If you have reached Sequence 2 or 1, you know the problem. As soon as your acting bar fills, the whole game goes quiet. Bounties pay nothing. Dungeons pay nothing. Events pay nothing. You are still playing, and nothing you do registers any more, nothing matters.
That happens because acting has only ever had one use - advancing - and once the brackets above you are full, that use disappears. Not gradually. All at once, the moment your bar tops out.
And the slots above you were often held by people who had already stopped playing. You were locked out of the endgame by accounts that had left it.
So acting past a full bar now goes somewhere, and a seat that isn’t being defended can change hands. The race stops having an end. That’s why we’re talking about this today!
Acting Overflow
Once your bar is full, further acting is banked. That bank is what Usurpation spends.
It is not acting. It never counts toward advancement and never shows in your bar percentage. It is a separate pool with a separate purpose. You will see it on the acting page of your Beyonder menu, and in the action bar as +N overflow whenever a gain banks instead of landing.
The bank works from Sequence 4 and downward. Above that you still have a bar to fill, and filling it is what you should be doing, since there are no limit of how many players can hold the Sequence place.
Each source has its own weekly limit, as a percentage of your bar, resetting Monday 00:00 UTC:
| Source | Weekly limit |
|---|---|
| Ability gameplay | 40% |
| World content | 40% |
| Player interaction | 25% |
| Stolen acting | 25% |
| Events | 25% |
| Passive / AFK | 5% |
| Acting bottles | excluded entirely |
Bottles are tradeable and farmable. They buy acting directly. Therefore they do not buy seats, so you can’t simply buy yourself a lift up, you gotta earn it!
Your bank caps at 3.5× your bar - two declarations plus a reserve. Hoarding beyond that does nothing. This is a currency to spend, and we believe that thrice the max amount is the humanly-possible cap one very active player can earn during very long time of period.
What that costs in real time
| Sequence | Full bar |
|---|---|
| 4 | 27,648 acting points |
| 3 | 35,942 acting points |
| 2 | 47,001 acting points |
| 1 | 62,208 acting points |
Contesting a seat costs 1.75× your own bar. For a Sequence 2 player that is 82,252.
At a hard 25 hours a week you bank roughly 10,800 a week, so one declaration is around eight weeks of committed play. At ten hours a week, closer to five months.
That is deliberate. A declaration should be the largest thing you have ever saved for.
Contesting a seat of a higher Sequence
What you need first
You can contest the bracket one Sequence above you only when you already have everything advancement asks for, and the only thing standing in your way is that the bracket is full. So the requirements are as follows:
- The bracket above you is full
- 100% acting
- Every ritual complete
- The next-Sequence potion in your inventory
- Not throttled by the progression limiter
- Settled into this pathway (see below)
- The bracket isn’t on cooldown
- You aren’t on a re-declaration cooldown
- Enough Overflow for your bid
Your Beyonder menu will show this as a live checklist, so you always know exactly what you’re missing.
Because you already hold the potion, you take nothing from the person you beat except the vacancy itself. On a win, your own potion is drunk through the ordinary advancement path - full ritual rules, full madness rules, nothing skipped. The seat was the only thing you lacked, so the seat is the only thing you win.
Your potion is safe
The moment you declare, your potion goes into escrow and its expiry stops. It cannot crystallise, cannot be dropped, stolen, or drunk by accident.
An escrowed potion is only ever consumed by a win. Outbid, refunded, war lost, withdrawn, anything at all going wrong - you get it back, with a fresh full expiry window!
How a contest runs
1 — Declaration. You pay your bid. The server is told. For the next 48 hours anyone else eligible for that bracket can bid too. When the window closes the highest bid enters and everyone else gets everything back in full, potion included. Handing a seat to a friend won’t work.
2 — Nomination. You don’t pick a name. You challenge a bracket, and the bracket decides who answers: the holder currently defending it least. That’s weighed from recent playtime (40%), church religion score (25%), recent ability use (20%), and Uniqueness accommodation (15%).
Playtime is measured over your best 31 days out of the last 60, not the last 31. One holiday does not make you your bracket’s weakest link.
