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Getting started

You arrive at the edge of Aldhearth, the one real city of the First Kingdom. Past its walls the Wane unmakes the land and grows it back wrong, and the Grown come out of it. The city keeps you: whenever you fall, you wake up here again.

Your first night

Play now on the sign-in card starts you at once, as a guest: a name of your own, no password to think of. Pick one of four ready wanderers (one for each origin) and go, or Customise your look first. You can save your wanderer later, from the game menu (Esc) or when you log out: choose a password, and a new name if you like, and you can play it from any browser.

The night is not over when you arrive: the Grown are at the edge of town, and you have a stone sword in hand. The tutorial is eight steps, each with experience and a reward:

1. Defend the fire. Walk east and strike down the three Grown at the edge of town. Their kills and the reward make level 2.
2. Your first skill. Spend your skill point in the skill tree (P).
3. Timber. Chop a tree outside town with your pickaxe.
4. A pick that cuts stone. Make sticks in the crafting window (C), dig 3 stone, and make a Stone pickaxe at a Workbench.
5. Copper and fire. Dig down for copper and smelt two bars in a Furnace: ore on top, wood below.
6. A better blade. At the anvil beside the Workbench, open Crafting's Anvil tab, make a copper sword (2 copper bars and a stick) and hold it.
7. Behind the walls. Go through Aldhearth's gate and find Oswin at the Warden House, north of the plaza: he gives you a map to a Burrow. An arrow shows the way.
8. The Burrow. Read the map and beat what waits at the bottom of your first dungeon. The first keeper you beat always drops a Burrow-fang for you: a Rare blade with a wave of fire.

On a computer, Your first night on the right lists the steps, what each pays, and what waits later. On a phone the tutorial is one line at the top, in the words of the buttons, and the button to tap glows; tap the line to see all the steps. The story Oswin tells of the Binding is in the Journal (J) as The story so far.

Every level up to 10 shows what it brought: a skill point to spend, more life, what opened (building outside the walls at level 3, the Meadow strider at 10). After the tutorial, Oswin has work for you: the tracker says so, and an arrow leads to him.

Skipped it? Skip hides the card and offers Undo. Come back to it any time: Continue the tutorial is in the game menu (Esc), in the Journal (J, with the steps you have done ticked) and in Settings. It picks up at the first step you have not done, and passes over what you plainly have done already: each step still pays its reward once, and never twice. Settings also has Start the tutorial over. Building is allowed by how far the tutorial ever got, so going back to an early step does not take it away.

The Night Raid

Every twenty minutes (at ten past, half past and ten to the hour, Aldhearth time) the Grown come at Aldhearth's east edge in three waves, the last led by a Night captain. It is for wanderers of level 15 and under: they are told when it comes, score points for each Grown driven off, and get experience at the end, with an Event Chest the first time each day. See Events. When it begins, and when you set out for the Burrow, the game names others who started tonight near you: Invite asks them to your group.

The daily chest

Once each day (Aldhearth time) you can open the next of seven chests: 80 gold, an Ash dye, a Jewel of Ascent, 120 gold, a wild egg, 160 gold, and on the seventh, the Meadow strider. Miss a day and the chest waits: it never goes back to day 1. A small button under the events line says when today's is ready.

Before you go

Log out in the game menu shows what the night brought (levels, steps or tales, gold) and what goes on while you are away: rest where you stand, furnaces still smelting, labour, and the next event for you, at your own clock's time.

