Major update19 Oct 2026

PvP: Duels, Caravans and the Lampless Reaches

Fighting other players is here, and it is always your choice. You can challenge someone to a duel, haul a wagon of goods down a road where raiders wait, or take the ferry out to the Lampless Reaches, where nobody keeps the peace. If you never opt in, nothing changes for you.

This is a first pass at all of it. The numbers, the rules and the rewards will all move as we see how the fights actually go, so please tell us what feels wrong, unfair or no fun. Your reports shape the next round.

How PvP Works

Nobody can hurt you unless you have joined a duel, a caravan or the Lampless Reaches.
Fights use the weapons, abilities, blocks, parries and dodges you already know. Players deal less damage to each other than to monsters, and the gap grows with level, so a fight between two veterans lasts about as long as one between two newcomers.
You never earn skill experience from hitting, healing or blocking another player, or from cleansing an ailment another player put on someone. Ailments from creatures pay as before.
Stuns, roots and silences wear off faster each time you're hit by the same kind in a short space, and then you shrug them off for a while.
Healing someone who was hurt by a player in the last 10 seconds works a little less well. You can only heal, shield or buff players on your side of a fight.
Name colours tell you who is who. Red can attack you right now, orange is flagged but can't reach you, blue is your party, and green is a mutual friend. A friend only protects you when you're on each other's lists, and your Friends list now shows who has added you back.
A new strip under the minimap shows where you stand, the levels you can fight and your combat timer. Click it to read the rules.
After any PvP blow you're in a fight for 10 seconds. Log out during it and your character stays put until the timer runs out.
While that timer runs, Lamp-stones, Home Recall, portals, ferries, delves and changing worlds all wait. You'll be told how many seconds are left.
Portals, and the odd NPC who offers to carry you somewhere, follow the same rules as the Lamp-stones. Haulers, raiders and anyone in the Lampless Reaches have to walk.
If something that stops you riding starts while you're calling your mount, like a duel's countdown or taking the reins of a handcart, the summon stops.
You can lock any skill from the Skills window so it stops gaining experience, which is handy for keeping a fair fight at a level you like. Anything you'd have earned while it's locked is lost, not saved up.

Duels

Right-click a player within 15 m and pick Challenge to a Duel, or use the Duel button on their Inspect window. You can duel almost anywhere, towns included, as long as you're clear of banks, shops and the Exchange.
You both agree the rules in a window much like trading. Pick one round or best of 3 or 5, the round time, and whether food, potions, healing abilities and each combat style are allowed. You can also go basic attacks only, lock gear, require certain slots to be empty, or fight on Even Footing at the lower of your two levels.
You can duel someone in your own party. It only makes the two of you fair game for each other, and only for that duel. Once the countdown starts, neither of you can invite anyone to a party or join one until the duel ends.
A lamp-lit ring appears around you both. Nobody dies in a duel. The blow that would finish you leaves you on 1 health and you lose the round. Step out of the ring for more than 3 seconds and you lose it too.
Players with accounts at least 7 days old and a total level of 150 can stake coins and tradeable items. The winner takes both purses, a draw hands them back, and there's a daily limit on how much you can stake.
Hearthmoor has a sparring ring in the court of Guild Row. Hesper Vane, the Ring Master, will set up a duel with one of her rule sets for you and a partner.
Your wins, losses and draws show on your Inspect window. Duels never give experience.

Caravans and Raiders

Haul a whole wagon of goods home in one trip, if you can keep it out of the raiders' hands.

Hiring a wagon

Every town with a bank now has a Guild Carter. Talk to them and ask to hire a wagon, or right-click them and pick Hire a Wagon to go straight to the yard. They're happy to explain anything else about the trade.
There are three wagons:
The Handcart costs 5,000 coins, carries 600 kg and 15 kinds of goods, and you pull it on foot.
The Carter's Wagon costs 15,000 coins, carries 2,000 kg and 30 kinds of goods, and you can pull it on foot or mounted.
The Long Cart costs 50,000 coins, carries 5,000 kg and 45 kinds of goods, and needs a mount.
Every wagon has a fresh look. The Handcart is a sturdy planked cart with lashed sacks, the Carter's Wagon has painted boards, a canvas cover and a lantern, and the Long Cart is a big four-wheeler in the Carters' Guild green and gold with its own pennant. Cargo piles up on the bed as you load it.
A contract lasts 90 minutes. Insurance costs 40% on top of the fee and pays back 80% of the fee if the wagon is lost, but not if you walk away from it or the contract runs out.
One wagon at a time. When you hire, party members close by are asked to join you as escort, and they can load, pull and fight for the wagon.

