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.
Saturday
Every week
20:00
Server local time
60 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 hour is up → 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 — 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.
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 is a bird's-eye view of Elder's Retreat, the seat of the realm, with neutral Asgardin the corner. It shows the Elder's gate — the one objective that decides the war — plus a second ether gate further into the town, so an assault doesn't have to funnel in beside the objective. Click either gate 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.
Uncontested
Nobody is fighting over it — walk in unopposed.
Once you're on Elder's Retreat, your minimapcarries 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 screenfor as long as the war runs. Outside a war, the map's header counts down to the next one, to the second.
All four are contested at once, and a guild can hold more than one — but only one of them decides anything.
Elder's Retreat
The seat of the realm
Whoever holds it when the hour is up wins the war. Nothing else counts toward the win.
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.
Elder's Retreat is the hub, and the roads run both ways. Three coloured ether 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.
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 puts you back in the war
You respawn on ground your guild holds — the seat first if it's yours, otherwise a sub town. Hold nothing and you go to Asgard.
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.
Every town — seat or sub town — is won the same way: one gate, three steps.
Break the gate
The Ether Gate is a large, tough structure — attack it like any enemy, and keep swinging until it falls.
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.
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. So the war opens as a three-way scramble for Retta, Herbat Village and Pascal's Camp.
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 swept off Elder's Retreat to Asgard. The war becomes a contest between the qualified alone.
Losing your last town
Qualification is re-checked, not granted once. If the sub town that got you in is taken back and you hold nothing else, you lose the right to hit the seat — and if the field has closed, you're swept to Asgard on the next pass.
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 watch from Asgard. Defending your feeder town matters as much as pushing the seat.
Whoever holds Elder's Retreat when the hour is up wins the war, announced across the realm. Nothing else counts toward the win — holding all three sub towns and not the seat wins you nothing but the gold; holding only the seat wins 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.
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 a flat town share.
Elder's Retreat
Its own share, plus a seat bonus worth three more — more than the feeder towns put together.
Shown in town shares— one share is what a single sub town pays; the exact coin amount is set by the operator. Sweeping all three feeder towns pays 3×; holding Elder's Retreat alone pays 4× — and wins the war. A guild that skips the war is paid nothing, even if it still holds all four towns.
Ravens hold Elder's + Retta; Wolves hold Herbat
Ravens — 5× + 🥇 gold box · Wolves — 1× + 🥈 silver box
Wolves sweep all three sub towns; Ravens hold Elder's
Ravens — 4× + 🥇 gold box · Wolves — 3× + 🥈 silver box
Ravens hold everything
Ravens — 7× + 🥇 gold box
Nobody holds the seat; three guilds hold a sub town each
No winner — 1× + 🥈 silver box 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.
Winning makes your guild the reigning champion, and the crown carries a standing bonus for every member— new joiners included — until another guild wins. 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 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 modeputs 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; you start above Elder's Retreat.
Moving around
The controls
Jump between fronts
One button per battleground — Elder's Retreat, Retta, Herbat Village, Pascal's Camp. Click to switch front instantly; you stay a spectator throughout.
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 for an unobstructed view. 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. A 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. A war that ended with Elder's Retreat unheld adds no row — wars won means the seat was taken and kept. 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 cannot be crowned victor. If nobody at all attends, there is no victor, nobody is paid, every town stays put, and the reigning champion keeps the crown.
Send someone to watch — a guild mate in spectator mode sees all four battlegrounds and can call which front is collapsing. Bring your own supplies, split your force, 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.