Help & getting started

Members of an empire may slip into a district held by a rival empire and quietly tear it apart from within. It is a slow, sustained job, not a single strike, stay in the district and on your feet, and each pulse chips away at its structure, drags down its loyalty, and siphons zenni straight into your pocket, yours to keep no matter what happens next. A lone saboteur needs roughly an hour to raze a well built district to nothing, a full crew working together is much faster. Starting and stopping: sabotage begin, or resume a paused effort sabotage stop break off (also toggled by typing sabotage again) Cannot start while fighting or off your feet. If a fight breaks out: Being attacked does not ruin your work, it pauses it, dealing no damage until you are standing and clear of combat again, when it resumes on its own. You cannot quietly stop mid fight, to bail you must flee, which ends the sabotage. Leaving the district or stepping onto safe ground also ends it. Getting caught and killed: Zenni already siphoned is yours to keep, even in death. A saboteur killed by another player while at work is driven off and locked out of that district for 12 hours, every other district stays open. Dying to a monster, a hazard, or your own hand carries no lockout, only a rival player's blade earns it. Limits: - Flee the zone during a raid, or in the brief window just after breaking off, and you are locked out of any sabotage for 15 minutes, and it trips your 3 minute vitamin, candy, and repair kit cooldown - Your empire runs only one siege at a time, more members may join the same district, but you cannot open a second elsewhere - Capturing a district benches your whole empire from sabotage for 12 hours - A freshly captured district is under 24 hour martial law and immune to sabotage until it lifts - See help siege for the full picture of attacking and defending a district Unclaimed ground, propaganda: Worked inside an unclaimed district, sabotage becomes a propaganda campaign, driving loyalty down toward capture without touching structure. No breaches, no zenni, unclaimed ground has nothing to rob, it is purely political. A war room, or a Warden's flat double strength, quickens it just like a raid, letting an empire with no broadcast tower take unclaimed ground. That ground drifts back toward calm on its own, so you must outpace it. Structural breaches: Your work occasionally triggers a structural breach, a burst of extra structure and loyalty damage in one hit. The rarest breaches are the most violent, and the biggest are felt across the whole surrounding area. A higher level war room at your headquarters hits harder and breaches more often (see help headquarters). A faction sabotaging as an empire's Warden has no war room of its own, so it strikes at a flat double strength instead, harder than even a maxed war room. Staying hidden: While at work you cannot be found by sense, instant transmission, or the where command, defenders must physically search their own district to find you. The deeper the damage runs, the more precise the warnings the owning empire receives, and a district guarded by a Bastion War Command warns its owner the instant your raid begins. On ground they control, defenders may cut you down freely. The payoff: Zenni siphoned scales with how developed the district is, a raw district pays little, a fully built one rich with facilities pays out many times more per pulse. Why it matters: A district's structure shields its loyalty. While structure holds at half or more, an owned district's loyalty cannot be pushed below zero. Below half the shield breaks and loyalty can be driven toward rebellion. The moment structure is razed to nothing loyalty suffers a heavy one time collapse, and from there every pulse does four times its usual loyalty damage, until the district can be captured. Sabotage also weakens the owner's facility buffs as it works, since those scale with structure. Owners undo the damage with district repair (see help districts).