If your rank is at least Lt. Major, you can create and participate in Melee battles. In these battles, you and up to three other players from your faction will fight against up to four players from another faction (none if facing a Foreigners). To enter a Melee, go to the Melee Receptionist or to the Marshal, both of whom you will find in every Plaza.
Melee Battles are your main source of Honor, which you will gain regardless of win or loss. The result of a battle will affect each faction's Conflict Points.
There are 6 Melee types you can play (5 of them can be explicitly chosen), and 4 Level settings (of which 3 are available.).
You can create a party to play with friends in the same battle.
Melee Types
Note that the melee types only determine the victory condition, and not determine what you should do or what goal you should be heading for.
Capture (also known as Suppress)
In these battles, your objective is to capture bases. There are five different types of bases:
- Captain Bases: To capture these bases, 4 Base Captains have to be defeated. They are initially located at the 4 corners of the base.
- Infantry Bases: You have to defeat 100 troops spawned from within the base.
- Officer Bases: You have to defeat the officer. Initially stands at the west side of the base.
- Tank Bases: To capture these bases, you have to destroy 4 juggernauts.
- Tower Bases: To capture these bases you have to destroy 4 towers.
There are two variants of Capture battles. In the first one, you have to capture all of the enemy bases (suppress enemy), while in the second one, you have to capture every single base, including the neutral/yellow bases (suppress all).
Overall judgment for this mode is judged on bases owned (100 points per base), supply bases captured (200 points for taking enemy's supply base), and troop KO (1 point per troop KO).
Defeat (also known as K.O.)
In these battles, each team simply has to defeat the specified number of units total either 2000 or 3000. It is important to focus only on defeating soldiers. Capturing bases or following enemy officers to kill them is pointless in this battle type. It is inadvisable to have two or more players of the same team in the same area. You should split your team and secure a large area for yourself. If you are being chased by an enemy player, it does not make sense to fight back unless you are sure you can defeat the player. It is recommended that you run away and keep killing soldiers with your attack that has the largest attack radius, your opponent who will be chasing you will not be getting kills thus not contributing to their side. If this problem persists, move into a zone that has enemy (red) troops. This way, your opponents will refrain from attacking you, as they can't get any troop kills in that area.
Confront (also known as PvP)
The strict PvP mode. In these battles, your objective is to defeat 10 enemy officers before your opponent. AI officers spawned to make up 4 players per team do not count for this total unless the team consists solely of AI officers. AI controlled characters from a disconnected players still get counted toward this total. Most players prefer Commander KO judgment condition, and Flask Remain settings.
Search (also known as Treasure)
In this mode the purpose is to bring treasure to an allied base as many and as fast as possible. Each character is only able to carry 3 treasures at a time. To acquire treasure you have to pick it up from the ground, which can happen by defeating field officer (high chance), break boxes or jars (moderate chance), defeating troop (extremely low chance), or defeating enemy commander who is carrying treasure to steal from them. Once you pick up the treasure, get to any allied base will relieve you of all treasure you are carrying and add 1 point to your score per treasure. Returning treasure to your supply base that has not been destroyed will grant you 2 points per treasure. Once 10 treasures have been deposited, the battle is over, and the higher scoring faction wins. It should be noted that carrying treasure inflict various penalties on you depending on how many you are carrying.
- 1 treasure will remove the buff that would reduce damage from enemy commanders by a lot, disable jumping, reduce your running speed and max running speed somewhat.
- 2 treasures will almost halve your running speed, max running speed and disable musou attack.
- 3 treasures will make you move extremely slow and speed buff will have almost no effects.
Riding on a mount however negates these effects while you are on it giving you the speed your mount has. The only judgment condition is Receive Treasure which scores 1 point per treasure returned in a base, 2 points if returned to your supply base while it's still up.
Destroy the Enemy Force
The main objective in this mode is to deplete as much of the enemies fighting strength as possible within the time limit. There are exactly 40 bars at the top right of the screen each bar equals 250 points, both sides start with 10,000 points. Battles begin with 2 Neutral bases spread throughout the battlefield, there are various ways to deal damage to the enemy force which are
- Take and hold a base - Similar to Showdowns, each time a base pings 1000 points will be depleted.
