ARENIA

Arenia is a world that runs whether or not anyone is watching: about a hundred million named people living, working, marrying, fighting and dying in realms that rise and fall. The client lets a few people step into it as characters of their own. Your character is one of those people. The world doesn't wait for you, and it doesn't single you out: whatever can happen to anyone can happen to you. The one difference is that the world never makes your choices for you.

Town life is told in words and pictures: you go to a place, see who is there, talk to them, and choose what to do. Fights are played on a turn-based battle map.

Contents

1. Getting started
2. Your characters
3. The town
4. Your character sheet: the System window
5. Doing things: deeds
6. Buying and selling
7. Crafts
8. Food, drink and feasts
9. Magic, healing and rest
10. Growing stronger
11. Travel
12. The quest board
13. Fighting: the battle map
14. Playing together
15. The world comes to you: offers
16. Time, being away, and death
17. Every key, on one page
18. Tips
19. Rough edges

1. Getting started

What you need

• A Windows PC (64-bit).
• The client. Install it from the server: the sign-in page has "Get the game client for Windows" (or go to /client/ on the server, e.g. http://192.168.254.235:5080/client/). Run Arenia-Install.exe once: it asks where to put the game (your own AppData folder unless you pick another; it must be a folder you can write to, so not Program Files), installs it (no admin rights, no .NET to install), puts Arenia on the desktop and makes an Arenia folder in the Start menu: the game, this guide (as a PDF), and Uninstall Arenia (it asks first; your characters live on the server and are not touched). Windows Settings, Apps, Arenia, Uninstall works too. (The page also has a quick installer that asks nothing.) Windows may warn that it protected your PC, since the installer is not signed: More info, then Run anyway.
• Updates come by themselves: each time the client starts it asks the server for a newer version; if there is one it says "Downloading version …", then restarts into it before you sign in. If the server says your client is older while you play, the new version downloads quietly and goes in when you close the game. The version is shown at the bottom left of the sign-in screen.
• Or build it yourself from the repository: open Arenia.slnx in Visual Studio and build Arenia.Client (NuGet brings in Raylib-cs, the graphics library, and Velopack, the updater). A client built this way does not update itself ("a build, not installed"). If a picture is missing from art, the thing it belongs to is drawn in plain colour; nothing breaks.
• An account on the server. Accounts are made by invitation: ask the world's keeper (the admin) for an invite code. The admin makes codes on the viewer's Accounts page (/accounts.html).

The window opens at 1280×800. You can resize it, down to 960×600.

This guide is in the game. The Player's Guide (F1) button on the sign-in screen opens it in your web browser, as a page with the sections down the side; so do F1 on every screen but the town's (in town F1 is the key list, which has an Open the Player's Guide button), and the Menu (Esc) while you play. The Start menu's Arenia folder has it as a PDF to print or keep.

Signing in

The first screen reads ARENIA — a living world.

• Register (click it; Enter does not register) makes the account and signs you in.
• Log in (or Enter) signs you in afterwards.
• Tab moves between the fields.
• If your account uses two-factor sign-in, a box for the 6-digit code from your authenticator app appears after the password. Type the code (a recovery code also works) and press Log in again. Six wrong tries drops the connection.
• The client remembers the server and your login name (in %APPDATA%\Arenia\client.json), never your password.
• Your account also signs you in to the web viewer, where you can watch the whole world. An account with only the viewer role can watch but not play.

If the connection drops at any point, you are returned to this screen with the reason in red. Your character is safe: the world and everything in it is saved on the server, all the time. There is no save key.

2. Your characters

The character list

Your characters lists everyone you play: name, people, level and class, and where they are now ("in Rinshan", "on the road to Vel Amar", "out on a quest", "held by …"). Click a living character (Play ›) to step into the world.

• You may have four living characters per account.
• A dead character stays on the list, greyed, as "(gone)".
• Your children, grown: when one of your characters has a child who has grown up, the child appears here with Take up ›. Taking them up makes them a character of yours.
• New character starts a newcomer; Log out goes back to the sign-in screen.
• A character can be played from only one client at a time.

