PvP

To meet Wurmpedia's quality standards, this article or section requires a cleanup by the Wurmpedia Team.

PvP is an abbreviation for Player versus Player fighting.

Server differences

PvP is the main difference between home and wild type servers, and the rules reflect that.

Home

PvP is illegal on the home server. In the words of head GM (at the time) Unforgiven:

This means, no griefing people by tearing up their house/area/animals, no chat abuse of people, no threatening people, no stealing, and absolutely no killing people. It's really quite cut and dry. The exception is outlaws, you can kill outlaws to your hearts content.

See the forum for the latest ruleset on PVP.

Wild

PvP is encouraged on the wild server, especially WL vs BL.

There are no repercussions in the wild server for killing, except making enemies. However, the global rules for "insults, harassment, griefing" still apply.

Mastercheifs Guide to PvP

First and foremost, I don't care that I'm leaking secrets of the trade that I kept to a closed circuit of people, enjoy.

Clearing Homeserver myths:

1. Nobody is out to kill you, don't walk into an enemy village's back yard and you won't be killed.
2. Only spiders do more damage here, lions and such are the same.
3. Your biggest problem will be hyenas, not BL as they have better things to do
4. You can catch up to peoples fighting to a reasonable point, there is a huge wall at 60 where it is very hard to get that .01 more fighting (killing two bears with sickles gives you .01 at 60)
5. You will not get to 70 fighting by shafting pigs. That will get you to 10 max.
6. Fight things around your level for optimal skill
7. The forums is not where the battle takes place, that is where the idiots and people who are drawn into idiocy fight, the real warriors kill you, post logs and are done.
8. You do not need to train fighting 24/7, it helps sure, but not a requirement. Do what ever you want, let the fighters fight, you can do your smithing, carpentry as it all helps the town/warriors.
9. Horton does eat noobs, that is not a myth
10. Silron does not suck

I classify pvp in 5 different areas Battles, Raids, Sieges 1v1 and giggle fights.

Battles 

A skirmish on an area with no guards, no token to drain, just WLvsBL warriors going at it.

Raids 

A quick attack on a small village or homestead, pull the guards, drain the token, take what you can before the guards respawn.

Sieges 

An overwhelming force tries to take down a large village, Get on deed, take everything, give them nothing, drain token, harass them (through game mechanics) profit

Giggle fights 

You show up, taunt the people on deed and mess up their outside facilities, destroy their farms, cows etc.

1v1 

obvious

Now lets get some things straight if you are too lazy to read this.

1. Numbers matter, 3 20 fighting with 20ql axes can take down a 60 fighter with appropriate weapon skill
2. Armor counts, if you don't have 5:1 numbers, don't bother engaging, you will die. Without armor you have no chance of hits glancing off and having your opponent do no damage to you.
3. The killing hit is a foot, leg or thigh shot. If you are hit in the foot, you are incredibly easy to zerg, as you will be outnumbered quickly.
4. Archers are very important, its painfully hard to get archery up, but shooting someone in the leg from a distance with a 50ql arrow is a killing blow, they also take care of alts and other people leading trains of animals into you.

Battles

Simple: The side with the most elites win.

Elites are people who have been playing for a long time, have fighting so high that only other elites will catch up to them and have body stats and weapon skill to back it up. Numbers do matter, but not so much if you have 5 people with superior fighting to 10 people with minor fighting. The following formulas will help you: 5e vs 10n = 4e | 1e vs 10n = 8n | 5e vs 2e 8n= 2e 4n

Noobs die easily, elites know what to do, how to dance and how to single noobs and other elites out.

Formations: They don't give you any coded bonuses, but there are some obvious advantages

The line: Good for holding a broken wall down, whoever gets close gets eaten. Lines are very useful when you have superior numbers. To break a line: You need elites and fodder. Send the fodder up, have them stay there or distract, send some elite agg fighters up there, force them to run back (target the noobs first) and then have all your other forces follow.

The arrow head (>) Good for offensive battles, have a really good tank up front, as they will attack him as soon as he gets in range (or auto attack will) then have the sides of the arrow push up and help out the tank, guaranteed hit on a noob. The sides of the arrow will cover the flanks.

The "Taya" It is when you are facing quite equal odds, it requires a pet (bear, crocodile, zombie, troll, the rest are useless) Simply attack someone and run back, your pet will take over and if it is a high dps pet (spider, bear when foe is unarmored, troll) then it will likely get a hit on the person (if he is not defensive and exponentially higher then the pet) any hit slows that person down, leg shots are a huge plus, this lets you run up with your pet, and since it is 2v1 now that you and your pet is ganking your opponent, he will surely die, you do not need high fighting as he will attack the pet.

Chasing: Wurm pvp causes immense lag, this makes it easy to get away from someone if there are no archers present. Get two tiles ahead of the person you are chasing and attack him, aim for legs works good here if you are aggressive, as that will surely kill them. You cannot run from an archer with +40 in a bow, your legs will be mush by the time he lets loose his 3rd arrow.

Raids

Done by a medium to small sized force, one or two catapults and a couple of mauls. Due to the dumb update where you cannot spawn at allies deeds, it is very hard to defend your own homestead or small village. Have someone skilled in a catapult break the wall down (i have no idea how this is done) and make sure you have a cart to transport ammo (iron ore or copper is better, as they can repair walls with stone rockshards) Pull the guards by someone aggroing it, the tank attacking one when the guards are returning to deed and everyone else attack the guard that is pulled. Very easy to take out the guards, get on deed, drain, take what you can and leave.

