Party Composition

Six parties get put together for Catacomb of the Branded at level 46. Each one is the result of a layered calculation: the gear its members are carrying, the level and health of the mobs they will meet, and how socially aggressive those mobs are.

Living page. Every table below is regenerated from the same files the game reads, so the numbers here cannot drift out of date.

How big the party is

Party size is an output of a calculation, rather than a number anyone picks.

Three things get measured about a hunting ground:

1. The level of its mobs.
2. How socially aggressive they are — whether they fight alone or call their neighbours in.
3. How deep their health pools run.

Those combine into one figure: how much power it takes to hunt there. The party then grows until its members’ gear adds up to that figure.

So size and gear trade against each other. A well-equipped six and a poorly-equipped nine are the same answer to the same zone, and that is where the variety in the tables below comes from.

Why a corridor needs more bodies

A catacomb corridor asks for more bodies than open ground does, and social aggression is a large part of why.

• Every mob carries a clan tag and a call-for-help range. Strike one clan member and its clan-mates come.
• Of 6,519 Interlude mobs, 2,399 carry a clan and 2,235 carry neither a clan nor aggression.
• Ten scattered loners come at you one at a time. Ten clan-linked mobs in a corridor bring most of the corridor.

We have measured 28 zones so far.

Those 28 zones sort into three tiers. The middle column counts how many of them fall in each:

Content	Zones	Party size
Open field — Dragon Valley, Cave of Trials, Aden Cemetery	9	1 to 3
Group content — Cruma Tower rooms, Garden of Eva	2	3 to 6
Room content — the catacombs and necropolises	17	7 to 9

What the zone resists

Level, health and social aggression feed the size. A zone’s resistances feed its shape.

Nine of the zones measured so far resist bows, including Cruma Tower, Field of Whispers and Catacomb of the Branded. Across all 54 parties built for those zones, none is an archer party. Bows go where bows work.

The support fits the damage

The damage dealers get picked first, and support gets picked last — because the right support depends on what it is supporting.

The party is	It pulls	For
Mage-heavy	Shillien Elder	Empower, Recharge, Wild Magic
Melee	Prophet or Warcryer	Haste, Guidance, crit chants
Archers	Prophet or Hierophant	Ranged damage buffs

Each support class is scored on what its buffs are worth to each kind of damage, read from the game’s own skill data:

What each support is worth

Each number below is what that support is worth to that kind of damage. A party picks its support to match what it already has — a nuker party pulls a Shillien Elder, a melee party pulls a Prophet or Warcryer. The scores add up its signature buffs (Empower, Recharge and Wild Magic for mages; Haste, Guidance and the crit chants for melee), weighted by how much each spell is worth and read straight from the game’s skill data.

Support class	Mages	Melee	Archers	Best partner
Bishop	2	3	3	melee
Cardinal	2	3	3	melee
Doom Cryer	3	12	10	melee
Elven Elder	5	1	1	mage
Eva’s Saint	5	1	1	mage
Hierophant	2	6	7	archer
Prophet	2	6	7	archer
Shillien Elder	8	5	6	mage
Shillien Saint	8	5	6	mage
Warcryer	3	12	10	melee

• Shillien Elder scores 8 for mages and 5 for melee. Warcryer is the mirror image at 2 and 8.
• The pick is weighted by those scores rather than fixed, so a mage party usually draws a Shillien Elder without it being guaranteed.
• If you are a mage and a Shillien Elder joins, that is the weighting working. A mage party running a Warcryer without a Shillien Elder means the weighting found no Elder free.

Every class earns its slot

A class gets its job from what it can do — its masteries and the skills it has at that level.

• A Warlord turns up as a secondary tank that pulls crowds, because it carries Provoke as well as deep AoE.
• A Bladedancer is a dancer rather than a damage slot, even though it levels a weapon mastery like any fighter.

What never happens

Three rules hold no matter what gets rolled:

• Never two of the same bard. Two Sword Singers is a bug, because their songs do not stack and the second one is wasted.
• Never all support. Damage slots get filled on purpose, since a party that cannot kill anything is not a party.
• Never a size that does not fit the room. See the tiers above.

Race is not one of the rules. Nothing reasons about race when building a party. A few slots are pinned by class — Bladedancers are Dark Elves, Sword Singers are Elves — and the rest reflects who lives nearby, which runs to roughly 65% local race in any zone.

Real parties, zone by zone

Actual parties from the world, one zone at a time. Notice the support slot: a party of mages takes a Shillien Elder for Empower and Recharge, while a melee party takes a Prophet or Warcryer instead. Each one is assembled from what the zone asks for and who is available at that level.

