Guide
Your hero
Stats, health and mana, the eighteen skills, how they rise and what pace does.
Stats: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence
- Every character has three stats: Strength (STR), Dexterity (DEX) and Intelligence (INT).
- No stat can go above 100, and the three together can't go above 250.
- Stats only rise through skill use. Each time a skill goes up, there is a 33% chance that one of the stats linked to that skill also goes up by 1. If the skill has two linked stats, one of them is picked at random.
- Once a stat is at 100, or your total is at 250, stat gains stop. The game has no way to lower a stat.
What the stats do:
| Stat | Effect |
|---|---|
| STR | Max health is 40 + 1.5 × STR (rounded down). Health regenerates faster. Melee damage gets +STR/400 (+25% at 100). You can carry 1.5 more stones per point. |
| DEX | Swing delay is 0.78 − 0.0032 × DEX seconds, never below 0.42 s. Chance to dodge a hit is DEX/1000 (10% at 100). Bandages are quicker and more reliable, and heal more. |
| INT | Max mana is 10 + 2 × INT. Mana comes back faster. Spells hit harder by +INT/250 (+40% at 100). |
Health and mana
- Health regen: 1 HP every (8 − STR/20) seconds, never faster than 1 HP per 2 s. If you haven't been hurt for 8 seconds, it runs 3× faster.
- Mana regen: slow unless you meditate. Out of a trance, 1 mana every (3.6 − INT/120) seconds. While meditating, that interval is divided by (1.5 + Meditation/20), never faster than 1 per 0.4 s: about 6.5× at Meditation 100. Meditation from gear counts. You never meditate on your own; see Targeting and abilities.
Starting archetypes
The archetype you pick only sets your starting skills, stats, spells and kit. Any character can learn every skill by using it.
| Archetype | Stats (STR/DEX/INT) | Starting skills | Gold |
|---|---|---|---|
| Warrior | 50/35/15 | Swordsmanship 35, Tactics 30, Parrying 25, Healing 20, Lumberjacking 10 | 60 |
| Mage | 25/25/50 | Magery 40, Meditation 30, Foraging 20, Alchemy 15, Swordsmanship 10 | 60 |
| Ranger | 35/50/15 | Archery 40, Tactics 25, Lumberjacking 15, Carpentry 15, Animal Taming 15, Healing 10 | 60 |
| Artisan | 50/25/25 | Mining 35, Smelting 35, Blacksmithing 35, Lumberjacking 20, Carpentry 15, Swordsmanship 15 | 150 |
- Every character starts with a Hatchet, a Pickaxe and a Fishing Pole equipped, and knows the spell Mend.
- Mages also know Spark, Weaken and Frost Bolt.
- Everyone who isn't a Mage gets 4 Ashroot and 4 Moonpetal, the reagents for Mend.
The 18 skills
| Group | Skill | Linked stats | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Combat | Swordsmanship | STR, DEX | Hit chance with blades. |
| Combat | Archery | DEX | Hit chance with bows, which shoot from range. Each shot uses one arrow. |
| Combat | Tactics | STR | Bonus damage with all weapons: +Tactics/200 (+50% at 100). |
| Combat | Parrying | DEX, STR | Needs a shield. Chance to block is 5% + 0.35% per point (40% at 100). A blocked hit does only 25% of its damage. |
| Combat | Healing | INT, DEX | Bandages. Success is 60% + Healing/250 + DEX/500, capped at 98%. A bandage heals 4–9 + 0.4 × Healing + DEX/20. At Healing 50 it also cures poison. |
| Magic | Magery | INT | Spell success, and access to higher spell circles. Every point past a spell's requirement adds 1/150 to its power. |
| Magic | Meditation | INT | Use Meditate and hold still to win mana back far faster (see above). |
| Survival | Hiding | DEX | Use Hide to slip from sight: monsters lose you until you move or act. Harder with monsters close by. |
| Survival | Animal Taming | INT, STR | Use Tame on a wild animal (never a monster) to make it a pet that follows and fights for you. |
| Gathering | Mining | STR | Ore veins, coal and stone. Gems turn up as rare finds. |
| Gathering | Lumberjacking | STR, DEX | Trees. Resin, amber and heartwood turn up as rare finds. |
| Gathering | Foraging | DEX, INT | Herbs, reagents, plants, oyster beds and similar. Needs no tool. |
| Gathering | Fishing | DEX | Fish, pearls, bottles and sunken treasure. |
| Crafting | Smelting | STR, INT | Ore and coal into ingots at a forge. Melts metal gear back down. A Grandmaster's failed smelt never loses the ore. |
| Crafting | Blacksmithing | STR | Metal weapons, armor and tools. |
| Crafting | Carpentry | STR, DEX | Bows, arrows and shields. |
| Crafting | Tailoring | DEX | Leather, cloth armor, bags and bandages. |
| Crafting | Alchemy | INT | Potions. The potions you use heal, restore, burn and poison +Alchemy/200 more, and their statuses last +Alchemy/100 longer. At Grandmaster, nothing you brew is plain. |
| Crafting | Cooking | INT | Meals. |
Bandages have a cooldown of 6 − DEX/40 seconds, never shorter than 2.5 s.
