Rival Seekers
Rival Seekers is asynchronous PvP. You raid defenses built by other players, and your own defense holds the line while you are offline. Nobody waits for anybody: your opponent does not need to be online for you to fight them, and you do not need to be online to be fought.
This page is the complete ruleset. If you only want the short version: five raids a day, your tier is recalculated every three days, and anyone who raids at least once in a window gets a chest for it.
The daily cycle
Every day at 00:05 UTC a fresh pool of rivals is drawn for you.
- Five raids per day. The counter resets with the new pool.
- One attempt per rival. A raid you lose is a raid you cannot retry against that opponent.
- Rivals are drawn with your tier in mind, so the pool is not a random slice of the whole player base.
The pool is your day. If you skip it, those five raids do not carry over.
Your two loadouts
You keep two separate teams, and they behave differently on purpose.
| Loadout | Team size | When it is read |
|---|---|---|
| Attack | Up to 4 heroes | Live, at the moment you raid |
| Defense | Up to 5 heroes | Frozen into the daily pool at 00:05 UTC |
That freeze is the rule most worth understanding. Editing your defense improves the copy of it that rivals will see from the next pool onward, not the one they are raiding today. Build your defense the day before you expect traffic, not during it.
Your attack loadout, by contrast, is read fresh on every raid, so you can retune it between raids in the same day.
Items
Both sides bring items into the fight.
- Two items per side, total across the whole team. Not two per hero.
- Only NFT-backed items can be equipped for PvP.
- Items are placed on specific heroes, and each hero's item sits in one of that hero's own slots.
- Your defense uses its items on its own. When a rival raids you, your defenders will spend a heal or a bomb when the fight calls for it. Items left on defense are not decoration.
Because the cap is two for the whole team, the choice is which two effects you want available in a fight, not which hero deserves a gift. A heal at the right moment is very often the difference between a treasure kept and a treasure taken.
Infusion does not apply here. An infused relic fights a raid with its base numbers, and a raid spends none of its charges. This has been true since items came to Rival Seekers; the picker used to show the infused glow and charge count anyway, which it no longer does. Infusion will get its own design for PvP after this ladder closes.
Formation and turn order
When you design your defense, you control two things.
Which defenders hold the back row
The number of back-row defenders is fixed by the size of your defense. You choose who holds those positions, never how many.
| Defense size | Back row |
|---|---|
| 5 heroes | 2 |
| 2 to 4 heroes | 1 |
| 1 hero | 0 |
The count is locked because it is a balance dial, not a tactic: every other split makes defending far easier than it should be. What is genuinely tactical is which of your heroes stand where.
Rows matter because of Attacks of Opportunity, which cut both ways:
- Front row is the clean target for melee, and punishes ranged attacks aimed at it.
- Back row is the exact reverse: open to ranged attacks, and it punishes melee.
An Attack of Opportunity deals 2 damage to the attacking hero. Reading a rival's formation before you commit is real skill, and so is building a formation that invites the wrong read.
If you never open the front/back assignment, your back row is assigned for you, the way it always was.
The order they act in
The order of your defenders is their turn priority when you are raided. Your first defender acts first. Put the hero who should open the fight where the fight opens.
Why defenders cast for free
Your defenders spend no MP. This looks like a bug and it is not.
A defense is run by the game, with no rerolls to spend and no read on the board. The free MP is what keeps it competitive against a live human who can see everything and reroll twice. It was measured, and taking it away made attacking close to a free win.
Points
Points are what order the season leaderboard. Every raid you make moves your own total.
| Result | Points |
|---|---|
| Win against a higher tier | +15 |
| Win against your own tier | +10 |
| Win against a lower tier | +5 |
| Loss | -5 |
Two things follow from that table:
- Punching up pays triple. Beating someone above you is worth three times beating someone below you.
- Your total never goes below zero. The system does not punish trying.
Being raided never costs you points. When a rival beats your defense they gain points; you lose none. A raid on you can only ever cost you the treasure at stake, never your standing.
Holding a defense pays too
From August 1, 21:00 UTC, a defense that repels a raid earns its owner 1 point, up to 3 points per day. Raids resolved before that moment earn nothing, and nothing is applied retroactively. That moment is the start of a settlement window, so no single window is scored half under the old rule and half under the new one.
It is deliberately a small number. Attacking is worth up to 50 points a day; defending is worth 3. This is not a second income, it is a separator: when two players have played equally well, the one whose defense has been holding while they were away should stand above the one whose has not.