- 1000 K.O.s between all members - Depletes 250 points.
- Defeat Commanders - Depletes 500 points.
- Defeat Enemy General - Depletes 1000 points.
- Special task for the losing side - Depletes 1000 points.
The special task will be given when the losing side is behind by 3000 points. When you deplete all of the enemy bars you win. Should time run out the victor is decided by remaining strength.
Unique to this mode is the musou limit, you are allowed to use musou only twice though picking up an Imperial Seal will give you back 1 musou to use.
Defeat the Enemy Leader
One way to get this mode in melee is by random chance when you play with Unknown victory condition. This will also appear during Campaigns, but you will be warned ahead of time in the prep screen.
To win this mode you have to defeat the enemy general. The general will take damage from all sources possible like a player, that means enemy attacks or allied bombs are a few of the effects, but they will always have at Armor Level 4. They can be healed from Protect, Rally, and Sacrifice advances as well as allied bases, but cannot pick up items. They have very high stats, and if you don't have any defense upgrades will likely die in one hit, this makes them very lethal in killing anything.
Unknown
Unknown (excluding defeat commander) a.k.a. Unknown 1
If you choose this type of a battle, the winning condition will be randomly chosen. Additionally, no matter what the victory conditions is, the generals have a high chance of appearing as if it were defeat leader mode. This mode excludes Confront from the list. Also the generals will not spawn at the start of the battle.
The victory condition is actually determined at the moment you create the battle, however the game will not tell you that, but it's possible to determine it indirectly.
Unknown (including defeat commander) a.k.a. Unknown 2
The same as Unknown 1, but generals have a high chance of appearing at the start of battle, and Confront mode is included in the choice of possible game modes.
Participation Setting
When you create a room you have the option of choosing who to allow to join your room. The Melee Receptionist and Marshal will let anyone in the faction join while the Messenger will only allow Guild members to join.
- Do not Invite - No one in your faction is able to join the room.
- Auto Invite - Anyone able to join Melees can join.
- Party Limited - Only those who are partied up with you will be able to Melee.
- Limited Invite - Ability to password protect your room so only certain friends may join, useful for wanting to battle certain opponents for some friendly battles.
Level Setting
When creating a Melee Battle, you are given the choice between three Level settings:
Difficulty | Rank Requirement | Temper Limit | Weapon Drop | Gear Drop |
Novice | Below Lt. Colonel rank. | Less than 16 | 1-2 | 0 - +2 |
Veteran | Rank between Lt. Colonel and Counselor General. | 16 or more | 2-5 | +2 - +5 |
Elite | Counselor General or above. | 21 or more | 4-5 | +4 - +9 |
Musou | None | None | 1-5 | All |
Novice is the only difficulty that keeps any weapon, gear, items and Lieutenant collected in the battle even if you lose, also recruitable Lieutenants flinch from attacks unlike higher difficulties. Elite is currently not available.
Melee Options
When creating a melee, you can customize it using various options
- Items: These can be set to either on or off. This determines if your allowed to equip special items during battle. Support items can always be equipped.
- Handicap: If handicap is on, the team with lower ranks or fewer players will receive a small buff.
- Flask Upgrades:
- Lost: After withdraw, all flask upgrades will be lost.
- Remain: After withdraw, all flask upgrades will remain.
- Decrease: After withdraw, all flask upgrade at 4 stars or more will decrease by one level.
- Judgment:
- K.O.s: If time limit is reached, victory is determined by the highest number of defeated troops
- Overall: If time limit is reached, victory is determined by overall score. This depends on the game mode.
- Commander K.O.s: If time limit is reached, victory is determined by the highest number of player kills.
- Treasure: If time limit is reached, victory is determined by the amount of treasure obtained. (Only available for Search mode and also the only possible judgment criteria for Search mode)
- Fighting Strength: If the time limit is reached victory is determined by amount of remaining strength. (Only available for Destroy mode and also the only possible judgement criteria for Destroy mode)
- None: Should neither side meet the main objective of the mode the match will be counted as a Draw.