Loading and hauling

Load anything you can trade, anywhere outside a safe zone. Coins, quest items and bound items stay with you. Each kind of item takes one slot however many you load, so weight is the real limit.
The cargo window works like the bank. Open your satchel near your wagon and the cargo opens beside it, then drag or click to load and take things back. Load All and Take All do the lot.
Anything you pick up or gather within 30 m of your wagon goes straight onto it, kills included, as long as it fits.
Press E near your wagon to take the reins, and E again to let go. Attacking, blocking or using an ability lets go of the reins too.
An empty wagon keeps up with you. The more you load, the slower it pulls, down to 95% of your speed on roads with a full load, and a bit slower off the road. You can sprint while pulling.
If you have a mount equipped, taking the reins of a Carter's Wagon or Long Cart puts you in the saddle. Carts hitch neatly to any mount, the rooster and the Headless Horseman's steed included.
Your wagon shows on the minimap and the world map. Rings on the ground show how close you need to be to load it and to have pickups land on it.
Bring it to any carter post and everything on it goes to your bank. Ask a carter to weigh your wagon, or use the button on your wagon card.

The risk

Hiring a wagon flags you for PvP until you deliver it or walk away. Raiders near your level can attack you, your escort and the wagon. Nobody can fight within 15 m of a town. What you carry yourself is always safe.
Raiders break a wagon's wheels to stop it. Any of the crew can repair crippled wheels in a few seconds, and the wagon rolls on at reduced strength.
Leave your wagon with nobody near it for 2 minutes and raiders can take it without a fight. Leave it 10 minutes more and it's gone with its cargo.
Walk away from a wagon and anyone can take it over, cargo and all, and haul it home as their own. You stay flagged for 60 seconds after you walk away or deliver, and the game tells you how long is left.
If the server restarts, your wagon is still there with its cargo when you come back, and you get the full grace time to reach it.
Road Wardens guard the first stretch of the big roads. Bandits and beasts sometimes ambush a wagon on quiet ones, more often the heavier it's loaded.

Raiding

Hidden raider's posts sit off the roads. Raise the flag with the Bandit Quartermaster, break a wagon's wheels or drive off its escort, then take it and haul it to a fence, who sends the cargo to your bank. A quarter of the load spills in the struggle.
Watch your back, since other raiders, and the hauler you robbed, can take it off you.
While you're hauling or raiding, raiders show on your minimap with crossed blades.
Lower your flag at any raider's post once you've been out of a fight for 30 seconds and have no stolen cargo, or it drops by itself after 10 quiet minutes.
Haulers climb the Carters' Guild ranks from Drover to Master of the Long Road. Raiders earn notoriety instead.

