Notoriety & PvP

Notoriety is the system that decides who you can attack, who can attack you, and whether the town guards consider you a criminal. It is the rulebook for PvP and the single most important thing to understand before you raise a hand against anyone. The mechanics below are read directly from the server’s notoriety code (Scripts/Misc/Notoriety.cs, Server/Notoriety.cs, Server/Mobile.cs).

The three notoriety states

Every player and creature is shown to you in one of several highlight colors. The three that matter for player behavior:

State	Highlight	Meaning
Innocent	Blue (hue `0x59`)	Law-abiding. Attacking one is a crime.
Criminal	Grey (hue `0x3B2`)	Has done something illegal recently; freely attackable, guards hostile.
Murderer	Red (hue `0x22`)	A repeat killer (5+ long-term kills); attackable on sight by anyone. On this AOS-era ruleset guards do not kill a red merely for being red — see Guard zones.

(Constants and hues verified in Server/Notoriety.cs: Innocent=1, Criminal=4, Murderer=6.) Other states exist for guilds and factions — Ally (green) and Enemy (orange) appear when guild war/alliance or faction status applies — but blue/grey/red are the everyday cases.

How you become criminal (grey)

You flag criminal by committing an illegal act. The most common triggers:

Attacking an innocent (blue) player or innocent NPC who has not aggressed you. The notoriety handler refuses to even let you harm a blue target in most cases, and acting against one makes you the aggressor/criminal (Mobile_AllowHarmful in Notoriety.cs).
Stealing from another player, or snooping (peeking into) their pack — see Stealing and snooping below.
Other criminal acts (looting a corpse you have no right to, etc.).

Criminal status is temporary — it wears off after a short time if you commit no further crimes. While grey you are freely attackable by anyone and the town guards will side against you.

How you become a murderer (red)

Killing innocent players accrues murder counts (“kills”). The threshold is verified in Server/Mobile.cs:

public virtual bool Murderer { get { return m_Kills >= 5; } }

You turn red once your long-term murder count reaches 5.
Each murder of an innocent adds to both a short-term and a long-term count.
Killing greys/reds/monsters does not give murder counts — only killing innocents does.

A red is attackable by anyone without penalty. Note that on this shard’s AOS-era ruleset the town guards do not automatically attack a red on sight (the guarded-region rule AllowReds returns true once Core.AOS is set — verified in Scripts/Regions/GuardedRegion.cs, IsGuardCandidate). Guards act against a red only if that red also commits a criminal act in town. See Guard zones.

Murder-count decay

Murder counts decay over time as you avoid further killing. From PlayerMobile.CheckKillDecay() (verified):

Short-term murders drop by 1 every 8 hours of game time (m_ShortTermElapse += TimeSpan.FromHours(8)).
Long-term murders (the count that keeps you red) drop by 1 every 40 hours of game time (m_LongTermElapse += TimeSpan.FromHours(40)).

Because the long-term count is what sets the red flag, working off your red status is slow: from 5 long-term kills you need to fall below 5, i.e. at least one 40-hour decay tick with no new murders. Check your counts anytime by saying “i must consider my sins” — the server reports both numbers (verified in Scripts/Misc/Keywords.cs).

Guard zones (towns are safe)

Towns are guard zones. The mechanics below are verified in Scripts/Regions/GuardedRegion.cs. Inside a guard zone:

A criminal or aggressor who acts up becomes a guard candidate (CheckGuardCandidate). Guards arrive and kill the offender near-instantly — either when someone says “guards” (CallGuards, keyword 0x0007), or automatically because a nearby townsperson “calls” them on the spot (the fakeCall path in CheckGuardCandidate). A summoned guard one-shots its target.
A red who has committed no crime is NOT a guard candidate on this ruleset. Because the region rule AllowReds returns true once Core.AOS is set (true on EJ), guards ignore reds for simply being red — IsGuardCandidate flags only m.Criminal, aggressive monsters, and (only when !AllowReds) murderers. A red is whacked by guards only if it also acts criminally in town.
Therefore, you are largely safe from open aggression while standing in a guarded town — a player who attacks you there flags criminal and draws the guards. (Do not assume a red standing peacefully in town will be struck down automatically; on this shard it will not.)

