In a game with a long grind and a slower pace, why is so much happening so quickly?!

Last update I talked about our local enemies gondor. Well now we are at peace with gondor, because our allies Revenant was attacked by another NA guild called APEX. APEX attacked Rev because of the fact that Rev went neutral with a few of the local Chinese guilds in their area, in large part so they could transport granite safely to build their castle walls.

The funny thing about all of this is, according to APEX, they attacked Rev to hurt the Chinese, but their attack cancelled our plans during Judgement Hour to attack gondor. Instead Rev had to defend against APEX, APEX got hit by another Chinese guild and lost a bunch of things on their realm claim, and we got hit by gondor and lost most of our planted trees on our realm claim. The best part is I tried explaining this before-hand to APEX, but their leadership is… a bit lacking in putting things together.

APEX also dropped an Instance Battle totem on Rev. The way this works is that after a 22 hour period, a 100v100 battle happens, and the side that loses takes a hit to their guild monument, costing them territory. The battle happens in an instanced spot where the totem is dropped, where all buildings and terraforming are undone.

On top of this, initially another NA guild, Monarch, pledged to help APEX in attacking Rev, and Monarch is a rather large guild. To complicate matters even more, several of the local Chinese guilds reached out to Rev and offered assistance against APEX, which is interesting because one of them would have gained some territory if Rev lost the battle. Guess they all hated APEX that much.

Anyone can sign up for the battle, and the two main guilds on each side can accept who will be part of the battle. When the battle actually started, the numbers were 80ish on the Rev side, 70ish APEX and friends. If you signed up and were accepted, the game will teleport you to the instance battle if you are online, and then places you back where you were after the battle. During the battle if you die you lose all your gear. The winners of the battle get all the loot.

At the start of the battle there is a 5 minute period to give everyone time to load in and get organized. You can’t move very far during this time. After that there is a 15 minute period where everyone can move around and fight, but the king-of-the-hill style counter hasn’t started. Once it does, whichever side has members near the totem gain control points. Max out your points and you win. If the other side has a member in the area, the point gains stop. It’s pretty simple, but also works well.

In our battle, APEX picked a spot that was in the forest, along with some marsh areas. This made defending much easier, and greatly hampered their cavalry and archers. Another mistake made is they basically didn’t engage us during the 15 minute time period. Both sides had archers firing away, and some cavalry skirmishes happened, but for the most part the infantry held lines and not much happened.

After that phase they made a push, but it was too late, and they lost the melee battle anyway. We won. Final kill total was 38 to 28 in our favor. What is also interesting is once the battle is won, there is still a 5 minute or so period where you can fight/kill any remaining players, the losing side can run to the edge to escape, and looting happens at the totem for the winners.

The combat in LiF being slower and far less ‘twitch’ feels a bit clunky in 1v1 engagements, but in larger-scale combat it actually results in tactics coming into play. Things like formations matter far more, and ‘holding the line’ is a real thing. Having a good mix of archers, melee, and cavalry is also key. A lot of MMOs aim to have this kind of combat, but LiF is the first I’ve seen that achieves it.

The instance battle was a lot of fun, and it’s a good system to settle these kinds of things. 100v100 is large enough to feel epic, but the size limit and the smaller map means performance holds up, and without major lag or frame-rate issues, the combat is responsive. For me so far, IB are a major highlight of LiF from the PvP perspective.

On the non-PvP side, we have finally completed our stone walls, which is a major accomplishment for a guild our size. This means our entire town claim area is protected, and we can freely craft and harvest within that area without worrying about enemy attacks. The high walls also mean we can fire down on enemies far better than we could from our old wooden walls.

On top of finishing the walls, we also built our trading post. The trading post has a few major benefits. The first is that every member can access it for 1000 units of personal storage space. The other benefit is we can sell certain items for money, and that money can be used to fund personal claims and higher-tier guild monuments. That means we can, and did, upgrade our monument to tier 2, giving us an even larger realm claim area. We are moving up in the world!

With the heavy push to finish the walls over, people can go back to focusing on their individual crafts, and since my builder hit 60+ masonry, I can build things like a kitchen (food quality bonus), larger housing (more bind points), and more advanced crafting stations.

It’s been a busy and exciting few days, and I’m guessing that will continue as the war between Rev and APEX continues, and we continue to grow and strengthen our military might.