Once a week, four of Hestia's towns are thrown open to every guild at once. No registration, no entry fee — break the Ether Gate, hold the ground, and your guild's name goes up above the real town's gate for the whole server to see.
Saturday
Every week
20:00
Server local time
60 min
One window
4 towns
Contested at once
Hold a town and your guild's name is displayed above that town's real Ether Gate — seen by every player who walks past, whether or not they ever attend a war. The whole server knows whose towns these are.
You don't fight in the real town. Each battleground is a separate copy of the terrain, so shops, NPCs and ordinary players are completely unaffected while a war rages. Nothing you do on a battleground touches 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 60+
The battlegrounds are end-game territory.
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. The server also announces the war 30, 10, 5 and 1 minute before it opens — the warnings reach you anywhere, including inside an instanced dungeon.
Open the Guild window and hit Join War. The map shows four towns at the corners of a square, neutral Asgard in the centre, and the roads between them. Click a town's ether-gate crystal to teleport straight in.
Held by ⟨guild⟩
Captured and settled — the crystal glows blue.
UNDER ATTACK
A gate is broken or a claim is running right now.
Peaceful
Nobody is contesting it — walk in unopposed.
The map is live — it repaints for everyone the moment a gate breaks or a town flips, so you can watch the whole realm from one window. Outside a war, its header counts down to the next one.
All four are contested simultaneously, and a single guild can hold more than one — up to all four.
Retta
Shortest approach
Herbat Village
Mid-length approach
Elder's Retreat
Longest approach
Pascal's Camp
Mid-length approach
You arrive away from the gate. Every battleground drops you at a staging point a real walk from the objective — nobody spawns on top of it, so attackers must cross ground and defenders have ground to meet them on.
Everyone outside your guild is an enemy
Battlegrounds are permanent open-PvP for the whole hour. 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.
Death sends you to Asgard
The neutral hub, not your usual respawn town. You're safe there and can rejoin from the war map.
No channel switching while you're on a battleground, and no NPC services — no shops, repairs, storage or crafting. Come prepared. Ordinary death costs apply (durability loss); there is no extra war penalty.
The whole contest is one gate, in three steps.
Break the gate
The Ether Gate is a large, tough structure — attack it like any enemy. Any guild may attack any gate they don't already hold.
Claim it
The instant it falls your guild is claiming the town — announced across the realm — and the gate begins rebuilding. It's back up within seconds.
Hold it for a minute
A progress bar appears above the standing gate. When it fills, the town is captured and your guild's name goes up.
Breaking is easy. Holding is the game.
When the hour is up, the board is settled on the towns held at that moment.
Towns you hold stay yours after the war ends — through the week and into the next war, where they go 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.
Ravens hold 3 towns, Wolves hold 1
Ravens — 3× town gold + 🥇 gold box · Wolves — 1× town gold + 🥉 bronze box
Ravens 2, Wolves 2
Contested — 2× town gold + 🥈 silver box each
Four guilds, one town each
Contested — 1× town gold + 🥉 bronze box each
Nobody holds a town
No reward — the realm stays neutral
Winning outright makes your guild the reigning champion, and the crown carries a standing bonus for every memberuntil another guild wins outright. While you reign, a champion row appears in the Guild window's Guild Skill tab listing the bonus — and vanishes the moment the crown moves on.
+10%
Experience
+10%
Loot — and gold
Buff
A visible champion aura
Monsters only. The EXP and loot bonuses can only ever apply on a monster kill — and the buff is stripped on any PvP ground, including the battlegrounds themselves. The next war starts even.
The crown only moves on a decisive result. An outright win passes it on (no relog needed); a contested war clears it; any other inconclusive war — including one nobody attended — leaves it exactly where it was.
Anyone still standing on a battleground is returned to Asgard, the result is announced across the realm, and an outright win is recorded permanently in the Territorial War ranking — a tab in the Guild window showing who has won the most wars, with towns taken and their last victory. Nothing is reset between wars: ownership survives the week and server restarts, with no decay and no inactivity timer.
Turn up and defend
Stays yours unless a rival completes a hold
Gold per town + a box
Skip the war, nobody attacks
Stays yours
Nothing
Skip the war, a rival 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 can neither be crowned victor nor 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.
Bring your own supplies — no shops, no repairs, no storage on a battleground. And turn up: rewards go only to members who were on the field, and a guild that fields nobody cannot win at all.
Download the launcher, create your account, and step through the portal into the world of Ether.