Once a week, four of Hestia's towns are thrown open to every guild at once. No registration, no entry fee — but they are not four separate prizes. Elder's Retreat is the seat, and the only town that decides the war. The other three are the road to it.
Sunday
Every week
20:00
Server local time
45 min
One window
1 seat
Decides the war
Hold a sub town → earn the right to attack Elder's Retreat → hold Elder's Retreat when the war ends → win the war.
A guild holding nothing cannot touch the Elder's gate at all. The three sub towns are the qualifier — and there are only three of them, so once all three are taken the field is closed and everyone else is sent home.
The prize is public. Each town's real Ether Gate carries the name of the guild holding it, where every player who passes through sees it — and the guild on Elder's Retreat's gate is the one that rules the realm.
You don't fight in the real town. Each battleground is a separate copy of the terrain — shops, NPCs and ordinary players are completely unaffected while the war rages. Nothing you do there damages the real world.
The war is open
Battlegrounds only exist during the weekly window — you can't enter outside it.
You're in a guild
Gates are captured for a guild. A guildless player can fight, but can never claim or be paid.
Level 30+
Below level 30 the battlegrounds are closed to you.
Not in combat
Step out of a fight first — the same rule as using an Ether Gate.
If you're turned away, the reason is shown in chat. You won't miss the war either — it's announced 30, 10, 5 and 1 minute before it opens, then again the moment the gates go live with a centre-screen banner. The warnings reach you anywhere, including inside an instanced dungeon.
Open the Guild window and click Join War on the bottom row. The map is a bird's-eye view of Elder's Retreat, the seat of the realm, with neutral Asgard in the corner. It shows the Elder's gate — the one objective that decides the war — plus three ether gates spread around the town. Click a gate to teleport straight in.
Held by ⟨guild⟩
Captured and settled — the crystal sparkles blue with the owner's name.
UNDER ATTACK: ⟨guild⟩
Somebody is hitting that gate right now — it turns red on the first blow, not when it falls.
Uncontested
Nobody holds it and nobody is swinging at it — walk in unopposed.
Once you're on Elder's Retreat, your minimap carries three coloured markers — green Retta, orange Herbat Village, yellow Pascal's Camp — showing where the roads out of the seat stand.
A countdown sits at the top centre of your screen for as long as the war runs, so you always know how much is left. Outside a war, the map's header counts down to the next one, to the second.
All four are fought over at once. A guild can hold one outer town at most, plus the seat — and only Elder's Retreat decides the war.
Elder's Retreat
The seat of the realm
Whoever holds it when the war ends wins. Nothing else counts toward the win — and it pays three times a feeder town.
Retta
Sub town — green road
A qualifier for the seat, your respawn point, and your road in.
Herbat Village
Sub town — orange road
A qualifier for the seat, your respawn point, and your road in.
Pascal's Camp
Sub town — yellow road
A qualifier for the seat, your respawn point, and your road in.
Your spawn point on each battleground is set back from the gate, so arriving reinforcements never simply materialise on top of the objective.
The gates on the war map are for opposite sides, and the game will refuse one that isn't yours — chat then tells you which one is.
The Elder's Retreat gate
Only the guild that holds that gate. It is the objective, and its door is the defenders'.
The three Ether Gates
Guilds that hold no town yet — and the guild holding Elder's Retreat itself. They are spread around the town so an assault doesn't have to funnel in beside the objective.
Once your guild captures a village, the Ether Gates close to you. You already have your own way in: walk to the real town you hold and click its Ether Gate, or use your captured village gate on the battleground. Both put you down at the front beside your own gate — and dying on a battleground respawns you in your own territory anyway.
Elder's Retreat is the hub, and the roads run both ways. Three coloured village gates stand on the field, one per sub town — each named for where it goes, and once a town has an owner its gate carries that guild's name.
Three plain Ether Gates also stand on Elder's Retreat, spread across the field. They are the way in for guilds that hold nothing — not roads between towns.
