458-459 Adventurer Combat League

What: A minimal-MT open-world PvP league, where single contestants compete against one another

Who: Hopefully, anyone who wants to participate in PvP and contribute to a positive, encouraging, fun atmosphere while doing so. I’ve intentionally designed aspects of the tournament to provide opportunities for fun and success to lower level characters in addition to HLCs, and at the last tournament there were multiple low-level characters (one of them circle 3!) who had fun.

Where: We'll be coordinating/spectating from [Promado Village, Village Boundary]

Room 254025

Lich Room 7353

Genie Map 9b, Room 75

From [Praxium, Foyer]: go gate, southeast, east

When: January 2027 - March 2027 (depending on number of entries)

Feature matches will be 9PM-11PM Eastern on Wednesday evenings, but if that time doesn’t work for you, you can still enter! Some matches will be scheduled between contestants, at times that work for them. Details below.

Why: For fun! For practice! Because open world PvP is interesting and cool and different than the Wyvern Arena!

Other TL;DR

Rules: 10 minute buffing time, 10 minute matches, minimal MT items (see details below)

Registration: Register as many characters as you want, though it's not guaranteed all of them will end up competing depending on tournament logistics. DM Sheearyn on Discord or find her in game to register.

Prizes: This is primarily for fun and practice and learning. There will probably be community-donated prizes that are more RP-oriented. There will not be plat prizes.

Questions? Feel free to DM Sheearyn on Discord or find her in-game! I'm happy to pressure you into joining answer any questions you need to make a decision about participating and join, if you'd like.

Default Rules

Seeding and Matches

Each round, contestants will be paired with others with the same or similar win/loss records (which I'll call the Swiss portion of the tournament). Within that, I will attempt to arrange matches between opponents who are close-ish in skill level (as measured by total TDPs), without repeating opponents during the Swiss portion of the tournament. This will be followed by top 4 or top 8 elimination matches. In some cases, pairing people with other competitors in their skill range will be impossible, and a contestant will be matched against someone with substantially different ranks. In those cases...

Unwinnnable Fights

Contestants are encouraged to experiment with the extent of how far they can effectively punch up during the tournament. If you think it’s on the edge of what’s possible, fight the match! See if you can pull it off, anyway - or get closer than you believed.

That said, if either party believes that the match would be too one-sided and unfun to fight, please prioritize spending your fighting time in a fun or learning-oriented way rather than a highly competitive way. Either character (but probably the lower-level one) forfeiting the match is an option. If you choose this option, we strongly prefer that you fight your opponent anyway, probably using modified rules, as described below. Play with buffing, or stancing, or bringing in a friend to help, or alternate “win” conditions, or restricting use of certain abilities, or turning the whole thing into a light-hearted picnic. Come up with a solution that works for the specific situation you’re in.

In many cases, the higher-ranked contestant may have a better understanding of what might work well. In these match-ups, it’s the job of both parties to create an experience that offers opportunities for fun and learning, across the skill gap. Please do your best to do so.

The intention here is threefold:

1. Everyone is (hopefully) participating in the tournament because they want to fight, for fun and for learning. To the extent possible, we want to provide everyone participating with opportunities to have fun and learn, at the time everyone’s committed to being available, with the opponent they’re matched with
2. To showcase - for both contestants and spectators - the available options to navigate large differences in skill level, including both the limitations and available value in those tools
3. In my hopes and dreams, to see people coming up with creative ways to enjoy fights with wildly disparately skilled opponents, and displaying a variety of interpretations of what it means to have fun and get what everyone wants out of those matches

Contestants

In hopes of having a wider skill range, with more representation (and opportunities to fight) across various skill levels, each player is welcome and encouraged to enter as many characters as they like, within the following constraints:

• Let me know which characters are all associated with you as a player
• If you enter multiple characters, it is not guaranteed that all of those characters will be in the final tournament roster, logistics and tournament needs depending.
• When entering multiple characters, feel free to clarify what’s important to you about which characters end up on the roster, as long as it only references your own characters/entries.
  • Examples of requests that I will (do my best to) honor:
    • I want at most 3 of my characters to compete.
    • I want at least one of my circle 200 characters to compete.
    • I want at most/least one of my bards to compete.
  • Examples of requests that I will try way less hard to honor:
    • If there are a lot of necromancers entered, I want to play my cleric
    • If Illiya is competing, I want to enter Tingen. Otherwise, I want to enter Sheearyn.