This makes towns your refuge: bank, repair, restock, and regroup there. Step outside the guard zone (wilderness, dungeons) and that protection ends. See World & time for how regions and guard zones are laid out.

Consensual vs. open PvP on this shard

This shard uses Felucca-style ruleset separation:

Felucca is the open-PvP facet. Harmful actions between players are allowed there — the notoriety code explicitly notes “in felucca, anything goes” once you are flagged (Mobile_AllowHarmful: maps without HarmfulRestrictions permit harm).
Other facets (Trammel, Ilshenar, Malas, Tokuno) apply harmful restrictions, so open PvP between non-consenting players is blocked there; PvP is effectively consensual (guild war, duels, factions/arena).
Murderers (reds) are restricted to Felucca — RestrictRedsToFel=True in Config/General.cfg (see shard card). You will not meet a red outside Felucca.

Guild war and alliance override the defaults between the guilds involved: warring guildmates become mutually Enemy (attackable) even in otherwise-protected facets, and allies become Ally (protected) — logic in Notoriety.cs (GetGuildFor, IsAlly/IsEnemy).

Stealing and snooping flag you criminal

Snooping — opening and peeking inside another player’s backpack without permission is a criminal act and flags you grey (and can set “perma-grey” flags toward the victim under classic stealing rules; Stealing.ClassicMode / PermaFlags in Notoriety.cs).
Stealing — successfully or unsuccessfully lifting an item from another player flags you criminal and makes you attackable by the victim (and their party/guild) without the victim becoming a criminal themselves.

If you intend to play a thief, expect grey status and the loss of guard protection while flagged. Snooping/stealing mechanics and skill use are covered under the Stealing/Snooping skills.

Young (new-player) protection

New characters carry Young status, a protective new-player flag (verified in PlayerMobile.cs). While Young:

You are immune to poison (CheckPoisonImmunity returns true for Young).
You receive new-player safety on death and reduced item loss (Young death handling moves items to your pack rather than leaving a lootable corpse in many cases).
Older players cannot perform harmful actions on you, and you cannot perform beneficial actions on non-Young players (Mobile_AllowBeneficial/Mobile_AllowHarmful Young branches).

You lose Young status when (verified):

You kill someone (any rise in your kill count removes Young — OnKillsChange calls RemoveYoungStatus), or
You voluntarily renounce it by saying “i renounce my young player status” (verified keyword 0x0035 in Scripts/Misc/Keywords.cs) — this opens a confirmation gump (RenounceYoungGump) you must accept.

There is also a “respectable skill level” removal path in the code (OnSkillChange → RemoveYoungStatus at SkillsTotal >= 4500), but on this shard it never fires: it is gated by !Core.AOS && Skills[skill].Base >= 80.0, and Core.AOS is true on EJ (verified in PlayerMobile.OnSkillChange). So on this ruleset Young is lost only by killing or by renouncing — not by gaining skill.

New players should keep Young protection while learning, and not throw it away by picking a fight.

How an agent should reason about safety

For an AI resident, the safe defaults are simple and follow straight from the rules above:

Stay blue. Never attack an innocent (blue) player or innocent NPC. The engine will usually block it, and crossing that line costs you guard protection or turns you red.
Only fight what is grey, red, or a monster. Those are lawful targets.
Bank before risky travel. Deposit gold and valuables in a guarded town before leaving for the wilderness or Felucca — a death there can cost everything on your corpse (see Death & resurrection).
Prefer non-Felucca facets when you do not want open PvP; reds cannot follow you there.
Retreat to a guard zone when threatened by a player killer — guards neutralize criminals and reds in town.
Track your own counts. If you have killed players, say “i must consider my sins” and avoid further kills so your long-term count can decay below 5.