Raids

A raid is built for a four-gladiator trinity: someone holds the boss's attention, someone keeps that person alive, and the damage seats end the fight before it ends the band. The room can launch short, but the boss never scales down to match.

Entry costs 3 expedition points and a full band is 4. Every seat is a real player: there are no AI companions, and an empty seat stays empty. The boss does not shrink to fit a short band either, so the gladiators you are missing are the difficulty. A room may start with any number of ready players, even one; that is permission to attempt it, not a promise that the composition is viable. At the raid's intended level, bring a coordinated band. An over-levelled pair can still take a raid far below their level. A clear pays about 2× the equivalent dungeon and rolls loot 3 times, and each player rolls their own: bringing more people does not thin anyone's share.

Raids also have a hard limit of 60 rounds. Running out of them is a defeat even with everyone still standing — a band that endures but cannot kill fast enough loses to the clock. The counter runs on screen for the whole fight.

The 4 raids

Your role is your gear

Nothing declares you a tank: the game reads what you are wearing. A shield in the off-hand makes you the tank, a tome with a healing battle art active makes you the healer, and anything else is damage. Change it on the character sheet — the seat you can take in a band follows from it.

Knowing a healing art is not enough: it has to be the art you are actually carrying into the fight. A tome with a damage art active is a damage seat, however many prayers you have learned.

Your talents do not follow the gear. Wearing a healer's off-hand with a damage build leaves you healing for very little, so a role worth switching to is a role worth keeping a talent loadout for.

How the boss fights back

• Phases. It hits harder below 75 % and again below 50 % health.
• Bloodied. Below 25 % it deals about 18 % more — but takes about 22 % more. A real execute window, not just a wall.
• Telegraphed specials. Every fourth round — every third once bloodied — it announces what is coming: a crushing blow aimed at whoever holds the most threat, or a sweep across the whole band. The warning and the strike are the same roll, so a telegraph is never a bluff.
• It concentrates on a thin band. A sweep spends itself across the whole party, so with one or two of you still standing there is nothing to spread — and the boss stops spreading. Every special becomes the crushing blow. Empty seats are the difficulty.
• You cannot mend yourself as well as you mend others. Inside a raid, healing and shields turned on yourself land for 55 % of their value on an ally. Holding the line and mending it are two jobs, and a raid asks for two people.
• Enrage on round 45. A countdown you can plan around. A band that cannot kill it by then does not survive it.

The Raid Finder

Open a band anyone can join, or take a seat in someone else's. A raid band has 4 player seats — 1 tank, 1 healer and 2 damage seats — and one player occupies one seat. The Finder says who is in and which role is still missing, and it says so out loud in chat. A seat you paid for is yours; the leader can free it if you never turn up.

During combat, every round has an action countdown. If you make no selection, the client sends your free basic strike. The server waits no more than 30 seconds for a living player before resolving the round, so a closed tab cannot freeze the band. Missing that server deadline marks that character absent and forfeits their personal item rolls for the run; their combatant remains in the fight and uses the fallback strike.

The Sigil

Kill 12 monsters in a raid's antechamber zone and you earn a sigil worth one extra full clear of that raid. You can hold 2 and spend 1 a day. The antechambers are Ruins of Pompeii for Warcamp of the Legion, Catacombs of the Colosseum for The Drowned Deep, Gates of Avernus for The Avernal Throne, Caledonian Highlands for The Grove of Mona.

Stones

Each raid drops its own socket stone, roughly 15 % of clears. They sit on different channels, so the one you want depends on your build, not on which raid opened last:

• Legion Garnet from Warcamp of the Legion — +3 damage on every strike.
• Drowned Sapphire from The Drowned Deep — +3% critical chance.
• Avernal Onyx from The Avernal Throne — Ignores a further 4% of enemy armor.
• Moonstone of Mona from The Grove of Mona — +3 to hit.

The socket they go into is bought with Crypt Marks and unlocked by weapon mastery: the dungeon sells the setting, the raid finds the gem.

The Magnum tier

The Avernal Throne is the only raid that pays into the game's top crafting tier. A clear rolls twice more, independently of the loot and of each other: 60 % for Cinder of the Throne (1–2 at a time) and 25 % for a weapon pattern. The pattern is aimed: it always matches the weapon you are carrying, so there is no wrong-weapon pattern to be disappointed by — what is uncertain is whether it comes, not which one. A duplicate is not dead loot either; it becomes 2 Cinder of the Throne.

Armour patterns come from Ladon instead, and everything the two bosses drop is bound. Forging any of it needs profession skill 90 and, for a weapon, mastery rank with that weapon.

How often it pays

Repeat clears of the same raid in a day pay full, then a third, then a seventh, then nothing. That falloff applies to every roll a clear makes — experience, gold, loot, the stone, and the Magnum drops above.