Last night there were multiple large sieges not involving OTG, and since our clan had no formal plans to attend, I made my way down to the area to do some good old scroaching.

For non-Darkfall players, scroaching is basically attending a siege as a neutral third party and picking off anyone you see, while also trying to grab as much loot as possible. It’s an evolution of the word roach (though I can’t recall why it went from roach to scroach, someone in the comments help me out)

Since I was solo, I focused more on the looting part than the fighting, and set out with some basic gear and a mount. Once I arrived at the scene of the first battle, I dismounted and crept from tree to tree, doing my best to not get noticed as I moved towards the closest gravestone. At each gravestone, I looted anything of value before ducking back into the shadows. After five graves I was close to being overloaded, and rather than push things further I rode off to bank my spoils. Round one was a massive success!

I returned to find that the battle had ended and the winning side was cleaning up the battlefield. Since I had little to lose, I took a chance and ran in, hoping people would assume I was an ally. That didn’t work, and shortly I had a small mob on me and was killed. Round two not so good.

A second city was also sieged that night, and since I still had time before our scheduled PvP practice, I again set out to see what I could loot. This city was on the coast with a lot of water surrounding it, and I was able to swim out to a little island with a good view and watched the battle unfold.

Making a judgment call on when the battle was at its peak, I swam across to the closest grave and again began the looting. I then made the mistake of killing a disconnected player (the allure of plate was too strong…), which drew the attention of a mage in the area, who started throwing fireballs at me. I ran towards the water and lost the mage, but sadly the island I swam to had a group of five waiting and I was brought down. Greed kills indeed.

Scroaching is far from an honorable act, but its part of Darkfall tradition and a good change of pace from normal PvE/PvP. Its low risk (other than time), high reward, allows you to see larger PvP battles play out, and gives you a bit of a rush as you sneak around and try to avoid any attention.

Tonight OTG has our own siege, and I’m sure random scroachers will be in attendance.