There is now a single server-wide corruption level — the Blight Tide — that the whole realm shares. It rises on its own, in real time, and every player who fights in the deep pushes it back. Open the War Map (Endgame menu) to see where it stands, how many defenders hold the line right now, how fast it's climbing, and your own place on the Warband ledger of this season's greatest cleansers.

The war scales to who's actually online: on a quiet night your single cleanse moves the needle hard, and a handful of committed players can always hold their ground. Seasons run quarterly — hold the Tide, or watch the deep gather.

Points of festering corruption — Purification Nodes — now pulse violet across the Underworld map (watch for the ✶ marker). Stand on one and cleanse it: the Tide drops, and you're paid in gold, Dark Crystal shards, favour and experience. Every ordinary Underworld kill pushes the Tide back a sliver too — the war is won a wound at a time. Nodes close over as you cleanse them and new ones open as the corruption spreads, so the front is always moving.

Linger too deep, too long, past every warning, and the corruption can take you: you are Claimed, and the deep wears you as a puppet — a heavy stat penalty until you break free. But it is never a surprise and never a single unlucky step. The corruption warns you as it climbs (80, 90, 95), and at the brink you get a grace window with a countdown. You can always flee to the surface, purify, or — best of all — cleanse a node, which burns away a chunk of your own corruption. Working the nodes is how you fight the war and how you keep the deep from claiming you.

If you are Claimed, you keep every level and every piece of gear. It is a state, not a death: retreat to a Safehouse and let Sister Embrael perform the rite to Sever the Claim — a heavy cost, always available — and you are yourself again.

The war isn’t only for the sword-arm. At the new War Forge (Endgame menu), guild members turn gathered materials into War Materiel — and every piece forged deposits Supply Points into the guild’s shared stockpile. Fill it, and the whole guild becomes Warded: every member’s node cleanse pushes the Tide +25% harder. Supply Points decay, so a guild has to keep the forge lit — the gatherers and crafters hold the line as surely as the fighters do.

Forging also arms you: a Wardstone staves off the deep’s corruption for ten minutes; a Purge Draught cuts your corruption on the spot. And a guild’s cleansing now counts toward its realm influence — holding the deep is holding power. Watch the Warbands ladder on the War Map to see which guilds are turning the Tide.

Until now the deep was a place you farmed for gear and then left. Now it's a front you hold — a living state that pushes back, that you can lose ground in, that everyone in the realm is fighting together. This is the first stroke of a longer campaign: the descent deeper, the choice of who you become in the war, and the day the corruption learns to climb toward the surface. For now — hold the line.