Captivity and the Cellars

Related in Cellars: Captivity and the Cellars | Ghost Gloves | Murder | Group Quests

When guards drag you to the cellars, you are captive: not dead, but not free. Karadiyar uses city jail holds as a middle ground between death and normal play. You can still read messages and see who else is locked up, but most adventures wait until you are released.

This is separate from dungeon instances such as Dunglor. The cellars are the city guard jail in your current settlement.

How you end up captive

Real players can be jailed when risky activities go wrong. Common paths include:

• Attack quests: A failed strike can land you in the cellars instead of sending you home unscathed.
• Group instances: Harsh outcomes on raids, ambushes, rescues, mine delves, cave assaults, dragon hunts, and alliance hunts can jail everyone on the team who was there in person.
• Seafaring: A disastrous discovery sail or treasure hunt can end in captivity.
• Plunder: Getting caught or failing a robbery during a Plunder window can send you to the cellars. Breaking into an empty house does not.
• War: Members of the losing side in a finished war can be held in the war city's cellars.
• Castle siege: Losers of a siege can be thrown into the castle city's cellars. Neutral castle rules have special cases.
• Failed rescue: If you try to free someone from the list without paying bail and the attempt fails, you may be jailed. The captive you tried to help keeps their original sentence.

While you are already captive, you cannot stack new jail sentences from quests, plunder, or seafaring. War and siege losses can still add time on top of an existing sentence.

What is locked

While captive, Karadiyar blocks most action screens on both client and server. Expect locks on quests, group joins, skills, farming, market trading, healing, PvP bandit fights, and kill attempts. You can still use chat.

From the City screen you can open the map, but travel from the map is disabled until you are free. The cellars list itself stays visible so you can see who is held in your city.

If you are jailed yourself, you may view the cellar list but cannot rescue or bribe others from that screen. Pay your own bail from the captive card instead.

Three ways out

1. Wait: Your sentence has a countdown. When it reaches zero, you are free again with no extra step.
2. Pay bail: Spend gold from the captive card. Bail scales with your character level (higher level, higher cost). The gold is spent even if you are freed another way moments later.
3. Someone frees you: A free player in the same city can rescue you (skill check) or pay a bribe in gold to release you instantly.

If another player frees you while you are online, your client learns through the normal cooldown update flow and a private message.

The city cellar list

Open Cellars from the City navigation grid. The list shows every captive currently held in your city, sorted with the longest sentences at the top. Each row shows a name and remaining time.

Free players see Rescue and Bribe actions. Captives see the list in view-only mode.

Captive Rescue skill

Captive Rescue is the sixth trainable skill. It rises when you successfully rescue captives or bribe them free. Higher skill makes rescue attempts more reliable. See Captive Rescue for a plain-language overview.

Ghost Gloves

The Ghost Gloves are a permanent store purchase tied to the cellar system. They are believed to shorten time behind bars, improve your odds when freeing captives, and speed skill learning, without leaving fingerprints on the lock.

Murder while captive

A player held in the cellars cannot be murdered. Trackers must wait until the target walks free again. See Murder.