buffers the next draw; releasing early cancels that request. The bar reaches full power after 0.9 seconds and stays full while held. A full draw deals 32 base damage, with its extra power earned over the final quarter of the pull; shots before three-quarter draw keep their previous damage. Arms show increasing tension while drawing and stronger strain when held too long. During warmup or respawn protection, arrows are harmless practice shots. Once protection expires, town arrows deal normal damage.
Development verification¶
Run a complete ten-bot match on the shared gameplay server simulation:
npm run simulate:clash -- 3 2700
npm run test:clash
node --import tsx --test tools/pvp-towns.test.ts
node --import tsx tools/pvp-simulate.ts 21 2 --hybrid
The first argument is the bot seed; the second is the maximum simulated seconds. The report includes the winner, scores, captures, gathering/crafting, combat commands and tick cost. The optional PVP simulator accepts a seed, a maximum raider count, --swap for opposite spawns, and --hybrid for three human-seat input proxies versus one. Those proxies use AI-generated normal inputs and are not real human players. These are local simulations, not a public-host capacity certification or proof of human balance.
Original combat controls · Crafting reference · M6 implementation and acceptance
Training during a round¶
Every weapon class starts each round at rank 1. Use sword and shield, mace, bow or staff to train that class: damaging enemies, useful blocks, successful gathering and crafting earn experience. First captures reward the team, with extra experience for the operator. Twenty percent cross-training goes to each other weapon, so switching remains useful. The bar above your weapons shows the equipped class; C → Crafting shows training for the selected weapon.
| Rank | Total XP | Damage increase | Ability recharge reduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0 | 0% | 0% |
| 2 | 60 | 3% | 4% |
| 3 | 150 | 6% | 8% |
| 4 | 280 | 9% | 12% |
| 5 | 440 | 12% | 16% |
| 6 | 640 | 15% | 20% |
Basic swing timing, bow draw time, health, healing-flask recharge and the shared one-second ability lock stay consistent. Experience uses actual damage, never overkill or friendly fire. Repeated gathering/crafting and combat bursts have separate earning limits; repeating a capture cannot farm its first-capture reward. Standing idle earns no activity XP.
Training survives defeat and stays with each seat when a human replaces a bot or reconnects. A new round resets it. Bots follow the same rules. This training is PVP-only and never changes saved PVE skills or equipment.
Red town road and controls¶
Sunken Bell's central gate opens onto a six-metre-wide boardwalk curving toward Blackwater Sluice. Fitted planks follow the bends without overlapping sections or posts in the walking lane. The aqueduct stands beside the approach, leaving both edges of the road clear. Its stone pillars have solid collision. The capture wheel faces the approaching Red team. The gate, road and working side of the wheel have shared client/server collision clearance.
Use F to interact or hold a capture; Q / E / R use weapon abilities. Shift+F toggles fullscreen. Controller bindings are unchanged: X interacts and Y/B/LB use abilities.
A quieter combat HUD¶
The top strip shows the two team scores, round clock and five frontier markers. Town danger and victory messages appear when needed. One compact objective shows the next action, direction and distance. Full territory details, lobby codes, bot orders and all class-training bonuses are in M → War map / Crafting / Team.
Your weapons and ability recharge indicators sit along the bottom, with a thin class-training bar above them. Health remains visible; stamina and mana brighten while being used. Chat shows only the two latest recent messages during play; press Enter to read the retained chat history. Controls opens the complete keyboard and controller guide.