How to play

You have one character and nine skills, each from 1 to 99. Everything you do is a task: dig some ore, forge a sword, fight a goblin. A task takes time, carries on while the tab is shut, and gives experience in the skill it uses. You can queue several in a row.

The loop is simple: gather materials, craft them into gear, then wear the gear and fight. Your character has no stats of its own; how hard you hit and how much you can take come from what you wear. Better gear lets you fight stronger monsters, and fighting raises your combat level, which opens new places to go.

Gathering is mining, farming and woodcutting, done out in the zones wherever there is something to dig, pick or fell.

Crafting happens at a station in town, and each trade has its own: blacksmithing makes melee gear in Ironspire, bowyery makes ranged gear in Silvenwood, and artificing makes magic gear in Aldenfield. Pick a style and stick with it to start; you can always learn the others.

Fighting is choosing a monster where you stand. Melee beats ranged, ranged beats magic, and magic beats melee, so what you wear matters against what you face. If you die, you wake at your tavern with one hit point. How combat works has the detail.

Open the Travel tab and click a place on the map to walk there. Every road takes 15 seconds. Some places need a combat level to enter, and your first tavern is Lucerna. How travel works has the rest.

Here is where you are: its monsters, what can be gathered, and its buildings. Character is what you carry and wear, your skills, the ledger of everything you have found, and your feats. Travel is the map. More is your account, the leaderboards, this reference and the news. Chat is one room for the whole world.

You heal slowly on your own between fights. To heal faster, buy bandages from a vendor and use them out of a fight, and carry potions, which you drink during one. Vendors in the first towns sell the weakest potion.

Better potions and elixirs are brewed with alchemy, at the station in Lastlight, which opens at combat 20.

Gear you no longer need can be broken down, anywhere, into dust, essence or shards. Those are spent enchanting the gear you wear to make it stronger, at the enchanting station in Candlemere. Everything you can enchant.

Contracts: every tavern posts work, to kill so many of a monster or to deliver a stack of materials, for coins. How contracts work.

The auction house in Lucerna is where players buy and sell with each other. Vendors buy anything you no longer want. How trading works.

The arena at The Tiltyard is where you duel other players. How duels work.

Treasure trails start from a note found while fighting, and feats are hard things done to a boss. How trails work and how feats work.