Chapter 8.7 Bounty Hunting
Bounty Hunting
Players can attempt bounty hunting by collecting wanted posters. Wanted posters are self replicating, you can take as many copies as you want without the posting disappearing. This is important to understand since you will need to burn the poster each attempt to enter PVP against a player. With bounty hunting, you must be stronger and more skillful than the player or NPC you are trying to take in. Warding protections are negated if a bounty hunting poster with your identity on it, (including your aliases,) is activated near you.
How to Use a Wanted Poster - Updated 5/8/26 v1.1
Using a Wanted Poster will burn it, and the flames from the pages will fall to the floor and radiate outwards in a limited radius. If the wanted person is in the radius, the flames will radiate to the wanted player or NPC, and they will now be marked. However, this activates PVP with any player or NPC in the area if they choose to enter the arena and fight. This allows the wanted player to either flee, or stay in the area to get assistance.
Players who join, that are not affected by a wanted poster, only lose stamina as a brawl. This allows people who are siding with the criminal or bounty hunter to join in, or merely ignore it and allow the two to duke it out. Joining players can free target any opponent but will only do hit damage to their active target.
Local Culture Enforces Roles - Added 5/8/26 v1.1
Bounty hunters should determine when it is best to combat a criminal. Crime controllers, such as crime hub hideouts, or thieve guilds will flag members if a players has a wanted poster in possession. Criminals will not get additional law infractions in areas depending on the strength of crime vs law culture in the area. For example, a public bar that has aligned with criminals can become a safe haven for criminal players and NPC and can even weigh down bounty hunters. However, towns and cities with high law culture may force criminals to meet in hidden areas instead.
Bounty Collection
Only the player who activated the wanted poster can choose to collect the unconscious player, or fully eliminate the player if the wanted status is Wanted Dead or Alive, or Wanted Dead. Players with wanted posters can activate theirs to also stack a chance of claiming a wanted player.
Heading to the Prison Controller (Updated 5/8/26 v1.0)
By tying up the player, and putting them in your possession (carrying, or on your mount or a wagon pulled by your mount, you will gain a compass UI). If more than one controller wants the player turned in, multiple icons will appear on your map, and the compass will indicate the closest one clearly.
Bounty Hunting in a Party and Switching Sides
Non-party members assisting a criminal or bounty hunter will not receive lethal damage as a brawl assist, and will only lose stamina. A bounty hunter activating a wanted poster, will enable all their party members to target the wanted person automatically at the start of the fight, and can deal lethal damage to the criminal. The criminal and their party members can deal lethal damage to the bounty hunter and attached party members, but not brawling players. Players would need to leave the bounty hunter's party if they wanted to switch sides to assist a hunted criminal. Vise versa if a criminal or other player decides to assist the bounty hunter.
Criminal and Bounty Hunting Brawl Skill (Added 5/8/26 v1.1)
Criminals and Bounty Hunters can activate riftcraft skills to allow lethal damage during bounty hunting brawls without being apart of a party. The local culture of crime or law and override these based on which is stronger.
Wanted Poster Timeout (Updated 5/8/26 v1.1)
If you cannot get a captured bounty to a prison in time, the wanted poster's affect will time out. The prisoner can break free, and run for it. There are two states you can be collected in. Logged off, and logged on.
Being Collected by a Wanted Poster (Updated 5/8/26 v1.1)
While in a collected state, you can log off, but your player will not revert to a firefly state, you will remain fallen. While collected, the item tying you up will decay over time, so they need to turn you in before the restraints decay. If the player that captured you goes inactive, or stops maintaining your ties, you can break free. The restraints will show as a runic symbol, the same symbols that appear at the edges of a wanted poster. If you are logged off, and the ties break, you can continue to revert to a firefly state again.
Captured in a Firefly State (Updated 5/8/26 v1.1)
Players can use wanted posters on players in their logged off firefly state. This will allow them to capture you in a lantern. The same tied-up rules apply, where runic symbols indicate you were captured due to a wanted poster, and the lantern will need to be maintained to keep you in it.
Dropping Off Criminals (Updated 5/8/26 v1.1)
You can drop off a criminal at a jail/prison controller that wants them. Their jail/prison needs to have the wanted poster quest matched or be set to allow any. This will delete the same posters still up on bulletin boards and other areas in the open world. It will mark other player's in their inventory and core menu as crossed off, and they can delete them from there. Or you can drop off a player or NPC at a location and have authorities pick them up, or you can meet them somewhere and the players who created the posters can mark it complete then.