If the nominated holder hasn’t been seen in 45 days there is no war - the seat is simply taken.
3 — The War. Both sides earn War Points from real play: bounties, dungeons, world content, events. Points count as a percentage of your own bar, so a Sequence 1 defender and a Sequence 2 challenger are compared on effort rather than raw numbers. Bottles, AFK time and admin grants are worth nothing. Standings are announced once a day.
4 — Resolution. The leader wins, and must be online within 48 hours to claim the win and take the seat.
The war is counted in days the defender was actually online
This matters more than anything else here, so read it twice.
A war day only counts - and War Points only accrue, for both sides - on a day the defender was online. The war lasts seven days of their presence, not seven days on the calendar.
Go away for a fortnight and you come back to a war that has barely moved, not one you have already lost. There is a 21-day real-time limit so a contest can’t run forever, and the challenger can walk away with a full refund once the defender has been missing 48 hours. Neither side is trapped waiting on the other.
Who wins
| Situation | Result |
|---|---|
| The war ran its full seven days | Most War Points. A tie keeps the seat. |
| Time ran out, challenger scored more | Challenger |
| Time ran out, level, challenger scored something | Challenger |
| Time ran out, defender never appeared once | Challenger |
| Time ran out, defender scored more | Defender keeps the seat |
The last two lines are the whole balance of this system:
- Never turning up is not a defence. If you don’t appear at all, you lose the seat.
- Turning up on three days out of seven and still out-earning your challenger keeps it. You defended it in the time you had.
A defender who showed up and had a quiet week is not punished. A defender who has stopped playing is not protected.
If you lose a contest you started
You keep half your stake; the rest is spent. The bracket closes to challenges for 14 days, and your next attempt costs 1.5× more - so nobody can hammer the same bracket over and over. That surcharge fades after 60 days.
If you are deposed
You are not wiped out:
- You drop one Sequence, on that pathway only
- You keep 95% of the acting bar at your new Sequence
- You receive the Beyonder Characteristic of the seat you lost
- Your rematch costs half price for the next 60 days
Contesting a Uniqueness
Separate, smaller, and much faster.
Spend 50 - 100% of your bar in Overflow to force a direct re-evaluation against your pathway’s current Uniqueness holder. What you spend buys a score multiplier: ×1.25 at the minimum, up to ×1.5 for a full bar.
- It uses the same scoring the automatic system uses. Nothing was invented for the occasion.
- The holder keeps their accommodation bonus. You are fighting uphill on purpose.
- You must beat their score - a tie keeps it with them.
- It resolves immediately. There is no war.
- Seven-day cooldown per pathway afterwards.
- Losing spends half; the rest returns.
Before you confirm, you see the odds. The screen shows your score, theirs, your multiplier, and the result - calculated exactly the way the real verdict is. It is not an estimate.
Seat contests and Uniqueness contests are separate ladders. Winning a seat does not touch Uniqueness.
Switching pathways
A free transfer carries your Sequence and your full acting bar into the new pathway. Without a rule, someone could transfer in on Monday and contest a seat on Tuesday - ahead of people who had walked that pathway since Sequence 9, so we have foresaw it.
So a pathway you arrived on sideways - a switch potion, a free transfer, or an Avatar takeover - has to be settled into first:
- 30 days before you can contest anything on it
- Overflow banks at 25%, climbing back to full over 60 days
In practice, for a Sequence 2 player at 25 hours a week: someone native to the pathway can afford a declaration around day 54, someone who switched in around day 76. You are not shut out - you are roughly 40% further away, and you close that gap by playing the pathway.
A pathway you have walked from the start is unaffected, and so is everyone currently playing. This applies only to switches made from now on.
Two related things to know:
- Your Overflow bank does not survive a pathway change. It belongs to the pathway. The transfer screen now warns you before you confirm.
- Transfer tokens are now checked when you spend them, not only when you activate them.
An example
Kai is Sequence 2 Tyrant: full bar, all rituals done, Sequence 1 potion in hand. He’s walked Tyrant since Sequence 9. The Sequence 1 Tyrant bracket is full at 3/3.
