Devlog #13: Someone Crossed Into Your Land

Posted 2026-11-04 · Foundation MVP phase

Last week ended with a promise. Dug-in archers could hold a fire zone against beasts, and against other Houses: "not yet".

This week it is yes. And because a war you cannot see coming is not a war, it is an ambush, the other half of the work was making sure the House on the receiving end knows.

Squads fight people

Until now a squad's volley could hit a beast, a lair or a wall, and nothing else. Now it hits heroes.

When it does, the troops come first. A hero with a squad in the field does not take the blow: the squad does, and the men fall before the commander does. And a hero who gets hit fights back at the commander of the squad that hit them.

The type triangle now counts against the real army on the other side. Riders beat archers, archers beat spearmen, spearmen beat riders, and the numbers are worked out against the enemy squad that is actually standing there, in the formation it is actually in. A hero with no squad is one body, and counts as a single spearman.

In testing, twenty tier-1 archers dug in behind their commander brought down a squad of twelve spearmen in their first volley, and the hero leading it went down three seconds later. Treat those numbers as a first pass: there will be more rounds of balancing before any of this is final.

The zone only fires in war

The fire zone from last week now shoots at heroes from other Houses too, but it fires on its own, so it follows the rule every automatic action in this game follows. It only starts a fight when the two Houses are at war, with no pact between them and no shield on either side.

At peace it stays quiet. In testing, the same squad with the same intruder three tiles away did not loose a single arrow in four seconds.

Someone crossed into your land

War in Stand Eternal has always come with a warning: a declaration takes a full day to take effect. This week the warning reached the moment itself.

When someone crosses into your land, you are told. A hero of another House standing inside your territory sends you a warning with their name, their House and where they are. It comes from any House except your allies and the Houses you have a pact with, and it comes even at peace, because the moment to dig in your archers is before the first arrow, not after.

When someone strikes one of your heroes, you are told who, and whether it was a squad or a hero's own sword.

When one of your heroes is knocked out, the record says who did it.

None of these spam you. The same intruder, or the same hero under attack, warns you once every ten minutes, however long the fight drags on.

And it takes you there

A warning that says "at 6732, 924" still leaves you hunting for the spot. So now it does the hunting.

Click a warning, in the summary that greets you on login or in the House history, and the camera goes there. If you are already playing when it happens, the spot pings on the minimap for a few seconds, and if it is off the edge of the minimap the ping sits on the edge, on the side to look.

And the row of portraits at the top of the screen now shows who is being hit: the portrait flashes red. That includes a commander whose squad is taking the blows, because with troops in the field the hero's own health does not move at all.

Why it matters

This world runs 24 hours a day, and you do not. Every one of these warnings is written down whether you are online or not, and the summary that opens when you come back puts them at the top, in red, before anything else.

Wishlist

Stand Eternal is on Steam. There is nothing to buy and nothing to install yet. The wishlist is how you hear when there is, and it is the single most useful thing anyone reading this can do for the game.

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Stand Eternal is a 24/7 civilisation MMO with one world, no pay-to-win, and the same game on PC and mobile. It is in development, and the devlog is how I show the work.

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