Crystaria has two PvP arenas: open-world duels against players standing on your tile, and the Echo Arena, a seasonal ranked ladder fought against stat-perfect echoes of real characters. (The hourly Colosseum tournament is its own event.)

Open-World Duels

• Players on your tile appear in the Players panel. Attacking is a choice — but it is the attacker's choice, not yours. Standing in the open world means you can be challenged by anyone within your level band. To be left alone entirely, see Staying out of it below.
• Level bands. A duel is only allowed within 25% of the lower of the two levels, and never less than 25 levels — so ±25 at level 40, ±50 at level 200, ±1,000 at level 4,000. The band is symmetric: it stops you punching up just as it stops you punching down. Guest accounts cannot PvP at all.
• Duels use your full kit: Attack, Cast, Weapon Artes and Abilities — and a Tamer's pet strikes alongside them. Both duellists take turns; see How a duel plays out below.
• Flee is available in PvP (it doesn't exist against monsters) — a duel going wrong can be escaped.

How a duel plays out

Duels are turn-based, the same way a party fights in the deeps — see Party Play & Turn Order for the timeline itself. Raise a hand against someone and they are pulled into the fight wherever they are standing, with the duel panel and a turn of their own. Nobody has a fight resolved on their behalf any more: every blow is struck by the player who chose it, with their own gear, buffs, runes and last resorts behind it.

• Turn order runs on agility. A quicker duellist acts more often. Striking first buys you exactly one action — a place at the front of the queue, not a permanent lead.
• You have 15 seconds to choose. A countdown sits beside the turn queue. Let it lapse and you brace instead — the next blow lands 10% lighter — and the fight moves on without you. Miss 5 in a row and you drop out of it.
• Defend is a command of its own: give up your turn to brace, and the next blow that lands on you is 10% lighter. It holds until you act again.
• Your full hotbar is there — Attack, Cast, Weapon Artes, Abilities and Fusions — and Flee still ends the duel for both of you at any point.

Answering is not aggression. Everything the realm holds against someone who starts a fight — the Mark, the level bands, giving up your own Ward of Respite — falls on the one who raised their hand. Striking back inside a duel already under way costs you none of it, at any level gap, with Peaceful Mode on or off. Peaceful Mode and the level bands still decide whether a duel may be started against you at all.

Two conditions have to hold when the challenge is made:

• Both of you must be online. Challenge someone who has stepped away (no sign of them for 90 seconds) and the duel resolves the old way, in a single exchange — dragging an empty chair into a long fight is not a duel.
• Neither of you may already be in a battle. Challenge someone fighting in a dungeon and you are told to wait; one character cannot owe a turn in two places.

Staying out of it

• Peaceful Mode — switch it on under Game → Settings and nobody can draw you into a fight. It blocks both directions: while it is on you cannot start one either, so it is never a one-way shield.
• The Ward of Respite — after you are defeated you cannot be attacked again for a short spell, so you are never farmed where you fell. Starting a fight of your own gives the ward up at once.

Losing the realm's protection

Three things trade your level shield away. While any of them is true, any player at any level may come for you — and the first of them suspends Peaceful Mode too, so nobody can strike someone and then switch it on to duck the answer.

• The Mark of the Aggressor — raise your hand against an unmarked player and you are Marked for an hour. Whoever you struck can answer, and so can anyone else.
• The Rampage — 5 kills inside an hour and the realm stops protecting you entirely. Bounty work does not count toward it.
• A bounty on your head, but only once you have already drawn blood. A purse alone never strips a peaceful player's shield — otherwise a newcomer could be bought as a target for pocket change.

Stakes

Kills and successful defences are announced in world chat, and a PvP kill credits your guild's monthly influence tally (+10).

The Echo Arena

• Found under Combat → Echo Arena — full page: The Echo Arena. Your whole hotbar works in duels and in the Arena. You fight echoes — snapshots of real players' builds — so a ranked match is always available, no waiting for anyone to be online.
• Wins and losses move your Arena Rating on an Elo ladder (K=24), with seasonal resets and a public ladder.
• Your own echo fights for you in other players' matches — keep your gear sharp even when you log off.