War of Emperium

The War of Emperium, also referred to as WoE, is a guild-versus-guild event where said guilds fight in order to conquer a castle. The objective of WoE is to attack a castle and destroy the emperium at the end, to occupy the castle for your guild.

On HeRO, WoE takes place two times per week.

General Information

All players are allowed to enter WoE castles and fight, but only players whose guild has learned the "Official Guild Approval" skill is able to attack and destroy an emperium.

"Retro WoE" was available in HeRO for many years until 2018 when it was discontinued due to low participation. Only non-trans and non-extended classes were able to participate in it, as used to be the case in Ragnarok Online's earlier years before the release of newer classes.

Castle Mechanics

Once a caste's emperium is destroyed, all players inside the castle that don't belong to the guild that conquered the castle will be warped out. The player that dealt the last hit against the emperium will claim the castle for their guild. In addition to its ability to be damaged only by guilds with the "Official Guild Approval" skill, the emperium can only be hit by normal attacks. All other skills will have no effect on the emperium with the exception on the following:

• Gravitation Field
• Pressure/Gloria Domini
• Sanctuary (can heal the emperium)
• Summon Flora (The plants' normal attacks can damage the emperium)
• Summon Homunculus (Homunculi normal attacks can damage the emperium)

Upon conquering a castle and warping non-dominating guilds out, these can return to it right away to attempt to conquer it. Once the War of Emperium ends, the guild that conquered it last can keep the castle until the next WoE when other guilds may try to take it.

Inside WoE castles, guild mates and guild allies can not attack each other. Additionally, guild members cannot be expelled inside, and alliances cannot be broken by members inside a castle.

Note that God Items and MVP cards are disabled inside the castles for War of Emperium.

Castle Benefits

Owning a guild castle has several advantages. See below for more info on these benefits.

Castle Chests

Every night at approximately 12:01 AM / 00:01, castles generates treasures chests. These appear in a special room accessible only to the leader of the guild owning a castle. Every day, a certain number of chests will appear. The amount of chests will increase depending on the castle's economy, which you can increase by talking to the castle Steward (his name varies per castle) and investing in the castle's commercial growth. Every 5 points of investment adds one new treasure box spawned nightly. A maximum of 2 investment per day is possible, and can only be done by the guild leader. The content of the chests are customized in HeRO, and are listed in the War of Emperium Chests page.

The chests will be spawned at random from all the castle chests available for the region. This means that compared to officials, regardless of which Prontera castle is open for example, there is a chance to spawn chests from any of the 5 Prontera Castles, to compensate for the low amounts of castles open.

Note: In the rare occurrence of a server crash or if a reboot occurs before you had time to pick up the treasures, chests will NOT be spawned back.

Guild Dungeons

Members of guilds that own a castle all have access to ten different dungeons. These can be accessed via the guild flags located outside the conquered castles.

All castles share the same guild dungeons, and PVP is enabled in them, meaning you can meet players of opposing guilds inside, and engage in battle or party with them. Like other dungeons, you will lose experience if you are KO'd inside.

A list of all available Guild Dungeons can be found here.

God Items

God Items are very powerful gears that can only be obtained by crafting them from special items that drop from castle treasure chests. The process of acquiring all the required pieces for a single item can take many months or more. This is usually considered the endgame of WoE by some guild leaders. For information regarding heRO's modified God Item acquirement methods, please see this page for details.

Note that God Items cannot be used in War of Emperiums.

Castle Guardians

Guardians can be summoned at the request of the guild leader owning the castle by talking to the castle steward. While WoE is ongoing, guardians automatically attack all non-allied characters. The guild skill "Guardian Research" is required to summon Guardians, while the "Strengthen Guardians" skill will increase their stats (attack, etc).

Guardians are spawned at fixed locations within the castle and can move around on their own, but obviously cannot go through warps to other rooms. There are 3 types of WoE Guardians:

• Soldier Guardian has the lowest attack and HP out of all the castle guardians. However, it makes up for it with Bash Lv 10 and Stun Attack Lv 5, the latter of which has a 50% chance of causing stun if it hits. It also does not change targets, meaning once it targets a player, it won't stop attacking them until they leave the area or one of the two die.
• Archer Guardians have high attack and magic defense, as well as a 12 cell range which can be useful to interrupt spells. It also uses archer skills such as double strafe.
• Knight Guardian has high attack, high physical defense, average magic defense, and slightly higher attack range than Soldier Guardian. It has uses no skills however.

Kafra Access

The leader of a guild that owns a castle can hire their own Kafra Employee by talking to the castle steward. A castle kafra can provide free storage, guild storage and cart rental services, plus the option to warp to the town nearest to the castle. These services will only be provided to members of the dominating guild.

The skill "Contact With Kafra" is required in order to hire a Kafra Employee, and the guild leader can fire them at any time. If a rival guild conquers a castle, the Kafra Employee will be automatically fired.

