Server Rules

1. Community conduct

1. 1.1

   Treat people with respect. Rivalry between Aresden and Elvine is part of the game; personal abuse is not.

2. 1.2

   No discrimination. Hate speech, racism, homophobia, transphobia or any other form of discrimination is not tolerated and is punished severely.

3. 1.3

   Keep trash talk inside the game. Do not insult or threaten a player's family, friends, partner or pets. Attack the character, not the person.

4. 1.4

   No harassment. Do not repeatedly target a player, whether through chat, whispers or in-game actions that have nothing to do with playing.

5. 1.5

   No doxxing. Publishing private real-life information about anyone (real names, addresses, workplaces, phone numbers, social media, photos) without their consent results in an immediate permanent ban.

6. 1.6

   No explicit or shock content. No pornographic, gore or gratuitously offensive text or links in chat.

7. 1.7

   No impersonation. Do not pose as Staff, Game Masters or other players, including through character names or guild names.

8. 1.8

   Keep names clean. Offensive, hateful or misleading character and guild names are changed or removed without notice.

9. 1.9

   No spam and no advertising. Do not flood the chat with repeated messages, and do not promote other servers, communities or unrelated products.

10. 1.10

    No public witch hunts. Do not accuse players in public chat. Send your evidence to Staff and let them handle it.

11. 1.11

    No threats against the service or its players. Threats of DDoS, hacking, real-world violence or legal intimidation lead to a permanent ban and may be reported to the authorities.

12. 1.12

    Keep feedback constructive. Opinions and bug reports are welcome; abusive or dismissive language towards the people who build and run the game is not.

2. Accounts and security

1. 2.1

   Your account, your responsibility. Any rule broken on your account is punished on that account, regardless of who was at the keyboard.

2. 2.2

   Account sharing is at your own risk. Staff does not recover items, gold or characters lost through shared access.

3. 2.3

   Accounts cannot be sold, traded or given away. An account belongs to the person who created it. The original e-mail address and security answers are the only accepted proof of ownership.

4. 2.4

   Protect your login. Use a password you do not reuse anywhere else and keep a valid e-mail on the account: it is how ownership is verified.

5. 2.5

   Staff will never ask for your password. Anyone who does is scamming you. Report it.

6. 2.6

   No ban evasion. Creating or using another account to get around a mute or ban turns the original sanction into a permanent one and applies it to every account involved.

3. Economy, trading and real money

1. 3.1

   No real money trading (RMT). Buying, selling or trading in-game goods, gold, characters or services for anything outside the game is strictly prohibited, for both sides of the deal.

2. 3.2

   The official shop is the only legitimate way to buy. Anything bought from a third-party seller is unsupported, unrecoverable and punishable.

3. 3.3

   Trades are final. Player-to-player trades, loans and "hold this for me" arrangements are made at your own risk. Staff does not reverse trades or restore items lost to a bad deal.

4. 3.4

   Deliberate scamming is punishable. Taking payment without delivering, faking a trade or abusing a loan is a sanctionable offence even when the items cannot be recovered.

5. 3.5

   No abuse of economy bugs. Duplicating items or gold, or exploiting a pricing or crafting bug, results in a permanent ban and the removal of every gain traced to it, including from the accounts that received the items.

4. Fair play: cheating and exploits

1. 4.1

   No third-party programs. Bots, macro programs, mouse and keyboard recorders, auto-clickers, speed hacks, memory editors, packet editors, DLL injectors and combat macros are forbidden.

2. 4.2

   No AFK play. Performing in-game actions while you are away from the keyboard, through macros, a taped mouse button, a weight on a key or any similar trick, is not allowed.

3. 4.3

   Automated play is detected automatically. The game recognises input that repeats itself. The first time, you get a warning on screen that tells you what was detected; if it happens again, you are disconnected. A character that keeps fighting for a long time with no other activity, in one spot or on the move, gets a check on screen instead: "Are you still there?", where you click the item that matches the one shown. It is not a penalty, but the character cannot act until someone answers it. In some farming spots, a player far above the level of the monsters there who has been killing that spot's monster for a good while without moving from their place can be chased by an Illusion: a translucent copy of the monster with no shadow. Only one hunts you at a time, it waits still for a moment before giving chase, and it does not follow you far from where you were fighting. Nothing can hurt it, so dodge it by moving away from where you were fighting; if it reaches you, you are Bewildered for 60 seconds: you attack and cast more slowly and take more damage, more with each hit. Being reached again and again within a day escalates to a disconnection and finally a temporary ban. Any second automatic disconnection within a day, for any of these reasons, suspends the account for 24 hours.

