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Queue a fight, a harvest or a job at the forge, and it carries on while you are away. Embershard is a free, minimalist, text-based MMORPG in your browser: one persistent world, one chat room for all of it, and an economy the players run.
Every swing is rolled and written down, round by round, whether you are watching or not. When you come back, the experience and the loot are already yours.
Install it on a phone or a desktop, and it can tell you when your queue runs out, a contract is done or something of yours sells.
Not ready? Walk the map or look through everything in the game. Every place, item and drop rate is public, and none of it needs an account.
Hallowe'en is on until 31 October: anything you fight or gather may turn up a carved turnip to keep.
How it plays
The grind is the game
Combat, three gathering skills and five trades, each one to 99, on a curve where level 92 is halfway there. Progress is long on purpose, and it shows: profiles and leaderboards are public.
One conversation, the whole world over
Everybody talks in one room, wherever they are standing, and every line says where it was said. Being in the world means being in a conversation, not watching a progress bar alone.
An economy players run
Mine, farm and cut wood, carry it to the one city that knows the trade, and sell what you make at the single auction house. Break down what you outgrow to enchant what you keep, and brew elixirs for the hard fights. No shop sells you power.
Settle it in the arena
Stand in the Tiltyard, name your gear and a wager, and challenge anyone there. Neither of you sees the other's kit until the first swing. The winner takes the pot, and whoever runs is written down as having fled.
Bosses worth boasting about
15 bosses, from combat 10 to 99, most of them in a room of their own. Every one keeps a pet that might follow you home, and a handful of feats that ask you to kill it the hard way, counted on the leaderboards.
Work, and a trail to follow
Every tavern posts work: kill so many of something, or bring in a load of ore or timber, and be paid for it. Fights turn up notes that lead you from place to place, to a casket of coins and a find to keep.
What is in it
- 37
- zones, and 18 more indoors and underground
- 109
- monsters, 15 of them bosses
- 497
- items, and 151 recipes to make them
- 44
- places to mine, farm and cut
- 15
- pets, one kept by every boss
- 86
- feats to earn against them
All of it is in the reference, down to exact drop chances and the damage formula.
Your first 15 minutes
You wake on Ashfell Road with a hundred coins, three potions, and a club and a cuirass somebody else dropped. Goblins work the length of it, and there is copper in the ground. Dig some ore, cut an ash log in Greenglade next door, and pay the forge at Ironspire ten coins for a copper sword, which hits harder than the club. Then go back for the goblins.
That is the whole game in miniature: gather, make, fight, then do it somewhere harder. What you are handed gets you started; what you make gets you further. When you want coin, take work off a tavern board.
Where it is up to
Embershard is built in the open by one person. There is content all the way to level 99 and more arriving every week. Numbers get re-tuned as people play, nothing is ever wiped, and every change is written up in the news.
Latest: How to play, October 17, 2026.
There is a goblin on Ashfell Road with your name on it.