Introduction
Kastow is a long-term player of DivinityCraft and a member of its staff team, holding the rank of admin.
He joined the server in November 2012 during the second era as a member of russian-speaking faction YOBA. An initially small war between YOBA and Lordaeron grew into one of the biggest conflicts of the server. After YOBA had been destroyed by GoldVenam, Kastow vowed to destroy Lordaeron by any means possible. He created a new faction and formed an alliance to destroy Lordaeron. He continued fighting even after being permabanned on 3 April 2013 with the use of the MoveCraft plugin.
In October 2014 Kastow returned as eskimo42 and, hiding his identity, launched a massive campaign against Lordaeron. His support to a new faction TheUnion and raids against Lordaeron created a new superpower on the server.
On 15 January 2015, Kastow, using numerous alts, claimed all of Lordaeron's cities. After it had been found that Kastow was behind the event, the server had been rolled back.
With the wipe of the Third world, Kastow came back on the server.
With promotion of RoboRik to the admin rank, Kastow was promoted to moderator and subsequently to admin rank as well due to the knowledge of the server plugins.
November 2012 - January 2013
Coming to the server
"Really solid and stable server. The idea is top notch as well but the realization is kinda unfair. There is an alliance of most influential factions that leave no air to breathe for small freshly-picked factions." - Noxmare, Nov 29, 2012
Kastow came to the server on 27 November 2012 as a part of call to arms by a faction called YOBA led by Noxmare. At the time YOBA had been suffering from attacks by Lordaeron and needed more players to defend the faction, so they posted a thread on a russian imageboard, asking people to join.
A part of YOBA's base at the time had been claimed by GoldVenam, so the faction decided to move north, into the snowy mountains, and build an unclaimed base to avoid being raided. The faction members shared resources and instruments with each other - such level of trust had been acquired by recruiting only russian-speaking members who came from the imageboard.
On December 7, GoldVenam, with changed nickname, sent a teleport request to Kastow. He accepted it and forgot he was also teleporting back to base at the time. This resulted in GoldVenam teleporting to YOBA's unclaimed base and claiming most of its resources.
For the next base YOBA had selected the biggest mountain in the south east side of the map and carved it out. The base had a vertical structure with the ladders in the middle and facilities branching out to different sides. The bedrock around the ladders was covered with pressure plates to signal of any enemies around.
Kastow and YOBA started raiding Lordaeron. They spotted a wooden airship sitting in a wilderness chunk in Haven, claimed and destroyed it. Lordaeron built a giant well around the chunk and spawnkilled the YOBA members that set their home there, including Kastow.
The Lordaeron Bay operation
As Kastow learned more features of BoatMod, he also discovered the possibilites of using it against Lordaeron. Lordaeron bay was filled with ports and had a total of 15 ships in the area. On December 9, at night, Kastow managed to get 14 of the ships out of the claimed area and destroy them. If the ships were anchored, he attached a horizontal wooden pole to them, changing their geometrical center and thus allowing them to turn around an axis that was farther in the sea, and ignore the anchors.
The axe with which the ships had been destroyed was renamed to "Torpedo Axe" and presented to Roobster88. This caused an outrage of Lordaeron and massive raids upon YOBA.
The next day Kastow and his associates stole a 2500-block airship from Lordaeron and drove it across the map to YOBA. This caused massive lags on the server and, thus, the staff made a decision to lower the block limit of airships.
"Due to several crashes caused by boatmod today we have decided to lower the max boat size limit to 750." - Roobster88, Dec 10, 2012
Kastow had been criticized by the members of YOBA for claiming responsibility for these operations and thus angering Lordaeron.
Webway raids and first ban
Lordaeron was a massive faction with towns spread out across the bay, and to travel between them efficiently, the faction home had been set in nether in a set of tunnels, each leading to a portal connected to a certain city. It was partially made of glass, which, in turn, could be moved by BoatMod. Using this, Kastow could rip the parts of the tunnels out, enter the webway and kill the players that would attempt to travel. At the time, mob eggs could be bought in the shop, so Kastow filled the Lordaeron's faction home with blazes.
GoldVenam and other Lordaeron's prominent fighters would come to defend the webway. With the absence of spells and 1.9 PvP mechanics, fighters had to rely just on potions and god apples. During one of the fights of Kastow against Lethal_Legend and GoldVenam, Kastow scored 6 kills while GoldVenam and Lethal_Legend scored only two. Lethal_Legend complained to staff about Kastow using hacks.
Combined with the facts that several members of YOBA had been spotted using a hacked client Nodus and that staff team were also leaders of Lordaeron, staff believed Lethal's complaint despite Kastow being innocent. Kastow was confused and started thinking that Lordaeron had been abusing its admin powers to defend itself.
Zhelih
Before the ban, on December 6, Kastow had planted a spy alt into Lordaeron called Zhelih and used it to gain information from the inside. He settled down in Serenity, a town ruled by GoldVenam and situated on the southern shore of the continent. Zhelih was involved in digging out an immense cave of Lordaeron called Orzammar and the construction of parts of GoldVenam's base. During the ban, Zhelih had been developing his position in Lordaeron and gaining more trust. He also discovered a trick with HyperConomy that could give a player virtually infinite amounts of money.