Making a newcomer

Every new character arrives the same way: young, untried, level 1, with a few silver, signing on with the Adventurers' Guild at Iron rank in a city with a guild hall. There are three steps.

1. A newcomer arrives. - Name: a given name (required) and a family name (optional). Tab moves between them. - People: your race. Use ‹ › to look through them. Each shows its leanings (stat modifiers, such as "STR +1, INT -1") and how long its people live. - Sex: Female or Male. - Arrive in: pick your starting city from the list on the right (scroll with the wheel). Each line gives the kind of place, its realm, its size, its land and its climate. Cities with an Adventurers' Guild hall in realms that are not evil are offered (smaller places only if the world has too few). - Next: your life.

2. Before the System. The System asks about the life you lived before you came to the guild: about eighteen questions on your people, schooling, apprenticeship, childhood, fears, faith, first weapon, friends, temperament and more. Click an answer or press its number (1–9). Back goes back a question. Let the System decide answers the rest at random. Your answers become your history, and they add stat points where your life leaned.

3. Class selection. The System offers five classes. Each card shows its name (coloured by rarity), its rarity, role and element, what it grows, and the abilities it draws on. Rarity colours run Common (white), Uncommon (green), Rare (blue), Epic (purple), Legendary (orange). Your life nudges the odds, but your luck is fixed for the character: Answer again changes which classes you are offered, not how lucky the roll is. Pick a card (click, or 1–5 on the main row or the keypad) and press Become a … (or Enter). The choice is permanent.

You start with plain gear, a few healing draughts, a few days' bread, a couple of spells if your class casts, and a room at the inn nearest the market.

3. The town

The town screen is where you spend most of your time.

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Town · Kind of Realm                    Name · Lv N · purse · date   │  top bar
├──┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│▣ │                                                                   │
│▣ │               the picture of where you are                        │  [ PARTY ] box
│▣ │                                                                   │  top right
│▣ │   caption: place · district            time of day · season       │
│  ├───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│? │   the story (scroll with the wheel)                               │
│≡ ├───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  │ Choose·K  Trade·E  Quest board·B  Travel·J  People here·P  Say…   │  action bar
└──┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
 rail: Places (G), Map (M), You (C), Town (T), Keys (F1), Menu (Esc)

• The picture shows where you are, lit by the time of day. Townspeople stand at the doors of where they work; other players are blue, you are gold.
• The story under the picture is the log of everything that happens to you: what people say, what you do, news reaching the town. Scroll back with the mouse wheel.
• The action bar shows what you can do here and now. Each button appears only where it applies: Choose · K, Trade · E, Quest board · B, Travel · J, Healers, Learn magic, Rest · R, People here · P (with "· N to do" when the place has deeds), and the chat box.
• The rail on the left opens the drawers and windows. Hover an icon for its name and key.

Panels slide in from the right. Esc closes the top one; with nothing open, Esc opens the Menu (Back to the game, Leave (characters), Quit the game).

Getting around

Moving is instant. Choose where to go, and you are there.

• Places (G or Tab) opens a parchment map of the town and its districts. You are the gold dot; other players are blue. Hover a building for its name, click it to go there. Under the map, the districts open out into their places. A gold dot marks places that trade. The numbers on the right are the townspeople there (grey) and players there (blue).
• Map (M) shows the same map large. Click a place to go there.

Towns are laid out in quarters around the market: temples to the north-east, guilds to the north-west, the nobles (and a capital's keep) to the north, the watch and the gates to the south-west, workshops to the south-east, docks on the water, and homes in the lanes. A town is the same for everyone and on every visit.

When you arrive somewhere, the story tells you where you are, who is there, and what you can do there.

People and talking

People here (P) lists the place's description, its buttons (trade, board, travel, healers, learn, rest), its deeds (things you can do here; see §5), the townspeople present, and any players present.

Click a townsperson to talk. Their mood shows at the top right: warm, plain, curt or haughty. Ask about a topic with a click or a number key:

Everything people say comes from the world's own record of them; only the wording is made up. Asking twice in a day gets the same answer. People keep their secrets: nobody will tell you about a curse, a pact, a plot or a spy, and a thief passes for a labourer.

