A guild city is a major commitment, requiring a massive investment of blood and treasure to create and maintain. With a great price comes a great reward, however, as the benefits for owning one extend beyond lording over your greatness to one and all. In addition to power and prestige, there are concrete benefits to land ownership in Age of Conan.

A player city provides a central gathering point, meeting hall, role-playing center, and socializing hub for your guild. Instead of trying to herd people across the world into the same place at the same time, simply tell everyone to get back to the city, and if someone insists on telling Chuck Norris jokes in the middle of tense role-play sessions, boot them out of the guild and leave them to the wolves.

Some buildings are there to support crafters and grant access to upper-level crafting recipes, as it’s impossible to build a siege engine without the mighty Engineer’s Workshop.

For more concrete benefits, several of the buildings grant benefits to all members of a class or archetype in your guild. Build a Temple and your priests will all grow tougher, while a Thieves’ Guild will help all your rogues get sneakier and stabbier. “But how?” you cry. We’ve consulted with the darker powers in Development—Jayde—and he gave us some detailed info on how some of these buildings will work.

The most common bonus available to players through the player cities will be the passive and/or feat based statistical bonuses for owning a Keep or other “archetype” buildings. These include: The University (Magic Rating), the Temple (Magic Resists), the Barracks (Defense Rating), and the Thieves’ Guild (Attack Rating). Additionally, the Keep building will have a generic bonus to Health Points, Mana Points, and/or stamina points.

Furthermore, these bonuses will increase based on the tier of each building, so a guild that puts in the effort to build a massive, powerful city will receive massive, powerful bonuses, the better to lord it over their friends and enemies.