Hunted Target

How to win this board

Read this before you choose a spawn. The rank is not the number of corpses. The purse is not a pile of bodies. Both are weighed from life, and the life of one creature is written in full when you land the killing blow.

1. The only number that climbs the rank

Your life is the sum of the full life of every marked creature you finished. A rotworm writes 65. A behemoth writes 4,000. One behemoth stands above sixty-one rotworms, because 61 times 65 is 3,965, and 4,000 is more.

Your bodies are only the count of those killing blows. They do not climb the rank while someone else has more life. They matter in two thin ways: they break a tie, and they add a little dust to the city purse.

1. More life stands higher.
2. Equal life: more bodies stand higher.
3. Equal life and equal bodies: the hunter who reached that life first stays ahead.

2. What one killing blow is worth

The board writes the creature's full life, not the wounds you dealt on the way. Chip it down with a party, and the last hit still takes the whole life. A summoned creature writes nothing. A creature that is not one of the three marks writes nothing. The staff do not sign the board.

These are the lives of creatures in this world. A blow is worth that number only when that creature is nailed to today's contract.

Four rotworms are 260 life, the same as one cyclops. Life is then a tie, so the four bodies stand above the single cyclops. Hunt the mark with the heavier life. A fast field of weak marks fills the body column and barely moves the rank.

3. How the city purse is counted

Every hunter's life is added into one city life. Every hunter's bodies are added into one city count. The clerk then does two sums, both rounded down, and adds them.

If that sum is 1, 2, 3 or 4 gold, the clerk writes 5, so three hunters can each take a coin. Zero stays zero. A single rotworm is still zero. The dust is the small term. At a thousand bodies it is 153 gold. At three thousand bodies it is still only a few hundred. The life term is the purse.

Read the third row as a plan, not a prize. Two hundred thousand life is a long file of rotworms, about three thousand bodies, and the purse is still near two and a half thousand gold. Twenty million life, the last row, is the sort of night that passes 50,000. The cap of 80,000 is the ceiling of the sum. It is not a purse the city is expected to fill.

This contract, weighed the same way: 23,660 life gives 224 life gold, and 91 bodies give 14 dust. Together that is 238 gold.

4. How the three shares are cut

Second blade takes 30% of the purse, rounded down. Third blade takes 20%, rounded down. First blade takes whatever is left, which is the half plus any coins the rounding dropped. On a purse of 2,587 the shares are 1,294, 776 and 517. They add back to 2,587. They never add past 80,000, because the purse itself never does.

The gold is one purse, not three. It is paid into the bank, including when the hunter is offline. Fewer than three hunters, each with a killing blow of their own, and the clerk shuts it. A thousand hunters may sign. There is no ceiling. Only the first three are paid.

5. The favours, and who does not get them

When the contract closes and the purse is paid, two favours go out. They last until 22:00 on the next day, Europe/Warsaw, through the next hunt and not beyond it.

• The first blade draws 5% more experience, and finds 20% more gold in loot.
• The second and third blades find 20% more gold in loot. They do not draw the experience.
• Fourth place and below take neither gold nor favour.

A second win does not make the experience 10%, and it does not make the loot 40%. The same favour simply runs until the new hour. A pile of loot under five gold coins is too small for the fifth to become a coin. The favour is the hunter's own. It is not given to the party, and it is not given to the whole city.

6. A plan for the four hours

1. Read the three marks. Take the one whose one blow is the heaviest life you can finish.
2. Land the killing blow yourself. A friend's last hit writes the life on their name.
3. Do not farm the weakest mark for a long body count. Sixty-one of them still sit under one strong blow.
4. Watch the city life if you want the purse to grow. Your own life is what takes the place.
5. Keep two other hunters on the board. Without three names, the clerk returns the gold.
6. Hold first place until 22:00 if you want the experience. Second and third still leave with a heavier purse of loot, and with their share of the bank.

The window is 18:00 to 22:00, Europe/Warsaw. The three marks are drawn once that day. The red omen may name one of them. It does not have to. Scouts tell you the field is busy. They are not the rank, and they are not the purse. A restart does not draw the marks again and does not wipe the tally. The purse is weighed again from the life taken. A night the city misses entirely pays nothing.