Darkfall: Unholy Wars takes place (I believe) 200 years after the events of Darkfall. Aventurine hasn’t done a lot with the lore, but in-game some areas reflect this more than others. The location of today’s story, the city of Aradoth, is a prime example of the change.

Right as I logged on a few members of NOX were attacking our city of Kvit. I don’t know how many they killed, but as a response force was gathering they left. Once our force was gathered, and being eager to engage in some PvP, we decided to head over to the home of NOX, the city of Aradoth.

In DF1 Aradoth was a very popular city for a number of reasons. It was a city with a mine, it was centrally located, and it was highly defensible since it was located inside of a mountain and accessibly only through winding cave tunnels. In DF:UW, the city itself is now outside, next to the mountain.

As we rode up to the city, we could hear the sounds of combat, which we correctly assumed was dueling. Our force crept right up to the city zone line, surveyed the situation, and picked the right time to rush in and murder the occupants.

The initial surprise of the attack worked, and we brought down a good number of them quickly, with only three fleeing. Two fled out of the city to the east, and one fled into a mountain tunnel. The group pursuing the target into the tunnel quickly lost him, and then one of them had trouble finding his way back out. Meanwhile, the rest of us chased down one of the two that fled east.

The splitting of our force, along with some general miscommunication, resulted in one of our numbers going down in the city, which forced all of us to re-enter and deal with the naked mob that we had created. That however was successful, and we were able to recover the fallen’s gear bag and get everyone out of the city.

We rolled to a nearby chaos stone to resupply and bank some loot. While at this stone a local informed us of a group farming nearby that had killed him, so we followed him to the spot and killed his killers (while he amusingly yelled “revenge” in area chat).

At this point we had the option to either return home, or head back to Aradoth, where we knew a response force was gathering. Picking action over pixels, we went back to Aradoth.

We again swept into the city and killed those around the bank, and yet again one player fled into the mountain. This time however we all followed inside.

What’s really cool about the mountain is it now contains the ruins of old Aradoth, right down to the location of buildings the old city had and the layout of some of its tunnels, which was very nostalgic for me having spent a good amount of time in that city in DF1.

A new addition however was a second exit from the tunnels, which the one enemy player used to get out. The exit (from what I saw, which was brief) appears to be a narrow gap among some rocks that you need to climb up on. One of our players found it, the rest of us did not. Unfortunately for the one player, he jumped right into the full NOX response force, which quickly brought him down. They then started attacking the rest of us, and the call was made to retreat back into a larger room before fighting.

We ran back and hid amongst the ruins, waiting for the enemy to run by. They did, and once five or so were in the room, we jumped out and attacked. Initially the battle was going in our favor, and I personally chased around a primalist to keep him from healing others. However as the fight dragged on, more and more NOX members spilled into the area, and we were eventually overwhelmed. I went from chasing one primalist to dodging 3-4 warriors all swinging at me. All but two of us went down.

The two that survived did so thanks to the rubble in the tunnels, as they were able to hide long enough for the enemy to clean the field and move out. Once they did, they were able to recall home.

Not a fully successful return to Aradoth, but a lot of fun.