The Lampless Reaches

Gannet's Quay has a ferry that sails west to Blackwater Landing, a harbour of wreck-timber shacks where nobody has ever hung a lamp. The quay and the yard are safe. Past the windbreak, they aren't.
The Reaches go three stretches deep. The Shore has the wreckers' beaches and a warship on her side in Wreck Bay. The Wilds have the Saltblack marsh, the cliffs of the Ribs and Gallows Key. The Deep is ash and black sand under the smoking Sootcrown. Climb the Ribstair to the Lookout Tor to see it all.
The deeper you go, the wider the level range of who can attack you. On the Shore it's players fairly close to your level, and in the Deep it's anyone at all. Your party and mutual friends can never hurt you.
Attack someone who hasn't hit you or your party in the last minute and you're Marked for 10 minutes, with a red skull lamp over your head. Fighting back never marks you.
When you fall you keep your three most valuable belongings and the rest drops in a cache at your body. Coins always drop, bound items are always kept, and dropped worn gear may shatter. Marked players keep nothing. You wake at Gannet's Quay, and the death screen lists what you kept, dropped and lost.
Every coin you carry drops when you fall out there, so the game now says so. The ferry asks before you sail if you have coins on you, Blackwater Landing reminds you when you step off, and there's a bank strongbox on Gannet's Quay right by the boat.
Lamp-stones, Home Recall and changing worlds don't work out there. Unstuck still frees you if you're wedged somewhere, but it only sets you down on open ground close by, or just inside the mouth if you're in a cave. It won't take you home. Mags Tidewell will row you home from the Skiff Hole in the Deep for 1,500 coins, if nobody is hitting you.
The further in you go, the better the ore and the tougher the locals. Gathering out there gives more, and creatures give more combat experience.
The Reaches are now the richest gathering ground in the game. The Deep holds the densest rich coal, dhurrite, aether, starstone and skystone anywhere, and the Wilds hold a field of 35 adamant under the Liars' Watch.
Every gathering skill has a reason to make the crossing. You'll find wispwood and aetherbloom groves, beds of Cinderlily, Mountain Herbs, Barrow Herbs, Rimeleaf, Skybell and Starbloom, Moon-web on the Lookout Tor, and schools of deep-sea fish and drowned eels.
The whirlpools by the Skiff Hole are the only Whirlpool Fishing Spots in the world, and the only place to catch a Moonray. Bring a dhurrite harpoon and someone to watch your back.
Nodes come back faster the deeper you go. On the Shore they keep their usual time, in the Wilds they return in three quarters of it, and in the Deep in half.
The best spots sit right at a camp's door or have their own guards, so expect company. At the rich dig sites the ore runs in seams along the hillside, with a big outcrop standing over each one.
Every fishing spot out there can be fished from ground you can stand on.
Blackwater Landing's heath rolls in hummocks and dunes, thick with gorse, heather and whatever the storms throw up. The Lookout Tor has a proper summit with the wreckers' cairn flying a scrap of sail, the Ribs are broken cliffs of crags and ledges, and the Sootcrown's crater is all ash, basalt and ember cracks. The Ash Choir never carried a Lamp-stone this far west, so you won't find one in their camp.
The same grass that covers the mainland grows out here, and it sways and bends round you just the same. It's thick on the Shore's heath, in the wood and round the marsh, thin marram on the beaches and the odd dry tuft on the ash. Ferns and mushrooms fill the saltblack wood, reeds crowd the marsh pools, and the beaches are strewn with driftwood, shells and wreck timber.
Heath fades into beach and wood into marsh, the way the ground does at home. The Deep keeps its own looks, with black sand on its shore that darkens where the sea wets it, dark ash rock on the Sootcrown's walls and paths trodden into the ash. The paths out here are plain earth, and there's no cobbled road on the isle.
The roads and trails climb gently, so you can run the Wreckers' Road and the Cliff, Causeway and Gallows paths without long steep pulls. The Ribstair is still a hard climb up to the Tor, as it should be.
Press M out there and the map opens on the Reaches, with the isle, the paths, the camps, the gem caves, the Lookout Tor and Blackwater Landing, and the Shore, the Wilds and the Deep named across it. The minimap follows you too. A switch under the title flips to Aethermere and back, and a green dot sits on the one you're standing in.
The whole isle shows on the map from the start. Pins belong to the world you drop them in, 40 to each map.
Marked players show on your minimap with a skull while you're in the Reaches.

The Reaches Gem Caves

Two caves have opened on the isle, and both are thick with gem rock.

