Siege of al-Merayah - Cant Damage Fort

[Sir Max]

Hey Everyone,

I run a server for me and my friends. We are trying to do the Siege of al-Merayah. But we cant seem to damage the fort at all.

We built 2 trebuchets near by on one of the higher grounds. We have been hitting the walls with it none stop for like 10 minuities but its not getting damaged. We tried to run at the wall and attack it with our weapons, melee ones, explosives etc but still no damage is been done to it.

I have restarted the server, its fully up to date. We did originally have can damage player buildings turned off but i turned that on and again restarted the server but we still cant damage it.

Is there a specific server setting we need turned on or do we need to do anything in game to start the Siege so we can damage it rather than just attacking it.

[Akadai]

As far as I'm aware, it doesn't matter what the server setting is for player structure damage. The castle has it's own code separate from player built code. They even mention this in their dev stream

I can also confirm this on my own server. We have player structure damage turned off, but we can destroy the walls of the castle

I think a lot of people don't quite realize just how much damage is required to destroy bits of the castle. It takes A LOT of damage, so much so that most might give up thinking it's just not taking any damage at all. Part of the problem is, there is zero indication that damage is being done. There's no health bars, there's no signs of damage or anything

Keep in mind, restarting the server will just reset the health of walls, also leaving the area can cause the castle to reset as well

It's easy to get discouraged from breaking the walls due to how much is required to even break through, to the point you have to ask your self "is it worth it?"

[Goldie]

I saw a video (I think it was Wak's) where he did fire damage to a wall and he could see the damage by holding a repair hammer. While the fires were still burning he seemed to be able to do more damage using other methods. I will see if I can find the video and link it if I'm allowed.

Edit: Here's the video. If you start watching at 4:24 he shows how he does it with explosives and a battering ram: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0L8oSVK19I

[Akadai]

I'll have to try the repair hammer next to it, next time I'm messing around with the castle. I didn't think something like that would even work on an npc structure

I had no idea the final boss could max level a thrall though. I didn't bring any with me because I was afraid they would die. I was simply exploiting the infinite spawns to just farm xp at the front gate, pulling small groups at a time

I'm guessing because they instant level to 20 they wont gain any bonus stats from food though?

Edit: Oh btw, there's 1 hidden away door at the top that leads straight inside. There are many doors, but most go no where. One does

[Goldie]

Wak put out a second video to the one that I linked explaining how he believes the bonus leveling of thralls works. It's worth the watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_TtqcWXqeo

[Akadai]

Thank you for linking that. I was literally thinking about doing these tests my self later today or tomorrow, but he's already done them. I'm going to have to check out more of his videos XD

I don't know if I'll fully take advantage of this or not. I kind of enjoy the way I level my thralls currently and I think this might ruin that for me. Atleast the option is there if I feel otherwise, until/unless it gets nerfed that is

[Aurelia]

Me and my friend took the time to set one up and bombarded it for about that long, and only took down about 15% of it's health after about 10 minutes.

Another day after the event had restarted (gate healed), I used oil arrows and explosive arrows to melt it down, which seemed to be much quicker and more doable than the tribuche.

We used the battering ram for the second gate, and from there we just ended up bashing down doors with the hammers the enemy dropped....

This whole siege thing is neat, but the numbers are really bad. A handheld log (battering ram) does more damage to the gate than a boulder from a tribuche.

Melt the first gate, use battering ram for the second, use hammers for the remaining doors. Getting throurgh places was not that exciting.

As an added note, make sure you have your repair hammer handy, as drawing your repair hammer will let you see the hp of the gates/doors.

[Akadai]

Slightly off topic, but it turns out the boss in this castle isn't the only one that will max level a thrall. The final boss in the sorcery dungeon at Mek-kamoses will also max level thralls. Just discovered this by accident with a friend, running it for the first time

We both had a couple followers with us. Mine were already max leveled, but his weren't. He was surprised to find they were maxed out when we left. Just to confirm, we ran it a 2nd time. This time I brought some fresh followers at level 0. They also hit max when the final boss was killed (granted they gained 4 levels just from kills in the dungeon)

Considering the dungeon resets when you exit, it's far easier to just farm this one for xp. It does take 30 blood crystals, but you can get that in the dungeon it self from harvesting the golems. It's a pretty fast dungeon once you figure out how to move between each phase of it

---

Edit: Just an update on this. I ran the Mek-kamoses dungeon by my self without my friend a few more times and the boss stopped instant leveling my thralls. So I'm not sure what's going on. I also noticed there is a delay before you can open the dungeon again. I guess I didn't notice this earlier cause we were idle a bit when we came out the first time

Now I'm wondering if there's some sort of bug at play

[Solomon Hawk]

Are you by any chance not using Demon Fire Barrage ? Usually 4 or 5 demon fire barrages will take out the (first exterior) T3 gate. (Maybe more depending on damage settings). The more direct the hit, the better the damage.
But at least hitting around the gate also works.
The zone between the outer wall and the first main wall is a mob style killing zone with infinite respawns. You have to distract them.
The second gate, an inner T3 can be taken down with several explosive jars, but you'll be fighting off attackers unless you can keep them distracted and away from you. That's where a small force of standby guards set to max attack range and attack all enemies can be helpful along with two of your best followers. (Hint: Set up a small FOB close as possible to the castle without drawing unnecessary attention). I typically use The Weeping Ruins for this purpose.
Archers on towers near as possible to the castle can draw attention without very harsh consequences since attackers will go after them .. leaving them vulnerable to your ground based heavy hitting guards.
Distraction/deployment.

The first outer gate appears to be only a T2 gate.

I've used battering rams on inner doors without the need to use a repair hammer to pause and find out how much damage was done. I just keep ramming them till they collapse and it's not very time consuming. But it can be time consuming when you're being mobbed by hostiles without someone (or a good thrall or two) following you and watching your back.

[trovo/PewPewPew™]

Each standard wall has 70k hp, A ram has enough for 20 wacks and should do around 3-3.5k damage (right clicking seems to do more damage than left clicking). You should be able to knock down a wall, via right clicking, with one ram (there are three in the castle that you can steal) besides the four explosive jars.

[Thumper]

you can avoid all this by climbing over the walls....

and your followers will teleport to your new location

[Malthrax]

just run up to the wall, press E, select "dismantle"

[Pablo Croft]

Now, if only the purge system ran so well haha.