Garek's Guide to Siege Rams

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The purpose of this document is to give a comprehensive explanation of how to build and use a ram, as well as how to best plan the logistics of moving them into battle.

The information presented here was compiled with painstaking effort by the author, and should not be re-posted in whole or in part elsewhere without the author's permission.

DAoC Battering Rams

In DAoC, there are three different types of battering rams that can be built by players. The purpose of a ram is to destroy a wooden door in order to gain entry into an enemy keep (you cannot damage your own realm's doors with a ram). The three types of rams are denoted as 'small ram', 'ram', and 'siege ram'. The three differ from each other in only two regards, first that they have a different resource cost, and second, that they do different amounts of damage. All three are the exact same weight, and have the same graphic.

Siege Ram in Resting Position

Siege Ram Armed for Firing (note the position of the swings)

Component Formulas

Craft	Component	Linen Heavy Thread	Ferrite Metal Bars	Tanned Leather Squares
	Ferrite Ram Beak	-	140	-
	Ferrite Ram Cladding	-	140	-
	Tanned Swing Harness	20	36	110

All crafted components require 500+ skill in the tradeskill to attempt.

Production Costs

Class I: Small Ram
Part	Crafted Cost	Vendor Cost
300 Elm Wooden Boards (Vendor)	1gp 80 sp (12s per 20)	1gp 80 sp (12s per 20)
1 Ferrite Ram Beak	1 gp 96 sp	2 gp 94 sp
1 Ferrite Ram Cladding	1 gp 96 sp	2 gp 94 sp
2 Tanned Swing Harnesses	1 gp 35 sp each, 2 gp 70 sp total	1 gp 85 sp each, 3 gp 70 sp total
Total Cost:	8 gp 42 sp	11 gp 38 sp


Class II: Battering Ram (Ram)
Part	Crafted Cost	Vendor Cost
300 Oaken Wooden Boards (Vendor)	7 gp 20 sp (48 sp per 20)	7 gp 20 sp (48 sp per 20)
1 Ferrite Ram Beak	1 gp 96 sp	2 gp 94 sp
1 Ferrite Ram Cladding	1 gp 96 sp	2 gp 94 sp
2 Tanned Swing Harnesses	1 gp 35 sp each, 2 gp 70 sp total	1 gp 85 sp each, 3 gp 70 sp total
Total Cost:	13 gp 82 sp	16 gp 78 sp


Class III: Siege Ram
Part	Crafted Cost	Vendor Cost
300 Ironwood Wooden Boards (Vendor)	21 gp 60 sp (1 gp 44 sp per 20)	21 gp 60 sp (1 gp 44 sp per 20)
1 Ferrite Ram Beak	1 gp 96 sp	2 gp 94 sp
1 Ferrite Ram Cladding	1 gp 96 sp	2 gp 94 sp
2 Tanned Swing Harnesses	1 gp 35 sp each, 2 gp 70 sp total	1 gp 85 sp each, 3 gp 70 sp total
Total Cost:	28 gp 22 sp	31 gp 18 sp

                            Crafted costs are determined using materials bought in stacks of 20.
                            All costs rounded off to the nearest sp.
                            Note that each formula uses the same crafted parts, they only vary in the wood used.

The difference in rams is quite pronounced:
Class I does approximately 300 dmg.
Class II does approximately 450 dmg.
Class III does approximately 750 dmg.

Note: These are their approximate damages against a Level 1 door. Higher level doors reduce the maximum damage the ram delivers.

Component Procurement

Merchant Keeps are:
Albion - Caer Benowyc, in Hadrian's Wall
Hibernia - Dun Cruachon, in Emain Macha
Midgard - Bledmeer Faste, in Odin's Gate

-Wood can be purchased in Tir Na Nog, Innis Carthaig, and at any Merchant Keep.
-Ferrite Ram Claddings can be purchased at Innis Carthaig and at any Merchant Keep.
-Ferrite Ram Beaks can be purchased at Innis Carthaig and at any Merchant Keep.
-Tanned Swing Harnesses can only be purchased at Merchant Keeps (and are labeled "swing harness").

Note: Many merchants sell siege components that are not usable in any siege weapon. For example, in a frontier merchant keep you may find a "Ram Beak" for sale on one vendor. This item is not usable in a ram. You must use a "Ferrite Ram Beak". Be particularly cautious of this disparity when purchasing Ferrite Ram Beaks and Cladding, since these must be made of ferrite, and "Ram Beak" and "Ram Cladding", while useless, are sold by NPC merchants.

