Cell Raiding — Ancients Wiki

Raiding is how gangs take a slice of each other's wealth. One gang attacks another's cell, fights past its guards and reinforced door, and rips generators and crude ore out of the walls — while the defending gang's guards, mages, and door try to run the clock out. This page covers the whole loop: launching a raid, attacking, defending, and how the defenses scale.

You must be in a gang to attack, and you can only raid from the /raid browser.

Starting a Raid

Open the raid browser with /raid, pick an eligible cell, and launch. A few rules:

Raids start immediately once launched — there's no scheduling delay to dodge.
Your whole gang is auto-joined as attackers the moment it begins (and the defending gang is auto-joined as defenders). You don't all have to click anything.
Your gang can only run one raid at a time, and a cell can only be targeted by one raid at a time.
You can't raid your own gang's cell.

Spectate any active raid with /raid view <cell> (for example /raid view High-A-22) to watch from a viewer hallway. Raiders can't use the viewer hallway — they have to actually enter the raid.

Getting Into the Raid

Being auto-joined makes you a participant, but it does not teleport you in. To actually enter, warp to the target's cell block and run into the cell — the same way you'd visit any cell. This matters because it's also how you get back after dying (see below).

Attacking

Once inside, raiders have three jobs:

Breach the doors. The cell's reinforced raid door has to be attacked down — you can't mine through it. A boss bar shows the door's health when you're near it, and breaking one door also knocks out any doors right next to it.
Beat the defenses. Guards and mages will be on you the whole time (see Defending below). Each cell block also caps the gear everyone can use inside it, so fights stay at the block's tier — see the gear table on the Cells page.
Loot the cell. Use a Gen Breaker to rip out ore generators and crude ore blocks; their value is credited to your raid. Only a capped portion of the cell's total value can be stolen in a single raid — a progress bar tracks it, and the raid ends automatically once the cap is hit. The defenders' vault chest cannot be opened by raiders.

Defending

Defenders build up their cell before a raid from the cell menu (/cell → Defenses). There are two layers: guards and the raid door. You can't place or upgrade defenses while your gang is in an active raid, so set up in advance.

Guards

Guard rooms spawn NPC guards that fight raiders on sight. There are three kinds, and each placement spawns a roomful:

Cell Guards — standard melee defenders.
Frost Mages — ranged casters that pelt raiders with homing frost, slowing and occasionally freezing them in place.
Lightning Mages — ranged casters that fire beams and call down area-of-effect lightning strikes.

Guards wear gear that matches your cell tier — chainmail at Low Security all the way up to netherite at VIP — so higher-tier cells field tougher guards by default.

Placement cost scales. Each additional room of the same type costs progressively more than the last, so stacking endless guards gets expensive fast. Frost Mages and Lightning Mages cost more to place than plain Cell Guards.

Upgrading guards

From a guard room you can pour money into:

Gear tier — bumps the whole room up a gear bracket.
Damage, Health, and Speed — three separate stat tracks, each upgradeable up to level 10. Costs climb with each level, and you can buy several levels at once.

Mages reuse those same three stat tracks for their abilities instead of raw melee stats — for example, a Frost Mage's upgrades feed into freeze chance and slow strength, and a Lightning Mage's feed into its lightning damage and blast radius.

The raid door

Your cell's reinforced door has 5 strength tiers. Each upgrade costs $75,000 and makes the door both tougher and more resistant to attacker damage, buying you more time before raiders break through.

Defender combat

Defending players deal reduced melee damage to raiders by design — the cell's guards and door are meant to do the heavy lifting, not the owner solo-ing the raid. Stack defenses rather than relying on your own sword.

How Defenses Scale With the Raid

Defenses aren't a fixed wall — they react to the size of the attacking party:

Guard health scales with the number of raiders. A solo raider faces noticeably weaker guards, while a full attacking party faces the toughest version of every guard. Bringing more people hits harder, but it also hardens the defense you're walking into.
This scaling only applies during an active raid. Outside of a raid, guards sit at their normal strength.

So a big coordinated raid clears faster but meets stiffer guards; a small crew meets a softer defense but has fewer hands on the gens and the door.

Dying in a Raid

Your items drop on death — there's no keep-inventory inside a raid, so bring gear you're willing to risk (capped to the cell block's tier).
There is no deathban. Dying does not lock you out.
Both attackers and defenders respawn at spawn, outside the raid. To keep fighting, warp back to the cell block and run in again — exactly how you first entered.

Raid Length & Ending

A raid runs until one of these happens:

The value cap is hit — raiders have stolen the maximum allowed and the raid concludes.
Time runs out. The clock depends on the defending cell's tier:

Defending cell	Raid length
Low Security	90 minutes
Medium Security	105 minutes
High Security	120 minutes
Maximum Security	150 minutes
VIP	180 minutes

Inactivity. If nothing happens for 10 minutes, the raid ends early — everyone gets a warning a minute before.

Protection

Every cell has a daily 12-hour raid-protection window during which it can't be raided. The owner picks the start hour in the cell menu, but a change only takes effect after 24 hours, so you can't dodge an incoming raid at the last second.
After a raid ends, the cell is shielded from new raids for 24 hours.
Buying, deeding, or claiming a cell is blocked while your gang is the target of a scheduled or active raid.