Co-Op Battles

Co-Op, or Multiplayer Battle, was introduced on February 14, 2023, during the Love Festival 2023. It had been previously unlocked in January as a bundle sales stretch goal.

## Co-Op Creatures

### Permanent Creatures

At this time there are seven creatures currently available for Dust Warriors who want to fight a co-op battle. They can all be found in the Multiplayer Battle Room.

**Akkoz**
200 words/10 minutes
(Easy Difficulty)
**E-Rus**
444 words/44 minutes
(Easy Difficulty)
**Balbor**
500 words/45 minutes
(Easy Difficulty)
**Crossnaw**
750 words/60 minutes
(Easy Difficulty)
**Imeus**
800 words/40 minutes
(Easy Difficulty)
**Lótsachu**
1,000 words/60 minutes
(Easy Difficulty)
**Luria**
1,250 words/90 minutes
(Easy Difficulty)

### Recurring Event Creatures

Some Co-Op creatures are associated with an event, and are not found in the Multiplayer Battle Room year-round.

**Alphea**
400 words/25 minutes
(Easy Difficulty)
**Buefys**
600 words/25 minutes
(Easy Difficulty)
**Peress**
300 words/15 minutes
(Easy Difficulty)
**Nikaji**
650 words/25 minutes
(Easy Difficulty)

A full list of all Co-Op Creatures can be found here.

## Basic Co-Op Battle Mechanics

There is no set word count for Co-Op Monsters. Instead, the Dust Warrior must battle with fellow warriors to defeat them. There are different word and time requirements depending on the Difficulty level chosen.

As the FAQ explains,

>  Co-Op monsters grow in size to match the number of teammates you bring to battle. A Co-Op monster’s word count will be multiplied by the number of teammates (a 500 word monster is 1,000 words for a team of 2 and 2,500 words for a team of 5), but the monsters time limit will remain the same (against a 30 minute monster you’ll have 30 minutes regardless of the number of teammates).
>
>

Like with Endurance Battles, there is a small lag between typing words and the site registering them. Pausing every few sentences allows the site to catch up and count the words previous written.

### Difficulty

When setting up a battle, Dust Warriors can chose between four difficulty levels: Easy, Medium, Hard, and Extreme. Each choice affects the word count per player and also how many minutes Dust Warriors have to complete the battle, in addition to their drop multiplier.

For more detail and information about specific creatures, see Co-Op Difficulty.

### Attack

With this function, each Dust Warrior's Attack stat does count the same as when fighting regular monsters, increasing the damage they deal as they write. An individual's attack stat does not count for the group as a whole.

For example, in a 2 person match requiring 400 words total to defeat the monster, each person is "responsible" for 200 words. If one of them has attack of 0, they need to write 200 actual words to make their "share". If they both have an attack of 0, and write at the same pace, they will each write 200 words and finish the monster at about the same time. If one has the 0 attack, but the other one has an attack of 100, the second person only need to write 100 actual words to count for 200. Of course, they can write more than that. If both write at the same pace, the monster's 400 words will be completed in fewer actual words.

### Defense

Unlike Endurance battles, Defense does not come into play in Co-Op battles. The time is solely reliant on the monster and difficulty chosen. For times, see the table under Difficulty or on the monster's page.

### Luck

Just like all other monster battles, Luck applies when calculating drops after the battle is won. According to the FAQ: "Everyone gets an equal chance of winning drops. Rewards won for the battle take into account your Luck and are calculated individually, meaning that if you write less words you won’t get less rewards." Thus, drops are calculated based on the size and difficulty of the monster as a whole, multiplied by individual Luck, rather than being based on an individual's actual word count in the battle.

### Bonuses

Bonus multipliers are literally multipliers for the drops. If the creature would usually drop 2 of an item, a 2x multiplier causes it to instead drop 4, a 3x multiplier causes it to instead drop 6, and a 4x multiplier causes it to drop 8.

With Co-Op battles, bonus multipliers are first calculated based on the Difficulty, and then a player's Luck stat. Co-Op Creature pages list the base drops, without accounting for Difficulty and Luck.

The news released a list that explains the drop multipliers by Difficulty, but does not seem to account for individual Luck:

* Easy: base level
* Medium: Rewards multiplied by 1.4X
* Hard: Rewards multiplied by 1.6X
* Extreme: Rewards multiplied by 1.8X

## Co-Op Battle Logistics

### Finding Co-Op

To start off, find the Multiplayer tab. In the side bar, it is between Adventure and Journal.

From there, you'll be taken to the Co-Op Lobby. In some ways, this resembles an area page that you'd see in the Adventure tab, except without the markets, and a Lobby instead of a Wilderness. The page you enter on is Lobby Rooms (1) and that's where you find a room for a fight.