Legend
In any mode, you will see on top right corner of the screen 2 bars. The upper one represent the current state of the judgment conditions, and the lower bar represent your progress toward victory condition.
The upper bar is always in the form of and bar filled with blue on the left and red on the right side. The bar do NOT represent the percentage, rather it represent the amount of point a side have over another. The distance between the point where blue and red clash and the center is proportional to the difference in point, with the difference being at 666 points for a bar where the distance is at the maximum. If a side have more than 666 points difference, the bar be completely of one color and there will not be any indication of how many points that side have more over than 666 points. Note that whether these action will count toward the judgment condition or not depend on the judgment condition, but when it does count it is as follow:
- Supply base captured = 200 points
- Normal bases owned at the end = 100 points each
- Troop defeated = 1 point each
- Treasure turned in = 66.6 points each
The lower bar will looks different for a suppress compared to other game. In any game modes other than suppress, the bar will be consisting of 10 arrows on each side pointing toward the center, with the one lightened up representing the progress achieved: each arrows is 10% of the progress (ie. 200 KO total in 2000 KO mode, 300 KO total in 3000 KO mode, 1 treasure total in search mode, 1 enemy commander defeated total in confront mode).
For suppress mode, the bar will consist of a numbers of boxes, each boxes representing a base and the color determine the owner. Yellow boxes will only appear in suppress all game at the center of the bar.
In any victory condition, there will be a blue and a red flag on the 2 sides of the victory condition bar. These flags representing the respective supply base: a colored flags means the supply base is not yet taken, while the broken flag represent a destroyed supply base.
Reinforcement
When a side is losing in judgment condition(progress toward victory condition does not matter) at a certain amount there is a chance that a general of that faction will appear as reinforcements in any mode other than defeat the leader mode. The choice of general is random from one of those a player on that side is serving if players on that side is serving more than one general, or a random general from anyone in that faction if that side all serve one general or have no players. While the general has a tendency to make you lose even more in judgment condition because troops and commanders defeated by the generals do not count toward judgment condition, winning that match will impress that general and gain you some trust.
Honor
When you finish a melee, you will acquire honor no matter the result. But the amount obtained will depend on your performance and the battle itself. Honor amount will increase significantly with more enemy players and slightly with more teammate. The defeated team will generally acquired less honors than the winning team, however it's possible and often for a 1st place in a losing team to get more or same honor as 4th place of the winning team.
In Search mode, honor acquired will be the same for everyone of the same team.
In other mode, honors are mainly affected by your ranking in your team. The way the ranking are calculated is based on your team's performance. For example, if you play a suppress match with KO judgment and your team loses all the bases, then the players who capture more bases will have higher ranking; however if the game times out and is decided by the judgment condition, then players with more KOs will have higher ranking. Number of withdrawals will be the secondary tie breaker. Anything else will be tie breaker for position only, because if two people tied to the withdrawal they will get the same honors no matter who have higher ranking.
While honor is mainly affected by your ranking in the team, honor can be vary by one point more or less depend on your performance. For example, if you get 100 KOs in a battle end with KO judgment, but still make 1st place you will have two honor less than if you make 1st place in the same battle with 1000 KOs instead.
After all calculation, honor can be multiplied by certain support items.
Farming Items
In Melee battles there are always two non-respawnable officers (units with name over them and are not commander) either on the field or in supply base from each side (neutral force not included) who carry weapon/gear chests, and two crates that contain item pouches. If generals appear, they can drop either a weapon/gear chest or a pouch, and each side can have one general appear. So in total, there are generally 8 items that can be found in each melee; however it is rare to get more than 4 because it requires you to pick up chests from the officer(s) and/or general of your own faction. Additionally, there is a small chance that a gear chest will be a blue chest (instead of the usual red) that contains two pieces of gear instead of one, thus allowing you to be able to get maximum of 14 items from a melee, but the chance of getting this is extremely low.