UPDATE: Team NPC Battles

[Mooncalf]

So here's the surprise I've been working on to go with this month's update: you can now fight alongside up to 3 other friends against NPCs, in regular NPC battles!

To do this, all you need to do is go to your 'relationships' page and create or join a team. This team will act as a group against any enemy, as long as your allies are within sight of the NPC who is being attacked by any one of you. Or to put it another way, simply attack an enemy with your allies standing either in the same square, or in any adjacent square, and you'll all attack together. Your team mates don't even need to be online, they just need to be in sight, and have energy! This works against any NPC, except for in solo raids or in the labyrinth (for now; this may change later).

While the loot item will always go to the individual who initiated the attack against the enemy, all experience points are split between the surviving team members equally. In addition, you get 5% bonus XP per additional team member involved in the fight, up to 15% per kill. You'll also expend just a proportionate amount of energy per fight, depending on how many people are in the team. This means that if you are unable to kill a super hard enemy alone, team up with some friends and you'll perhaps take them down, but you'll still gain your fair share of the XP (plus a bonus), while expending less energy than usual. Perfect for helping friends to level up, or for hunting for that hard to get loot from super tough beasties.

What about the fights themselves? Well, for each member of the team, you or a team mate will be more likely to attack, because the enemy is outnumbered. Additionally, all team mates must be defeated in order for the battle to be lost, and each team mate of course has a separate tally of wounds and a separate blood / battle weariness stat. This means that you're close to twice as likely to beat an enemy with two of you, than you are with just one of you.

We hope this update will encourage more team play, more community spirit, more chat parties, more factions being formed, and just more fun in general. Please let us know if you have suggestions on how to improve the system, or if you find any bugs with it.