henever a new Tibia character is created, not only the name and gender have to be chosen but also the game world on which the character will live on. Of course the decision will depend on the country in which you live but you will also have to decide on what kind of server you would like to play. In Tibia you can choose between 3 different types of servers. They vary on the extent of allowed player killing. Right now we have 14 Non-PvP servers, 58 PvP servers and 2 PvP enforced servers.

Non-PvP Servers

Similar to the beginners island Rookgaard, you cannot kill other characters on Non-PvP servers at all. Druids and sorcerers producing whole backpacks of runes do not have to fear passing player killers who love to kill other characters just for fun. You can run through the streets of Carlin or Thais without any equipment and nobody will lay a finger on you. Here, the only threat players have to fear are monsters. Randomly, players try to kill other characters by luring monsters. However, this is a violation of the Tibia Rules and players will be punished if they are caught doing so.
Non-PvP servers are particularly recommended for peaceful players who like to solve their arguments by talking to others instead of unsheathing their sword or whipping out their spellbook. After all, players cannot kill other characters even if they annoy them e.g. by killing their monsters or stealing their loot bags. As these are no rule violations, people have to find their own peaceful ways to solve such problems on these game servers. And they do. Just because they cannot be physically harmed does not mean that troublemakers have an easy life on Non-PvP worlds. Players have found other ways to deal with characters that are just looking for trouble. If you find your name on a so-called black or grey list, you will have a hard time to find a guild, a quest group, or players who are willing to trade with you.
There are a few more differences on Non-PvP servers that will affect your game play. You will not hurt other characters if you use area spells or runes, such as the ultimate explosion spell or a great fireball rune. This way you can concentrate on monsters completely when hunting and do not have to fear accidentally attacking characters near you. Field runes like fire bombs or fire fields last for a much shorter time and they do not create damage if a character steps on them. Also training with summons or other players is impossible as you are unable to attack them. For this reason you will always need creatures to train your weapon and shielding skill. Also you cannot heal any wild creatures to prevent you killing another character who may have a tough time to bring his opponent down.
This server type mainly attracts players who have no interest in player killing, many of them are role players or people who like to organise community events. For this reason, players that are interested in community matters will be well advised to play on Non-PvP servers. But of course you can find some role playing and a nice community on PvP servers, too.

PvP Servers

Normal PvP game servers enable players to kill other characters, however, only in a limited way. Player killing on these servers is regulated by the skull system. If a character has a skull, you can kill this character without any negative consequences. A character will have a skull if he has attacked or killed a character without a skull or if he is a member of your party. Players may only kill a certain amount of characters without a skull, so-called unjustified kills. Players who have reached 3/5/10 unjustified kills in one day/week/month will receive a red skull for 30 days. Characters that have a red skull will lose their complete equipment when dying even when wearing the precious amulet of loss. For this reason, characters with a red skull normally do not use their best equipment when hunting as the danger of losing it is much too high. For this reason, they will have to face more damage of creatures which might even prevent them from playing on their usual hunting grounds. And there are even more drawbacks. A red skull clearly signals to other players that this is an aggressive character who has no qualms to kill others. For this reason many characters will try to stay away from red skulls as far as possible so the marked characters will hardly find any training or quest partners. Moreover, such characters often have trouble to find a guild. Killing other characters is mostly connected with much trouble which is not appreciated by the majority of guilds on normal PvP servers.
If a player with a red skull keeps killing other characters, he will be banished if he accumulates 6/10/20 unjustified character kills in one day/week/month. On PvP game servers, most players will not kill other characters without a good reason as the limitations may quickly lead to harsh punishments which could even include the deletion of your account if done repeatedly or after previous rule breaks.
To sum it up, PvP servers enable you to defend yourself in critical situations or to kill characters that annoy you. However, as the skull system regulates the number of unjustified kills one player can make, it is still less dangerous than to play on a PvP enforced game server.

PvP Enforced Servers

Players who prefer to handle their ingame arguments with the sword rather than with words, are well advised to play on a PvP enforced game world. On these game worlds player killing is always legal and there is no limit on how many players you may kill. You will even obtain experience points if you kill characters whose level multiplied with 1.1 and rounded down to the next whole number is higher than your own level, e.g. a character of level 40 will only get experience points if his opponent is level 38 or higher.

Example for a level 40 killing characters of level 36, 37 and 38:
36 x 1,1 = 39.6 rounded down to 39, 39 < 40 = no experience points
37 x 1,1 = 40.7 rounded down to 40, 40 = 40 = no experience points
38 x 1,1 = 41.8 rounded down to 41, 41 > 40 = experience points

However, killing members of your party will not get you any experience points. The number of experience points you gain depends on the proportion between your own and your victim's level and the number of experience points your opponent has reached. The higher the level of the other character compared to your own level is, the more experience points you will obtain, e.g. a player with level 20 that kills a character who just reached level 50 will obtain 64655 experience points, while a character of level 51 will receive only 7389 experience points for the same kill.

Of course the drawback of such a server is that you can be killed yourself at anytime on such a game world. There is no amulet of loss available to save your precious equipment and there are also no blessings to reduce your loss when dying. To ensure fair fights the delay to cast aggressive spells is lowered to one second and there is a probability that casting the spell cancel invisibility will destroy applied stealth rings. To survive on such a server, you need good fighting skills and a group of friends to back you up. Therefore such a server is recommended specially for players who are talented in PvP.

You have now heard much about our current server types. However, other server types are also imaginable at some point in the future. For this reason we would like to ask you in our current feedback form which new server type you could picture for and would like to play on in Tibia.

Enjoy playing on your favourite game world!
Your CipSoft Team