The fastest reliable way to clear a wanted status is to break line of sight with the PIDF and stay undetected until the indicator burns out. Dying also clears it instantly — and in multiplayer, simply being downed is enough.
You will find tables online listing a 1–5 star scale with per-tier clearing times. No official source or extracted game data documents stars or any fixed tier count. No community reference page for "Wanted Level" exists at all, and the current in-game indicator is a text label behind a burn-down timer bar. The most-copied star table comes from a site whose publication date is five days before 1.0 shipped, yet describes post-1.0 mechanics in precise numbers. Treat it as invented.
What the system actually is
Committing a crime makes the Palpagos Islands Defense Force hostile and puts a "Criminal Activity Underway" warning on screen. The PIDF is the only one of the game's seven factions that is not hostile by default — it attacks only players who have committed a crime.
The 1.0 update overhauled the system. The official changelog is the clearest statement of how it now behaves:
Overhauled the crime system: as your wanted level increases, stronger pursuers will appear. You can now clear your wanted status by avoiding detection for a certain period of time. NPCs will no longer immediately become hostile when accidentally attacked. Pursuit can now be disengaged.
So it is a persistent, escalating pursuit state rather than local aggro — but escalation is measured by charge count and severity, not by a star meter. Community documentation puts it plainly: the levels and quantity of officers sent after you depend on the severity of the crimes and the number of charges.
Witnesses are the whole mechanic
A crime only sticks if a non-enemy NPC sees it. Kill or capture the witness first and no charge is registered at all. Enter a Wildlife Sanctuary without an officer spotting you and there is no trespassing charge. This is the single most useful thing to understand: preventing a charge is far cheaper than clearing one.
What raises your wanted level
| Charge | Trigger | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Assault | Attacking any non-hostile NPC | Includes trying to catch a human in a Pal Sphere, and capturing a Pal that is working at a settlement. Damage dealt by your own Pals does not count. |
| Trespassing | Entering a Wildlife Sanctuary | Recorded as a level 1 charge |
| Poaching | Capturing Pals inside a Wildlife Sanctuary | Recorded as a level 1 charge |
Note the wording "a level 1 Trespassing charge" — charges carry their own level, which is the closest thing to a tier that any source confirms. The maximum charge level is not documented anywhere we could verify.
Capturing a Wandering Merchant in a sphere is specifically called out as a crime that spawns hostile human NPCs and marks you wanted.
PIDF officers spawned by your wanted status give reduced XP for their level. Deliberately provoking them to farm kills is worse than fighting almost anything else.
Every confirmed way to clear it
- Die and respawn. Instant and total. In multiplayer, being downed is sufficient — you do not need to fully die.
- Break line of sight and wait. The 1.0 headline addition. Get away from the PIDF, stay unseen, and the indicator's bar burns down to nothing. This is the method to use when you want to keep your gear and your position.
- Fly high on a flying mount. Charges appear to clear automatically at sufficient altitude. Community documentation hedges this with "seem to", so treat it as reliable in practice but not formally documented.
- Singleplayer: save, quit to the menu, log back in.
- Eliminate the witness before they report you. This prevents the charge rather than clearing an existing one.
Running away alone is not enough on its own: escape far enough and your current pursuers despawn, but a fresh set spawns near you until the charges themselves expire.
Things that do not exist
A full-text sweep of the available reference material for fines, bail, bribes, jail and prison returns nothing but false positives on "Refined Ingot". Specifically, none of the following are in the game:
- Paying a fine or posting bail
- Being arrested or jailed as a player
- A consumable item that clears wanted status
- An NPC who wipes your record
Do not confuse the wanted system with bounties. The Vigilante Bounty Officer and the Bounty Intel Dealer relate to you hunting named human world bosses. That is an entirely separate system and has nothing to do with your own criminal record.
Useful interactions
Fast travel still works while wanted. Combined with the timer-based clearing, the practical routine is: fast travel somewhere quiet, stand still out of sight, wait for the bar, carry on.
Tower arenas leak. Entering a Syndicate tower boss fight while wanted causes PIDF grunts to spawn inside the boss instance and open fire on the boss. This is listed under known bugs and has been connected to an exploit for capturing normally-immune boss Pals.
A dedicated-server bug where logging out while wanted cleared your status but left the PIDF behind was fixed in 1.0.0.
What we could not verify
In keeping with how the rest of this site works, here is what is genuinely unknown rather than quietly guessed:
- The expiry duration in minutes. The only figures in circulation come from an unreliable source.
- Whether there is a maximum wanted level, and what happens at it. The only confirmed statement is that stronger pursuers appear.
- Whether Attack Choppers are a high-tier pursuer. Patch 1.0.3 adjusted "the BGM playback range for Attack Choppers so that it plays correctly for players who are Wanted", which strongly implies they can show up while wanted — but the Attack Chopper is documented only as a Stronghold boss, and no source states it spawns as a crime response. We are not going to assert it.
The main community write-up of the crime system is still tagged as a stub and its update history stops at 0.1.5.0, so its removal list reflects Early Access knowledge that the 1.0 changelog then supplements. Where the two differ, the changelog wins.