Dark Omens

The seven windows

The Flame only accepts Essence during seven windows. Everything else in the event runs the whole two days; this does not, and a clan that misses windows loses the event in the calmest possible way.

The pattern is an hour every eight hours — 17:00, 01:00 and 09:00 UTC — widened around each reset. Ten hours of open Flame out of forty-eight.

What the Flame actually does

The Chalice holds the Omen Essence the clan has poured in, and how much is in it sets the Flame level. There are five, and each one produces more Rank Points a minute than the one below — but also consumes more Essence a minute to stay there.

The two numbers are the same number. A clan makes as many Rank Points per minute as it loses Essence per minute. Essence is not a fuel that makes production cheaper; it is the production, converted one for one.

That is why a clan slides back down between windows. Nothing is taking the Essence away except the Flame itself, and the higher the level the faster it empties — so the top level is the one that lasts the least without a refill.

None of the five thresholds is a fixed figure. How much Essence each level asks for, how much it burns a minute and how many Rank Points that pays all scale with the division your clan was matched into.

The loop

Two monsters and five tokens, and they feed each other in a circle. Nothing in it is bought and nothing is picked up off a corpse: every token comes from finishing the personal missions, and the missions pay exactly what the next round of killing needs.

• Omen SigilsDropped by both monsters. What clears the personal missions
• Omen EssencePaid by the missions. What the Chalice drinks
• Dark Omen ScrollsPaid by the missions. What moves the battle pass
• Merit of BalanceScore in Restoration of Balance. Both monsters pay it
• Remnants of DreadScore in Spoils of Dread. Only the Dark Omens pay it

Why a monster on your ground is two problems

The personal missions pay Spawn Cards, and a Spawn Card drops a Dark Omen monster on a rival. Those monsters throttle that clan’s Flame — and pay Omen Sigils to whoever kills them, which is what clears the next missions.

So a monster sitting on your land is doing two things at once: costing you Rank Points every minute it lives, and holding the Sigils that your missions turn into the Essence for the next window. Killing it fast recovers both. Clearing is not the chore between fuelling runs; it is half the event.

How much can be dropped on you

The limit counts summons sent to a clan by all the enemy clans put together, not monsters currently alive, and it refreshes every hour.

Two things follow from that wording. Killing a monster does not open a slot for another one inside the same hour, so clearing fast never invites more. And no clan can be buried without limit in a single hour, however many cards the other three are holding — the pressure they can apply is capped per hour, which is what makes the 95 % floor reachable but survivable.

Two ways round it, both in the rules. Monsters already standing when the hour turns keep suppressing but stop counting against the new hour’s limit. And once every clan in the division is full, a card can still be thrown at a random one — those summons ignore the cap.

The six you can drop, and what grade they come at

A Spawn Card comes at one of three grades, and the grade is what sets how hard the monster is, how long it stands there before its lifetime runs out, and how deep a Suppression it puts on the clan that receives it. Six squads share the three grades.

• Spawn CardSummons the Minor Epic and the Epic
• Major Spawn CardOnly for the Major Epic, which is Death

Minor Epic

Plague

Pyre

Greed

Epic

Famine

Insanity

Major Epic

Death

Everything about them is read off the division your clan was matched into, strength included, so the same squad is a different fight in a different division.

The march they take is not the same either. Some squads accept only a Hero or a single captain, and the heaviest let all three captains ride with the Hero.

When to drop them, which is not whenever

A clan is always making Rank Points, but never at the same rate. Pouring Essence into the Flame increases your production, and it stays increased until the Essence drains back below the thresholds that hold it there. Since Essence only goes in during the windows, between one window and the next every clan slides back to level-one production — the lowest there is.

A Dark Omen monster does not take points away: it takes a share of the rate. So the same monster is worth far more against a clan whose production is up than against one that has slid back to the floor. Dropping cards in the dead hours between windows is spending them at the bottom of the curve.

The event window has a tab with every rival clan’s current production rate. That is the thing to watch: summon when the clan you are chasing is high, not when your own cards happen to be ready. The exception is the hour right after a window, when their rate may still be up from their own pour.

And drop them together. Several members spawning on the same clan at the same moment overwhelms its ability to clear them, so the monsters live longer and throttle a rate that is still high — the suppression lasts longer and bites harder at once.

Suppression stops at −95 %. Anything past that is not wasted, though: the excess is held back and comes in on its own as monsters die, so a clan that is buried stays buried until the total falls under the cap again.

Strategy tips

1. Coordinate around the windows

   The Chalice only takes Essence while one is open, so what the clan manages to do in those few hours is what its production looks like for all the hours in between.

2. Summon into a full Chalice

   The aim of a Spawn Card is always the same — take Rank Points off a rival while their Flame is at its top level. Suppression is a percentage, so the same card takes far more off a clan producing at its peak than off one that has already slid back down.

3. Clear your own ground fast

   A Dark Omen monster keeps its share of your production for as long as it is standing, so every minute it survives is paid for out of your own score.

Past those three there is no winning strategy. This is the tournament in the game that asks the most of a clan, and what decides it is reading what the other three are doing and answering it. There is no advice beyond the three above that holds in every division and every pairing.

What runs alongside it, and the pass

Two events run on top of it. Spoils of Dread turns your share of the monster killing into personal goals and pays Valor Points. Restoration of Balance is a personal leaderboard on where the division lands.

The pass carries both event artifacts on its free track: the Chronoglyph, for Food production and training speed, and the Ghostflame Lantern, for fighting epic monsters. A tier opens every 50 Omen Scrolls, and past 1,000 it keeps paying every 100 — five Ghostflame Lantern fragments a time. The paid track is not needed to play, or to take the clan reward.

Fatigue, and why one big player cannot carry it

Every attack on a Dark Omen monster leaves you Fatigue Marks, and how many depends on the damage you dealt. The Marks cut your troops’ strength and health — bonuses included — in your next fights against Dark Omens, and nowhere else. Nothing you do outside this tournament is touched.

They clear on a timer, and each Mark pushes that timer out by twenty seconds. When it reaches zero every Mark goes at once and you are back to full. The countdown is in the Activities tab, with the number of Marks behind the info icon beside it.

So the strongest player in the clan cannot simply clear the ground alone: the harder they hit, the longer they are weakened for the next one. Fatigue is what makes this a tournament about how many members turn up rather than how good the best one is.

What finishing in the top three is worth

The top three clans in the division hand every one of their members Proofs of Glory, and the higher the finish the more of them. They do not pay out now: they raise the Arcane Bonus to the Valor and Experience that the Dark Omens Battle Pass gives, in later runs of the tournament.

So a clan that places well is not just banking this weekend, it is making the next one pay better. They sit in the Items in the City window, and only players who were in the clan when the tournament began receive them.