Each character will be treated as a distinct tournament entry (and will be paired independently for a fight each round), with the following exceptions:

• Characters associated with the same player will not be paired against each other.
• Each player will have at most one  match per week during the Wednesday time slot (and the rest of your matches will be scheduled at other times - see the scheduling section).
• Each player is only eligible to win one prize. Winning any prize disqualifies that player’s remaining characters from any of the other prizes. Priority will be given to the prize that is listed first in the list below.
• Each player may only have one character represented after the cut to elimination. If a player has two or more characters who would otherwise qualify, they may choose which one to play in the elimination rounds.

Items and Abilities

• No reapers, bees, cow totems, frostdrums, flamelutes, sparklutes, or automatons.
• No in-fight HEALME usage.
• No wands, gyres, parallel foci, Unleash, balance boots, mysandas, invisibility cloaks, HE gifts, grey stones, roar helms, fear cloaks, MT purchased acid and poison, elemental transform weapons.
  • Thieves may use MEF wands
    • If a thief doesn’t have a MEF wand, an empath can cast MEF at 57 mana with 100/100/100 spell stance for the same effect
• Swiss matches will be a single fight, elimination matches will be determined by the best 2 out of 3 fights.
• Each fight lasts up to 10 minutes or the opponent is eliminated, whichever occurs first.
  • Should the round go to time during swiss: The fight will be considered a draw, and no winner will be assigned.
  • Should the round go to time during elimination: Sheearyn and two other judges (who are not part of the top 8), to be announced when the cut to top 8 happens, will determine a winner based on wounds, vitality, and overall contribution to a positive tournament environment.
• 10 minutes of pre-fight preparation will take place between fights. This time is to be utilized for buffing.
• All buffs must be put up in the competition area, by the contestant themselves, after the pre-fight preparation clock has begun.
  • i.e. No buffs/predictions from 3rd parties (and/or alts)

Penalties and Disqualification

• A character that vitality logs, disconnects, or is sent to the junk room loses the fight.
• A character that shows up more than 30 seconds late to a match loses the fight.
• A character that arrives at their match already buffed (rather than buffing during the prescribed pre-fight preparation window) loses the fight.
• A second instance of this infraction will result in disqualification from the Tournament.
• No interacting with the opponent (except for banter) once arriving on the arena floor prior to the match beginning.

Scheduling & Results Reporting

Regardless of how many characters enter, at most 7 matches per week will be chosen as “feature matches” to happen during the Wednesday evening timeframe. The remaining matches will be scheduled between the participants during the week.

If you can’t make it during the Wednesday evening timeframe - either for the whole tournament, or for a given week - please let me know as soon as you know, so that I can plan accordingly to not schedule your match for that week as a feature match.

Contestants involved in a non-feature match are expected to schedule a time with their opponent during the week, ending before that week’s feature matches. Both contestants are requested to send me the outcome of the match, and at least one of the contestants is requested to send a log of the match to post on the tournament wiki.

I (Sheearyn) will do my best to be available to provide healing/match monitoring, either personally or finding someone else to help, if the contestants request such things - but as long as both contestants report the same result and I get a log from at least one of you, a “tournament official” doesn’t need to be present.

Failing to have a match/report results at all will be scored less favorably than a loss.

Modifying Match Rules

During the first tournament I ran, it became clear to me that people are going to do things I don’t expect, and (at least sometimes) fight according to rules that aren’t the ones I’ve written here.