The Cinder Throat runs under the Sootcrown, deep in the Deep. Its mouth opens in the north-west flank between two stands of basalt, and you walk straight in. There's no door and no loading, so whoever stands in the mouth can see you coming up the black sand, and whoever follows you in is right behind you. The throat is four metres wide all the way along, so a small group can hold it. Past it are the Ash Gallery, the Glass Vent round its slag lake, the Ashbed and, up a short ramp, the Starfall Seam. It has the whole gem ladder, and the top of it is dense, with starstone and skystone in quantity, aether veins, emberstone, and cinderlilies in the ash. The fire-born keep it, inside and at the mouth.
Bellhoard Grotto is the Lantern Liars' sea cave on the Wreck Bay shore, in the Wilds. They hang the bells they take off the ships in here so nobody can ring for the lost. You'll find the Bell Hoard, the Drowned Pool (you can fish it) and the Captain's Rift up the Bell Stair, with plenty of sunstone, emberstone, tidestone and some skystone.
Each cave has a pin on the map and a sign by its mouth. To get into Bellhoard Grotto, walk up to its mouth from any side and pick Enter, and you'll be facing into the cave. To leave, use The Way Out at the back of the entrance passage, where daylight comes through the roof, and you come out facing the isle.
Inside, the Reaches' rules hold just as they do outside. The Cinder Throat counts as the Deep and Bellhoard Grotto as the Wilds. Fall in a cave and you wake at Gannet's Quay like anywhere else in the Reaches, with your cache left where you fell. Log out inside and you log back in inside.
Gem rocks always run dry when you mine them and take a while to come back, about 20 minutes for skystone and 40 for starstone.
Going through the Grotto's mouth isn't a Lamp-stone jump, so you can do it mid-fight and anyone chasing you can follow. You need a short breath between passes, though, so you can't hop in and out to dodge a blow. Mounts stay outside both caves.

Reaches Gear

New materials come from the Reaches: Driftiron Ore, Saltblack Logs, Sea Silk, Wreckglass, Drowned Eels and Brinehide.
Every Reaches beast can drop Brinehide.
Crafters turn them into three lines of gear made for fighting players. Wrecker's is worn at level 20, Reaver's at 40 and Lampless at 75, with armour and a weapon for every style, a Hull Shield and jewellery.
The gear carries Damage to Players, Damage from Players and Tenacity, which shortens crowd control from players. These do nothing against monsters, and the rest of each piece is a tier below its level, so it's no use in the open world. Nothing is sold in shops or drops finished.
A Lamp Ward, bound at an enchanting altar, saves one extra belonging the next time you fall in the Reaches.

Coins

Coins are now an ordinary item in your satchel. They sit in a slot like anything else, stack as high as you like, and you can move them, sort them and put them in the bank. Deposit All takes them too, unless you lock their slot.
Your coins are where you left them. They now sit in the last slot of your satchel, and if your satchel was completely full they went into your bank instead. Nothing was lost.
The coin total still shows at the bottom of the satchel window.
Coins have a new icon, and the pile grows the more you carry.
PvP gear from the Reaches now looks like its own line in your bag. Wrecker's and Reaver's blades take on their line's colours instead of looking like plain steel and adamant.

Horses for Sale

Odile Fairweather at Reedlight Inn now sells horses. Four of them stand in a new paddock beside her stable, with a trough, hay and a sign by the road.
The Lamp Road Courser costs 250,000 coins and gives +23% speed.
The Silverrun Palfrey costs 350,000 coins and gives +26%.
The Ironcrest Destrier costs 450,000 coins and gives +29%.
The Starlit Charger costs 550,000 coins and gives +32%.
You buy them in order. Odile wants to see the horse before it, so you'll need your Moorland Pony for the Courser, the Courser for the Palfrey and so on. You keep every horse you buy.

Other Improvements

The prompt on screen now always matches what E does. Before, a prompt could show for one thing while E needed you to aim at it.
Footsteps keep time with your feet at any speed, and walking and running animations match how fast you're actually moving.
The drovers' ox carts on the Lamp Road are pulled by real oxen now, and the carters who push handcarts round town hold them properly.

Fair Play

The Report Player window has four new PvP reasons. Pick one and moderators also see the last minute of combat between you and that player, so you don't need screenshots.
Staff can take someone out of PvP for a while. If they're in a duel they give it up, if they're hauling they step away from their wagon, and if they're in the Reaches they're set down at Gannet's Quay.
We keep count of how builds, weapons and abilities do against players so balance can follow the fights. It counts builds, it doesn't follow you.

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