Zone	Lvl	Fights like	Size	Members
Necropolis of Sacrifice	27	Balanced	7	Human Knight, 2x Shillien Oracle, Monk, Orc Raider, 2x Assassin
Catacomb Of The Heretic	33	Balanced	7	Human Knight, 2x Elven Oracle, 2x Scavenger, Elven Scout, Rogue
Necropolis of the Pilgrims	36	Balanced	9	Elven Knight, Cleric, Orc Shaman, Scavenger, Orc Raider, Warrior, Rogue, Elven Scout, Assassin
Garden Of Eva	41	Balanced	6	Temple Knight, Shillien Elder, Prophet, Plains Walker, Tyrant, Phantom Ranger
Cruma Tower (rooms)	44	Melee	6	Temple Knight, Sword Singer, Shillien Elder, 2x Tyrant, Treasure Hunter
Catacomb of the Branded	45	Nuke	7	Sword Singer, Shillien Elder, Prophet, 2x Spellhowler, Sorcerer, Necromancer
Necropolis of Worship	48	Melee	7	Temple Knight, Bladedancer, Elven Elder, Plains Walker, Gladiator, Tyrant, Treasure Hunter
Catacomb Of The Apostate	54	Melee	8	Dark Avenger, Bladedancer, Shillien Elder, Prophet, Gladiator, Plains Walker, 2x Tyrant
Necropolis of the Patriots	57	Melee	8	Shillien Knight, Bladedancer, Elven Elder, Warcryer, Abyss Walker, Treasure Hunter, Plains Walker, Tyrant
Antharas Lair	63	Balanced	8	Shillien Knight, Bishop, Warcryer, Gladiator, Treasure Hunter, Tyrant, Phantom Ranger, Hawkeye
Necropolis of Devotion	63	Melee	9	Temple Knight, Bladedancer, Bishop, Prophet, 3x Tyrant, Abyss Walker, Gladiator
Catacomb of the Witch	66	Melee	7	Shillien Knight, Bladedancer, Shillien Elder, Tyrant, Treasure Hunter, Abyss Walker, Plains Walker
Necropolis of Martyrdom	69	Balanced	7	Temple Knight, Shillien Elder, Warcryer, 2x Treasure Hunter, Phantom Ranger, Silver Ranger
Tower of Insolence	69	Melee	9	Shillien Knight, Bladedancer, Shillien Elder, Warcryer, 2x Tyrant, Abyss Walker, Treasure Hunter, Plains Walker
Stakato Nest	74	Archer	9	Bladedancer, Shillien Elder, Prophet, 4x Phantom Ranger, 2x Hawkeye
Necropolis of the Disciples	75	Balanced	9	Dark Avenger, Elven Elder, Shillien Elder, 2x Treasure Hunter, Tyrant, Hawkeye, 2x Phantom Ranger
Necropolis of the Saints	75	Balanced	8	Paladin, 2x Elven Elder, Treasure Hunter, 2x Plains Walker, 2x Phantom Ranger
Catacomb of Dark Omens	78	Melee	7	Dark Avenger, Spectral Dancer, Shillien Saint, 2x Adventurer, Duelist, Grand Khavatari
19 16	80	Balanced	9	Paladin, Cardinal, Hierophant, Duelist, 2x Ghost Hunter, Sagittarius, 2x Ghost Sentinel
Catacomb Of The Forbidden Path	80	Archer	8	Spectral Dancer, Shillien Saint, Doom Cryer, 3x Ghost Sentinel, Sagittarius, Moonlight Sentinel
Monastery Of Silence	80	Archer	9	Spectral Dancer, Shillien Saint, Doom Cryer, 3x Sagittarius, 2x Moonlight Sentinel, Ghost Sentinel

Under the hood

The chain that decides size

wealth band ─→ GearScore ──→ PartyPower ──┐
  (per sim)     (per sim)     (per party) │
                                          ├─→ size + composition
mob data ────→ ZoneDifficulty ─→ ZoneRating
 (level,        (mobLevel,        ("you need this
  pack, hp)      packSize,         much power here")
                 hpTier)

Piece	What it decides
GearScore	One sim’s power, from weapon caliber, armour grade, shots and level
PartyPower	A party’s power, aggregating member gear-scores and folding in role synergy
ZoneDifficulty	The zone’s demand as (mobLevel, packSize, hpTier)
ZoneRating	levelTerm(mobLevel) × packTerm(packSize) × hpTier — one demand number
PartyCaliberPlan	The iso-power set: every size-and-wealth pairing that meets that rating
Viability	The reverse question — can this party clear this zone?

Party sizes vary because of the iso-power set. One zone rating is satisfied by several different shapes, each at a different wealth floor, so the size you see reflects the gear the sims happen to be carrying. There is deliberately no separate variety setting to tune.

How packSize is derived

packSize means how many mobs answer one pull, not how many are in the room. Getting this wrong in either direction is the most common source of a badly-sized party.

Attribute	Weight in the calculation
clan + clanHelpRange	The dominant term. Hit one clan member and its clan-mates answer, whether or not anything is aggressive.
aggressive	A multiplier — neighbours join on sight, but nothing summons them. ⚠️ An absent value defaults to true; reading it as false under-counts aggression by roughly 200×.
aggroRange	Deliberately unused. A level 1 Gremlin and a level 42 Mordeo both carry 1000, so it separates nothing.

clanHelpRange is read as a strength rather than a literal radius, because the room is already the spatial unit — mobs attributed to one room are co-located by construction.

Related

• Sim Party Mechanics — joining a party and telling it how to behave
• Smart Roam — how a party decides it is time to move on

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