Do something… (D) opens the deeds you can do to that person (§5). Click another player under "Players here" for the deeds between players, including Ask them into your party.

Chat

Press Enter (or click the chat box) and type. Enter sends your words to every player in the same town; Esc cancels. Chat also takes a few commands: /invite Name, /join (or /accept), /no, /leave (see §14).

The town (T)

Town (T) shows facts about the town, the prices at the market, and the talk of the town: the news that has reached it, with when and how it came (a rider, the crown's relay, the guild…).

4. Your character sheet: the System window

C opens the System window. I opens it at your equipment. Inside, 1–7 or Tab switch tabs, and Esc, C or I close it. While it is open, it takes every key.

Free points. Each level brings free points instead of fixed stats. On the Status tab, click + beside an attribute to place one (hold Shift to place five).

Casting outside a fight. Press Cast on a spell. A spell on yourself happens at once. Otherwise pick a target: yourself, a player here, or a townsperson here. A movement spell opens the town map so you can click where to go. A spell or ability is ready again after about 20 seconds (a restore on yourself, ten minutes); damage spells are for fights.

5. Doing things: deeds

Almost everything you do in the world beyond talking, trading and fighting is a deed: work, worship, crime, courtship, crafts, buying a house, standing for a throne. Deeds belong to places (in the People here / This place (P) panel) and to people (Do something… (D) while talking to them).

How the deed list works:

• A deed you can't do now is greyed, with why in red underneath.
• A deed with a › has choices: click it to open them out. Hover a choice for its full details: what it costs, what it needs, what it does, and why you can't take it, if you can't.
• A few deeds ask for your own words (naming a relic you made, for instance): type them and press Write it.
• The result goes into the story.

The world decides who may do what by the same rules it uses for everyone. If a deed says you can't, the reason is the world's reason.

What you'll find where

6. Buying and selling

Trade (E) opens the shop's panel wherever the place trades (a gold dot in Places marks them).

• On the shelf this week: gear, 6–12 pieces, the same for everyone that week. Each shows its price and its slot, level and bonuses. A red level means you can't wear it yet. Buy.
• Yours to sell: gear from your bag the shop will take, with what they'd pay. Sell.
• Goods: each shows its unit and weight, what they sell at and buy at, how much is in stock, and how much you have, with Buy 1 · Buy 5 · Sell 1 · Sell all. Hover a draught or a dish for what it does.
• At the bottom: your purse and how much you're carrying.

Prices follow the town's market, which follows the world's: a famine, a siege or a war changes them. You pay a little over the market price and sell for about three quarters of it. Money is shown as gold, silver and copper (100 copper to a silver, 100 silver to a gold).

Carrying: 20 kg plus 2 kg per point of Strength, gear included.

7. Crafts

Anyone can work a craft. How well you do it, your art, comes from your class line, from working at the trade, and from having a shop of your own. Each craft is a job: one at a time, taking real minutes, finished when its time is up and you are in that town. Start one from the deeds at the right bench (a smithy, an apothecary, an inn's kitchen, your own house). Hover each recipe for what it needs, what it costs, how long it takes and what it makes.

Work that rises in tiers (smithing, the gear trades) lets you choose the tier you work in, up to your art.

8. Food, drink and feasts

Food matters here. As in the stories, a great cook's feast can turn a fight.

Grades

Meals and drinks come in grades, set by whoever made them: Plain, Good, Fine, Masterful, Grand, Legendary, Divine. Rations don't have grades. A dish is named with its grade, such as "Hearty stew (Masterful)", and "(…, beast)" marks a dish made with monster parts.

Eating and drinking

Use Eat or Drink in Supplies (the Equipment tab, C then 4). You can have one meal and one drink in you at a time; a new one takes the old one's place.