The price of items in Hyperconomy depended on the amount of items on the market – if a player bought an item, it would be removed from the market and the price of the item would rise. There was also basic price of the item, defined by configuration, and there was a 25% tax. If you wanted to buy an item, you would pay basic price plus tax, in total 125% of the basic price. If you wanted to sell an item, you would get basic price minus tax, in total 75% of the basic price. Players could buy and sell anything including enchants for the tools. Enchants for the wooden items had a much smaller cost than enchants for the diamond items, but there was one pool of enchants for wooden and diamond items.
"1. I have bought sharpness4 on two diamondswords. It's like 300 or 400 each.
2. Combined on anvil for sharpness5.
3. Exhausted the market of sharpness5 by buying cheap sharpness5 on wooden swords.
4. Due to rule 2, when there are only two sharp5 left, on wooden sword it costs 3000.
5. The last enchantment cost 1/7 of US national debt, so it is impossible to buy.
6. Sold the sharp5 on diamond sword and acquired 7500. The profit from the procedure is 4500 - xp -value of diamonds/swords.
7. Goto 1, excluding 3.” - Kastow, Dec 28, 2012
Using this way, Kastow acquired 2 stacks of diamond blocks and hid them in chests inside a house wall. Three days later Kastow's main account had been unbanned. Seeing the lack of resources, he used the same way of getting money on his main account and was banned again for glitching the hyperconomy. After telling the staff about the way of getting money, the ban time was shortened to 1 week. Kastow was again confused that the Zhelih account had not been banned for the same actions, but asking questions about this would have endangered the undercover operation.
The Commoragh operation
During the time of the ban Kastow discovered that beds can be used by BoatMod and that exploding them damages blocks. On January 7, 2012, Kastow, after having been unbanned, and his YOBA colleague Digital_, raided a Lordaeron nether town called Commoragh using beds and destroyed it. Commoragh turned out to be the main storage of heads acquired by Lordaeron, and stole 50 of them, including 2 of jeb_.
Webway had also been severely damaged and the spot below the faction home had been filled with lava. Both of these were qualified as glitching and led to another week-long ban of Kastow.
The fall of YOBA
The leader of YOBA, Noxmare, became bored of the server and handed over the admin position to a random person which turned out to be a woman named 13sqrt5.
As YOBA had a very high level of trust between the members of the faction, almost everyone in it was an officer. This meant that one mistake could lead to the destruction of the faction. 13sqrt5, unlike her predecessor, didn't take the necessary precautions and didn't check the possible newcomers. This allowed Bemyala, one of GoldVenam's alts, to infiltrate the faction and become the officer of it. On January 15, 2013, YOBA had been destroyed.
January 2013 - July 2013
Phoenix
"Despite the war with YOBA being over I think Kastow still pursues the goal he always has on the server: the destruction of Lordaeron. I wonder if he even truly wants it destroyed, he probably knows how hopeless it is and simply enjoys the journey rather than the goal." - Roobster88, Jan 20, 2013
The fall of YOBA left its members scattered, not mentioning the numerous bans for the Nodus hacked client. Kastow began to gather the remaning Russian players to settle down in mountains north of Lordaeron and continue fighting. The leader of the faction was rasmikun, and the ranking system was based upon the ranking system of Tau empire from the Warhammer 40000 universe. Almost bases of Kastow ever since have been underground networks of rooms and tunnels, for the sake of protection against raiders and flexible and ergonomic access to facilities.
After the disappearance of most of the Russian-speaking members, Phoenix had to start recruiting foreigners, but do it extreme caution as to not endanger itself again. When a newcomer joined the faction, the faction home would be moved inside a glass box. Then, the newcomer would be asked to set his home inside only to get kicked from the faction. After this, without having any ability to escape, Kastow and his officers would start interrogating the newcomer to identify whether he was trustworthy.
February 2013
The war of Lordaeron vs YOBA was one of the main events on the server for 1.5 months, and its sudden end has negatively affected the server. The formerly united warmongers had no one to fight anymore and started fighting each other. This culminated in creating of an alliance against Lordaeron, creating of Wulfreach by Lethal_Legend, his permban and the creation of a rebel server.
Lordaeron, suffering from raids from Phoenix, built a giant wall in order to protect the faction lands. While the raids have now been slower, it didn't totally prevent them.
Kastow continued his double life, raiding Lordaeron from his main account and helping construct the Ascalon fleet from his alt with a Lordaeron newcomer morganstern1. Since GoldVenam was concentrated on building Orzammar, Zhelih was the candidate for replacing him in Serenity and, thus, becoming an officer. Since Kastow didn't have enough faction power on his own, he started discussing with other players opposing Lordaeron the future operation. One of them leaked the info to Lordaeron. Zhelih was kicked from the faction. Thus, Kastow learned to never talk about alts.
Permban
Shortly after, Kastow had planted another alt inside Lordaeron, Ax3effect, in order to replace Zhelih.