What to do next

• Level up. Kills give experience; a skill point comes every second level. The experience bar at the bottom shows how far you are. Monsters far below your level give almost nothing, so move outward as you grow: see regions and their levels. Ones a little above you pay a bonus, but one far above you pays no more than one six levels above you would: the experience always depends on your own level (each reborn counts as 20 levels more for this).
• Keep them off you. Two stone, planks and a stick make a Stone cudgel by hand, in any shape: as hard as the stone sword, and every Grown it strikes is thrown back. Later a Ram’s horn gives any weapon the same (see Crafting).
• Gear up. Copper, then iron, then mythril. Every anvil can upgrade any piece of gear (weapons, tools, armour, rings, amulets, wings) to +6 with Jewels of Ascent. From +7 on, and to make wings, runes and mythril gear, you need the Master Forge in Aldhearth: see crafting and upgrading.
• Colour your wings. Wings are earned, and their colour comes from wing dyes: pale and ash grey at any Trade Post, the others from the Grown and chests, the rarer colours only where it is dangerous. Select a dye in your bag and press Dye your wings (or hold it and right click); pale dye washes a colour back out. See the wing dyes.
• Bank your gold. From level 10 a fall costs a tenth of the gold you carry (before that, nothing). Keep the rest in your vault in Aldhearth (all your characters share it).
• More characters. An account can have four. Make another from the character screen (Settings, Change character), each with a name of its own; they share the vault.
• Rest. Log out inside a town’s walls and you come back rested: double experience from kills until the bonus is used up.
• Play together. Invite people to a group (G), found or join a guild (L), trade with other players: see guilds and groups and trading.
• Go up and down. Below the ground are grottos, geodes, old mines and boss lairs. Above the world is the Skyreach.
• Meet Brainrott. Just inside Aldhearth's gate, Brainrott, Thinker of Thoughts, has three short tales for new players: a Bug net and a butterfly, a fossil and some apples, and a journey. See Brainrott and Napoleon.
• Go somewhere else. A Wayward stone (a Workbench: 6 stone, 1 crystal, 3 essence) sends you to a random spot on the open land you have earned, far from towns and Grown: a quick way to see more of Nyrath.
• Take the Wild Road. From level 6 or so, the road gate on Port Tidewrack's street leads out to the Burrows, the first of seven hunting grounds joined end to end by mountain passes: The Wild Road.

Good to know

• Esc opens the game menu (settings, keys, help, the wiki, log out), and closes whatever is open, one thing at a time. See Controls.
• Too much, or too little, to look at? Settings (O) > Graphics > Effects sets how much the game moves and shines, from Off to High; a phone starts on Low. See Effects and animation.
• Two hotbars: 1 to 9, and Shift+1 to 9 for the one over it. Double click a thing in your bag to put it in the slot you have picked.
• No fliers near home. In the meadows round Aldhearth no Grown that flies is born: learn to fight on the ground. Farther out, mind the sky.
• No Apexes near home either. The Grown grow as they eat: first into a bigger Grown form, then into an Apex, with five times the life and three times the blow of a young one. In the meadows round Aldhearth they stop at the Grown form. Anywhere, a Grown only grows while someone near it is playing, so a player standing away from the keys doesn't leave a field of Apexes behind.
• Away pays nothing. When nobody has touched the game (keys, mouse, touch or a controller) for 2 minutes, you are away, and the Grown that fall to you then, to your pet, your thorns or a blow given back, pay nothing: no gold, no experience, no spoils, and your pet brings you nothing. You are told when it starts, and everything pays again the moment you are back.
• The land heals over. A bare hole in the top three rows of the open land grows back after 5 minutes, so nobody falls into an old shaft. Going down for a while? A ladder at the top keeps your way open. See the healing skin.
• Plant what you chop. Leaves and trees you chop sometimes drop a sapling: plant it on grass or dirt with room above, and in about 8 minutes it is a tree again. Bare dirt next to grass grows grass by itself. See Trees and grass.
• Playing from far away? The game forgives a slow connection: when the server has to put you back, it does it once and smoothly, your hits and arrows show the moment you swing, and a swing at a fleeing Grown lands where you saw it. When the line or the server hiccups, the Grown and the other players walk on and slide back into place instead of freezing; a Grown coming into view fades in at the edge of the screen instead of popping up; and loot that reaches you goes into your bag at once. Your ping is the small number on the minimap.

Collections that pay for ever

Finish part of a collection and a small bonus stays with you. The character window (I) lists them under Collections:

Levels and reborn

A level-up gathers light round you, bursts and raises a column, and the banner says your new level:

The highest level is 150. At 150, Oswin in Aldhearth can rekindle you anew: you go back to level 1 and keep your gear, bag and gold, and you come back stronger for good, with a title and a glow. There are sixty ranks of it, each asking more than level 150: work from the rifts, dungeons, events, the deep and the rest of the game (see Reborn: the long climb). Or stay at 150: from there your experience fills Mastery, levels without end, each a point for a small bonus of your choosing, and you keep your Mastery if you rekindle later. See Mastery.