Two limits worth knowing:
- It does not count as a win. Defense points do not make you eligible to promote and do not protect you from relegation. Only raids you make do that.
- It does not put you on the ladder. If you have never raided this season you have no ladder row, and there is nothing for a defense to add to. Defending sharpens where you already stand.
Tiers and windows
There are five tiers: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond.
Your tier is not a function of your point total. It changes only at a window settlement, by how you ranked against the other players in your own tier.
The window
A window is three days. When it closes, three things happen in order.
1. Everyone who played gets a chest. Raid at least once inside the window and you collect a chest for the tier you held during that window. Playing is the gate, not winning. A window of five straight losses still earns the chest.
| Tier during the window | Chest |
|---|---|
| Bronze | Common |
| Silver | Uncommon |
| Gold | Rare |
| Platinum | Epic |
| Diamond | Elite |
2. Tiers move by percentile. Within each tier, players are ranked by the points they earned in that window, and a slice at the top moves up while a slice at the bottom moves down.
| Tier | Top promoted | Bottom relegated |
|---|---|---|
| Bronze | 30% | none (Bronze is the floor) |
| Silver | 25% | 10% |
| Gold | 20% | 15% |
| Platinum | 15% | 20% |
| Diamond | none (Diamond is the ceiling) | 30% |
3. Window counters reset. Everyone starts the next window from zero, whether they moved or not. Your season points are untouched.
The movement rules, exactly
- Promotion requires at least one win in the window. Ranking high on losses alone is not enough.
- Only a window with zero wins can relegate you. One single win makes you safe until the next window closes.
- You move at most one tier per settlement. No cascades, in either direction.
- Bronze never relegates. Diamond never promotes. The floor holds and the summit is earned.
- Rounding favors the player. The promoted slice rounds up, the relegated slice rounds down.
- A tier with only one active player promotes that player. Being alone at the top of your bracket is not a penalty.
- Settlement runs on the hour, so a window that closes at any time of day settles within the hour.
Rewards
Every day
| Achievement | Reward |
|---|---|
| Win a raid | 1 Escense |
| Win a raid against a higher tier | 2 Escense |
| Win 3 raids in one UTC day | Uncommon chest |
| Your defense repels a raid | 1 Escense and 1 ladder point each, up to 3 per day |
Your defense earning while you sleep is the point of building one. Both the Escense and the points share the same cap, so a day where your defense holds three times is a full day of defensive income.
Every three days
One tier chest per window, per the table above.
Every week
Volume pays on its own track, counted by wins across the week.
| Wins in the week | Reward |
|---|---|
| 5 | Rare chest |
| 12 | Epic chest |
| 20 | Season booster |
These pay out at the weekly reset, Monday 00:30 UTC, not at the moment you hit the number. Your wins bank until then, and every threshold you passed pays at once: reach 12 and you collect both the 5-win and the 12-win reward on Monday. The counter starts again from zero after the reset.
When the ladder closes
| Placement | Prize |
|---|---|
| Top 1 | $20 USDSC |
| Top 2 | $10 USDSC |
| Top 3 | $5 USDSC |
| Top 10 | Skin Pack |
| Top 20 | Relic Pack |
Final placement is by season points, not by tier.
Claiming
Nothing is credited automatically. Every reward waits for you in Rival Seekers, under Rewards, in the Pending tab, with its own Claim button.
Rewards expire. A reward earned on one day can be claimed that day and the next; after that it is gone. Check the Pending tab whenever you come back, and claim before you close the game.
Season 4 schedule
Note that Rival Seekers and the descent do not end on the same day.
| Ends | |
|---|---|
| Season 4 "Confluence", the descent | August 10, 21:00 UTC |
| The Rival Seekers ladder | August 14, 21:00 UTC |
The ladder runs four days past the descent's finale, which is one extra window: one more recalculation, one more chest, and a last chance to move before the standings freeze.
Quick reference
- Pool refreshes 00:05 UTC, five raids, one attempt per rival.
- Defense is frozen at 00:05; attack is read live.
- Two items per side, and your defense uses them.
- Back-row count is fixed by team size; who goes back and in what order is yours.
- Wrong-range attacks cost the attacking hero 2 damage, in both directions.
- +15 / +10 / +5 for a win by relative tier, -5 for a loss, never below zero.
- Windows are three days. Playing earns the chest; winning once protects you; only zero wins can drop you.
- A repelled raid pays the defender 1 Escense and 1 point, capped at 3 a day, from August 1, 21:00 UTC.