• A meal raises every stat by its grade's share of your own: Plain +2%, Good +5%, Fine +9%, Masterful +15%, Grand +24%, Legendary +38%, Divine +60%. The dish's own flavour stats (a roast's Strength, say) rise by twice that. It lasts some hours of real time.
• A drink is half a meal: a Divine drink adds +30%, a Divine meal +60%, and both together +90%.
• A great meal does more in a fight (a drink doesn't):
• Grand and up: health back each round, and fear, poison and fire held off part of the time.
• Legendary and up: a second wind. Once a fight, whatever would drop you (a blow, poison or burning, a trap) leaves you standing on 1 health instead.
• Divine: a second bonus action every turn.
• A beast dish (or a beast brew, at half the edge) makes your blows land harder against monsters.
• Feeding the party: carry extra portions of the meal you ate, and before a fight each companion eats one with you.

Where to get it

• Cook it yourself (cooking at an inn's kitchen or your house) or brew it (brewing). Your grade is your art, held back by your level and your kitchen.
• Order a feast at an inn: the town's best cooks for hire, with their grade, their signature dish, the price, and how many more parties they can feed today. Order 1 or 4 portions, packed to carry. A great cook feeds only a party or two a day, and the finest feasts are dear.
• Dine at the crown's table in a capital's keep: free, once a real day, if you serve that crown (a sworn champion, one of its knights or nobles, its ruler or heir). You eat its Master of the Kitchens' cooking on the spot.
• The shops and inns sell plain fare at the town's own standard of cooking.

If you cook well

The world's crowns and companies want great cooks. If you cook better than a crown's own cook, it may offer you its kitchens, with a stipend; a renowned company in your town may ask you to be its cook, for a weekly wage. Your cooking then feeds their armies and parties while you're away. Give up your post in the kitchens at a keep or an inn.

The Cook's and the Brewer's own abilities

The Cook and Brewer class lines learn kitchen abilities of their own:

• Grade: Seasoned Palate, Feast of Heroes and Table of the Gods (cooking), and Cellar Master and Ambrosial Brew (brewing), raise your grade by one. That's one grade at most in all, and each only so far.
• More from each go: Hearty Fare and Bottomless Pot (portions), Taproom Brewing (jugs), Good Larder (rations).
• Speed and luck: Kitchen Hand (a quarter less time); Taste Test (spoils half as often); Legendary Recipe (never spoils, and comes out a grade better twice as often).
• Beast dishes: Monster Cuisine puts a carried monster part into each go and makes it a beast dish or brew.
• At home: Field Kitchen lets you cook to the full of your art in your own house.
• For the table: Banquet Hall makes one portion feed two companions at a party feast; Hearth Blessing and Cask Aging make the meals and drinks you have last half again as long; Famed Table doubles the renown your cooking earns.

9. Magic, healing and rest

• Learn magic (at a school, mage tower, academy, enchanter's atelier or temple): buy a spellbook, then study the spells your class can learn. Each costs coin and some hours of study; one study at a time, written into your book when it's done. A class can only reach so far into each school of magic; what you're shown is what you can learn.
• The healers (a healer's house, a hospice, a temple): pay to have your hurts tended, mend a lasting wound, rest in the sanctuary for mana and stamina, or ask the priests, quietly, to lift an affliction.
• Rest (R) at your room at the inn, or at home: you're whole again in about 30 real minutes, against about 2 hours on your feet. The picture darkens while you rest. Going somewhere, talking or trading gets you up; looking at your sheet doesn't.
• Draughts heal, restore and protect. Too many too quickly make you potion-sick, and then they work at half strength.

10. Growing stronger

• Experience comes from fights (each foe slain gives a share of a level at its level), clearing dungeons, quests, a day's work at a trade, and the newcomer's work.
• Levels bring free points to place (§4).
• Abilities: at milestones in your class you are offered three abilities to choose from (the choice card, §15).
• A second and third class: at level 250 and level 600 the System offers five classes again.
• Hidden classes are sometimes offered to those who've earned them. They replace your class and come with free points. Refusing is safe.
• Rank in the Adventurers' Guild rises with your level, from Iron upward. You can take quests of your rank and one above.
• Titles come from deeds: slaying a terror or a dragon, a thousand dungeons, a tourney won, a floor of the Tower, a rift sealed, a world first. Each grants a little.
• Renown grows with what you do and what the world hears of it.