If both people agree that some other set of rules would be more fun for your match, feel free to share what rules you’ve agreed on and report the match outcome based on those rules. If you don’t want to discuss alternate rules, or can’t come to an agreement - use the default rules above.

If you’re going to modify the rules for your match, the match still must:

• Have rules that are mutually agreeable to both parties. If you dislike a proposed rules modification, feel free to say you’d prefer the default tournament rules.
• Happen in the Open World (not the Wyvern Arena or other normalized settings)
• Fit within the league’s logistical constraints. That is, if you’re in a feature match, the fight must take place within the same time constraints as the default rules.
• Provide a relevant log I can post to the tournament wiki page
• Result in a clear win/loss/draw result, which both parties agree upon and report to me consistently

If you have questions about the limits of what’s acceptable here (assuming your opponent agrees), please reach out directly.

Prizes

We’re fighting for fun and practice, right? Maybe bragging rights? Who needs prizes? 🙂

Prizes are intentionally not plats. They're chosen to showcase and highlight the skills and expertise of our community members by offering donated experiences or services, and provide something that's a little more fun and lighthearted than cold, hard coins.

Up to 10 prizes will be awarded, depending on specific circumstances for the tournament (and available prizes). Each player is only eligible for one prize, regardless of how many of their characters participated in the tournament. Because the value of the prizes is likely to be subjective, prize winners will get to choose from the available prizes in the following order:

Overall Placement:

• 1st place
• 2nd place
• 3rd place

Outperforming Expected Placement based on Total Ranks:

• 1st place
• 2nd place
• 3rd place

Other Potential Prizes (4 of these awarded, based on which feel most applicable):

• Attitude and Sportsmanship
• Crowd Favorite
• Most Fun/Creative Feature Match
• Most fun opponent in non-feature matches (as nominated and/or voted by your opponents)
• Most educational opponent in non-feature matches (as nominated and/or voted by your opponents)
• Most Unique Fighting Style (i.e., most Off-meta approach)

Prize List (not final - more to be added)

• 2 hours of on-duty healing for sparring practice or hunting (in the room with you if I'll survive it, outside the hunting grounds if not), provided by Sheearyn
• Berrybomb bast riding set (A darling cream-hued riding hat trimmed with berrybomb bast, An exquisitely tailored berrybomb bast jacket lined with cream-hued silk , A stylish riding skirt composed of raspberry-pink berrybomb bast, Some dark chocolate-brown riding boots laced with raspberry-pink cords)
• An apron containing a "first aid kit" set of remedies created by Rezzian

Registration

How to Register

1. Find Sheearyn in-game, send Sheearyn in game mail, or send Sheearyn a Discord message including:
   1. Name(s) of the character(s) you would like to enter
   2. Guild of each character
   3. Total TDPs on each character, at the time of registration
2. At some point between 1/1 and 1/9, meet with Sheearyn in game and TELLEXP SHEEARYN ALL, in order to verify TDPs for pairing the first round (using Cherisse’s TDP calculator).
   1. I will try to ask for a tellexp all each week thereafter, to do my best to continue pairing similarly ranked characters, even though characters likely grow at different rates.

What Will Be Posted?

• Before registration closes, I intend to post the number of registered characters in various (minorly overlapping) ranges of total TDPs. I hope that some non-HLCs will enter early, and that seeing that someone else has will help to encourage others to enter characters in similar level ranges.
• When the roster is finalized, I will post an alphabetized list of registered characters and their guilds as the tournament roster.

Timing and Deadlines

• Prize listing (hopefully) announced: ~January 1st???
• Registration Closes: January 9th
• Roster Published & First Round Pairings Announced: Hopefully by January 13th
• First Round Feature Fights: January 20th

Roster

Note that the ranges are overlapping, so the total number of characters entered may be less than the sum of these numbers.

800-1100 Total TDPs: 1 entry

600-900 Total TDPs: 1 entry

Standings after Swiss

Nothing to see here yet...

Pairings

Nothing to see here yet...