Everyone outside your guild is an enemy
Battlegrounds are permanent open-PvP for the whole window. You don't flag, and you can't opt out.
Guild & party are safe from you
You can't damage guild mates or party members, and their names never show red.
No Karma, ever
Kills here carry no Karma penalty and no outlaw status — everyone present chose to fight. No PK item drops either.
No mounts
Riding is disabled — a speed boost would decide who reaches a gate first. Ride in mounted and you're put back on foot within a couple of seconds.
No combat pets
Your pet is dismissed exactly as in a duel or an arena match, and comes back by itself when you leave. You keep it equipped — it just doesn't spawn during the war.
You must stay in a guild the whole time
It's a guild war. Leave or get kicked while standing on a battleground and you're returned to Asgard within a few seconds.
No channel switching
While you're on a battleground you're on that battleground. The minimap names every gate in the colour of its own mark, so you can pick a direction without memorising the dots.
Almost no NPC services
No storage, no crafting, no buying and no selling — every other NPC refuses to talk. Bring your own potions. (Repairs are the one exception, below.)
…but you can repair your gear
A handful of merchants on each battleground will fix your equipment, and only that. Talk to one and the ordinary shop window opens — the two repair buttons in it work as always, while buying and selling are refused for the duration of the war.
Retta
Barrett, Nash
Herbat Village
Eloy, Eressa, Tual
Pascal's Camp
Linda
Elder's Retreat
Restin — in the town quarter, and a second Restin posted forward, nearer the fighting
Arriving, dying, and coming back
5 seconds of immunity on arrival
Every way in counts — a gate, a warp, or respawning after a death. Nothing can damage, stun, freeze, root or knock you down, so a squad camped on your landing spot can't kill you before your screen finishes loading. Your own guild can still heal and buff you. It ends the instant you attack or cast anything: it's there to let you arrive, not to open a fight from behind a shield.
Death puts you back in the war
You respawn on ground your guild holds — Elder's Retreat first if the seat is yours (a defender belongs at the seat, not marched back from a feeder town), otherwise a sub town you hold. Hold nothing and you go to Asgard, safe, to rejoin from the war map.
Holding the seat? You come back at the Ether Gate
Not on the objective itself. You get a moment to regroup and a run back in, rather than reappearing inside the assault that just killed you. It's a walk, and that's the point: dying on the seat costs the defence time — it just no longer costs it the defender.
You must stay down for 5 seconds
A 5-4-3-2-1 countdown runs before Go to town will work; click early and you're told how long is left. Without it, a defender killed on their own gate would be standing on it again before the attackers could finish the capture.
No in-place resurrection
Neither the Statue of the Resurrection Goddess nor the Heart of Resurrection (“Resurrection of Blessing”) works on a battleground — only Go to town. Nobody can rez on the spot and hold a gate forever.
Ordinary death costs only
Equipment durability loss, exactly as anywhere else. There is no additional war penalty on top.
Kill enemies back to back without dying and you're rewarded for it — the war's own version of a rampage. Two kills earns tier 1, and every further kill raises you a tier, up to tier 4 at five kills. Each tier is a real combat buff that grows with the tier, and it refreshes on every kill.
Tier 1
2 kills
≈ +20 weapon damage · +20 defence · +20 magic power · +200 max HP
Tier 2
3 kills
≈ +40 / +40 / +40 · +400 max HP
Tier 3
4 kills
≈ +60 / +60 / +60 · +600 max HP
Tier 4
5 kills
≈ +80 / +80 / +80 · +800 max HP — the maximum
Buff values are approximate — roughly +20 weapon damage, defence and magic power and +200 maximum HP per tier.
Every town — seat or sub town — is won the same way: one gate, three steps. Breaking is the fight; paying is the commitment; holding is the game.
Break the gate
The gate is a huge structure — 3,000,000 HP. That is deliberate: breaking one is a job for a guild committed to it for several minutes, not something a passing player does while the defenders are elsewhere. Bring numbers, and expect to be fighting the whole time. The realm sees the town turn red on the first blow.
