Awakening (infestations)

Wurm Online has something called Rifts, which are popular events for players to gather to fight off these so called "rifts". The Awakening server has a very different lore and a much smaller population, which means fewer players are likely to gather at the same time to fight off rifts, as they are in Wurm Online, and rifts also only occur on specific time periond. Instead, we decided to create a new kind of "rifts", which can be activated at any time, and which can be defeated by a smaller team of players, and these are called "curse infestations".

Curse Infestations

The curse infestations are said to be crystalized focal points of the curse, which has been plaguing the world of Awakening for millennia. For better understanding the curse, please refer to the Awakening history. They take the form of stones, crystals and trees, there are a total of at most 300 such curse infestations spread across the map, they tend to spread like trees rather than just randomly, so if one is found, often more are around in the same area.

Details about curse infestations can be found in the Awakening Infestations spreadsheet.

Locating Infestations

Curse crystals spawn on sand, steppe, and rock tiles. Curse trees will spawn if the tile has a tree or bush. For other types of tiles, curse stones will spawn. The only difference between these three types is that when harvesting them, you will get different resources. Infestations only spawn outside of PvE zones, because the PvE zones represent areas where the curse has no foothold. They will also not spawn near altars or inside deed borders. One requirement for infestations to spawn is that the tile should be fairly flat, and only lower altitudes, so you won't find them in the sea or in the mountains - one reason is that flowing water and blowing winds tend to cleanse areas of the curse; another is that it's easier to fight the infestations if the ground is flat.

Tracking

To find curse infestations, the track skill has been expanded to send messages in the event log when using the skill if near to an infestation. With higher skill level messages will show up at a longer distance. However, travelling across the landscape, you will often see the infestations, and so the tracking skill is rarely needed. The track skill for locating infestations works similar to using a pendulum for finding water tiles, except it will give messages for longer distances.

Activating Infestations

So, when you have found an infestation, what do you do? First, you will need sacred salt or sacred crystals, these are obtained by casting the spell "consecrate" on source salt or source crystals, and so you need an adept to help with this. Activate the source salt or crystal and right click the infestation item (curse crystals, curse stones and curse trees have the same procedure), then select "Exorcise", which will use the exorcism skill and a positive result will activate a wave. Using a sacred crystal instead of salt, will succeed with the exorcism every try; the salt will only succeed if the skill check was successful. The more powerful the infestation, the higher the difficulty for the skill check.

Infestation Tiers

When examining an infestation item, it will say what power it has: "The power of this infestation is [tier].". The power can be one of five tiers: weak, strong, terrifying, demonic, infernal. There is also a sixth tier, hellish, but it is only used for waves - see below.

Infestation Waves

There are a total of 5 waves before the infestation has been vanquished; however, you will need 6 sacred salt or crystals, because you also need one for the final exorcism. Each infestation contains a certain power, and each wave the curse will spend power to defend itself and it will increase the amount of power per wave; so that the last wave will have twice the amount of power than the first. The power in each wave is spent on spawning creatures, the amount of power defines which tier of creatures are used. This means the power of the wave defines the amount of creatures and the tier, not the power of the infestation. The infestation will spend power on spawning creature of the tier of the initial amount of power until all power has been spent. The distribution of power in each wave, and which creatures spawn at which tier is detailed in the Awakening Infestations spreadsheet.

When you start with one wave, if you experience it was very hard to finish, it is a good idea to look for an infestation with a lower tier, because next wave will be harder.

All spawned creatures must be killed before the next wave can be activated. Tower guards will engage with infestation creatures, they are not unique, and so if a tower is near enough, calling on the guards could be a good idea sometimes.

Unfinished waves will reset after a server restart.

Curse Creatures

The creatures that are spawned by the infestations, have the "curse" modifier. The strength of such creatures is much higher than normal creatures, but not as much as a champion creature - it's somewhere between a normal and a champion. If you have trouble fighting a champion creature, then expect to have trouble fighting five cursed creatures spawned in a wave.

Harvesting Curse Resources

Having completed all five waves, and exorcised the infestation a last time, the curse item can be harvested for resources. Harvesting is using a skill, and a skill check has to succeed to actually gain any resources; the skill check is vanilla and usually requires quite high skill level. In addition to curse resources used for crafting runes, you also gain moon metal lumps; the QL of the lump can be a maximum of the QL of the infestation item being harvested. The weight of the lump is randomly between 0.05 - 0.3kg.

To harvest a curse crystal, the prospecting skill is used, and you get a curse crystal and a glimmer steel lump. Harvesting a curse stone, the mining skill is used, and you get a curse stone shard and a adamantine lump. Harvesting a curse tree, the woodcutting skill is used, and you get a curse wood and a seryll lump.