Having joined a new clan (Apollo, part of the Cairnivore Alliance) in DarkFall, I’m finally getting into some more organized PvP on the NA-1 server. Oddly enough my first night with Apollo was also our alliance’s first real offensive against The Red Army, another large alliance. The assault went well, with some asset destruction (keep, tower, two gates) happening before TRA showed up and offered some resistance. After a battle that lasted 20-30 minutes in and around their city, the retreat was called and out we went. I was able to kill a few targets (with help of course), and came close to going down 2-3 times (most of the damage coming from friendly fire AoEs funny enough), and generally it was a great time. The organization and execution was spot on, which really is what separates clans/alliances when it comes down to it.

A few days later our city of Hammerdale was on the receiving end of TRA’s retaliation, with our own keep, bank, and gatehouse going down to some siege hammer bashing. I logged on after the attackers were pushed out so I missed the majority of the fighting, but not all of it. The first fight happened when I went to the closest NPC city to grab some gear (since our city’s bank was destroyed) and found four members of TRA recalling. Not wanting them to get away clean, I hit one of them with a knockback, cancelling his recall. As we were both blue, and for whatever reason our two clans were not officially at war, this turned me gray for 10 seconds. Not wanting to abandon their friend, the other three recalling also cancelled and we got into a staring contest, neither side able to actually fight in town due to the zap towers. I asked for the clan for a war dec, but no go on that, and clearly the other side was also unable to get a war dec going (to be fair a second battle was going on between the two sides at this time at a different location, so leadership was rather busy). They eventually moved out of tower range, and started attacking me with magic and bows. After the second hit, this kept them gray for two minutes, and at this time three other Apollo members arrived to help out.

As we battled back and forth, the key contributor actually ended up being an Infernal NPC that happens to live VERY close to town. Being a hard-hitting mob, whoever was the focus of the Infernal was usually trying to run away or parry as best as they can. At one point, one of the enemy fighters was down to about 10% HP thanks to our focus fire and the Infernal sneaking up on him, causing a bit of panic on his part. We got him down, but right before the final blow he went blue, and as I was the one to take the final shot, I took an alignment hit and went red, making me fair game for the other three to attack without going gray. This was bad news. I was able to run among the other three Apollo members while fighting, which made it risky for the enemy to swing at me, as any time they hit the others they went gray and could be freely attacked. Despite this tactic, I eventually got too low on stamina to effectively keep running around and fighting, and they got me down. After I went down the other Apollo members managed to kill two more enemies and the third escaped, but overall we came out ahead and had a nice little skirmish under some unique circumstances.

The other battle of the night happened a little later, with some members of the Black Shields (another TRA clan) showing up at Hammerdale. At this point our bank was back up so we quickly grabbed gear and went to the walls to defend. I believe the enemy numbers were around 7-10, while we had 10-12 Apollo in the city. The fighting went back and forth, with our guys firing magic and arrows down from the walls and eventually charging down to try and finish them off. Not being fools, the Black Shields pulled back a little and managed to string us out. With half of us dropping back to the city and a few overextending, I believe they managed to kill 2-3 of us. Round one went to the Black Shields. They regrouped and came back to the city, and this time our organization was a lot better and we hit them hard right as they came to our walls. They again tried to mount up and run away, but we killed two mounts and ran their owners down as they tried to flee. The remainder of their force tried to provide cover, and that cost them another death when the majority of our force showed up and the arrows started to fly. The rest got away, but between the three kills we were able to recover some of our loot, along with the quality stuff the Black Shields were wearing. Not to mention another fun skirmish with some talented opposition.

As the war between The Cairnivors and Red Army is only just getting started, I’m sure plenty of other battles are ahead, and I’m looking forward to it all, as this is what DarkFall is all about.