Pay the claim fee
Breaking does not take the town — it reserves it for your guild. Hit the gate again and a window asks you, showing the price and your gold balance; say yes and your guild is claiming it. /claimgate does the same if you'd rather type. Any one member can pay — it doesn't have to be the guild master — and only one payment is ever taken however many of you click at once.
Hold it for a minute
Once paid, the gate rebuilds 3 seconds later at full HP, and a progress bar appears above it showing how much of the one-minute hold is left. When the bar fills, the town is captured and your guild's name goes up over the gate.
The claim fee
The fee is small on purpose. It's there so that breaking a gate is a decision rather than an accident — not to price anyone out of the war. The real cost of a town is the 3,000,000 HP gate and the fight around it.
You can't break your own gate — you repair it
Click your own damaged gate and it offers to repair it: a window gives you the price and the HP it buys back, and nothing is charged until you say yes. Hitting it works too, and /repairgate while standing at it does the same. An operator can turn repair off entirely — if it's off, the game says so rather than doing nothing.
Click once to be asked the price, again to pay it. On the three outer towns your gate is normally your ride back to Elder's Retreat — while it's damaged the click means repair instead, so travel with your Door of Return. The seat's own gate never travelled anywhere, so there it's only ever the repair question.
What it costs, on a 3,000,000 HP gate
Read those figures before you plan around repair. Gold is a real defence, but at these prices it's a burst defence — enough to deny one break at a decisive moment, not a way to out-spend a determined assault for forty-five minutes. Bodies on the field are cheaper than gold, and the guild that tries to hold the seat with its treasury will run out before the attackers do.
Breaking a gate is a long, loud commitment — and holding it afterwards is still the game.
A 3,000,000 HP gate means you can't take a town quietly: the defenders will know long before it falls, and the one-minute hold only starts once it's standing again.
Qualify
You cannot damage the Elder's Retreat gate until your guild holds at least one sub town — swing at it with nothing to your name and the blow does nothing; the game tells you why. So the war opens as a three-way scramble for Retta, Herbat Village and Pascal's Camp. Take one and hold it: that's your ticket to the seat, your respawn point and your road in.
The field closes
There are only three sub towns. The moment all three are held, nobody else can qualify — the realm is told, and every guild holding nothing is teleported off Elder's Retreat to Asgard. The war becomes a contest between the qualified guilds alone.
Losing your last town
Qualification is re-checked, not granted once. If the sub town that got you in is taken back off you and you hold nothing else, you lose the right to hit the seat — and if the field has already closed, you're swept to Asgard on the next pass. Defending your feeder town matters as much as pushing the seat.
If your guild is still empty-handed, the announcements land the moment the third town falls — that is your warning shot. Take one of the three early, or you are watching from Asgard.
Your guild can hold only one of the three sub towns. The moment you have a claim on an outer town, your attacks do nothing to the other two towns' gates, and the roads to them close to you — the coloured gates on Elder's Retreat refuse you, and so does the war map.
Why. There are three doors, and three is also the number that shuts the field — so a guild taking two would lock a third guild out of the war entirely. One each keeps every door open.
It costs you nothing. The seat is not an outer town. Holding your feeder town and Elder's Retreat is exactly the position you're fighting for, and it is never restricted.
Lose it and the restriction lifts with it. You're free to go and take another town, or win the old one back.
Whoever holds Elder's Retreat when the war ends wins it, announced across the realm. Nothing else counts toward the win — holding your outer town and not the seat wins you nothing but the gold; holding only the seat wins the war outright.
Win a war and you start the next one as reigning champion — with the board reset around you.
That is the shape of a title defence: you sit on the seat while three guilds fight over the right to come at you. Towns otherwise stay yours after the war — through the week and into the next, going back up for contest with your name still on them.