- Weeks 1–8. He plays normally. His bar is full, so everything banks - around 10,800 a week. After eight weeks he has enough for the 82,252 declaration.
- Day 1. He declares. His potion goes into escrow, expiry frozen. The server is told.
- Day 2. Mira, also a ready Sequence 2 Tyrant, bids higher. She enters; Kai gets everything back in full, potion included, fresh expiry.
- Day 3. Of the three Sequence 1 Tyrants, Dain is defending least, so he’s nominated. He was online yesterday, so this is a real war.
- Days 3–12. Dain plays five of those days - those are the days that count. Both earn War Points. Dain manages a few hours an evening; Mira grinds harder and pulls ahead.
- Day 16. The seventh counted day lands. Mira leads, logs in, and takes the seat.
- After. Dain is Sequence 2 Tyrant, keeps 95% of that bar, receives a Sequence 1 Tyrant Characteristic, and has a half-price rematch for 60 days. Around day 30 he re-brews using it and starts banking again.
Now the other version. Same setup, but Dain never logs in again after being nominated. No day ever counts. The war stalls, hits its 21-day limit, both sides on zero - and Mira wins. A seat nobody answers for isn’t held.
What this means for you
If you’re at a full bar: everything you do pays again, starting immediately.
If you hold a Sequence 1 or 2 seat and you play regularly: almost nothing changes. Ties keep your seat, only days you’re online count against you, and one holiday won’t make you a target.
If you hold a seat and you’ve stopped playing: you will eventually lose it, and that is the point.
If you’re stuck below a full bracket: there is now a route through, even thought it costs about some committed playtime plus a week of out-playing whoever is defending least.
If you’re on a break: short breaks are genuinely protected - the clock stops while you’re away. Long absences are not. The line is between “I have classes and can play six hours a week”, which is fine, and “I haven’t logged in since June”, which is not.
Common questions
“Do I have to out-act the other Sequence 1s?” No. Your bar is already full, and so is theirs. You’re spending a separate currency to open a fight, then out-playing them during it.
“So the bid just decides whether a war happens?” The bid proves you’re serious, gives Overflow a purpose, and decides which of several would-be challengers gets the fight. The war itself is decided purely by play.
“What if I go on holiday mid-war?” The clock stops. Days you aren’t online don’t count for either side. Your challenger can withdraw after 48 hours of your absence, but they can’t win by waiting.
“What if I’m the challenger and the defender vanishes?” Wait it out and you win at the 21-day mark, or withdraw for a full refund. Your choice.
“Does my potion expire while I’m waiting?” No. Its expiry is frozen from the moment you declare, and it comes back with a fresh window if anything goes wrong.
“What do I actually lose if I’m deposed?” One Sequence on one pathway. You keep 95% of your acting, gain the Characteristic of the seat, and get a half-price rematch for two months.
“Can a group gang up to lock a bracket?” Losing a war on purpose no longer protects a bracket - a challenger who doesn’t genuinely contest doesn’t trigger the cooldown. And withdrawn declarations carry a re-declaration cooldown, so they can’t be spammed.
“Does this change the Uniqueness system?” Seat contests don’t touch it. Uniqueness contests are the separate, smaller system described above.
Where to find it
Everything is menu-driven; the commands are just a second route to the same screens.
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| Your Overflow bank and weekly usage | Beyonder menu → acting page, or /coi acting status |
| Contest a seat | Beyonder menu → Contest a Seat |
| Contest a Uniqueness | Uniqueness menu → Challenge |
| War standings | The same seat button, once you’re in a contest |
| Walk away | /coi usurp withdraw |
Withdrawing is free within 15 minutes of declaring, and free at any time from a war stalled by an absent defender. After that it costs the standard loss, and you can’t re-declare on that bracket for 6 hours.
The rules here are settled. The numbers - costs, weekly limits, war length - are a first draft and will move once we can see how quickly people actually bank in practice.
If something feels wrong, say so rather than assuming it’s intended! A good deal of what’s written above exists because someone did exactly that. See you on the battlefield!
