Ancient Lands: entry, group sizes and death rules
Check the portal colour before committing your equipment. An Orange Ancient Lands run protects equipped gear, not everything you carry. A Black run puts your equipment and inventory at risk.
Choose the portal for your party
Dragonfire portals lead to small, medium or large Ancient Lands. The supported party sizes are not interchangeable: check the portal before inviting the last player. Inside the entry area, every party member must ready up before the leader starts the run.
Matchmaking distinguishes solo players, parties of two to three, parties of four to five, medium parties and large parties. A five-player party can fit more than one portal size, but the encounter and matchmaking context still differ.
| Portal | Party size | Entry window after Patch 1 |
|---|---|---|
| Small | 1–5 players | 8 minutes |
| Medium | 5–7 players | 5 minutes |
| Large | 15–20 players | 5 minutes |
What death can cost
A yellow portal leads to partial-loot Orange Ancient Lands. Death can cost the items in your inventory; equipped items are treated differently. Do not carry unrelated loot into the run just because the entrance is in a yellow zone.
Black Ancient Lands use full-loot rules. Prepare the whole equipment set as a possible loss and leave spare inventory behind. The earlier development preview described non-lethal content, but that is not the Orange rule published in the launch changelog.
Apply the cap before buying stronger gear
The Ancient Lands threshold is 1,200 item power. Above it, Orange retains 20% of excess power and Black retains 35%. A raw value of 1,500 therefore becomes 1,260 in Orange or 1,305 in Black. Power below the threshold is not reduced.
Read an item’s power on its own page, such as the Adept’s Broadsword, where each enchantment and quality shows its value. Add your character’s bonus, then apply the cap. The result is item power, not a damage forecast. Dragon Sanctuary is a different activity and has no item-power cap.
Entry window, portal lock and time inside
Patch 1 reduced the small-run lock to 15 minutes and extended its entry window to eight minutes. Medium and large entry windows became five minutes. The large Ancient Lands area’s maximum lifetime increased from 45 to 60 minutes. This is time inside the area, not an extra hour to enter.
Read the entry countdown before moving the group. The Patch 1 notes separate these timers so an old preview or launch-day screenshot does not send your party to the wrong deadline.