Everything arrives by mail, shortly after the war ends — to the members who fought. You're recorded as a participant simply by being on a battleground during the war; a guild mate who spent the war in town earns nothing.
Gold is paid per town held — and the seat pays more. Every guild holding at least one town and fielding a fighter is paid, win or lose, the sub towns included, so a guild that never reached the seat is still paid for the ground it took.
Each sub town
Retta, Herbat Village and Pascal's Camp each pay the same flat amount.
Elder's Retreat
Its own 50,000 plus a 100,000 seat bonus — three times a feeder town.
Since a guild can hold only one outer town, the most you can hold is your feeder town plus the seat — 200,000, and the war with it. The seat alone is worth three times a feeder town, so there is never a reason to sit on your outer town rather than push. A guild that skips the war entirely is paid nothing, even if it still holds a town from last week. Every figure is paid to each member who fought — a guild that brings twenty people to hold the seat mails twenty lots of 150,000.
Ravens hold Elder's + Retta; Wolves hold Herbat
Ravens — 200,000 each · Wolves — 50,000 each
Wolves hold Herbat + Elder's; Ravens hold Retta
Wolves — 200,000 each · Ravens — 50,000 each
Nobody holds Elder's Retreat; three guilds hold a sub town each
No winner — 50,000 each
Nobody holds a town
No reward — the realm stays neutral
The seat is both the win and the biggest purse. Taking a feeder town is worth doing and worth defending, but it will never out-earn the guild sitting on Elder's Retreat at the bell — and that guild takes the champion's perk with it.
While a war is running and you're standing on a battleground, the two buttons on the right of your screen change. The arena buttons — Game Arena and 5 vs 5 PvP Arena — become War Stats (the scoreboard) and War Map (the same map the Guild window's Join War button opens). They change back on their own shortly after you leave a battleground, or when the war ends — everywhere else in the world they're the arena buttons exactly as before.
The scoreboard ranks guilds, not players
How to read it
Ranked by ground, not by damage
Villages captured first, then kills, then damage — because the war is won by holding ground, not by the biggest number. Ten guilds a page; use the arrows for the rest.
It's live
It updates every few seconds while open, so kills and captures appear as they happen. The board stays on the page you're reading rather than jumping back to the first — but the order can change while you read it, since a capture moves a guild up immediately.
Which war you're looking at
The title says WAR IN PROGRESS while one is running, or last war once it has ended. The numbers stay readable after the bell and are cleared when the next war opens — every war starts from nothing.
Ownership is visible in four places — and the towns whose gates carry a name are the real, everyday Retta, Herbat Village, Pascal's Camp and Elder's Retreat you already know. Everything else about them is unchanged — shops, NPCs, quests and safety all work exactly as before. The gate simply carries a name.
The real town's gate
The holding guild's name, to anyone walking past — no need to attend the war. It deliberately shows only the settled holder: a guild part-way through a claim doesn't appear, because that fighting is happening in the battleground copy, not in the town you're standing in.
The battleground gate
The holder, or the guild currently mid-claim during a war.
The coloured exit gates
On Elder's Retreat, each road out carries the name of the guild holding the town it leads to — which is also who may use it.
The war map
Elder's Retreat, the seat: Held by ⟨guild⟩, UNDER ATTACK, or peaceful.
UNDER ATTACK means being attacked, not already lost
A town turns red on the war map, with the attacking guild's name, from the moment somebody starts hitting its gate — you don't have to wait for the gate to fall to see that a town is in trouble. A gate is a long fight, so that red is the whole window in which a defender can still do something about it.
It clears by itself about twenty seconds after the last hit, so one stray swing doesn't leave a town red for the rest of the war. Hitting your own gate never marks it — that's a claim or a repair, not an assault. A town genuinely mid-claim, or whose gate is broken and waiting to be paid for, keeps showing that instead: those say more than “somebody is swinging”.
Winning makes your guild the reigning champion, and the crown carries a standing bonus for every member — new joiners included — until another guild wins outright. While you reign, a champion row appears in the Guild window's Guild Skill tab (the sixth slot) listing the EXP and Loot bonus, and vanishes the moment the crown moves on.