11. Travel

Travel (J) works at the gates, the piers, or the square.

1. Choose where. The list shows the towns a convoy is leaving for, then the nearest, with the days it takes and a red warning where it's dangerous (at war, an evil crown, under siege, in the deep). Type in the find field to search by name.
2. Choose how. Each way shows its days and its cost: the road (free), a ship (a fare), a convoy (a fare, and safety in numbers), the circles or a city mage's teleport (a fee, and at once), the deep ways, or your own far-carrying spell.
3. Set out. Click Set out; it turns into Go? for a few seconds; click again.

While you're on your way, the town is replaced by a journey card: where you are, the days to go, your company, and the story of the road. Back to your characters leaves the journey running. You arrive at an inn in the new town, which becomes where you live.

The road is dangerous. On foot or at sea there is a small chance each day of an ambush. If you're at the keys, the battle map opens in front of you; if not, the server fights it for you, and you can die in it. A convoy keeps the road's dangers off you while it holds. The circles and teleports skip the road altogether.

12. The quest board

Quest board (B) at the Adventurers' Guild hall.

• Spar in the practice yard: a blunted bout with a guild member of your level, a few times a day. Nobody dies; it's the safe way to learn the battle map.
• Newcomer's work (Iron rank, up to level 20): guild culls and town errands, played at once on the battle map. Each can be done once a real day, and a veteran goes along with anyone of level 10 or below.
• The guild's board: quests by rank, kind and level (clearing dungeons, bounties on terrors, lairs, hunts, outlaws, rescues), with the reward, the days away, the time left, and the System's odds: a bar from green to red showing how likely the guild thinks you are to come back, and who the guild would send with you.

For each quest you can:

• Send party: the guild's party goes and you hear how it went. It's safe for you, but you don't play it.
• Delve yourself / Do it yourself: you go with the guild's party and play it turn by turn. Anyone can die.
• Delve with party / Go with party: the same, with your party of players (§14).

The button asks Set out? / Go down? for a few seconds; click again to go. The party travels there (a quest card while you're on the way), then waits at the mouth of the dungeon, or wherever the work is, until you press Go in (Enter).

13. Fighting: the battle map

Fights are turn-based, on an isometric grid of 1.5-metre squares. You see only what your party has seen.

The screen

• Figures: people, the undead and the monsters shaped like people stand as animated figures. A person looks like their class (a knight for a warrior or guardian, a hooded rogue, a robed mage…) and is as tall as their people; you and other players hold the weapon and shield you really carry. They walk, strike, cast, flinch, fall and sit as it happens. A ring under the feet says whose side they are on, in the colours below (foes dark red, a captive pale); a second, red ring marks a master, an orange one a stair's keeper. Beasts, slimes and the like are still the shapes below.
• Tokens (for anything without a figure):

A gold ring marks whoever is acting; the fallen lie flat. - Over the tokens: health bars (foes red, friends green), shields, what afflicts them (poisoned, bleeding, burning), "gathering: …" when a great blow is being wound up, and "beaten — bind them" on a foe who has yielded. - The floor: teal squares are where you can move; a red or green tint shows an aimed action's reach. A pulsing red square is where a gathered blow will land next turn. Get off it. - Top bar: the place and floor, and "Round N · your turn" (with the seconds left, in a co-op fight), "Exploring", "They want your purse" or "Over". Turn-order chips sit to the right, and Back to characters at the far right. - Left: [ PARTY ]: everyone's health, mana and stamina, their state and boons (a feast, a second wind, a ward), what you've found, and your bread. - Right: [ LOG ]. - Bottom: your moves, action and bonus action left, and the buttons, each with its key: End turn (Space), Dash (D), Defend (G), Draughts (P · H heal), your abilities and spells (1–9, Tab for more), and on the right Short rest (R), Camp (C), Follow (T), Go down (V), Run for it (X), Bind them (B) and Leave (L). - Camera: Q / E turn the view; the wheel zooms (over the log, it scrolls the log).

