We get several questions related to The Purge from players so we wanted to take a moment to run down exactly what The Purge is and how it works. Hopefully this will give you a better understanding of this game mechanic.
What is the Purge?
The Purge is when hordes of NPCs come to attack your base to destroy you and your buildings. The difficulty of The Purge will depend on where you’ve built and the server settings. The Purge is considered a PvE feature and could attack you on any official servers. In single-player games they are turned off by default and need to be turned on in the server settings.
What causes the Purge to attack?
If you open up your inventory, you’ll see a bar beneath your character. This is the Purge Meter. As you play the game (gather resources, build, kill NPCs, explore the word) it will start to fill up. Once it reaches the first line you can be attacked by a Purge. It won’t happen automatically when you go over the threshold, but as long as your Purge activity score is above it, there’s a chance for it to happen. Keep in mind that it’s always a chance, not a guarantee.
The system works on a periodic scoring system. If anyone in a clan performs an action in that period – e.g. kill a player, build something etc., then that event is added to the list of events that have been performed in that period. The amount of times an action is performed, and the amount of players that perform it, is irrelevant. A clan that kills 1 NPC will receive the same score as a clan that kills 1000. Every update cycle, the Purge events are added together and the score is added to the Purge meter. All Purge events are then cleared for the start of the next period.
So, who gets attacked then?
The system is set up to choose a player (or clan) at random. If you are on a dedicated server or local game, and you are the only one playing, the purge will only pick you. But on a server with, for example, 10 clans, 4 of which are above the threshold, you have a 25% chance to get it if you are among the 4.
On official servers’ purges will only trigger during “Purge Time” which is a subset of prime time, “Purge Time” is between 6 PM and 10 PM local time (18:00 - 22:00, all days. Admins of private servers will be able to adjust this time either through the server setting GUI or modifying the serversettings.ini files.
Do you have a list of all the Purge settings?
Yep!
| SETTING | Serversettings.ini NAME | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Enable Purge | EnablePurge | Unchecking will completely disable purge events. |
| Purge Level | PurgeLevel | Raising this increases the purge difficulty level. Level zero will turn purge system off. |
| Purges per day | PurgePeriodicity | Raising this increases the number of times a purge will be triggered in a real day. The actual number of purges is also dependent on the various settings below. |
| Restrict Purge Time | RestrictPurgeTime | If flagged, Purges will be restricted to set times. |
| Purge Time Restrictions | PurgeRestrictionWeekdayEnd | The Purge will only take place during the times specified. |
| PurgeRestrictionWeekdayStart | ||
| PurgeRestrictionWeekendEnd | ||
| PurgeRestrictionWeekendStart | ||
| Purge Preparation Time | PurgePreparationTime | Raising this increases the time in minutes between the purge warning and the start of the purge. |
| Purge Duration | PurgeDuration | Raising this increases the maximum time the purge will last. If you kill all of the waves a Purge can complete sooner |
| Minimum Number of Online Players | MinPurgeOnlinePlayers | Raising this will make purges only occur when the set number of players are online. If set to zero, the Purge will attack any clan above the Purge meter threshold (offline Purges) |
| Allow Building | AllowBuilding | If flagged, building is allowed during purges. |
| Purge Meter Trigger Value | ClanPurgeTrigger | Raising this means more increases the amount of actions clans or players can do until they are eligible to be purged. In general, the higher the number, the longer a clan needs to be active in order to trigger the Purge |
| Purge Meter Update Interval | ClanScoreUpateFrequency | This is the interval that clan Purge events are aggregated, and the scores are added to the Purge Meter. Lower numbers will raise the clan meter more quickly. |
I tried using the admin commands and nothing happened
Those are debugging commands added for the development team. They were never meant to instantly activate a Purge (there could be a several minute delay before a Purge even starts). They’re not guaranteed to trigger a Purge either (the Purge analysis could fail), and the Purge might happen in a different location. Those commands need to be used in conjunction with other debugging systems to be of any use, e.g. monitoring log output, breakpoints in code, showing Purge debug info, etc.
Support for these commands for people outside of the dev team was never planned and they are not meant to be used in the live game. The dev team are using the commands without issue for the purpose they were created.
My Purge Meter is full, but nothing’s happened. What gives?
Even with a full Purge Meter you might not get purged right away. You may even get purged while you’re offline, so keep those defenses up!
Where are the mobs spawned and what are they heading towards?
They determine their location for spawning based on their ability to path to their targeted object, and then spawn in that area. They will target your buildings and placeables. Be aware that spawning can occur inside your home.
What influences which mobs spawn?
Difficulty affects which waves are picked to Purge. Higher difficulty levels have more powerful NPCs, spawn more waves and spawn more bosses. Waves are configured to be relevant to particular areas of the map. Some Purges are configured to have only one wave, others have several waves. Higher difficulty levels have a weighted chance of spawning more powerful Purges. It is still possible to spawn a level 1 Purge even though the difficulty is set to level 6.
What influences the time before arrival and between waves?
The server settings determine how much time you have to prepare after a Purge announcement. The same goes for how long the Purges last and how many waves there are.
What about Purge difficulty?
The Purge has 6 difficulty settings:
- 1,2 are used around the southern river (can be resisted with T1 buildings)
- 3,4 are used in the center of the map and the swamp (can be resisted with T2 buildings)
- 5,6 are used in highlands, frozen areas and volcano (you should have T3 buildings to resist them)