Catapults are not 100% required, one can simply lockpick his way onto deed if the guards are pulled and the deed starts after the walls. Drain it and leave, don't risk anything.

Sieges

With the current playerbase, you must get everyone from your kingdom to do it correctly. You need superior numbers, many catapults and mauls. 2 people making bricks and repairing stone houses can do a lot. Expect reinforcements coming, but they will take a while, but will be fully armed and armoured. Make sure the siege force is best possibly equipped. Pets are a plus, but take an awful long time if not bears. They secure the fact that reinforcements will do nothing, unless they have pets of their own. Fire iron and other ores at the walls, as the defending town can use rockshards to repair the walls. Try to attack from all directions, as that will make it harder to repair. If done correctly, a siege force will break through a large village within two hours. If the defending town only has one gatehouse, focus all your catapults on that one, lockpick it, pull the guards and kill the inside repairers, which will buy you precious time. Make sure to have one person harass the outside environment, cut down all their special trees, kill cattle etc.

Giggle Fights

You do not have the power to go on deed and fight the guards, so try and convince the opponent to come off deed by flattening his farms, messing with terraforming, raiding the mine etc. Chances of someone dying is small, unless some leads a train of animals into that attackers. The defenders can simply walk back into their gatehouse, which will trigger the guards on you if you are attacking.

1v1

It is a who has the most fighting and weapon skill, plus a bunch of small things.

Major things: Fight skill, favored terrain, weapon skill, body stamina, overall body, ql of equipment "the tree"

If you are out of stamina, you are dead, hope only that your opponent is also out of stamina.

The tree: Aggressive beats normal, normal beats defensive, defensive beats aggressive

My reasoning behind this. Aggressive will beat normal for the fact that you will get alot more hits on the normal person while they won't do enough damage to kill you, but will most likely wound you pretty bad if your skills are close and you are using axes (stamina does not matter much here). Normal beats defensive by blocking their slow hits and attacking at a good enough speed to lower the defensive persons stamina (defensive burns stamina faster)

Shields are good for when you want to out-stamina the person. Defensive will slaughter aggressive for obvious reasons, you can block a lot of aggressive attacks while aggressive cannot take care of your blows effectively, large axes have no chance against a defensive person with longswords.

The tree will give you a 10-20 fight skill/weapon skill boost against the person you are dueling.

Minor Things: Update 040815: Fighting now affects stamina. Make sure to fight well rested or you will defend much worse. Which means if you are weak, you will not fight as well as 100% stamina. Luck matters, but cold hard skill is the main force. If your opponent has very weak armor, target his weakest spot, this will kill him much quicker.

The PvP body stats

1. Body control - your accuracy and dodge rate, block rate to raise: fight, smith and mine/wood cut
2. Mind speed - accuracy, dodge rate, parry rate to raise: Fight and yoyo
3. Overall body - how much of a beating you can take, helpful if you need to waddle to the safety of your group if you get hit in legs
4. Body stamina - For 1v1 and tanking guards

PvP weapons

• Dual longswords for defensive
• Normal fighters should be the maulmen, to take out plate and chain
• Aggressive should use two large axes, or two longswords if you are scared of dying
• Tank should use large shield and shortsword, you will have close to none DPS and should switch to dual longswords when fighting players not guards, defensive is a must.

Any other combo is not recommended, but a longsword + maul is good for the fighter who wants to be ready in all situations.

PvP armor

• Studded leather is best, rest is useless
• Chain - its better then nothing
• Plate - good for tanking guards, you will move very slow, very low dps.
• Cloth - for insult to injury
• No armor - consider yourself dead unless you have 5 more people with you against one.

Pets:

• Trolls are best for pvp, but zombie spider > dominated troll. A troll is useful because it can dish out those high damage hits easily, but are a pain to dominate. Hard to kill, as the owner can pull it back and have it regenerate a 203 severe in 1 minute.
• Spiders are found everywhere, and are useful for everything
• Lava fiends are very threatening, and have normal dps.

Little things like elevation, if they are facing you or not and moving matter in close battles. To prove this to the skeptics, here is a situation which will surely prove it to you. I engaged Thunderstruck in battle, he was well equipped, highly skilled and exceptionally armoured. I had low quality leather armor, low quality longswords, 33 defensive and close to none weapon skill. I was sure it was going to be a clean slaughter, however i managed to strike a blow on Thunderstruck, which should be impossible. I soon concluded, that because i was on higher ground then Thunderstruck, i was on my favored terrain and Thunderstruck was moving, i got that hit on him. Small things can kill you, make sure to have duels in water, and not to move.

The Thunderstruck Tango™

This is a very important skill in PvP, some consider it cheap, most consider it survival. Before you could absorb mycellium freely, but now there is a 30sec cooldown timer, nonetheless it is very useful. Absorb mycellium and move away from your opponent in random directions, but make sure to stay in a 3 tile radius, or the absorption will cease. The absorption may not please you, as it can go to a minor wound, and not the one you wanted to heal. If you are WL, you can use this to run away or buy time for the rest of your group to assist you. Simply run around, not in circles, but in a planned escape. You can also bandage small wounds if you stay within the 3 tile radius from which you initiated the action. Try not to go over cliffs, and attempt to get your chasers hurt by running around falls and slopes, one of them might fall in. It is very hard to keep attacking someone while they are tangoing, as the auto attack fixes nothing, since they can run right out, giving you no time to throw your first blow.

Please Note It is very hard to tango with any wound greater then a light on your legs