Weight Considerations

Now that you've decided you want to build a ram in a keep-taking operation, you need to first address the logistics of getting the ram to the siege site.

Ram Component Weights

Component	Weight	Total
Tanned Swing Harness (2)	37 lbs	74 lbs
Ferrite Ram Beak	55 lbs	55 lbs
Ferrite Ram Cladding	35 lbs	35 lbs
Wooden Boards (300)	5 lbs per 20	75 lbs
	Total Weight:	239 lbs

Based on these figures, 1 ram weighs 239 lbs, regardless of the wood used. Here are some guidelines to use so that your ram arrives at the keep with all of its components.
1) Use as few a number of people as possible to transport components.
2) When allocating weight among individuals, never give them more weight they they can carry, unencumbered, while self-buffed.

Example: Garek is a L50 warden with 160 strength. Self-buffed (w/ L50 strength buff, +50 strength) his strength is 211. Check your encumberance, self-buffed, to know how much you can carry. Keep in mind your armor and weapons count against your encumberance too, so be sure to look at your encumberance and not only your strength. With 211 str the max encumberance is 210, and Garek carries approximately 50 pounds of equipment (tools, weapons, armor, etc.) so he can carry 160 lbs of equipment. Although Garek's strength is much higher with a druid's strength/constitution buff, he does not carry more than 160 lbs of siege equipment. The reason for this is, if someone is strength buffed and their buffer disconnects, they will be overloaded, and likely unable to move. If you come into contact with the enemy while moving to your objective, and the strength buffer is killed, overloaded party members will become rooted by their encumberance, and easy pray to enemy troops. Wardens, Bards, and Druids are ideal choices for carrying siege equipment for their self-buffed capacity, with Heroes, Blademasters, and Champions being a close second for their raw strength. Many members of these classes are also often Firbolgs, which gives them an even greater weight capacity.

Distributing Ram Components

When allocating ram components for a raid, set your people up into siege crews. The person that will construct the weapon is the engineer. This is ideally also going to be the weapon's operator, to save time in getting the weapon functioning. Those carrying parts must be ready to hand the pieces to the engineer at the door of the keep to be broken into very quickly when called. Because one disconnected person can make a ram useless, avoid allocating equipment to someone with connectivity issues. Also, hand each person parts for one ram. If you are bringing 3 rams to a given raid, do not given one person 3 ram cladding - if he should disconnect, die and release, etc. all of your rams become non-functional, instead of just 1. Whenever possible, have only 1 or 2 people carry a ram. For high level players, particularly nurture-specced druids, carrying am entire ram with wood is a realistic possibility.

Allocating parts for one ram across two carriers should look something like:
Engineer: 2 Swing Harnesses + Ferrite Ram Beak = 129 lbs.
Carrier 1: Ferrite Ram Cladding + 300 boards = 110 lbs.

Building a Ram

To build a ram, you need only have chosen a field of specialization from a tradecraft master. Siege weapons never require a skill greater than 1 in Siegecraft (all the siege weaponry cons yellow on the construction table at a skill of 1). This fact is important because it means you can never lose materials in a failed attempt at building a siege weapon. If you fail, you need only try the build again until you succeed.

Make sure you have a sewing kit, smithing hammer, and planing tool on you when attempting to build any siege weapon!

To physically emplace a ram, stand before the door you wish to breach of the enemy keep. You must be careful to stand close enough to the door that it will be in range for the completed ram to hit it, if you stand too far away, the ram will be out of range and therefore useless, since rams are all stationary and cannot be moved. The contact point of a ram is not the tip of the beak; the actual contact point is the middle of the chasis of the ram. For that reason you need the center of the chasis very close to the door. This center point is built directly where the engineer is standing, so simply running into the door before placing the ram will always be close enough.

The equipment carriers pass the engineer the full list of components once the engineer is standing in the spot the weapon needs to be built. The weight of all the components may overload the engineer to the point that he will be unable to move at all. Be mindful of this if the engineer is killed before construction is complete! If the engineer needs ressurecting before he has built the weapon, the resser needs to stand exactly where the engineer died, so that the engineer will be in the correct spot for construction. If you ressurect the engineer 50 feet away from where he died, he will not be able to walk to the correct spot, and all the equipment on him will need to be offloaded so he can move, creating a waste of critical time.

