The Marked

The Marked are named rare beasts, one to each great hunting ground. Nothing announces them —
each appears in its own secret window, and the only word comes from the Trophy Keeper if you go and
ask. They are group content: tough, hard-hitting, and they do not let you win by walking
backwards.

Every beast pays twice — once where it falls, once at the lodge.

The three grades

A +1 DragonBall opens a weapon's second socket outright, and a Mythic head is the only
source (see Gear & Upgrading). It replaces the ordinary roll rather than stacking.

Each rare drops its own gem family (Gravemaw → Dragon, Sky Tyrant → Phoenix, Nightmaw → Fury,
Wraith Lord → Moon), so the Mythics between them cover the families.

The roster

Trophies are bound and unsellable — their only worth is the Keeper's bounty ("Claim my
bounties"). Bounty follows grade first, not level: the Frost Ape (58, Fabled) outpays the Gorge
Stalker (60, Marked) several times over. Dynasty Tokens are bound and feed your
daily rewards.

The Pale Warden is a level-12 newcomer's first Marked.

Finding one

Nothing is announced. A beast can rise and slip away with nobody knowing.

Ask the Trophy Keeper in the Twin City lodge — "What stirs in the wilds?":

The Keeper lowers his voice: Old Whitetusk prowls the Forest; Gravemaw prowls the Ancient City.

You get the beast and its region — never a map pin, never the whole board. Then sweep it, and
sweep wide: get close and smouldering pawprints appear leading its way. The trail is yours
alone (it runs from where you stand), shows only a few paces, never appears from far off, and
stops once the quarry is in sight.

The Hunter's Lure ("Buy a hunting lure") draws a beast out early, used in its own wilds:
the Silver Lure costs 10,000 silver, the Gold Lure 50,000 for better odds. A lure can fail
and burn away, it does nothing outside the right region, and rarer beasts resist harder — so
expect to spend more on the grand ones.

The fight

Every mechanic announces itself in chat one beat before it lands. Reading those lines is the fight.

A Mythic in motion. Note the damage: an ordinary mob beside it eats ten times what the rare does —
these beasts cap how hard any single blow can land, so you cannot burst one down.

Every ability is telegraphed, the lit ground is always exactly the ground that hurts, and everything
in flight dies with the beast.

• Slam — it rears, a dark stain spreads under its quarry, then the blow lands on exactly that
  ground. Step out and take nothing. It won't land the killing blow itself, but its next swing will.
  Parties: don't stack up.
• The slam reaches. Stay out of its arms and it does not simply follow you — it wheels on you
  from across the ground and slams where you are going, not where you are. Two things follow from
  that. Standing still at range is no longer safe: hold your position and the ground under you is
  exactly the ground it marks. And running away in a straight line is no longer safe either, because
  it leads you. What still works is what always worked — read the telegraph and change direction.
  A turn beats it; distance does not.
• Spellfire (Fabled+) — kite too long and it fixes on you by name and hurls a bolt at your
  magic defense. Stay in the melee band and it never casts.
• Mend (Fabled once, Mythic twice) — it plants and its wounds knit. Burst it inside the window
  and the channel shatters; hesitate and the HP bar jumps back. Save your burst for this.
• Broodcall (Mythic) — it bellows and the local wildlife converges. The brood disperses when it
  dies.
• Ironhide's furrow — a straight lane of ruin from itself through you. A slam is a circle you
  step out of; the furrow is a line you step off, sideways. And it reaches: back away and it
  will drag the lane across the ground at you, longer the faster you run. The sideways step works
  at any distance; running straight just gives it more lane.
• The Gorgon Matron's pool — acid spreads where she plants, growing a ring per beat. Poison
  stacks the longer you stand in it and keeps eating after you leave. Fight from the rim, or pull
  her onto clean ground to reset it.
• The Reaver's arc (the Blade Djinn, the Tide Reaver, Grimjaw, the Gorge Stalker) — it plants and
  a blade-wedge lights up in front of it, then everything in the arc is cut. Step out of the fan
  sideways — or step in: the hilt at its feet is a safe pocket the blade passes over.
• The tithe (the Drowned Lord, Undertow) — standing in its face feeds it: motes gather one by
  one, and at a full gauge it locks the ground and detonates where it stands. The gauge only charges
  in melee — back off and it starves. A greedy face-tank feeds the blast that kills them.
• The Aegis (the Wraithlord and its kin, and every World Boss) — a ward flares and for a window
  your blows are blunted and a share is thrown back at you. Burst into it and you execute
  yourself; ease off, or swap targets, until it fades.
• The grudge — wound one from beyond its sight and it does not shrug: it wakes and walks you
  down, however far outside its eyes you stand. Distance hides you from its vision, not from its
  memory. Stop attacking and it loses interest soon enough; it will not be dragged far from its own
  hunting ground.

The break and the chase. Hurt it badly enough and it bolts, leaving a blood trail on the
cells it crossed. Run it down and it turns at bay — it won't break again, and its slams come
faster, wider and harder. Lose it and it slips away: no trophy, no bounty. A beast that escapes
returns sooner than it should and still wounded, and the whisper says so ("the wounded Ironhide
has been seen again in the Gold Mine — it still bleeds"). Left alone it recovers appearance by
appearance until the debt is gone.

Who gets paid

Every member of the killer's team who was there gets a full trophy and their own bounty. Nothing
is split and it does not matter who landed the last blow. A solo hunter is a team of one.

• You must be there. Parked in town gets nothing. (Dying to it counts.)
• Strangers get nothing. Passers-by who take a few swings are not on your team — party up.
• Only the season-first announce belongs to whoever actually put it down. The first hunter to
  fell each beast each season is announced server-wide, once only, so the race is real.

Beyond the bounty: your first Marked kill ever pays 5 bound Dynasty Tokens (assists count), and the
achievement chain Trophy Hunter I/II/III pays 5/10/20 Dynasty Tokens at 1/5/10
distinct rares, with III granting the "Marked" title.

The Trophy Book

Every kill is recorded. Read it at the Trophy Keeper:

• * Old Whitetusk x3 — felled, with your count.
• - Dune Widow [?] — still eluding you; pick it to read where its tracks have been seen.

Two titles come out of it: Tracker (first Marked felled) and Master Hunter (the whole roster
— announced server-wide). The Master Hunter capstone pays once, the first time you visit the
Keeper as a Master: 200,000 silver + 50 Dynasty Tokens, 5 Meteors + a DragonBall, three Master
Hunter's Crests, and a +1 Meteor — which opens a weapon's first socket outright, available
nowhere else.

Each Crest is consumed for the Hunter's Boon: double XP and boosted drop luck for 30
minutes. The title is permanent whether or not you spend them.

The weekly Hunt Ladder

Every kill scores, weighted by grade: Marked 1 · Fabled 3 · Mythic 6. Shared kills score
everyone. Type /hunters for this week's leaders. The ladder resets every Monday, so a
newcomer can top it without having played all season. Prizes wait at Millionaire Lee (paid even
if you were offline):

Your book, rank, auras and capstone are permanent — the ladder is a weekly race on top of them.

Tips

• The whisper names a region only. Learn each region's paths so you can sweep fast.
• Watch the ground, not just the health bar. The telegraphs are honest.
• When it breaks, commit. Hesitate and you lose the trail.
• A Master Hunter is rarely a solo act.

See also: Hunting & Loot for the ordinary drop ladder, and
Events for Kylin Nights and the rest of the world's schedule.