+5%
Experience
+5%
Loot — and gold
+500 HP
A visible buff to maximum HP
Monsters only. The EXP and loot bonuses can only ever apply on a monster kill — and the buff is stripped on any PvP ground: arenas, duels, PK-active fields and the battlegrounds themselves. The next war starts even.
The crown changes hands only by being taken. It passes the moment another guild wins a war (within seconds, no relog). A war where nobody claimed the seat — including one nobody turned up for — leaves it with you. There is no draw to lose it to.
You don't have to fight to follow the war. Spectator mode puts you above the battlefield as an invisible observer — nobody can see you, nobody can target you, and you can't affect anything. Open the Guild window and click Watch War on the bottom row; you start above Elder's Retreat, the seat.
Moving around
To keep one fighter in view, follow them with TAB. The free-roam camera centres on the thick of the fight, so a player who runs off to a far corner can drop out of view — TAB onto them and the camera stays with them wherever they go.
The controls
Jump between fronts
One button per battleground — Elder's Retreat, Retta, Herbat Village, Pascal's Camp. Click to jump to that front instantly; you stay a spectator throughout, and X leaves.
Camera speed & Hide UI
Step the pan speed from 0.25× to 4× — slow for watching a fight, fast for crossing the map. Hide UI clears chat, quests, hotbars and minimap, and moves both panels to the top so nothing sits over the battle. Leave Spectate returns you to exactly where you were. Both panels drag anywhere.
You need a guild, and the war has to be running. You can't switch to spectating from a battleground — if you're in the fight, you're in the fight; leave first. The spectator count is shown on screen, so the players fighting know they have an audience.
Anyone still standing on a battleground is returned to Asgard, and the victory is announced across the realm — or, if the seat was unheld at the bell, that the realm remains neutral. Nothing is reset between wars: the towns you hold stay yours through the week, across server restarts, and into the next war, where the gates go back up for contest with your name still on them. There is no decay and no inactivity timer — a town is only lost to a rival who takes it.
Turn up and defend
Stays yours unless a rival completes a hold
Gold per town held
Skip the war, nobody attacks
Stays yours
Nothing
Skip the war, a rival attends and holds
Flips to them
Nothing
Nothing protects an absent owner. A guild that fields nobody is paid nothing at all — not even for the towns it still holds — and cannot be crowned victor or take the champion's crown. If nobody at all attends, there is no victor, nobody is paid, every town stays put, and the reigning champion keeps the crown.
The Ranking tab. The Guild window has a Ranking tab with two views — Guilds, the realm's top guilds by level, and Territorial War, who has won the most wars, with towns taken and their last victory. A win adds a row; a war that ended with Elder's Retreat unheld does not — wars won means the seat was taken and kept.
Every figure on this page is what the live server is running (checked 16 September 2026). They can be retuned, so if the game ever disagrees with this page, the game is right.
The war
Taking a town
Rewards & the crown
Kill streaks
And above all, turn up. Rewards go only to the members who were on the field — sitting in town earns your guild mates nothing, and a guild that fields nobody cannot win at all.
My gear broke mid-war — do I have to leave?
No. Each battleground has one or two merchants who will repair. Talk to one and the ordinary shop window opens; the two repair buttons in it work as always. Buying and selling are refused during a war, so bring your own potions.
Can I be killed the instant I arrive?
No. You're immune to damage, stuns, roots and knockdowns for 5 seconds after arriving — through a gate or by respawning — so a squad camped on the spot can't kill you while your screen is still loading. It ends the moment you attack or cast, so it can't be used to open a fight.
Where can I see how my guild is doing?
Press War Stats, on the right of your screen while you're on a battleground. It ranks every guild in the war by villages captured, then kills, then damage, and updates live.
Can I join without a guild?
You can fight, but you cannot claim a gate or earn a reward. Gates and rewards are guild-based.
