How to play
How a run works
The game has two modes: the safety of town, and the road, where you can die. This page covers the road, since town doesn't need a guide.
Town and the road
In town you're safe. You can change gear and abilities, gather, craft, eat, trade, take bounties and spend Echoes. Nothing in town can kill you.
On an expedition you're committed. Town actions are locked until the expedition ends, and it ends in one of three ways:
- you finish it (the last patrol step, or beating a gate boss),
- you retreat from a camp, or
- you die.
An expedition is saved on the server. Stop between any two steps and pick it up hours later, in Discord or on the web.
Stamina
Every step onto a node costs 5 stamina, whatever the node holds, camps included. If you don't have enough, the game tells you when you will. Fights, events and camp choices on a node you've already paid for are free. The Stamina page has the cap, regeneration and everything else that costs it.
Two kinds of expedition
Patrol
- A loop of 3 steps around your current city, one after the other.
- Each step is a fight against the city's normal enemies, or, 30% of the time, an event.
- No elites, no boss. It's where you farm XP and materials. It is low risk, not no risk: you can still die.
- Finish the last step and everything you carried is banked.
Gate expedition
- A branching route map to the next city: 6 to 10 steps, then the boss.
- You see the whole map from the start. Each step you pick one of the nodes connected to where you are, so you choose how much risk to take.
- The first step is always a fight. Around the middle there's a treasure and a camp.
- The step before the boss is always a camp.
- Beat the gate boss and you arrive in the next city. Your loot is banked and your checkpoint moves there.
At the edge of the map, where the next city isn't open yet, you can still take the gate expedition and fight the boss. Beating it counts like any gate boss (the Echoes, and the class it unlocks), but the road beyond isn't open, so you head back into the city you left with your loot banked. Each life can do this once; after that the game says the road isn't open yet.
Both kinds can be run alone or with friends. See Parties.
The route map
| Node | What's there |
|---|---|
| Combat | A fight against 1 to 3 of the city's enemies. Winning pays XP, gold and a loot roll. |
| Elite | A tougher fight, usually one elite enemy, with better loot. Elites appear from step 3 on. |
| Event | A short scene with a few choices. The outcome is hidden until you choose. |
| Camp | A safe fire. Heals 30% of your max HP and lets you change abilities, then you push on or retreat. |
| Treasure | A chest. Rolls loot from the elite table, no fight needed. |
| Boss | The city's gate boss, at the end of every gate expedition. |
Ambushes. Stepping onto an event, camp or treasure node has a 5% chance of an ambush first. Deal with it, and the node is still there afterwards.
Events can pay out gold, items, XP or healing, or cost you gold, HP or a curse, or start a fight. A choice can even kill you outright, but only a choice you made: the risky ones hint at it, if you read them carefully. Players' finds are on the Events page.
Ghosts. From the second city on, a character who dies on an expedition haunts that server's expeditions in the same city. A combat or elite node has a 15% chance to hold one instead, if the city has any. Beat a ghost and you get one of its items, a rarity lower, with a 50% chance of a curse on the side.
HP, loot and banking
- You leave town at full HP. On the road, HP carries from one fight to the next.
- Camps are the only reliable healing on the road, so plan your route through them.
- XP counts the moment you win a fight. Gold and items you find are carried: they're only yours once banked.
- Carried loot is banked when you finish a patrol, retreat from a camp, or reach the next city.
- If you die, everything you carried is lost, along with everything else.
Camps and retreating
A camp heals you, then asks: Continue or Retreat to town. It's also the one place on the road where you can change your abilities. Retreat is the safe way out. You go back to the city you started from and bank everything you carried. The expedition is over, so the next attempt starts from a fresh map.
Fleeing
Anywhere else, the only way out of a bad fight is to flee. It's a roll, not a sure thing; Combat basics explains the odds. If it works, you drop 10% of the gold you carry and fall back one step down the road. You'll pay stamina again to move on. You can never flee from a boss.
Checkpoints
Your checkpoint is the city you're based in. Patrols, gate expeditions, /fight and gathering all happen around it. Beating a gate boss moves your checkpoint to the next city for the rest of that life.
Dying sends the next life back to Ashsquare. That is also where every life begins. See Life, death and heirs for what comes with you.