WoE Rewards

As an incentive to participate in WoE, you can receive experience and WoE points, which can be traded for items. You must speak to the WoE Agent outside castles to sign up in order to receive experience and WoE points, otherwise you will miss out on them. For every minute you spend inside a WoE castle on a Lv 85 character or higher, you will obtain 50,000 base and job experience (assuming server rates are at 5 times base), as well as 1 WoE point. The list of players registered for WoE is cleared after every WoE or at midnight if no WoE is ongoing. This means that you must register for every WoE.

The WoE Agent offers various goods such as consumables, and even access to a special dungeon. For more details, see the WoE Points page.

WoE Times

The times at which the War of Emperium takes place is listed below. You can also check timeanddate.com in which the cities most heroes are from are listed. To find your own time zone on the site, click "Add another city or time zone" below the converted times, just type in your city and select it once it shows up.

America:

Eastern (EST) time, server local time. GMT -5 (Montreal, Toronto, New York, Boston, Detroit, Miami, Philadelphia, Washington DC)
Wednesday from 9 PM to 10 PM
Saturday from 11 AM to 12 PM

Central (CST) time, GMT -6 (Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Memphis, Mexico City, New Orleans, Manitoba, Saskatchewan)
Wednesday from 8 PM to 9 PM
Saturday from 10 AM to 11 PM

Mountain (MST) time, GMT -7 (Albuquerque, Denver, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Alberta)
Wednesday from 7 PM to 8 PM
Saturday from 9 AM to 10 AM

Pacific (PST) time, GMT -8 (Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, British Columbia)
Wednesday from 6 PM to 7 PM
Saturday from 8 AM to 9 AM

GMT -3 (Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Brasilia) -> with no daylight saving
Wednesday from 10 PM to 11 PM
Saturday from 12 (noon) to 1 PM

Europe: +1 hour to all times during daylight saving

Western Europe (WEST) time, GMT +1 (Ireland, Portugal, UK, Spain, Poland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark)
Thursday from 2 AM to 3 AM
Saturday from 4 PM to 5 PM

Central Europe (CEST) time, GMT +2 (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Finland)
Thursday from 3 AM to 4 AM
Saturday from 5 PM to 6 PM

Eastern Europe (EEST) time, GMT +3 (Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Ukraine)
Thursday from 4 AM to 5 AM
Saturday from 6 PM to 7 PM

Asia/Australia: -> with no daylight saving

GMT +7 (Bangkok, Saigon)
Thursday from 8 AM to 9 AM
Saturday from 10 PM to 11 PM

GMT +8 (Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Perth)
Thursday from 9 AM to 10 AM
Saturday from 11 PM to Sunday 12 (Midnight)

GMT +9 (Tokyo, Seoul)
Thursday from 10 AM to 11 AM
Saturday from 12 (Midnight) to Sunday 1 AM

GMT +10 (Melbourne)
Thursday from 11 AM to 12 (noon)
Sunday from 1 AM to 2 AM

WoE Castles

HeRO has less castles open compared to official servers, due to lower population in comparison to them. To know which castles are open, simply talk to the WoE Agent outside any WoE castle. The Warper NPC will also list which and when a castle is open if you select the "specials" option, and then the "WoE Castle" option.

The location of all WoE castles are available below, along with the castle numbers. Castles are rotated about four times per year at GM's call. All castles retain their owner and economy with each rotation, and is usually announced in advance on the forums.

Differences Between HeRO & Official Servers

The following is a list of differences between HeRO and officials, that haven't already been mentioned above. Please note that by "officials", HeRO refers to iRO and kRO, and especially the Hercules emulator. This can include old pre-renewal versions, classic, and renewal versions, where applicable.

WoE Guardians

• Hercules Pre-Re database lists/listed Soldier Guardian as Small, Earth and Insect. This has been corrected on HeRO to be the same as the other WoE guardians.
• Instead of using Charge Arrow/Arrow Repel Lv 1 which does not knock back and has no substantial damage increase, Archer Guardian uses Arrow Shower Lv 10 in order to attack several targets at once.

Quality of Life Changes

• WoE Flags outside castles allow warps to Guild Dungeons if you own the castle. The official guild dungeon switches have been removed to prevent fatal misclicks during WoE.
• The Payon Castle 1 flag-in warp now takes you to payg_cas01 98 27 (Near the warp to the third room), instead of the original payg_cas01 212 108 which is in the very first room not far from the entrance of the castle.
• WoE flags inside castles have been removed completely, to allow for better mobility and pathing within the castle, and not a dozen visual obstructions and misclicks.
• The amount of WoE flags outside castles has been limited to one per castle entrance, to allow for better mobility and less visual obstructions. Their positioning has also been changed so that the owning guild's emblem is always visible on the game's default camera angle.
• Attempting to enter a closed castle or talking to the flag outside it or its town one will now provide information on the open castles as well as the WoE times.

Trivia

• The first ever emperium item in HeRO was obtained in the Orc Dungeon by a Baby Assassin. Until then, the server had no guilds. The options back then were to obtain Emperiums from Orc Zombies at a very low rate, or from Baphomet in the third level of the Forest Labyrinth. The guild created from the emperium came to be known as Order of Chaos.
• The first guild to conquer a WoE castle was "Order of Chaos". The guild fought and defeated the GM team, who was defending the castle.