Guild League: every rule, in one place

Guild League is 40 versus 40 across two fronts at once, on Tuesday and Thursday from 19:55 to 20:20, server time (UTC−4). The game ships a rulebook for it, and the rulebook is good — but it lives behind a "?" on the event screen, runs about fifteen screens of scrolling, and closes the moment the match starts. This is the same content, laid out so a number can be found in seconds.

Getting in, and how the season moves

A guild with at least 40 members is registered by the system automatically, and the players themselves need level 50 and party mode. Ranks are initialised before the season from the combined Power of each guild's top 20 members, and every rank holds exactly four guilds.

The two matches in a week are not drawn the same way. Tuesday is random; Thursday follows Tuesday — winners are paired against winners and losers against losers. The pair of results is the standing:

• Won both → 1st, promoted to the next rank the following week
• Won one → 2nd
• Lost both → 3rd, and last place is relegated a rank

The cross-server league

Above the server league sits the Major League, which holds up to 32 guilds across eight named ranks: Peak King, Supreme Warband, Honor Soul, The Chosen One, Glorious Legend, Immortal Myth, Eternal Monarch and Omni Ruler. Seeding is by the top-20 Power of each guild's highest recorded Guild Power.

The two leagues are connected at both ends. The guild that wins both matches in the top bracket of its server league is promoted into the cross-server one; a guild that loses both matches at Omni Ruler drops back down to its server league. Peak King is the ceiling and cannot be promoted further.

Everyone starts at 1,000 points, weekly results move the number, and every four weeks ranks are reassigned by total points and every guild resets to 1,000 again.

Two point rules carry more weight than the wins themselves. Two identical weeks in a row trigger a streak adjustment and then reset the counter — at Peak King that is +30 for two wins and −25 for two losses, so the figures very likely move with the rank. A win followed by a loss, or the reverse, triggers nothing at all. And a guild that fields fewer than 10 participants in any match that week takes an inactivity penalty of −50 points, which is larger than most streak bonuses: turning up badly costs more than losing.

The competition rules above are summarised from the official rules post on the Asian server's site (Guild League Rules Explanation). Asia is a separate build, so treat the exact figures as the shape of the system rather than a promise about ours.

Two fronts, and why the sub-field is not the leftovers

The league splits into the Main-Field, restricted to 40 elite players appointed by hand by the Guild Master, Vice Master or a Commander, and the Sub-Battlefield, open to everyone and also capped at 40.

It is tempting to read the sub-field as the bench. It is not: in all three modes the sub-field is what feeds the main field — morale that becomes buffs, and the final blows that hand Commander Skills to the people fighting on the other map. A guild that treats the sub-field as a parking lot loses the main one.

One mechanical detail that decides fights there: the sub-field respawn point is an invincible zone for allies, and enemies who step into it lose 40% of their HP every second.

Forty is eight parties of five

The game says "40 elites" and stops there, as if the Main-Field were one mass of people. It is not: in practice the raid organises into eight parties of five, and a serious guild puts a Priest and a Bard in every one of them.

Do that arithmetic before appointing anyone. Eight parties, two supports each, is 16 of your 40 slots — forty per cent of the Main-Field is support, and it means having eight Priests and eight Bards online at the same hour. A roster picked on raw power alone produces a list that falls apart on the field.

Why those two specifically, and what each brings, is laid out in the Dimension Drill guide — the classes behave the same way here.

What unlocks a reward

Personal points — from capturing, killing, assisting and slaying monsters — are for the personal ranking only and do not change the result of the match. What they do is gate the payout.

• Your own reward: at least 5 points, or simply staying in the scene for 5 minutes.
• The guild's auction rewards: 20 guild members have to reach 5 points each. Higher rank, better rewards.

Stellar Clash

Main field. Three tablets. Capturing one immediately deals 50 damage to the enemy guild and then 10 every 10 seconds, and a captured tablet is locked for 30 seconds before it can be taken again. Monsters spawn at three spots at the 10 and 15 minute marks, with an MVP at 15; kills go to the final blow, and a small monster deals 10 damage to the enemy guild while a large one deals 500.

Commander skills. The Guild Master, Vice Master and Commanders carry exclusive Ice, Fire and Shadow skills, and the weather — Sunny or Snowy — empowers flame or frost respectively. The skills themselves are earned by slaying MVP monsters on the sub-field.

On top of those there are three strategic ones: Group Warp, usable once per match, which summons every main-field member to a target location, and Group Buff I and II, which trigger when the guild's HP drops to 2,000 and 1,000 and hand the main field a heavy damage-reduction and immunity buff.

