How it works

Everything you need to know before you start, and most of what you need after.

Your first hour

You make a character, pick one of 6 classes, and arrive in a town. Towns are safe. Walk out of one and you are in the world proper.

• You start dressed — something in every gear slot, though none of it is good.
• Click a creature to select it, click again to attack. Nothing attacks you for walking past it.
• Auto abilities fire once a fight is actually happening, and stop when it ends. They never start one.
• Gold is picked up by walking over it. Gear is picked up for you too, and whatever beats what you are wearing goes in the bag first.

Levelling

The cap is 120. Early levels arrive quickly while the later journey asks progressively more of you; a committed first character takes roughly two weeks at normal experience. Past the cap, experience becomes renown, which buys recognition rather than power.

Gear

There are 12 slots and 249 pieces of equipment to put in them. A piece is worth more the deeper you find it, and worth more every level rather than in jumps — there is no dead stretch where nothing you find is an improvement.

Equipment wears out as you use it and can be repaired in town. A weapon at zero durability stops helping, which is usually noticed at the worst moment.

Fighting

Combat is real time. Range matters, line of sight matters, and so does what is standing between you and the thing you are aiming at. Monsters that lose you go home rather than following you across a zone.

Bosses are the exception to nothing except aggression: they never start a fight, at any level. If you have not swung at one, it is not interested.

Companions

You can raise critters, send them out on their own, breed them and take one along as a companion. A fainted companion can be revived without leaving the fight.

Dying

You lose time, not your things. There is a short wait and then you are back at a camp. Out of combat your health comes back on its own, quickly enough that the game is not a series of pauses.

Playing with other people

It is a shared world: other players are really there, in the same zone, at the same time. There are parties, guilds, trading, an arena and warbands. PvP is something you switch on, not something that happens to you.

After level 120

Ascendant Hall becomes the endgame ledger. Choose solo or group Breach difficulties, hunt rotating named rares and daily Incursions, compete on weekly adventurer, critter and guild boards, and spend marks on visible rewards. These systems expand records, collections and builds without an endless stat treadmill.