The Gauntlet (Skilling Raid)
The Gauntlet is the skilling raid: a co-op, endless survival run for up to five players. Instead of fighting mobs directly, each player works a gather/process skill pair that feeds one stat of a shared army. Numbered enemy waves arrive on a schedule and trade blows with your army; the run ends when the army's health hits zero. Your score is the number of waves you survive.
The loop
Inside the instance every player runs an autonomous loop at their chosen role:
- Walk to the role's gather node and fill the 28-slot gauntlet bag.
- Walk to the role's process node and convert every raw.
- Walk to the gauntlet center and deposit: processed items become army stat points.
- Repeat.
Skilling uses the real shared formulas and bonuses (action duration, success rate, cape/pet/tool sources, double-gather) but at 10× action speed and grants no XP; deposits show stat-gain indicators instead. A fully maxed player bottoms out at 0.1s per action.
Roles & army stats
There are five roles, one per army stat. Pick yours in the lobby; you can also switch mid-raid (see below).
| Role (gather / process) | Feeds | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Fish / Cook | Health | The army's health pool. Deposits raise both current and maximum health. When it hits zero the run ends (a wipe is the run's natural completion). |
| Mine / Smith | Melee Force | Both attack and a wall: your three Forces sum into the army's damage, and Melee Force also mitigates the enemy's melee lane. |
| Forage / Craft | Range Force | Both attack and a wall: your three Forces sum into the army's damage, and Range Force also mitigates the enemy's range lane. |
| Invoke / Imbue | Magic Force | Both attack and a wall: your three Forces sum into the army's damage, and Magic Force also mitigates the enemy's magic lane. |
| Farm / Brew | Defense | Pure mitigation, no attack value. Added to the shield of all three enemy lanes, so it softens every hit. |
A role's pair works at the highest tier both of its skills can reach (the lower of the two levels), but duration and success are still computed from each skill's own level. So the stronger half of a pair runs its side faster and more reliably.
Depositing
A processed item of tier T deposits 2 × 1.35T army points (rounded). Leftover un-processed raws still deposit at value / 3 (floored), so a wipe-time bag is never wasted. Health deposits raise both the army's maximum and current health. Every stat seeds at 10 so an unlucky opener can't be insta-killed.
| Item tier | Points per processed item |
|---|---|
| T0 | 2 |
| T1 | 3 |
| T2 | 4 |
| T3 | 5 |
| T4 | 7 |
| T5 | 9 |
| T6 | 12 |
| T7 | 16 |
| T8 | 22 |
| T9 | 30 |
| T10 | 40 |
Waves & combat
The first wave hits at 2:00, then a new wave arrives every 20s on a strict schedule anchored to the raid start. If a wave is still alive when the next is due, the new wave reinforces the standing one (lanes stack), so a stalled army can't idle under a weak wave forever, and every run ends.
During a wave both sides trade simultaneous damage rounds every 1.5s, applied to health only:
- Your damage: (Melee + Range + Magic Force) × (1 − enemyDef / (enemyDef + 600)).
- Enemy damage: each typed lane (melee/range/magic) hits for laneAtk × (1 − shield / (shield + 600)), where shield = Defense + the matching Force. A lane with no matching Force player leaks through Defense alone.
Each wave's attack budget splits into the three lanes with bounded random noise that widens with depth (early waves are near-even and forgiving; deep waves spike one lane harder). The split is deterministic per run, so the HUD's upcoming-wave preview always matches the real spawn.
| Wave | Health | Total attack | Defense |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 33 | 1 | 2 |
| 10 | 460 | 18 | 15 |
| 20 | 1,880 | 64 | 30 |
| 40 | 11,039 | 411 | 60 |
| 60 | 48,629 | 1,979 | 90 |
| 80 | 190,412 | 8,464 | 120 |
| 100 | 698,984 | 33,930 | 150 |
| 120 | 2,463,270 | 130,583 | 180 |
Switching roles mid-raid
Click any role pill in the Gauntlet HUD footer to switch instantly. Your current bag is deposited first (to your old role's stat, so nothing is wasted), then you re-roll the new role's working tier at your live levels and head out to its gather node. Per-stat contribution is tracked, so a switched player can feed several army stats over a run.
Disconnects
A disconnect pauses that player's loop. If they're still gone after 60s they're swept from the instance and their real inventory is restored.
Rewards
Common loot: every 20 waves survived unlocks one common roll from the next dungeon tier's drop table (Feeble at wave 20, Dire at wave 40, Savage at wave 60, Fell at wave 80, Ancient at wave 100), scaled by your share of the team's deposits (minimum 5%). Loot banks at run end, so a wipe still pays out.
Milestone Banners & Ledgers
The skilling-raid mirror of the dungeon glyphs/tablets, six tiers each. Banners reward team wave depth; Ledgers reward your personal single-run deposit total. There is no contribution gate. Each owned Banner or Ledger grants, across all 28 skills: +2.5% XP, −0.2s action duration, +1% movement speed, and one action source toward double-gather / material-save. A full 12-piece set is +30% XP, −2.4s, +12% move.
| Tier | Banner | Ledger |
|---|---|---|
| T1 | Survive to wave 20 | Deposit 725 points in one run |
| T2 | Survive to wave 40 | Deposit 2,400 points in one run |
| T3 | Survive to wave 60 | Deposit 4,650 points in one run |
| T4 | Survive to wave 80 | Deposit 12,000 points in one run |
| T5 | Survive to wave 100 | Deposit 20,500 points in one run |
| Chaos | Survive to wave 120 | Deposit 31,500 points in one run |
Tiered rares
Every cleared wave, each connected player rolls a tiered rare pool. Tier bands activate by wave depth (T1 from wave 1, T2 from 21, T3 from 41, T4 from 61, T5 from 81, Chaos from 101) and keep rolling once active, the rate ramping with depth before it plateaus. The HUD shows your live cumulative chance per band. The rare set is the five Beacons plus support collectibles:
- Beacon of Haste:−0.2s action duration (a duration source), +1% all-skills XP per beacon owned.
- Beacon of Bounty:+1.5% double-gather (a double source), +1% all-skills XP.
- Beacon of Thrift:+0.75% material-save (a save source), +1% all-skills XP.
- Beacon of Sure:+1% success rate (a success source), +1% all-skills XP.
- Beacon of Swift:+1% movement speed, +1% all-skills XP.
- Chef's Spice:+20% HP healed per eat, per owned tier.
- Trader's Notes:+1 barter reroll credit per completed barter task per tier, plus a friendlier price roll.
A full six-tier Beacon family takes its stat from the 34-source base up to the 40-source cap.