The Sea Tower

Overview

The Sea Tower is a naval siege fought by guilds, from the decks of their ships. A stone fortress rises out of the open ocean where the town of Ocllo once stood. Four obelisks stand on its walls, and each one is guarded by a tower cannon that anyone can man. Guilds sail in, batter the obelisks down with ship cannons, and fight each other for the credit. The guild that topples the most obelisks takes the tower, and holds it until the next winner.

There is no sign-up stone and no waiting room. The tower goes live on its own schedule, whether anyone is there or not: two hours after each Paintball, every four hours around the clock. See the PvP Event Rotation for how the events stagger. The moment you hurt an obelisk or fire a tower cannon, you are in.

Guilds only. Only a guild's cannons can harm the Sea Tower. An unguilded captain can sail the waters, man a tower cannon and sink ships, but their shots do nothing to the obelisks and can never claim the fortress. See Guilds.

The Fortress

The Sea Tower fortress seen from above, with the obelisk status gump in the corner — The Sea Tower from above. While the event is live and you are near it, the gump in the corner tracks all four obelisks.

The fortress is a walled stone keep in the open sea with its own pier. Each of its four corners carries a tower with an obelisk and a cannon emplacement; the reward chest appears in the walled square at the centre when the tower falls. A ring of water two hundred tiles around it is the battle zone. Inside that ring, while the event is live, every ship's cannons reach 35 tiles, the obelisk gump stays on your screen, and the waters are lawless, as all of the ocean is.

Pirate ships never spawn within that ring, so the only hulls on those waters during an event are the ones that sailed there to fight.

The Obelisks

A Sea Tower obelisk beside a tower cannon on the fortress wall — Obelisk 2 and the tower cannon that guards it.

Four obelisks, one on each corner tower. They are the objective and the only way to win. Each has 50,000 integrity and can be harmed only by ship cannons: swords, spells, siege weapons and the tower cannons themselves do nothing to them. Double-click an obelisk to read its current integrity, or watch the gump.

Obelisks are built to be sieged, not sniped. A cannonball takes only about one tenth of the hull damage it would do to a ship off an obelisk, so bringing one down is a sustained bombardment from several guns, not a lucky volley. Every hit you land on an obelisk is tallied to you and to your guild.

Credit for an obelisk goes to the guild of the player who lands the last hit. A rival guild that has pounded an obelisk to a sliver can lose it to the crew that arrives for the final shot, and the whole server hears who took it. Expect the last few thousand points of every obelisk to be a knife fight.

Tower Cannons

Beside each obelisk sits a heavy tower cannon. Stand within two tiles and double-click it to fire; it needs no ammunition and reloads on the same 10-second cycle as a ship cannon. Anyone can man one, guilded or not, but they only fire while the event is live.

Range 50 tiles, well past any ship gun, but only into the half of the sea the barrel faces. A cannon cannot swing around to shoot behind its own tower.
Three times the hull damage of a ship cannon against ships, spread over a small blast area. Crews caught in the blast take cannon damage too.
Unmanned for 30 seconds, it goes automatic and opens fire on any ship in range on its own. The tower belongs to nobody, so it shoots at everybody: your ship, your rival's ship, an ally's ship.
A player manning a tower cannon stands in the open and can be hit by return fire from ships.

Tower cannons cannot damage the obelisks. Their job is to punish ships that park too close, and to give a guild that has boarded the fortress a way to drive rivals off the walls.

Fighting From Your Ship

Everything you know from sea combat applies, with one difference: inside the battle zone your cannons reach 35 tiles during the event, so broadsides land from further out than usual. Ships take full damage from each other and from the tower cannons, and a hull that goes down sinks with its crew exactly as it would anywhere else on the ocean.

Position is the whole game. Every tower cannon faces outward from its own corner, so a ship anchored in the dead ground behind a tower's arc is safe from that gun but exposed to the others, and to every rival with a working broadside. Sinkings during the event count on the scoreboard.

Joining the Fight

You are a participant from the moment you damage an obelisk or fire a tower cannon. From then on your kills, deaths, sinkings, healing and damage to other players around the tower are recorded until the event ends. Ship-versus-ship fighting near the tower does not enrol you by itself; you have to touch the objective or the guns.

Type [SeaTower anywhere in the world to open the tower's status: which guild controls it, since when, and whether it is under contest right now.

Winning

The event has no clock. It ends the moment the last obelisk falls. The winner is the guild credited with the most obelisks; if two guilds are tied, the one that dealt the most total damage to all four obelisks takes it. The result is broadcast to the whole shard.

If nobody has finished the job when the next four-hour slot arrives, the tower stands unconquered: every obelisk is restored to full and the fight starts over from scratch. Damage does not carry across slots, so a guild that half-kills the fortress and sails home has given its rivals nothing.

Rewards

The Sea Tower reward chest in the walled square at the centre of the fortress — The prize chest appears in the walled square at the heart of the fortress.

The winning guild receives Renown and a payment into its guild treasury, and a Sea Tower Treasure chest appears inside the fortress. For the first 10 minutes only members of the winning guild can open it; after that it is anyone's, and it vanishes once it has been emptied. The chest holds several level-five treasure hauls plus a set of Ship Upgrades and Crew Contracts.

Battle Trophies. Everyone who took part receives Battle Trophies at the end, and members of the winning guild receive double. Trophies are spent with the Quartermasters.

Holding the Tower

The last guild to conquer the Sea Tower controls it until another guild takes it. Control is on display in the towns: Sea Tower monoliths stand in several cities, and double-clicking one shows the controlling guild, how long they have held it, and whether the tower is under contest at that moment. The same panel opens with [SeaTower.

The Scoreboard

The Sea Tower obelisk status gump — The obelisk gump, shown to everyone inside the battle zone while the event is live.

When the tower falls, every participant gets the scoreboard. It ranks players by Obelisks destroyed, damage to obelisks, cannon damage dealt to ships from the tower guns, kills, deaths, ships sunk, healing done to others, and damage dealt to players, with each player's guild tag beside their name. Sort it by any column.

Tips

Bring guns, not one ship. Obelisks shrug off nine tenths of every cannonball; a lone galleon will run out of powder long before the first tower cracks.
The last hit is the only hit that counts for credit. Hold fire on a nearly dead obelisk until you can land the finishing volley yourself, and watch for rivals doing the same to you.
Board the fortress. A crew on the walls with the tower cannons can punish any ship that parks within fifty tiles, and stop a rival crew from doing the same to yours.
Do not leave a tower cannon idle in front of your own anchorage. Thirty seconds after the last shot it picks its own targets.
Check [SeaTower before you sail. If a rival guild is already on the objective, arriving late is how you hand them the last hit.