Exploring

While nothing has noticed you, click any square you've seen to walk there; your companions follow. Click a chest or a heap to open it or take it. Monsters wake when they see one of you within about six squares, and then it's a fight.

Your turn

Turns go in initiative order (Dexterity, Perception and a roll). On your turn you have:

• Moves: 4 to 8 squares (more with Dexterity). A diagonal costs one move, but you can't cut a wall's corner.
• One action: attack (beside the foe, or 7 squares with a bow, 5 with a caster's bolt, in line of sight); an ability or spell; Dash (as many moves again); Defend (half again your defence); open or take loot; throw a flask.
• One bonus action: drink a draught, or an ability or spell on yourself. A Divine feast gives you two.
• End turn (Space or Enter).

Clicking: on a foe, attack it if you can reach it, or walk up beside it if not. On a beaten foe, bind them. On a caged captive, break the cage. On a chest or a heap, go and open it. On the floor, walk there.

Aiming: press an ability's number (or click it), then click the target square. Right-click or Esc cancels.

Draughts (P): your draughts and your stomach ("settled", "queasy", "potion-sick"). Click one to drink it (a bonus action) or throw it (an action, aimed). H drinks your best healing draught.

Loot

• Click a chest to open it. A locked chest is picked by your party's best hand; three failures jam it. F forces the chest under the mouse: noisy, and it may break draughts inside.
• A chest with a known trap is worked free first; a sprung trap hurts whoever is near.
• In a fight, taking loot costs your action.
• Coin counts at once; draughts and bread go straight into your pack; the rest is yours if you come home.

Floors, rests and leaving

• A dungeon has 2–6 floors, harder going down. Each upper floor's far hall holds the keeper of the stair: kill it and Go down (V) opens. Going down gives everyone back a fifth of their health, mana and stamina.
• Kill the master on the last floor to clear the dungeon.
• By a stair, once a floor: Short rest (R) gives everyone four tenths back; Camp (C) costs a day's bread each and makes everyone whole, but wanderers may find you.
• Leave (L) at the stair you came down by, or once the master is dead, Take it, go from anywhere.
• Back to characters leaves the floor exactly as it is; play the character again to return to it. (A server restart puts the party back at the mouth.)

Fights beyond the dungeons

• Open ground (a road, a field, a camp, a ship's deck) has edges. Run for it (X) takes the party off over one of them. Foes in reach may land a blow as you go.
• The parley: bandits and pirates ask first. "They want your purse": Pay the toll, Fight, or Run for it. Only the party's leader answers.
• Prisoners: a beaten outlaw may yield ("beaten — bind them"). Bind them (click, or B out of a fight) and the crown pays a share of the bounty.
• Rescues: break the captive's cage (stand beside it and click), then bring them out alive.
• A sea terror: hold on for the rounds shown; there's no getting off the deck.

When it ends

An end card tells you how it went: Cleared, You came back up, Carried out, Beaten off, Paid off, Got away, and so on. Go on takes you home, back to town, or to your characters.

If you fall: a healer in the party (of high enough level) may raise you in the field, or you're carried out to the world's healers, and your purse may have to pay. If the whole party falls, you are missing: given up for dead after about a game month if nobody finds you. Not every fight can kill you. Spars, the guild's sent parties, tourney bouts and the Trial are safe. Played delves, ambushes, field fights and real-steel duels are not.

14. Playing together

Up to four players can share a party.

• Invite: click a player under "Players here" and choose Ask them into your party, or type /invite Name in chat.
• Answer: a card appears: Join · Y or No thanks · N (or /join, /no).
• The [ PARTY ] box in the top-right corner of the picture lists the members ("leads", "not here") and has a Leave party button (or /leave).
• The one who asked leads. Going off alone (to another town, other work, or back to your characters) takes you out of the party.

Delving together: the leader takes a quest with Delve with party / Go with party; the guild fills the party out. At the mouth, whoever presses Go in leads. While exploring, players follow the leader until they walk off on their own; Follow (T) falls back in. Each player plays their own turn, with 60 seconds to take it. A turn left to run out ends in Defend, and a player who isn't at the keys is played by the server. Only the leader can go down, leave, rest, run or answer a parley; the buttons say so. Each player keeps their own loot.

