Dark Forest

### Backstory

*"Dark forces are at work in the Dark Forest. The royal hunting company reports orcs in vast numbers. Even the traveling merchants avoid the forest and have to take long detours to trade goods with our kingdom. Any attempts to clear the forest have been in vain. All items made of steel and iron, such as swords and armor, glow red hot with heat as soon as the king's bodyguards enter the forest. A direct battle against the orcs is therefore impossible. My seer believes, the dark magician Azrael has cursed the forest to cut off our supplies. Only items made of Silver and Thorium seem to be able to defy the curse. There's a rumor that a shyster in the tavern has silver arrows. Please collect arrows, and go hunting in the Dark Forest to eradicate the orcs from our kingdom!"*

### Hunting Basics

The dark forest is unlocked at combat level 5. Hunting is a passive part of the game, meaning that you can send your knight into the dark forest and then go do other things. It keeps your knight online, which is important if you have a tag team partner. You need silver arrows in order to be able to hunt. If you try to enter the forest with no arrows, you get the option to buy a starter quiver of 200 arrows for 20 diamonds.

While hunting, your knight will encounter different orcs, with the variety of orcs and the orc levels going up as your hunting level increases. Learn more about the residents of the dark forest.

You can develop your hunting abilities by purchasing hunting skills and bonuses at the Hunting Lodge. You pay for these using arrow makers, which you get by training serfs at the Arrow Factory, reaching hunting milestones, or killing serf traders in the dark forest.

#### Experience and Leveling

Both encountering an orc and killing an orc earn you hunting experience points. You can increase your experience gain by buying the Increased Learning Ability bonus, which will help you level more quickly. Say **hunting level** to hear your current hunting level and how far along you are towards the next level.

When you get enough experience points, you gain a level and can assign a hunting skill point to one of three hunting attributes: aim, breakthrough power, or read tracks. Starting at hunting level 15, if you have more than 5 hunting points to assign at once, you’ll get the option to assign more points to the attribute you just chose, allowing you to assign skill points in batches rather than one at a time. At certain levels you earn arrows and arrow makers as milestone rewards.

#### Collecting Resources

You get 10 gold for each enemy you kill in the dark forest. Certain orcs give up additional resources when you kill them (healing herbs, honeycombs, gold, serfs, throwing axes, orc meat, boar meat). In addition to hunting orcs, you can also gather mushrooms, apples, raspberries, and blackberries just walking around in the forest. During special holiday events, you can gather Easter eggs, or get Christmas cookies by hunting elves.

If you have bought the herbalism skill from the hunting lodge, you can gather healing herbs in the forest, too (along with carrots and barley bundles). If you have healing herbs equipped, when you encounter injured knights in the forest you will heal them, and they may thank you by giving you objects from their inventory (silver arrows, apples, mushrooms, berries, orc meat, boar meat, silver bars).

#### The Orc King

The toughest orc of all is the orc king. He has so many health points that it can take days to kill him. He can be encountered at any level, and is aggressive, so he will attack you in retaliation. Sometimes he throws his axe at you, possibly several times, as you run away after the initial attack. He also sets traps, and if you step into his trap and can’t get out, you don’t tend to survive.

As the orc king’s health gets low, he starts eating some of the hunters that he kills, which replenishes his health. He can also go into a temporary blood rage, during which he is extra aggressive and more likely to eat hunters.

The knight that lands the killing blow on the orc king gets 50,000 extra order points for his order, along with a diamond bounty and a wolf coat blueprint. At the start of each game day, if the king has survived the previous day, the bounty for killing him is increased. Once the orc king has been killed, the forest is closed for the rest of that game day. When it reopens at the start of the next game day with a new orc king, the bounty is reset to 350 diamonds.

### Advanced Hunting Activities

#### Hunting Wolves

Wolves are a valuable target because of the wolf hides you can collect. You won’t encounter wolves the way you do other enemies, though; you need to equip wolf bait before entering the forest. Once in the forest, you will place a wolf bait which will attract a wolf and give you a chance to shoot at it. Because you use bait, read tracks isn’t important, but you need to fine-tune your aim and breakthrough to find a level that increases your chances of hitting the wolf and does enough damage to kill it. You can use hunting skills (but not axes) against the wolves, so the right skills can improve your aim and damage enough to kill a wolf. Even so, you won’t kill every wolf you attract.

#### Wolf Coat

When you enter the Dark Forest with a wolf coat equipped, you won’t actually hunt orcs. The wolf coat makes you invisible to the orcs and the dragon, so you can mostly move through the woods unharmed, gathering resources and healing other hunters (as long as you have the herbalism skill and can gather healing herbs), for which you might receive a gift of arrows, apples, mushrooms, orc meat, boar meat, raspberries, blackberries, or silver bars. However, you are still vulnerable to the orc king’s trap, and will still encounter and attack the bees.

#### Dragon Encounters

The biggest enemy you’ll encounter in the dark forest is the dragon. When a dragon is abroad, it occasionally flies overhead, blanketing the forest in fire and burning all the hunters in its path. You can also encounter the dragon on the ground, where you alone will get burned if you aren’t able to hide from it. Either way, you will need to wait for another hunter to come by and rescue you, or have salads of resurrection equipped. When you encounter the dragon, you can shoot it with thorium arrows if you have them equipped. A successful hit will yield a dragon scale or a piece of dragon meat. You can learn more about the dragon by visiting Dragon Rock.

#### Hunting with a Dragon

If you manage to raise a pet dragon, and have a dragon saddle with which to mount it, you can fly over the forest, hunting from above. The orcs are unable to hurt you when you hunt this way, but you won’t get any of the resources from foraging or killing orcs (though your dragon will get food from eating the orcs).

#### Hunting Tournaments

Hunting tournaments are held throughout the week but especially on Mondays, starting at the top of the hour, and feature a variety of different tasks. The top three knights win a prize that may include diamonds or a wolf bait recipe. You could also get lucky and receive a salad of resurrection recipe just for entering a hunting tournament.

Looking for more hunting tips? See tips from other players, or add your own advice.