How it plays
Quests, fights, what a room shows you, how far you can level, and what there is to do between fights.
Quests and stories
Quest givers are marked on your map and call out as you pass their door. A quest's card says who wants what and where to start looking, and leaves the finding to you.
Choose your reward
Many quests let you pick one reward from several when you hand in.
Answer back
Now and then someone asks you something, and you pick what to say from a few replies. Saying nothing is always one of them.
Moments held still
When the story turns, the web client holds the moment: the window draws into a letterbox, the lines come one at a time, and nothing else breaks in until it ends. A setting makes every scene wait for you to read on. A crossing to a far country is drawn on the map, the boat moving under the words.
In a fight
Fights run in real time, and a blow can land from further than the room you stand in.
Who it's after
Every creature keeps a tally of the damage and healing done in its fight and goes after whoever tops it. A Warrior with a shield, or a pet told to taunt, counts for more than its damage. A bar under the enemy's health shows where you stand.
Five resists
Magic, Fire, Cold, Poison and Disease. A spell of a resisted kind can fail outright, more often against something above you, and loses some of its strength when it lands. Rare gear and some buffs raise yours.
Into the next room
A caster's spell at one creature or one friend reaches a room next door the caster can see. Open with a Fireball from the doorway, or heal a Warrior holding a fight there. The creature you hit comes for you.
Down the line
A Hunter shoots down a line of rooms, and an arrow does more for each room it crosses. Pinning Shot roots its target and vaults the Hunter back a room, and the pet can be sent ahead to scout.
What's in your hands
A Warrior fights with a shield, a two-handed weapon or a weapon in each hand, and its passives and some of its buttons change with what it holds.
Songs that are music
A Bard's songs are written in one key and to one beat, so the songs it plays together are heard as one tune, and they can quicken when a fight starts.
Look closer
What a room shows you depends on your light, your Perception, and what has happened in it.
Next door
Look down a line of rooms before you walk in. As your Perception grows you see further, and in time you notice what waits nearby without looking.
Light and dark
Torches burn down and sputter in their last minutes. Without one, you feel your way through a dark cave.
Rooms that change
A room that names a creature reads differently once the creature is gone. Some rooms read differently by the rune you bear.
Hidden ways
Secret rooms, walls a careful look gives away, briars to burn through, and doors that open only from the far side.
Progression
Levels come from fights and quests. Runes, earned out in the world, decide how far they go, and at level 25 your class becomes something more.
Runes
Without a rune, levels stop at 12. Each rune is earned somewhere out in the world and engraved on you there, and each lifts the cap: White to 16, Yellow to 20 and Green to 25. Your rune also decides which other players you can fight, and who can fight you: those bearing your own rune, or the one just above or below it. Until your first, no player can attack you, and the town and the country around it are at peace.
Promotion
At level 25, bearing the Blue Rune, your class is promoted and takes a new name. You keep everything you had, and go on leveling under it.
- Warrior Champion
- Rogue Shadowblade
- Acolyte Cleric
- Sorcerer Archmage
- Hunter Ranger
- Necrolyte Necromancer
- Druid Archdruid
- Enchanter Illusionist
- Bard Virtuoso
- Shaman Mystic
Talents
Promotion brings five talent points, and every level after it another, to spend in your class's own three sections, in the roles it plays, or on talents anyone can take. Some sharpen what you have; some are new buttons.
Every class's talentsProfessions
Every character can keep two professions in any mix: two to gather, two to craft, or one of each. Fishing, cooking and first aid count toward neither, and anyone can take them up.
Gathering
Mine ore, pick herbs, chop wood and skin what you hunt. A vein or a herb shows only to someone who knows the trade, and its name is colored by how much it can still teach you. What comes up is rough, standard or fine, and finer the further your skill is past what it asks.
Crafting
Smelt, tan, saw and weave at the town's stations, then smith, work leather and wood, and tailor. Crafted gear rolls its quality from the materials that went in, and the best recipes can turn out rare on fine ones.
For everyone
Cook your catch into a meal that keeps you Well Fed for half an hour, and make bandages from cloth to bind your wounds between fights.
Life in the world
Fish any water, trade with other players, hunt for treasure, or find company for the road.
Fishing
Cast into any water and wait for a bite, or take on a whole school of fish, which you fight with a bar of fishing moves in place of your own.
The market
Sell to anyone, online or not, at the Market Hall, and post work orders for crafters to fill. Spare copies of a piece of gear can reinforce it, up to +10.
Companions
Once you bear a rune, hire a companion at the Lantern, the town's tavern: a warrior to hold the line, an acolyte to heal you, or a sorcerer to burn what you point at, as bold or as careful as you like. It follows you everywhere and fights what you fight, and a Hunter can keep its pet besides.
Treasure
Crates and locked chests turn up beyond the town, and don't stay in one place. A Rogue can pick the lock, and a smith can make the key.
The Whistling Green
A sparring ground where nobody dies. Ring the gong for a sparring partner near your level, or call another player out to a duel.