Wilderness PvP

The Wilderness is the one place in CraftScape where another player can kill you and keep everything you were carrying. It is six bands deep, the rules tighten the further in you go, and it holds bosses, two altars, a locked chest and the only bank inside its walls. This is how those rules actually work.

The six bands

The Wilderness is one long strip cut into six bands, numbered I to VI. Each band carries a wilderness level of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 or 60, but that number is not flat across a band: it climbs steadily as you move away from the entrance, so band III runs from roughly 20 up to 30 and band VI tops out at 60. Your current level sits in the contextual line on your HUD. Crossing into band I throws up a warning that a player kill costs you everything you carry.

Bands I and II are single combat, so only one attacker can be on you at a time. Bands III, IV, V and VI are multi combat, where any number of players can pile on at once. You get a warning card when that status changes, on the way in and whenever you cross between a single and a multi band, though moving from one multi band to the next passes without comment. Leaving the Wilderness altogether clears the lot with a plain PvP Disabled notice.

The sky is held at midnight inside the Wilderness and fades back to normal as you leave. You are given night vision the whole time you are in there, so the dark is atmosphere rather than a handicap. Head transmogs are switched off inside the bands and along the wall itself, so nobody in the Wilderness is wearing a disguise: the helmet you see on somebody is the helmet they actually have on.

Who is allowed to hit you

A hit between two players only lands if both of you are standing inside the Wilderness. Swing from outside the boundary, or at somebody standing outside it, and the attack is refused with a message. Past that, the gap between your combat level and theirs must be no larger than the wilderness level, and the game reads the shallower of your two positions: whoever is closer to the edge sets the limit for both. Near the wall that gap is one or two. At the far end of band VI it is sixty, which is everybody.

Multi combat is not purely a property of the ground you stand on. Once you have traded blows in a multi band you stay flagged as multi for a further fifteen seconds wherever you walk, so backing up a few steps towards safer ground does not shake a group off you. Damage also stops landing past roughly twenty-two blocks, which caps how far a ranger or a mage can reach out from cover.

Getting out alive

Teleports are not instant. A cast runs a visible countdown, three seconds for the quick forms and five for the drawn glyph, and you have to stand still for all of it. Walk off and the spell is cancelled and you are put back on the tile you started from. Inside the Wilderness there is a second restriction: taking an action part-way through the cast, including swinging back at whoever is on you, kills it. And if a player lands a hit on you, the teleport dies on the spot.

The same lock covers the obelisks. Step on one while a player has you in combat and it refuses, and there is a short cooldown before you can use another. The lock runs for fifteen seconds from the last hit a player put on you, so an escape has to be started before the fight rather than during it. In practice you cannot fight and flee at the same time, and choosing to trade one more hit is choosing to stay.

Logging out is not an escape either. Disconnect within ten seconds of a hit in a player fight and you die where you stood: everything you carried is dropped, you are sent back to the world spawn with full health, and the whole server is told you logged out mid-fight. Even a clean logout deep in the bands costs you the ground you covered, because you come back at the Lumbridge graveyard rather than where you left. Ordinary player kills are announced to everyone as well.

What you lose

There is no item protection here. If the player who killed you had damaged you within the previous thirty seconds, your items go straight into their inventory, and anything that will not fit lands on the floor locked to them, so there is nothing for a passer-by to grab. No gravestone spawns and there is nothing to come back for. Untradeable items and anything flagged to return to your bank on death are the exceptions, and those follow you home.

Dying to a monster instead leaves a gravestone wearing your own face on the spot where you fell, and it stands for fifteen minutes. It is not reserved for you. Outside the Wilderness a grave answers only to its owner, but a Wilderness grave can be emptied by whoever reaches it first, and the deep bands are exactly where somebody else will. Treat those fifteen minutes as a race against other players, not as a safety net.

The Wilderness also widens what counts as carrying something. Outside it, only your inventory is at risk. Inside it, your backpack and your pouches are emptied into the pile too, so a rune pouch or a coal bag is not a hiding place. You cannot drop pouches while you are in the Wilderness either, so you cannot stash one on the ground before a fight. Items other players drop are free for anyone to pick up in here.

Getting around

Six obelisks stand in the Wilderness, two in band II and one each in bands III, IV, V and VI. Walk onto the plinth and you are thrown to one of the other five, chosen at random. That makes them the fastest travel in the Wilderness and the fastest way to land somewhere far more dangerous than where you started, with no say in which. They will not fire while a player has you in combat, and there is a short cooldown between uses.

Levers at Edgeville and in Ardougne drop you deep in one step, at about level 50 and squarely in multi combat. A second lever beside the landing spot sends you back to Edgeville, so the trip is reversible if you can reach it. Inside the Mage Arena another lever leads down to an underground chamber holding a banker and a magic shop, with PvP switched off. It is the only bank in the Wilderness.

Two more pockets have PvP disabled outright: the Corporeal Beast's cave in band IV and the platform at the King Black Dragon's lair entrance in band V. A games necklace teleports directly into both, so neither boss needs a walk through the bands. The Corporeal Beast's gate asks you to confirm on the way in, and while the beast is alive it will not let you back out until ten seconds after your last exchange with it.

What the Wilderness pays

Larran's big chest sits in the deepest band and takes one Larran's key per opening, with the contents dropping at your feet. Keys are a rare find on kills that count towards a slayer task, from any master, not only the wilderness one. The chest is mostly coins and noted supplies: ores, fish, logs, essence and gems come up commonly, rune arrows, dragon arrows and noted herbs less often, and rune platebody, platelegs and full helm sit at the rare end.

Krystilia takes wilderness slayer tasks from just outside the wall. Her assignments only tick down for kills made inside the Wilderness, but they run longer and pay more slayer points than an ordinary master's, and slayer experience earned inside a PvP area is boosted for the risk. Bones buried in the Wilderness give more prayer experience than the same bones anywhere else. The chaos altar sits in band I and the death altar in band IV, both shallow enough to reach without a deep run.

There is non-combat work up there too. An agility course in the deepest band pays a heavy lap and four tickets with no agility requirement at all, and a much shorter volcano course sits in band III. Six exploration beacons are scattered across the bands, each claimable once every four hours; they pay more than beacons in safe country, and the first time you touch one it pays double. The Fountain of Rune in band V tops an amulet of glory or a skills necklace up to two charges above its normal maximum.