4. 4.4

   Multi-clienting limits. Running several clients to gain a gameplay advantage is not allowed (for example, farming on one character while hunting on another, or using an alt to tank or buff your main). A second client used purely to chat or keep a shop open in town is fine.

5. 4.5

   No connection manipulation. Lag switching, artificially delaying or dropping packets, and disconnecting to avoid a death or a loss are treated as cheating.

6. 4.6

   Report bugs, do not use them. If you find a bug or an exploit, report it privately to Staff. Using one is punished with a ban and the removal of everything obtained through it; reporting one in good faith is recognised and rewarded.

7. 4.7

   Do not distribute cheats. Sharing tools, modified clients or step-by-step exploit instructions is treated the same as using them.

5. Game client integrity

The client checks its own files every time it starts, against a signed manifest published with each update, and reports the result to the server. Missing, altered, replaced or added files are detected and logged.

1. 5.1

   Play with an unmodified client. Do not edit, replace, rename, delete or add game files: sprites and asset packages, sounds, maps, fonts, executables or libraries.

2. 5.2

   Examples that count as cheating. Making walls, buildings or monsters transparent or smaller than the game draws them; recolouring sprites so enemies stand out; altering or amplifying sound cues such as footsteps to locate hidden players; editing map data.

3. 5.3

   No reverse engineering or redistribution. Do not unpack, decrypt, modify or redistribute the client's assets or executables, and do not use third-party launchers or patchers. The official launcher is the only supported way to install and update the game.

4. 5.4

   What you are free to change. Everything the game itself offers is fair play: every setting in the System Menu (F12), resolution and window mode, key bindings, volumes and language. If the game lets you change it, it is allowed.

5. 5.5

   If the check fails, run Repair. A failed or interrupted update can leave files damaged. Use Repair in the official launcher to restore the original files. If the check keeps failing after a Repair, contact Staff; do not keep playing on a broken install.

6. 5.6

   How it is enforced. A failed check is evidence, not an automatic verdict: Staff reviews each case before acting. Confirmed tampering results in a suspension or a permanent ban, in proportion to the advantage obtained.

6. Towns, factions and PvP

1. 6.1

   No griefing allies. Do not intentionally attack, trap, body-block or otherwise stop your own town's players from hunting or moving.

2. 6.2

   No cross-faction assistance. Using characters to help the opposing town is strictly forbidden: for example, using an Aresden alt to help Elvines kill Aresdens, or buffing and supplying the enemy side.

3. 6.3

   No kill-feeding. Do not deliberately let enemy players kill you without making a genuine effort to fight back.

4. 6.4

   EK farming. Using an enemy character to repeatedly hand kills to yourself or a friend gets a large part, or all, of your Enemy Kills wiped, plus further sanctions for repeat offences.

5. 6.5

   Event integrity. Collusion, result-fixing or coordinating with the opposing side during Heldenian, Arena matches or any official event is punished as cheating, for everyone involved.

7. Enforcement, appeals and Staff

1. 7.1

   Sanctions are proportionate and cumulative. The usual progression is warning, mute, temporary suspension, permanent ban, and it may include the removal of items, gold, EKs or characters. Staff may skip steps for severe offences.

2. 7.2

   Every case is judged individually. Staff weighs context, intent, prior history and the advantage obtained. Server logs are the final arbiter; screenshots and video help, and timestamps help more.

3. 7.3

   Appeals. You may appeal a sanction once, within 5 days of receiving it. Appeal calmly and with evidence; arguing in public does not help your case and may extend the sanction.

4. 7.4

   No bribery, no favours. Do not offer Staff anything in exchange for items, information or leniency, and do not ask GMs for items, levels or advantages. Staff does not grant them.

5. 7.5

   Staff decisions are final. The administration reserves the right to evaluate every situation individually and to act in the best interest of the server, including in cases these rules do not anticipate.

6. 7.6

   These rules can change. Updates take effect when they are published on this page, and continuing to play means accepting them.