15. The world comes to you: offers

The world treats you like anyone else. When it would pick someone for an honour, a post, a duty or a trouble, and you qualify, it asks you instead. These offers come to the choice card:

• Choose · K on the action bar shows how many are waiting; K opens the card.
• [ LEVEL UP ] is an ability pick; [ CLASS SELECTION ] a second or third class; [ WHAT DO YOU DO? ] an offer from the world.
• Pick with a click or 1–9, confirm with Enter. Later · Esc puts the card away; the choice keeps waiting.
• An option you can't take now shows why, in red.

What the world may offer: a patent of nobility or a knighthood, the crown's champion, a god's Chosen, a high priesthood, a school's headship, a seat on a council, an embassy, a spy's work, leading a town or a house, a crown's kitchens or a company's cook, a captaincy, a muster for war, a strike in your trade, a marriage proposal, a duel, a rival's challenge, a beast to tame, a dragon's champion… and troubles: being accused, arrested, carried off, found out.

Offers don't wait for ever. When its day comes, an unanswered offer answers itself with the safe choice. Honours wait while you still qualify and have played in the last month.

16. Time, being away, and death

Time

• While anyone is playing (signed in, even on the character list), the world runs in real time: a game hour is a real hour, and the time of day follows the clock.
• When nobody is, it runs at its own pace, by default about a game day every 43 real seconds.
• So a journey with nobody else online goes by quickly; with friends online, the road takes real days.

While you're away

When you aren't playing, your character makes no choices but goes on living. They stay at their inn or house, pay their keep, age, heal, work their trade if they have one (and are paid), and hear the news. Anything the world wants of them comes as an offer that waits for you, or answers itself when its day comes. Time away counts as rest.

When you step back in, the story starts with what happened while you were gone.

A journey or a quest goes on while you're away. If the road turns violent with nobody at the keys, the server fights for you.

Gaol and captivity

• Caught by the watch and sentenced: you sit out your sentence in gaol (a [ GAOL ] card). Buy your way out, or Break out, which is played on the battle map.
• Carried off: a [ CAPTIVE ] card. Pay the ransom, try to get free, or wait for a rescue. Captors don't kill you for waiting.

Death

Death is real. When a character dies, their story is over: they stay on your list as "(gone)", and the chroniclers remember them. Make another character, or take up a grown child.

17. Every key, on one page

Town

System window

Choice card and journey card

Battle map

Some letters mean different things in town and in a fight: G (Places / Defend), D (Do something / Dash), E (Trade / turn the view), H (help / heal), T (Town / Follow), C (sheet / Camp), B (board / Bind), P (place / Draughts).

18. Tips

• Hover everything. Tooltips carry the rules: costs, odds, what a choice does and why you can't take it.
• "· N to do" on the People here button means the place has deeds. Look at every new place once.
• Read the odds on the quest board before you go yourself. Send the guild's party when the odds are poor.
• Spar first. The practice yard is the safe place to learn the battle map.
• Carry bread if you mean to camp in a dungeon, and a healing draught or three always.
• Watch for pulsing red squares, and for "gathering" over a monster's head.
• Eat before you go. Even a Good meal helps, and a great cook's feast is worth its price on a hard delve.
• Esc backs out one layer at a time, and never closes the game.
• Ask the town for news. The world is full of things happening; the talk of the town is how you hear about them.

19. Rough edges

The client is young. Known quirks, as of 11 October 2026:

• An old client may still sign in (the protocol only grows), but the server says so: a red line on the sign-in and character screens. If you see it, get the newer client.
• Place pictures: there is no painted art for places yet; every place is shown as a slowly turning model of the spot.

Fixed on 11 October 2026: resting at home (Rest now works in your own house, and going to the lanes takes you to your own door), keypad Enter in chat, keypad numbers at class selection, and the in-game key list (F1 now lists the System window's and the battle map's keys too).