Dark Omens

The seven windows

The Flame only accepts Essence during seven windows. Everything else in the event runs the whole two days; this does not, and a clan that misses windows loses the event in the calmest possible way.

The pattern is an hour every eight hours — 17:00, 01:00 and 09:00 UTC — widened around each reset. Ten hours of open Flame out of forty-eight.

The loop

Two monsters and four currencies, and they feed each other in a circle.

Killing either one pays Omen Sigils, and Sigils are what clear the personal missions. The missions pay the other two things the event runs on: Omen Essence, which the Flame drinks, and the Spawn Cards that drop monsters on a rival. So neither is picked up off a corpse and neither is bought — both are earned by killing enough to finish missions.

The other two are score and nothing else. Merit of Balance ranks you in Restoration of Balance and both monsters pay it; Remnants of Dread rank you in Spoils of Dread, and only the Dark Omen monsters pay those.

Why a monster on your ground is two problems

The personal missions pay Spawn Cards, and a Spawn Card drops a Dark Omen monster on a rival. Those monsters throttle that clan’s Flame — and pay Omen Sigils to whoever kills them, which is what clears the next missions.

So a monster sitting on your land is doing two things at once: costing you Rank Points every minute it lives, and holding the Sigils that your missions turn into the Essence for the next window. Killing it fast recovers both. Clearing is not the chore between fuelling runs; it is half the event.

How much can be dropped on you

The limit counts summons sent to a clan by all the enemy clans put together, not monsters currently alive, and it refreshes every hour.

Two things follow from that wording. Killing a monster does not open a slot for another one inside the same hour, so clearing fast never invites more. And no clan can be buried without limit in a single hour, however many cards the other three are holding — the pressure they can apply is capped per hour, which is what makes the 95 % floor reachable but survivable.

When to drop them, which is not whenever

A clan is always making Rank Points, but never at the same rate. Pouring Essence into the Flame increases your production, and it stays increased until the Essence drains back below the thresholds that hold it there. Since Essence only goes in during the windows, between one window and the next every clan slides back to level-one production — the lowest there is.

A Dark Omen monster does not take points away: it takes a share of the rate. So the same monster is worth far more against a clan whose production is up than against one that has slid back to the floor. Dropping cards in the dead hours between windows is spending them at the bottom of the curve.

The event window has a tab with every rival clan’s current production rate. That is the thing to watch: summon when the clan you are chasing is high, not when your own cards happen to be ready. The exception is the hour right after a window, when their rate may still be up from their own pour.

And drop them together. Several members spawning on the same clan at the same moment overwhelms its ability to clear them, so the monsters live longer and throttle a rate that is still high — the suppression lasts longer and bites harder at once.

What clans that win actually do

A roll call at each opening, with leaders naming who pours and when. A clan that empties everything into window 1 has nothing for the six that follow.

Spawning together. The same cards landing on one clan at one moment are worth more than the same cards spread across a day, because suppression that overlaps compounds against a single Flame.

Focus-firing one monster at a time, as a clan, rather than everyone starting a different one.

What runs alongside it, and the pass

Two events run on top of it. Spoils of Dread turns your share of the monster killing into personal goals and pays Valor Points. Restoration of Balance is a personal leaderboard on where the division lands.

The pass carries both event artifacts on its free track: the Chronoglyph, for Food production and training speed, and the Ghostflame Lantern, for fighting epic monsters. A tier opens every 50 Omen Scrolls, and past 1,000 it keeps paying every 100 — five Ghostflame Lantern fragments a time. The paid track is not needed to play, or to take the clan reward.