Gameplay essentials

Your adventurer plays on autopilot. They train whichever skill is furthest behind, fetch what a recipe needs, bank, sell surplus and save coins for goals. You steer with priorities.

Skills

Twelve skills, each levelled with experience (XP). Every level takes a little more XP than the last, so the climb never really ends.

• Gathering: Mining, Woodcutting, Fishing. Rocks and trees hold a few resources, then rest before they can be used again.
• Making: Smithing (ore to bars, bars to tools and armour), Cooking, Firemaking, Fletching (bows and arrows) and Crafting (pottery, string, jewellery, cut gems).
• Combat: Attack, Strength, Defence and Vitality.

A skill that lacks its inputs gathers them first: Cooking goes fishing, Smithing mines its own ore. Better tools are forged along the way, and your adventurer equips each one as soon as they have the level for it.

Towns and travel

Four towns, each with its own bank counter, noticeboard and resources. The bank is shared between them.

• Stonecross, the walled starting town: a quarry, a forest, a lake and flax fields beyond its gates.
• Ironvale Heights, a terraced mining town with iron, coal, silver and a gem rock up in the shafts.
• Gullwick, a harbour town for sea fishing.
• Highpeak, a mountain hold with the rarest ores and the toughest monsters.

Towns are linked by roads, and walking them takes real game time: travel is part of the pace. Your adventurer settles in a town for a while and only moves on when a skill trains clearly better somewhere else, or can only train there.

The ferry. Gullwick and Stonecross are also linked by boat: 40 seconds on the water against 90 on the Coast Road. Your adventurer sails once they own the Ferry pass (a noticeboard upgrade posted when Gullwick trusts you) and have the fare in the bank. Otherwise they walk.

The noticeboard

Coins are mainly for the towns. Every noticeboard carries two kinds of posting.

• Goals. Town projects change the place: a gate opens, a jetty is built, market stalls appear in the square. Upgrades change your adventurer: boots to walk faster, bags to carry more, better baskets and tools. Each one helps a little; none is required. Your adventurer saves for three goals at once, splitting income between them, and pays for each at the next noticeboard.
• Town requests. Each town you've visited asks for goods it needs ("the smith needs 35 iron bars"). They're handed in for coins and reputation with that town. Higher reputation gives a little more XP in the town's trades and opens some projects.

In the Noticeboard panel you can pin goals to save for them first, and reorder the pins.

Mastery and milestones

• Mastery: every rock, tree, fish, recipe and monster has its own mastery, from level 1 to 20, earned by using it. Each level adds a small perk, like a slightly faster swing or one more ore before the rock rests.
• Milestones arrive every two levels in each skill: a passive knack ("Steady swing: Mining 2% faster"), a title every ten levels, or a line from the towns noticing your work.
• The Ledger tab lists every milestone and every find so far.

The Priorities panel

The autopilot still makes every decision; priorities change what it weighs.

• Skills: favour one, avoid one, or set a target level to work towards.
• Save for: put one goal at the front of the queue.
• Stockpiles: "have 200 iron bars in the bank" (up to three).
• Food, risk and travel: eat your own cooking or buy food, avoid dangerous ground, stay local or roam.
• Spare coins: cheapest goals first, upgrades first, projects first, or keep them.

Every setting has a fallback, so your adventurer never gets stuck: an avoided skill still fills in when nothing else can train.

Combat

Combat trains like any other skill. Your adventurer banks, puts on their best forged gear, takes food and fights near home first (chickens, cows and goblins in the field outside Stonecross), moving further afield only when they clearly outclass the monsters there.

Some resources sit in dangerous places and need Attack and Defence levels to reach. Aggressive monsters there ambush skillers: your adventurer fights back and eats when hurt. Out of food and low on health, they retreat to the bank and avoid that area for a while. There's no death and nothing is ever lost.

The home and the bed

A plot north-west of Stonecross is for sale. Buying it starts a house built in stages (foundation, fieldstone walls, roof and hearth, an extension), then rooms and furniture tiers. Each stage needs coins and materials your adventurer makes themselves: planks from their own logs, fieldstone from the quarry, linen from flax. Furniture gives small perks.

The first bed matters: when you're out of play time, your adventurer walks home and sleeps in it. Until they own a bed they sleep at the Lake Gate Inn.

Leaderboards

Two boards, Skill total and Gold total, each over three periods: all time, the last 30 days and 8-week seasons (everyone starts each season from zero). They refresh about every 15 minutes.

• Skill total ranks total level across every skill. Ties go to more XP, then to whoever got there first. Over 30 days and in a season it ranks levels gained, with XP gained breaking ties.
• Gold total ranks every coin your character has earned. Spending on projects, gear or supplies never lowers it. Over 30 days and in a season it ranks coins earned in that time.
• Anyone can read them in the game (the Boards button) or on the leaderboards page.
• To appear, sign in and turn on Show me on the leaderboards with a public name. It's off by default.
• Saves that gain XP or coins faster than the game allows are kept off the boards.