Sub-field and morale. Mobs spawn at 5, 8 and 13 minutes, worth 5 points and 10 morale each. At 5 minutes both sides get 20 small items worth 5 points and 15 morale, refreshing every 2 minutes up to six times, plus one large item somewhere on the map worth 50 points and 250 morale, refreshing every 5 minutes up to four times. When the combined morale of both sub-fields reaches 3,000, 5,000 and 8,000, the whole main field gets a buff.

Two named spawns matter: at 8 minutes two Hatii and two Ifrits appear — Hatii gives Frost skills to the main field, Ifrit gives Flame — and at 13 minutes Baphomet shows up, worth a large morale swing and the Dark skills.

Master Effects

Players may randomly receive one of these on respawn.

Vale of Clash

The main field is a race to 3,000 points, and the points come from Crystal Pillars. Ten seconds after the battle opens, pillars start spawning at random spots, three per refresh, and they refresh every 40 seconds — announced by a broadcast and marked on the minimap, appearing in the scene 20 seconds after that preview. The scene holds at most 1 S-rarity, 3 A-rarity and 3 B-rarity at a time.

A pillar has to have its sealing barrier broken before it can be captured, and the guild landing that final blow scores immediately. Then a capture zone opens around it: the more allies inside, the faster the bar fills, and a difference of five players is already maximum speed. Once captured, the pillar pays out every three seconds until it is exhausted and disappears.

Killing an enemy is also worth 1 point. Commander skills here are Ice and Curse, unlocked by landing the final blow on an S-rarity pillar in the sub-field.

Fiesta Tempo. With five minutes left and no guild at 3,000, every point from capturing pillars is doubled and everyone on the battlefield gets a buff. It is the mechanic that decides close matches, and it rewards holding pillars late rather than early.

Sub-field. Same game, paying morale instead of points.

Killing an enemy there is worth 5 morale, and at 1,000, 2,000 and 3,000 morale the main field gets damage reduction and movement speed.

Personal rating runs D, C, B, A, S, SS, SSS, and is display only. At settlement the standout players get a Battlefield Title — MVP for the highest rating, Warlord for most kills, Assist for most assists, Healing for most healing. They show on the settlement screen and cannot be worn in the world.

Vigrid Avenge

This one is about the horn. The Global gets it with the patch of 15/10, expected to open on 19/10, and in a new scale: the numbers below are the ones that patch announced, not the ones the mode launched with on the Asian server, where a match was played to 800,000.

Victory is decided in this order: the first guild to 3,000 points wins on the spot; then the highest points at the end; then the guild holding the horn on the main field; and finally the combined Power of the top 10 members.

What pays, on the main field

Fiesta Tempo starts with five minutes left, if no guild has reached 3,000 yet. It does not double everything: holding the horn at the end and player kills stay the same, and holding the horn goes from 12 to 15. These are the numbers in the game client after the patch.

The horn

One Fallen Valkyrie spawns at the centre when the match opens, and she does not come back. Whoever defeats her takes the horn and becomes the Heimdallr Messenger, with five skills: Group Summon, Dash, a control-immunity and damage-reduction buff, a movement-speed buff and an area attack. Dash has a 30s cooldown that refreshes whenever the horn changes hands.

Killed by a player from another guild, the horn passes straight to the killer; die any other way, or leave the field, and it drops to a random member of an enemy guild.

Carrying it hurts. After transforming, the Messenger is hit by Divine Backlash: 25% of Max HP every 5 seconds, and healing received cut by 90%. The counter is the Gjallar Altar — eight across the field, each granting 60 seconds of immunity plus a buff for nearby allies, and an altar can only be lit again at the same spot after 90 seconds.

Fenrir is the horn’s predator. Whoever lands the final blow may transform into its avatar — two minutes to trigger the change, one minute of it once triggered — and the avatar kills the Messenger in one hit. Fenrir respawns after a while.

The other monsters

Element Lords — four of them, two on the field at a time. The guild that lands the final blow takes the corresponding power for 60 seconds.

Undead Spirits come four per refresh; up to four Pharaohs and one Infernal Nightmare can be on the field at once. All of them respawn after a while.

The sub-field and Guild Merits

Elites can enter both maps; everyone else only the sub-field, up to 40 per guild. Leaving a battlefield mid-match costs a 15-second wait before coming back, and that cooldown is shared by both maps.

The sub-field, Ruinscape, plays exactly like the main one, but its horn decides nothing: everything there pays Guild Merits instead of points. The Guild Master and Commanders spend merits on two group skills, 30 merits each: Quick March (MSPD and MSPD cap +30% for 10 seconds, CD 120s) and Indomitable Will (immune to all crowd control and area damage taken −20% for 15 seconds, CD 300s). Both are removed on death.

The cost of 30 is in the game client after the patch, where the skills read “Cost 30 War Badges”; before the rescale it was 30,000. In that earlier version the altars were corrupted every five minutes in three waves (3, then 2, then 1); that is not in the 15/10 announcement and gets checked once the mode is seen in game.