If you want more help, head to (3) the FAQ. But let's start with (2), the quest tab.

As you can see, it basically looks like the quest tab on any area page. You can see more details of each quest, and pick them up as usual.

Now, back to the Lobby.

### Joining a Room

If you want to just jump into any open room, "Fast Join" (5) is the button for you. If you know the Dust Warrior, room name, or code you want to join, you can use the search function (6).

The "All Rooms" drop down (7) lets you choose between Public, Private, Available, and Invited rooms. When you scroll down, you'll see all the rooms that fit your criteria.

* (8) Room names default to "Dust Warrior's battleroom", but you can spice them up in your settings.
* (9) Leader tells you who created the room
* (10) Access tells you if the room is public and open (globe), or locked in some way. If they are private, you can still enter them, provided you get the password.
* (11) Status tells you if the battle is "Preparing", meaning you still have time to join; "Ongoing", meaning the battle is in progress; or "Finished", meaning that the battle is done. Ongoing and Finished rooms are also locked to newcomers.
* (12) Room Capacity tells you how many people are in the battle and the maximum number of people who could potentially join (between 2-8)
* (13) Battling tells you which monster they've picked, and what stats it has. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to tell which difficulty setting the room owner has chosen, unless you're able to do the math of the monster base number, the number of participants, and the difficulty multiplier. Popping inside to look for yourself is much easier.
* (14) Join lets you join (or attempt to enter the password) for a room you like the look of.

But let's say you want to want to create your own room, just the way you like it. Scroll back up and "Create Room" (4) is the place to go.

### Creating a Room

Once you've created your room (and gotten that shiny leader crown by your name), you can customize it the way you'd like. "Choose Monster" (1) lets you pick between different Co-Op Monsters.

Click the one you want, and it will be highlighted and show a bigger image. You can also click the information "i" to see the monster's full popup with description, drops, and such. Once you've picked the one you want, confirm with the "Select Monster" button.

If you want to change the settings, check out "Edit Room". (2)

As you can see, this is the place to pick your room

* Name
* Visibility (private/public)
* Password (if private)
* Number of players (2-8)
* Difficulty (easy, medium, hard, extreme)

If you have chosen Easy difficulty, you can tick the box to enable copy/pasting. This is only an option for Easy mode, and is off by default.

Don't forget to save!

Currently, rooms are visible from the moment you create them. If you want to make a private lobby, a good tip is to create it, set it to private, and save. Then you can change the monster and other settings at your leisure without someone else wandering in prematurely.

Back in your room, you can send invites to friends with (3). This is the same friends list that the new chat feature uses, so you don't have to worry about adding people twice. If a friend of yours is in a room already, their icon in the lobby will include a blue star to indicate your status.

If you decide you'd rather not continue with your own room, just hit Leave at any time (4). A pop up will ask if you're sure, just in case you hit it by accident.

If you leave your room while someone else is within it, leadership of the room will transfer to them. You can also select your successor by clicking on the three dots by their name (5) and setting them as leader (6).

If you do leave, your room name and settings will remain, but the new leader will inherit the ability to change them. Be aware that if they do not change the title, it will still carry your name even after you are gone.

Note the inherited name on this room that isn't mine, despite now being the leader.

Once Dust Warriors have joined your lobby, while you're waiting to begin the fight, you can chat together. This functions like the recently implemented friends chat (though you do not need to be friends, simply in the same lobby). It also allows you to give reactions, just like you can in the forums, though the layout might remind you more of the discord. (***At the moment, reactions are bugged. They disappear from your stash when you use them, but they are not given to the person you react to. Bug Report here***)

### Fighting a Co-Op Battle

Once you have everyone in your room, hit the "I'm Ready" button to lock yourself into the battle. Once everyone in the room has readied up, the battle will begin! (***There is a bug, wherein if the last unreadied person leaves or is kicked from the room, the battle will not start. One person must unready and then ready up again, which will start the battle. Bug Report here***)

Note that you can add (or subtract) friends from this widget.

If your battle queue is already full, don't worry. As you can see, there was a full load of 10 Love Buhini, and when this battle was added, it jumped the queue and made itself the first of 11 battles.

From the command center, you can also ready up/un-ready, and return to the Lobby with "Back to Room."

Even though autoplay was toggled on, it did not autostart the Love Bunini after the Alphea. According to the FAQ, this function will even work if you are in mid-battle, pausing it for you to resume later. (***In practice, this is bugged, so the frozen monster drops to the bottom of your queue. You cannot resume the fight unless every other monster is deleted from your queue, including event monsters you might have saved. Even then, it sometimes restarts from scratch. Some Dust Warriors find it more convenient to note how many words they had completed, delete the frozen monster, and paste that many words into a new version of it. Bug Report here***)

One other thing to note is that while you are in a Co-Op room, your command center circle at the top of the screen will appear empty. As you can see here, the queue is not actually empty.