Readying the Ram

Once the ram is built it will drop on the ground, and give the engineer a dialogue box saying the ram has fallen to the ground, since it would not fit in your backpack. Click Ok. Now target the ram you just built and type "/control release" to unlock the weapon.

Controlling the Ram To take control of a ram, you target the weapon while standing next to or in it, and type "/control". If the weapon has no controller, you will become the controller, and a pop-up window will appear on your screen with a timer-bar and a few commands on it. If at any point you wish to stop controlling the ram, you should close the seige weapon pop-up box, then type "/control release". Now another operator can take over. Until you type "/control release", no one else may operate the equipment.

To use the ram against the door, the next thing you need to do, now that you have your pop-up menu available and are in control of the ram, is click on the door you are trying to breach. This will have a name like "Albion Gate". With the gate targeted, hit the "Aim" button on the pop-up window. You will receive a dialog message confirming you have now aimed the ram.

Now, hit the button marked "Arm" on the control window. The timer bar will begin to fill. It takes 5 seconds to arm a ram. Note that the timer bar takes much longer than 5 seconds to fill, so do not rely on the bar to gauge when the ram is ready.

After 5 seconds has elapsed, press "Fire" button in the window, and the ram will visually swing back and forward one time. You will also receive a melee damage report of the ram's damage.

You can click the Fire button continuously until the ram actually fires; although the timer bar resets, it does not restart the 5 sec requirement. As soon as you have clicked "Fire" and the ram has hit, immediately click "Arm" again. The trick to efficient ram operation is to focus on what you are doing. Hit "Fire" as soon as 5 seconds has elapsed each time, and remember to re-arm the ram as soon as you've fired it! The display can be somewhat misleading, because after you have fired the ram, the status bar begins filling again on its own, even before "Arm" is selected. However, you cannot fire the ram again without arming it first, even if the status bar completely refills! If you wait for the bar to refill on it's own after completing a fire, it will prompt you with a dialog of the sort "this weapon must be armed first", and hitting Arm will re-start the timer. Don't fall into this mistake - your attack troops are counting on you to break that door down as fast as you can, and every second counts!

Running a Ram with Hotkeys An optional method of building and operating a siege ram is by using a series of hotkeys, to avoid the trouble of using the control panel, which can be misleading and get in the way.

Macro 1 - Siegecraft menu Siege Ram icon
Macro 2 - /control release
Macro 3 - /control
Macro 4 - /aim
Macro 5 - /arm
Macro 6 - /fire
Macro 7 - /repair

Now for the construction:
Walk next to door and get the parts.
Macro 1 (builds ram)
Target the ram
Macro 2
Macro 3
now target the gate
Macro 4
Macro 5
Macro 6 - Push repeatedly until the ram fires
Macro 5
Macro 6 - Push repeatedly until the ram fires
Macro 5
Macro 6 - Push repeatedly until the ram fires

And if the ram requires repairs,
Target the ram
Macro 7

(Hotkey Method contributed by Nittany, <Dark Octopus> Guild, on Hibernia, Gawaine)

Repairing the Ram

Siege Ram hit point bar

It is essential that you watch the ram's health bar to avoid having it decay before you are done. Rams decay two different ways:
1) Slowly they decay naturally on a 15 minute timer.
2) Any enemy spell or melee damage also removes hit points from the ram.

Presently siege weapon repairs only check the repairer's Woodworking skill using a pass/ fail skill check. If successful, you will repair the ram's hit points to full. These repairs cost no resources, and do not require any wood or other material to attempt. If you fail your repair attempt, simply try again.

Multi-Ram Strategy When you use more than one ram on a door, each ram does additional damage. They also give a large bonus to any melee/archery damage inflicted on the door at the same time. Keep in mind that doors that have been upgraded take less damage from both rams and melee, so you will need more damage output to take these doors down quickly. Relic Keep gates are always Level 8, and are extremely resistant to melee and ram damage. Be sure you remain flexible and plan accordingly.

Practice makes Perfect Even after reading this ram primer, you will not be able to smoothly carry into battle, deploy, and operate a siege ram without practice. Rams are one of the more complex aspects of DAoC's RvR system, but can also have a huge impact when experienced troops use them correctly. Plan raids to practice using rams, and remember that the key is to train many people to proficiency in their construction and operation, so the rams are built as fast as possible and used correctly.

Other Information For more information on siege weaponry, be sure to check out Garek's Guides to Ballistae and Catapults. For more information on Keep Doors and the Woodworking skill, review Garek's Guide to Keep Doors.