Your first run
HOW TO PLAY
Everything the game does not stop to explain: the controls, what actually kills you, and which systems are worth learning first.
THE LOOP
1. SPAWN AND ARM YOURSELF
Every run drops you into a freshly generated 1500x1500 world with a random tier-1 weapon and a few potions. Nothing carries over from your last run - the world, the loot and your gear all start from zero.
2. FIGHT AND OPEN CHESTS
Kill things for glory, and hit chests until they crack open for better weapons. Better weapons open harder chests, which hold better weapons again. That escalation is the whole progression.
3. BANK GLORY BEFORE YOU DIE
Glory accumulates while you survive and is scored against every other player. When you die it stops - but if it beat your previous best, that score stays on the leaderboard permanently with your name on it.
CONTROLS
These are the defaults. Every key on this list can be rebound in the launcher under Controls - click the binding, press the key you want. The arrow keys always move you as well, whatever you bind movement to, so you can never lock yourself out.
| Action | Default |
|---|---|
| Move | W A S D |
| Sprint (drains stamina) | SHIFT |
| Attack | Left mouse button |
| Special attack (costs mana) | Right mouse button |
| Equip weapon from slot 1-8 | 1 - 8 |
| Open inventory | I |
| Drink health potion | F |
| Drink mana potion | V |
| Interact / enter portal | C |
| Toggle auto / hold-to-fire | M |
| Reroll the quest board | R |
| Open chat | ENTER |
| Discard an item | Hold right mouse button on the slot |
| Debug monitor | F1 |
COMBAT
TWO FIRE MODES
Auto-fire is on by default: your weapon fires continuously at wherever the mouse points, no clicking at all. Press M for hold-to-fire instead, where you only shoot while the button is down. Auto is easier on the hand; manual gives you silence when you want to sneak past something.
MANA IS A SPENT RESOURCE
You have 100 mana and it regenerates 3 per second - a full refill from empty takes about 33 seconds. Specials are deliberately not a rotation you can lean on; they are the button you press when a fight has gone wrong.
STAMINA IS YOUR ESCAPE
Sprinting burns stamina. Several mobs are built around that: the Wolf leaps a huge distance, the Zombie lunges the moment you sit just outside its reach. Keep something in reserve rather than sprinting everywhere by default.
SPECIAL ATTACKS BY WEAPON
Every weapon category has its own right-click ability. Cooldown is shared across all your weapons, so swapping weapons does not reset it. A few legendaries override this with a special of their own.
| Weapon | Special | Mana | Cooldown |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sword | Dash Slash | 25 | 4 s |
| Bow | Homing Volley | 30 | 5 s |
| Staff | Meteor Shower | 40 | 7 s |
| Dagger | Ricochet Knives | 25 | 4 s |
| Axe | Whirlwind | 40 | 6 s |
SYSTEMS WORTH KNOWING
CHESTS FIGHT BACK
A chest is opened by damaging it, and it heals itself while you do. That healing scales with its tier, so a weapon too far below a chest simply cannot out-damage the regeneration - you will never crack it, no matter how long you stand there. Come back with something stronger. Brown chests are common, silver rarer, gold genuinely rare.
ELITE ENCOUNTERS
Any enemy has a small chance to spawn as an Elite - a golden-shimmering "shiny" recolor of its usual sprite. Triple health, 50% harder hits, and worth hunting down for it: an Elite kill always drops a chest (never the normal 80% chance), forced to Gold rarity and a high enough tier to actually qualify for a legendary, with better odds of rolling one than a Gold chest normally gets.
TIERS AND LEGENDARIES
Swords, bows, staffs, daggers and axes each run from tier 1 to tier 10, with damage, range and fire rate rising every tier. Above them sit the untiered legendaries, each with its own behaviour - and they only ever drop from gold chests at tier 8 and above.
EIGHT SLOTS, NOT MORE
You can carry eight weapons besides the one you hold; potions stack separately up to 99 and never take a weapon slot. To drop something, open the inventory and hold right mouse button on it for about half a second. The weapon you are holding cannot be dropped - swap it away first.
THE QUEST BOARD
Three quests are active at a time - kill a marked mob, deal damage, survive a stretch, crack chests, or find the dungeon boss - each paying bonus glory the moment it completes. Do not like the board? Press R to reroll it. You get three rerolls per run and they are never refilled.
PORTALS AND DUNGEONS
Portals scattered across the open world lead into hand-built dungeons with their own enemies, traps and a boss at the bottom. Killing it guarantees a gold chest - delivered along with one last spiteful volley. Find the exit portal to get back out.
DEATH IS THE END
There is no revive, no checkpoint and no death penalty to soften it, because there is nothing left to penalise: the character, the inventory and the run are gone. Only your best score survives, which is exactly what makes a good run worth being careful with.
FIVE THINGS THAT WILL SAVE YOUR RUN
- Do not fight everything. Glory comes from surviving as much as from killing, and most deaths are one fight too many rather than one bad fight.
- Check a chest before committing to it. If its health is climbing back faster than you take it down, your weapon is too weak - walk away and come back later.
- Learn the tells. Wolf crouches before it leaps, Vulture hangs motionless before it dives, Crab makes the sand shimmer before it bursts out. Every one of them is avoidable once you know the wind-up.
- Save your special for the moment you are already losing. It is on a shared cooldown and mana comes back slowly - it is an escape button far more often than an opener.
- Water and lava block movement. When something is chasing you, a coastline is a wall you can be trapped against - but it is also a wall you can put between yourself and anything that cannot swim.