The rules
These are the rules the code runs, applied the same way to every fighter. Where this page and the code disagree, the code is right — tell us and we will fix the page.
How uptime is measured
Every monitor is checked once a minute from three regions at once. A minute counts as down only when at least two of the three regions agree it was down. One region having a bad moment is not an outage, and we will not scar a gladiator for it.
A site answering 401, 403 or 429 is recorded as unknown, not down. Those are a site refusing us specifically, not a site that has fallen over. Unknown minutes count for nobody, either way.
Weekly uptime is up minutes divided by up plus down minutes, over the week that is running. A fighter with no readings yet is treated as 100% — you start unwounded.
How a duel is scored
Duels are drawn Monday 00:00 UTC and scored Sunday 23:59 UTC. The score is one number, in percentage points of uptime, and it has three parts:
score = uptime % + armor + speed
Highest score takes the laurel.
Uptime is the fight. It is the thing being measured and it carries almost all the weight.
Armor is worth 0.02 per tier above the first. A gladiator who has climbed to X Primus Palus starts 0.18 ahead of a fresh I Tiro — about eighteen minutes of downtime across a week. That is a real head start and it is meant to be. It is also only a number: beat it on the day and you win. A lower tier taking a higher one is an upset, and the homepage says so by name.
Speed is worth at most 0.01 — deliberately less than a single tier, so response time settles close fights without ever outweighing an outage. It scales from a full share at 0 ms down to nothing at 1000 ms and beyond. A fighter with no response readings gets none of it.
If two fighters finish level on all three, the laurel goes to whoever has held their current unbroken streak longer.
What a win and a loss do
The winner takes a laurel and 24 points — one perfect day of climbing. Five straight wins earns the title Invictus; ten earns Primus Palus.
The loser takes a scar. Three straight losses drops them a division, and the count starts again.
How armor is earned and lost
One hour of uptime is one point. One minute of downtime costs five hours of climbing — downtime is five times faster at taking armor off than uptime is at putting it on. That asymmetry is the whole game.
The ten tiers, and the points each one needs:
| Tier | Points | Laurels | Armor bonus |
|---|---|---|---|
| I Tiro | 0 | — | +0.00 |
| II Wrapped | 1 | — | +0.02 |
| III Shielded | 6 | — | +0.04 |
| IV Armed | 24 | — | +0.06 |
| V Helmed | 72 | — | +0.08 |
| VI Greaved | 168 | — | +0.10 |
| VII Segmented | 336 | — | +0.12 |
| VIII Plumed | 504 | — | +0.14 |
| IX Gilded | 840 | 3 | +0.16 |
| X Primus Palus | 1344 | 8 | +0.18 |
The last two tiers are gated on laurels as well as points: you cannot climb to IX or X on quiet uptime alone, you have to have won fights.
Who fights
Only claimed, subscribed gladiators are drawn into duels. The companies seeded into the arena are observed: we measure them and show what we measured, and that is all. They are never given a duel, a laurel, a scar or a title, because they never entered. Inventing a result for a company that did not sign up would be a fabrication, so we do not do it.
An odd number of fighters means one sits the week out. No bye is counted as a win.