Crowns

King or Queen's crown.

Granted to those who own a guild castle, this prestigious Kaelar crown is one of a few that designate royalty in the world of Verra.

Kings and Queens

Castle keep throne room in Alpha-1 castle sieges.

Leaders of guilds that occupy guild castles are referred to as Kings and Queens (also referred to as Lords).

• A King or Queen may also be elected mayor of one node.
• Lords of castles and Mayors unlock special high-effect abilities with long cooldowns that can be used during sieges or events.

Mayors and lords of castles have spells they can use on the battlefield with high effect and long cooldowns for their teams.

Guild castles

Guild castle Alpha-1 early preview.

With five Castles in the world, and each having been owned by different civilizations from the far-flung past of Verra, you can expect that each Castle has its own character. Different terrains and different layouts will result in each Castle having its own advantages and disadvantages. Just because you have managed to take one Castle will not mean that your strategies will pan out in the next. Commanders will have to take into consideration the lay of the land, time of day, weather, and even seasons into account when forming their battle plans.

Five guild castles exist in Ashes of Creation.

• Each of the five castles has its own static layout. Castle siege defenses include deploying traps and blockades within the castle, as well as hiring mercenary NPCs to defend specific locations.

While the hard structural environment is static and not able to be- you're not building a castle if you own a castle, you're inheriting a historic ruined castle that is representative of the past because it has some tie-in to specific types of powers that we haven't gotten into from a lore perspective yet but we haven't expressed to the community. That's something that we're going to leave for the community to find out when they play. But when you place mercenaries and you place those blockades and you place those traps, that affects the level design of the castle according to the strategy you might use to defend it. – Steven Sharif

• Castle sieges occur in the open world but may become instanced based on testing.
  • Alpha-1 castle sieges occurred in a zone that is accessible via a NPC teleporter.
• There is one castle located on an island that is able to be affected by naval combat.

• Castles are initially be occupied by level 50+ NPC adversaries. These are the primary antagonists in the storyline. Guilds have a period of time to level up in order to siege these castles.
  • There will not be a relic to capture, instead whichever guild had highest contributing DPS against the raid boss will capture the castle.
  • Castle nodes around NPC run castles will not be present.

These Castles are occupied when players arrive on Verra, and their current inhabitants will have to be removed before any player can claim them. Castles will be dangerous and high-level raid zones until they can be cleared, and the first group of players to do so will gain the Castle as their reward.

• It is undecided if NPCs will attack player occupied castles that are otherwise not challenged by other players during the monthly castle siege events.

Q: You had mentioned in the past that player held castles could be attacked monthly. Does this mean that if a castle is not attacked monthly by players, the NPCs, which originally held the castle, would attempt to retake their castle from these players?

A: We've we've talked about this a little bit in the past, how we want to handle kind of off-cycle sieges: whether or not we want NPCs to attack the castle. The jury's still out on that from a design perspective. The original intent was that, if you didn't have any attackers scheduled for the castle siege that the castle would enter into an NPC siege, but that might not be the case in the future. That's still something that we're actively discussing. – Steven Sharif

Visuals

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  2023-05-09
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  2021-12-08
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  2021-06-03
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  2021-06-03
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  2021-05-29
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  2021-02-09
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  2018-02-15
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  2017-11-18

See also

• Kings and Queens
• Castles
• Castle sieges
• Guilds