Skill caps
- Training takes each skill to 100 (Grand Master) at most.
- Gear bonuses and dusted cloth add on top: up to 180, or 200 in Ascendant cloth.
- There is no cap on the total of all skills. The skills screen shows the total, but nothing limits it.
Titles and character level
- Skill titles: Untrained (below 10), Novice (10), Apprentice (30), Journeyman (50), Expert (70), Adept (80), Master (90), Grandmaster (100), and with dusted cloth Elder (125), Exalted (150), Mythic (175) and Ascendant (200).
- Reaching 30, 50, 70, 80, 90 or 100 shows a banner.
- Your title is the title of your best skill plus that skill's noun, for example "Journeyman Miner". Below 10 in every skill, you are a "Wanderer".
- Character level comes from your three best base skills among the Combat and Magic skills: level = 1 + (sum of the three − 75) ÷ 3.8, rounded down, never below 1. A new character is about level 1–4. Three Grandmaster skills make level 60.
- Character level decides which quests you're offered, which guardians can wake, and when a zone is called "far beyond you" (its minimum level is more than 6 above yours).
How skills rise
Skills only rise when you use them. Each use gives a chance to gain:
- The activity sets a base chance (see the list below).
- The base chance is multiplied by the world's pace and by a difficulty factor that drops as your skill climbs:
max(0.05, 1 − 0.85 × (skill/100)^1.5). The factor is about 1.0 at 0, 0.70 at 50, 0.39 at 80, 0.27 at 90 and 0.15 just below 100. - Being Blessed multiplies the chance by 1.5.
- The final chance can never be higher than 95%.
When a gain happens, the skill rises by an amount that depends on where it is now:
| Current skill | Gain per success |
|---|---|
| below 20 | +0.5 |
| 20–39.9 | +0.3 |
| 40–59.9 | +0.2 |
| 60–79.9 | +0.1 |
| 80 and up | +0.05 |
Base chances by activity:
- Gathering, fishing, crafting and spellcasting: 0.5 × (1 − your success chance) + 0.08. Tasks you often fail teach the most. A task stops teaching once your base skill reaches its maximum skill.
- Weapon attacks: 0.3 × clamp((difficulty + 35 − skill) / 25, 0, 1). Difficulty is the creature's combat rating: level × 1.2, plus 8 for a champion, 10 for a boss and 14 for a legend. Your weapon skill gets the full chance on every swing or shot, hit or miss. Tactics gets 80% of it.
- Parrying: checked each time a creature attacks you while you hold a shield, at 80% of the attack formula.
- Healing: each bandage gives a chance of 0.45 × (1 − base/110), at least 5%.
- Meditation: each point of mana regained while meditating gives a chance of 0.12 × (1 − base/110), at least 2%. Trying to meditate also gives half the practice chance.
- Hiding and Animal Taming: the practice formula, using your chance of success on that try (taming stops teaching once you are 40 points past the animal's requirement).
- Salvage: a flat 12% for the recipe's skill.
- Repair: a flat 15% for the recipe's skill.
World pace
A world's pace is chosen when the world is made and can't be changed later. It multiplies every skill-gain chance. The faster paces also make the world harder.
| Pace | Gain multiplier | About how long to Grandmaster in one skill | Monsters | Crafting materials | Loot |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Swift | ×3.55 | 1 hour | ×1.6 | ×1.75 | ×1.5 |
| Brisk | ×0.70 | 5 hours | ×1.3 | ×1.35 | ×1.25 |
| Standard | ×0.35 | 10 hours | ×1 | ×1 | ×1 |
| Patient | ×0.117 | 30 hours | ×1 | ×1 | ×1 |
| Legendary | ×0.07 | 50 hours | ×1 | ×1 | ×1 |
The hour estimates assume focused practice at the edge of your ability.
Hit chance and the real-world floor
All skill checks use one curve:
- At the task's requirement you have a 20% chance.
- The chance rises in a straight line to its top at the task's maximum skill.
- Below the requirement, the chance drops to 10%, then falls to 1% at 20 points under.
For weapon attacks, the requirement is the creature's combat rating and the top is 95% at 30 points above it. Outside the training grounds, every requirement is at least 10.
Training grounds
- The Training Grounds door is in Havenbrook, west of the gate. Inside is a walled yard with:
- 3 training dummies and 3 sparring rats
- 2 each of a practice post (axe), a practice rock (pickaxe), a practice shrub (foraging) and a practice pool (rod)
- a practice circle for spellcasting
- Training cap: 10. Inside the grounds, and on any practice content, skills rise to 10 and no further. When you hit the cap, the game tells you once per skill to go out into the world.
- Dummies and rats drop nothing, and their blows never take you below 1 HP. When one is knocked down, it gets back up at its spot about 6 seconds later.
- Practice spots never run out and hide no rare finds. Practice recipes in the CRAFT tab turn practice junk into more junk. Pace doesn't make them cost more.
- The practice circle supplies your reagents.