Rewards
Rewards are granted automatically, only if you have the wanted poster in your inventory. It will take up that slot. If you ran out of room in your inventory, or set all rewards to be picked up at a spitbox. You will need to go to a spitbox to obtain the item(s). You can delete any rewards you don't want from the spitbox. Completing bounties will add to your bounty and quest legend. There will be reward cooldown timers for bounties, to avoid fake bounty hunting.
Bounty Hunting Strategies (Updated 5/8/26 v1.0)
Make sure that the player or NPC you are targeting is within radius bounds. You will see this radius when you select the wanted poster. Only you will see this radius, but others will see it once activated.
Bounty Stealing (Updated 5/8/26 v1.1)
Crime skills can activate a wanted poster and overlap a current bounty hunting. This is useful for criminals trying to retrieve a bounty to free them, or a greedy bounty hunter that really wants to take someone in themselves. Locality can determine if bounty stealing is legal or not. By default, in unclaimed wilds, or unset localities, it is not counted as a crime.
Attempting to Free a Bounty (Updated 5/8/26 v1.1)
Criminals who try to free your bounty, are able to be attacked and pursued, but they can attack you as well. This will time out if attacks no longer land in the case the player or NPC got away. Attempting to free a criminal will leave riftmist (crime trail) at the attempt point, even for a bounty hunter who changes their mind and frees a bounty on purpose. If the criminal breaks free, you can attack them within a time window, and if they escape for too long it will time out and you will need to burn another wanted poster to attack them again. (Unless it is a PVP world and they are unprotected.)
Turning in a Criminal with No Wanted Poster and Other Turn In Options (Updated 5/8/26 v1.2)
You can still drop off a criminal at a jail/prison that allows drop-off even without a wanted poster. You will obtain the reward via a spitbox. If you can contact authorities to pick them up at a location, and the people who created the posters can mark it as complete once they drop them off to the jail/prison themselves. You will need to burn the wanted poster as a tag. However, other players can still bounty steal, so consider if you have good trustees. If the tag is still valid by drop off, you will gain the rewards via spitbox.
PVP Nuances (Updated 5/8/26 v1.0)
In PVP worlds, wanted posters are not needed to activate PVP in unclaimed, and unprotected land. Have the wanted poster in your inventory, attack the player, and capture them. You will still need to activate a Wanted Poster to break through any protections set via local culture skills. For example, a settlement may be set as a safe haven, or the criminal is walking around in unclaimed land with a protection lantern, in these instances you need a wanted poster to break through the protections. Wanted posters will break all applied protections.
Wanted Posters (Updated 5/8/26 v1.0)
Wanted Posters will auto update visually during the restrained state, and imprisoned state. So players don't waste time looking for one that is already handled. However, they will only auto decay after a criminal has completed all their sentencing or trials, in the case that they escape, or a player fails to drop them off, or if a player is a bounty stealer. These updates allows players to sort through which wanted posters are still active, and at what phase, regardless of where they are in the world.
NPC Infamy (Updated 5/8/26 v1.0)
If you gain high enough infamy with some groups of NPC, you will be bounty hunted by them. Some NPC work for the deity of justice, and get direct information from the deity themselves, others from local NPC law enforcers. Others will just be pissed by actions you have taken. They will not be satisfied until due justice has been served. Dying from them and resurrecting won't count as justice, but it will offer a cool down affect. Your infamy will go down just like crime, as you serve your sentences. Only then will they stop pursuing.
Bounty hunter NPC that work for the justice deity are granted wanted posters that will appear in their inventory. They are lead by the deity, so they don't need to burn the wanted poster to find you and will be drawn to you. This means, they can continue pursuing you regardless of location. Their strength will scale based on your criminal legend and current infamy. This also means, if you have not been caught before, and no players have identified you enough to create a wanted poster, you're going to want to retrieve the wanted posters from these NPC and destroy them before another player finds it and identifies you as wanted. If these NPC get away without you defeating them, they will drop their egos and start posting wanted posters, making their quest public.
NPC Witnesses (Updated 5/8/26 v1.1)
NPCs will post wanted posters at allowed locations if they witness a crime against one of their own, or if the player who hired them were killed, or if an NPC witnessed a crime on their hired property. However, If you change your outfit, hair, and eyes or cover these features up with different items like hoods, NPC will not recognize you. Witness NPC will run and scream if they recognize you from a murderous crime, or they may fight you on the spot.
Plan an escape, or await a trial. Let me tell you the possibilities that await you.
Created by Jimmy Slaughter