Plunder: The Complete Mechanics

🗓 Updated: 2026-10-12

Plunder: The Complete Mechanics

Plunder income is capped by a daily limit, and the limit scales with your Sanctuary level. Knowing the thresholds changes when you stop attacking for the day.

How the Limit Works

• The limit counts Grain, Timber, and Herbs carried home from attacks.
• Below the limit: you carry resources at 100% efficiency.
• From 1x the limit: efficiency drops to 15%.
• From 1.3x the limit: efficiency drops to 5% — that is the floor.
• The limit resets at 02:00 UTC daily.
• The yellow triangle under a target’s Might is the over-limit indicator — check it via Effect Overview, then Plunder Gains.

Daily Limits by Sanctuary Level

The pattern: +1M per Sanctuary level up to 20, then +2M per level to the 30M cap at Sanctuary 30. Two mechanical notes:

• A Sanctuary upgrade raises your limit immediately — no reset wait. If you are near the daily cap and a Sanctuary level is close, finish it first and plunder after.
• The War Supply skill from the Legion Commander specialty tree (Era of Revival) raises the cap by +6 / +14 / +24 / +36 / +50% at skill levels 1-5. See the Era guide.

The Nine-Hit Rule

Never attack the same farm more than nine times in a row. The tenth hit destroys the city outright and teleports its owner away — you lose the farm, and the player loses their city. Nine hits is the ceiling; the community treats it as an obligation, not a suggestion.

Field Technique: Getting a Full Farm Run

Community-tested procedure for a full daily plunder session:

1. Scout first. Open your mail after scouting: the report shows exactly how much of each resource the target holds. Peek at 2–3 candidates and pick the richest — many targets are loaded with one resource type.
2. Skip players in an alliance — attacking an allied member starts wars your alliance did not sign up for.
3. Stage on an adjacent tile. Send your squad to a resource tile next to the target; once it’s sitting there, you can launch up to ~8 rapid consecutive attacks without waiting for marches.
4. Keep them above 2,000 city HP. Below that they teleport away and your farmspot is gone — reuse the same farm tomorrow by stopping short.

Soldier Load decides how much you carry per hit. It rises +200 per troop tier (T6 = 1,400, T7 = 1,600, T8 = 1,800…) and can be raised further by the Load Training tech in the Soldier research tree. Higher-tier squads plunder the same target in fewer hits, saving stamina.

Stamina Math: Why Over-Limit Plundering Fails

Spending stamina on over-limit plunder is one of the worst trades in the game:

• At 15% efficiency, each stamina point earns roughly 7x less than normal.
• At 5% efficiency, roughly 20x less.
• The same stamina spent on monsters earns full value regardless of your plunder status.

So the daily rhythm writes itself: hit the richest targets you can beat first while you are at 100%, stop attacking farms the moment you cross the limit, and dump the rest of your stamina into monsters. And within your plunder window, always hit the richest target first — the limit is coming regardless, so fill it with the biggest numbers available.

Caravans and Covert Ops: Always Run Both

Caravans and Covert Ops are separate systems from plunder, and they dodge every restriction above: no plunder limit, no real troop loss, no stamina cost. They are pure upside, which is why the community rule is to run both every single day.

• Caravans — your automated trade income. Keep them moving.
• Covert Ops — you can plunder up to 5 other players’ Covert Ops per day. Golden Covert Ops pay the best rewards — always grab a golden one when you see it.