Once everyone has readied up and the battle begins, the command center circle at the top of the screen will accurately show the battle, and your list of "11" monsters. Your frozen queue and the "Back to Room" button also remain, but the option to un-ready has been replaced by your battle progress.

In the Command Center or in a file, your battle tracker is the same. The Command Center circle shows your group progress around the rim, though this is color coded by team member.

* The top bar shows the group's goal and progress, broken down into color-coded chunks.
* The middle bar shows your individual goal and progress, in your color
* The bottom bar shows the timer countdown, which gets smaller as the others get bigger.

As you can see, as the battle progresses, both your individual and team bars will track everyone's word counts. The color of your personal tracker bar will be your color in the group tracker bar. The group's progress also shows up in the Command Center circle. (If you are working on a quest with a word count requirement, only *your* co-op contribution will count towards that quest, not the group's total.)

Don't be confused by the presence of decimals! That's just your attack stat putting in some work.

If you write more than your minimum required words, your tracker bar will remain full, but will add a plus counter on top of it.

In certain color combinations, this plus counter is almost impossible to see, but it is there.

By fiddling with the levels of the previous image to an extreme degree, it is now possible to see the white numbers that were on top of that (originally lime) green bar.

It, at any point, you click on the tracker, a little menu will drop down, showing all teammates with a colored frame around their avatar. It also shows their current word count in numbers. If you're having trouble with the colored bar, this will give you an idea of how well everyone is doing, provided you don't mind a little math.

If you click the "Back to Room" button on the menu, you'll return to the room. You can see that most of your options are gone, save for chat, "Write in a File", which returns to your file, or "Leave", which lets you leave the battle.

Group Leaders have two extra options, which allow them to reset the battle or kick a player out of the battle.

If they choose to reset, everyone will be kicked out of the battle and it will be ended.

The other option is to kick a player, which can also be done before the battle started. This is useful if someone has gone AFK without readying up. To do so, click the three dots by their name, and select "Kick Player." A pop up will ask if you're sure, just in case you hit it by accident.

If you leave or are kicked out by a leader, you individually are out of the battle, but the others remain.

If you are removed from a battle for any of these reasons, you will be kicked back to the room, immediately alerting you what has happened. This keeps you from continuing to write, unawares. All words written to that point will remain in your file, but will not count towards a battle, just as if you had fled or lost a battle with a regular monster.

If only one player is removed from a battle, either voluntarily or by force, the total word count for the monster will not change, nor will the timer, and the words they have contributed so far will be marked in gray. If the player hasn't finished their share of the words, the remaining players will see their required count in the tracker increase. So, for example, if one person leaves a 4 person battle after writing 100 words, the remaining 3 people will have to write 4 people's worth of words minus 100 words.

### After Finishing a Co-Op Battle

When the battle is finished, unlike a normal monster or Endurance battle, a full screen celebration popup will appear. At the bottom are two links which will take you back to your file, or back to the room. (***This is somewhat buggy, and will often disappear if you fight multiple battles in a row. Bug Report here***)

Once you've returned there, the room gives an overview of the completed battle, but as people leave the room, it removes them from the overview as well, leaving it somewhat confusing to read.

If you want to see more details, head to your Battle History.

At the end of the row, after your loot, you'll see the "More Details" button. Clicking this leads to a new popup.

This popup shows you the full battle breakdown, including the number and percentage written by each teammate (still color-coded), as well as the Difficulty, words needed, and total words and time. Plus everyone's drops!

### Acknowledgment

Huge thank you to everyone who helped test battles to gain these images and information — especially the stranger things like evicting players — and their willingness to take a loss for the wiki's sake!

## Tactics

Unlike with regular monsters, it is harder to save up words ahead of time and paste them into co-op battles unless the battle is on easy difficulty and the room owner has enabled copy/paste. They are similarly difficult to use for something like editing equivalency, which some Dust Warriors give themselves credit for by pasting lorem ipsum text or something similar.

It is more effective to work on co-op monsters when working on a project that you're prepared to write a good bit on, just like with endurance monsters. Some people chose journaling or brainstorming for these kinds of battles, as the words tend to flow faster.

It is also worth noting that, with the exception of event-themed co-op creatures and quests, the ones that have been introduced so far do not seem to be in danger of vanishing any time soon, and the event ones are due to return next year when the festival returns. So, Dust Warriors who are newer to the game might find it makes more sense to put off working on the harder co-op quests until they've progressed further in the game and gotten better armor, increasing their attack stats. After all, it is far easier to complete an extreme battle (or 100 of them) with City of Light armor that makes every word you write count for two. For a better idea of how various armor pieces stack up, check out Battle Stats. Or for where to find them, Battle Items by Region.