Can we hold all four towns?
No — one outer town per guild. The most any guild can hold is its feeder town plus Elder's Retreat, which is also the winning position and the biggest purse.
Why is nothing happening when I hit the Elder's Retreat gate?
Your guild does not hold a sub town. Take Retta, Herbat Village or Pascal's Camp first — that is what earns you the right to attack the seat.
Why can't we attack Herbat Village? We already hold Retta.
One outer town per guild. Your guild has its door into the war; the other two are for the guilds that have none. You can still attack Elder's Retreat — the seat is never restricted — and if you lose Retta you're free to take another town instead.
We held our town all war and still lost. How?
The seat decides the war, not the towns. Whoever holds Elder's Retreat at the bell wins, even if that is all they hold — and they out-earned you too, because the seat is worth three times a feeder town.
Why were we teleported to Asgard in the middle of the war?
All three sub towns had been captured, so there was no way left for your guild to qualify. The realm is warned the moment the third one falls.
The gate to Retta won't let me through.
Once a town is captured, its road out of Elder's Retreat belongs to the guild that holds it. While a town is unclaimed, anyone may use its gate to go and fight for it.
Why can't I attack my own gate?
Because holding is meant to be the hard part. If you could re-break your own gate you'd just reset the timer whenever you were about to lose it. Click it and you're offered a repair instead.
What happens to the real towns during the war?
Nothing. The battlegrounds are separate copies — the real Retta, its shops, NPCs and quests carry on exactly as normal. Only the gate carries a name.
I got disconnected mid-war. Do I still get paid?
Yes, provided you were on a battleground during the war. The mail will be waiting when you return.
Does the whole guild share one reward, or do we each get one?
Each participating member gets their own mail with the full amount — the gold is never divided up. Turning out in numbers costs your guild nothing and pays every one of them: twenty fighters holding the seat means twenty mails of 150,000.
We only got gold, no box.
That's correct at the moment — no placing box is configured, so every reward mail carries gold alone. It's a setting that can be switched on later, not a bug.
Does the champion bonus help us defend our towns next war?
No. Experience and loot bonuses only apply against monsters, and the buff is stripped on any PvP ground — including the battlegrounds. The next war starts even.
Can we lose the crown without being beaten?
No. The crown passes only when another guild wins a war outright. A war where nobody claimed the seat — including one nobody turned up for — leaves it with you.
We won last week. Do we start with our towns?
You start holding Elder's Retreat only. The three sub towns are released the moment the war opens, so every challenger has a fair route to you. Defend the seat and the crown is yours for another week.
If I die on Elder's Retreat, where do I come back?
On Elder's Retreat if your guild holds it — at the Ether Gate, not on the objective, so you get a moment to regroup. Otherwise on a sub town you hold; hold nothing and you go to Asgard.
Can I spectate and then join the fight?
Yes — leave spectator mode, then use Join War normally. You cannot go the other way while standing on a battleground.
How much does it cost to repair our gate?
One repair restores at most a quarter of a 3,000,000 HP gate for 6,000,000 gold, and every later repair on that gate costs half as much again (9,000,000, then 13,500,000…). Taking a gate from zero to full across four repairs is nearly 49,000,000 gold. Treat repair as a way to deny one break at a decisive moment, not a substitute for defending the gate with people.
How do kill streaks work?
Two kills without dying earns tier 1, and every kill after that raises it, up to tier 4 at five kills. Each tier adds weapon damage, defence, magic power and maximum HP. A minute without a kill resets it, dying resets it, and re-killing the same player inside 30 seconds doesn't count. At four kills the whole battleground is told when somebody finally ends your run.
Why is the claim fee so cheap?
It's meant to be. 5,000 gold (10,000 for the seat) makes breaking a gate a decision rather than an accident — it isn't there to price anyone out. The real cost of a town is the 3,000,000 HP gate and the fight around it.
Download the launcher, create your account, and step through the portal into the world of Ether.