Border Defense War

The Border Defense War (BDW for short) is an instanced PvP event that goes from level 30 to 77, taking place a number of times throughout the day. The current BDW incarnation has Capture the Flag as its main mechanic, and dotes the participant players with a baseline stat boost.

Entry
Few times during the day, a BDW popup will appear, allowing the players to press a 'join' button, so they later can be teleported after 10 minutes into 16-man instances. As long as there's an equal amount of players signing up, everyone should get teleported, but in case there's a higher amount of players of any nation over the other, the exceeding number will be left out.

Rules
Once the registration window timer reaches 0, players get teleported to a special instanced map where they fight a randomly generated 8 vs 8 between humans and orcs.

The algorithm will do its best to have each party with at least 2 priest class characters, as they're vital for a proper, functional party to even work in the first place. After that, it will attempt to find 2 players of each class to complete the lineup, but in case some are missing, you will be matched with whatever is available, ending up with multiple mages or rogues at times.

Once inside, there's a 1 minute preparation time before the flag at the middle becomes an interactable object. During this preparation time, every player is invulnerable to damage and debuffs.

When the match properly starts, the flag (also known as Altar of Manes) can be attacked. It takes three attacks for it to be destroyed. The player who claims the final hit will become the flag carrier. As the flag carrier, the player will receive a debuff and with that, their speed severely diminished while many other skills (mostly of the movement or teleporting type) will additionally be disabled. The enemy team has to stop the carrier before they make it back to their base.

If the carrier reaches their base, their team will get 10 points, the flag carrier debuff will end and the flag will reappear after 60 seconds, whether the carrier delivered the flag or died halfway.

Additionally, each kill will add 1 point to the team scores.

Victory
When a team reaches 80 points (50 in case of lower bracket BDW), the match will end. If every player on one team leaves, the match will also end by default.

The Arena
The BDW map features an orc and human base, with Inn, Sundries and Potions NPC's. You can easily recognize which side is whose by looking at the colors from the middle of the map. The human base will be blue, the orc base will be red. Raising the camera angle will also show the nation flags at the top of the walls.

Rewards
The winning team will receive a varying amount of EXP, capped at 7 million, on top of a Red Treasure Chest, a Certificate of Victory and a Border Defense EXP scroll.

The losing team will receive an EXP scroll and a fraction of the EXP.

Lower brackets of BDW however (level 56 and below), only receive an Abyss Gem instead of a Red Treasure Chest.

Level Brackets
A level 30 going up against a level 60 wouldn't be very fair, so for that reason there's a multitude of level brackets in BDW.

The brackets are as following:

30~37

38~45

46~57

58~62

63~68

69~72

73~77

These might not be 100% accurate.

Strategy
The Border Defense War is a very fundamental and simple event. Capture the flag and protect your carrier, or in case you failed to secure the flag, defeat the enemy carrier, all while trying to get as many kills as possible and taking out key targets such as mages, priests or anyone that overextends.

It is generally advised for warriors to be the ones attempting to capture the flag, because they have the highest armor and HP values, and they can also equip shields. Bare in mind that flag carriers will be focus fired by the enemy team, so sending a squishy rogue or mage to do capture it might not be a great idea. Remember that the flag only takes three autoattacks to be captured, and the enemy will also try to claim it so get a weapon with a fast attack speed to attack the flag, such as a shield, dagger or your own bare fists.

Mages also play a key component in BDWs. Their ability to regroup and weave their party formation according to what's needed is invaluable.

Priests are expected to support by default, same with assassins and archers.

Legacy versions
This Capture the Flag style is the third version of the BDW mode. Originally starting as a simple monument destruction race, it then morphed into a monument channeling capture version, to later become the CtF style we now know.

Achievements
There are several BDW related achievements / titles, but the most noteworthy one is the Impregnable title, which grants 90 defense on equip.