Team up, secure your base, then ride out across vast uncharted lands to loot, harvest resources, and upgrade your arsenal as you face off against a rival Warden crew looking to claim your territory as their own. Battle for possession of the legendary Shieldbreaker in the open field; fight to carry it to the enemy base to bring down their shields—then raid to destroy their base before they can destroy yours.

Pick from an ever-growing roster of Wardens, and form up in teams of three. Wardens wield guns and raid tools, in combination with rare magical abilities leftover from a dwindling age of magic, now returned. Every Warden ability is designed to add depth to the game’s unique loop and mechanics, like raid combat and destruction; siege stealth and infiltration; base repair and defense; harvesting and loot gathering; open-world combat, and much, much more.

Choose from an array of unique strongholds to call in as your base of operations in large, open maps. Each base has different layouts, advantages, and vulnerabilities. Pick the base best-suited for your team composition, play style, and map type. Once you’ve called in a base, take some time to reinforce walls and customize your loadout before heading out into the field.

Mount up with your team and ride across the vast mythical landscapes of Highguard in search of loot, resources, and gear to strengthen your arsenal. You can find upgraded guns, armor, and other equipment, like better saddles and magical amulets imbued with perks. Be on the lookout, as the enemy team will be doing the same. Fight them off to secure the best loot for your team.

Wildlight has announced a 5v5 Limited Time Game Mode in Highguard, available free to all players. This limited-time mode will be available starting today and run through the weekend. 

Today’s update also introduces a brand new base, Soul Well! Wardens can now experiment with this dark relic from a lost age, added to rotation in both 3v3 and 5v5.

As one of two patches released during launch week, this update is emblematic of the Highguard team’s dedication to creating a “ready for live service” game, resulting in immediate action. Just this week, the team has squashed hundreds of bugs, improved performance across the board: yesterday’s update, Patch 1.0.4 introduced a variety of bug fixes, new video settings, and highly-requested features.

5v5 and Performance Patch! And a New Base!

5v5 Raid Mode - Experimental Playlist

We heard the feedback! 

For the weekend, we are experimenting with a 5v5 Raid Mode.

This is a separate playlist and not meant to replace 3’s. 

3v3 Raids are still there for people who enjoy it!

The lobby has been updated to allow for parties of 5 while the mode is live. Grab 4 friends and jump into some hectic raids!

A few small tweaks for this mode:

• Raids are now 10 lives instead of 6

• Respawns are slightly longer during raids to allow generators to be planted/defused

Dev note: As most of you know, we are working on optimizations across the game. Many are in this patch and 3v3 should see good improvements! But… adding 4 more players to the game is not going to improve performance, right? Please keep that in mind as you try 5v5!

Dev note 2: Firing Range does not support 5v5 at this time, so the Play button will be grayed out if your party is over 3.

New Base - Soul Well

This new base will be added to the rotation in all modes.

Optimizations

This patch contains several optimizations that touch on animation performance, projectiles, draw submission times, and other gameplay systems. These optimizations benefit console and PC, but every PC is different, so the exact speedup to overall framerate is dependent on GPU, CPU, and other factors. 

Quality of Life

Enabled these visual settings on PC and consoles

• Motion blur toggle for PC and consoles

• Anisotropic materials toggle for consoles (PC has this already)

Strange magical storms periodically ravage the continent of Highguard. Everytime one appears, an ancient magical sword, called the Shieldbreaker, forms at its heart. This sword is the crucial key for breaking through the outer shields of the enemy base so that you can raid. When one of these storms forms in the sky, ride with your team to its location and battle the enemy team for possession of the Shieldbreaker forming beneath it.

Once you have the Shieldbreaker, battle across the open field, on mount or on foot, as you attempt to carry the sword to the enemy base. But stay vigilant—if the enemy team eliminates you while carrying the Shieldbreaker, they can pick it up and ride to raid your base instead.

Once you’ve successfully reached the enemy base with the Shieldbreaker, plunge the blade into the base’s outer superstructure to weaken its shields, then summon in a Siege Tower to finish the job. When those shields go down, it’s time to raid.

With the base shields gone, you’ll need to push in to destroy the base by planting bombs on the base’s generators. But in order to get inside a well-fortified base, you’ll need to use every weapon, raid tool, and arcane ability at your disposal to shoot, sneak, or smash your way inside. Once inside, plant bombs and hold the objective while defenders try to flush you out. Chip away at a base’s strength by taking out multiple generators, or go straight for their anchor stone to destroy the base in one fell swoop. And if you’re defending, protect your generators and repel attackers until the energy of the Siege Tower is depleted and your outer shields repair.

If multiple generators or the anchor stone is destroyed, the enemy base is destroyed and the attackers secure the territory. But most of the time, victory doesn’t come with a single raid. When that happens, the enemy base shields repair, the siege tower dissipates, and the fight escalates as loot, gear, and weapons all upgrade in the field, and a new Shieldbreaker forms in a different location in the world.

From there the fight for control continues—until only one base is left standing.

Each new Episode will bring an array of new core content every month, including new maps, bases, modes, wardens, weapons, mounts, raid tools, loot items, and many more surprises we can’t wait to share. And all of this core content is completely free for all players.