What stands
in the mud.

In the game

Built today

Begin and explore

• IN GAMEAccount

  Register, log in, four character slots, unique case-insensitive names.

• IN GAMECreate a character

  Ten kindreds, 42 subraces, childhood, occupation, two traits, sex, avatar and eight free points, and last, the oath.

• IN GAMEWalk the world

  310 squares in 13 regions: Mudbury, four areas and the roads between. Fog of war, autowalk, map markers, resting.

• IN GAMEA city with doors

  Mudbury: four gates, a ring street, 35 houses you enter through one door, eleven shops, a portrait studio, and sewers below.

• IN GAMEPeople and guards

  Townsfolk, beggars and militiamen walk Mudbury’s streets alongside the giant rats; town guards patrol and a gate guard stands at each gate. The people can be attacked in the streets and give experience and gold, but kill one while a free guard or militiaman stands on the square and you are Wanted: the guards attack and call for backup.

• IN GAMEWalk north to the seam

  The Burnt Coast, where a foreign continent struck the shore: a burnt harbour, the old seabed and a scorched forest, with four monsters of its own.

Hunt and survive

• IN GAMEHunt

  Discover monsters with Perception, fight in one-second rounds, use abilities and potions, or flee.

• IN GAMEKeep a monster book

  The Monsterpedia, opened from the Menu: every kind of monster you meet, where you first saw it, how many you have met and killed in each region, and the loot you took. After enough kills (ten today, a placeholder) it shows the monster’s HP and damage. What it has not learned never even reaches your screen. Its second part, People and places, lists every house you have found.

• IN GAMEInspect anyone on the square

  Long-press or right-click a monster to see what your book knows about it, and how many kills remain to the next step. Do the same to an NPC to see its house, where it lies and what it offers; a tap opens a conversation with it.

• IN GAMEDie and recover

  Hard death above the novice threshold: your worn gear waits in your corpse, protected for you for a while, until it rots. You wake again at The Clay Mound, which is holy: no fight starts there, for anyone.

• IN GAMEMagic, on paper

  Magic arrow sits in Arcane Theory, First aid and Heal another in Restoration, and the two schools the School of Fire requires stand in the city. Nobody has yet walked the whole way to a fire spell as a normal player.

• IN GAMEPotions, food and a booster

  Healing and mana potions, with auto-potions for both. Food gives buffs that last many minutes. Whetstone oil, the one booster, works only against monsters.

People, quests and other players

• IN GAMETalk to NPCs

  A tap on an NPC opens a conversation: Train, Buy and sell, and the quests it offers. A “!” marks a card with a quest for you. Some choices need enough Charisma, and one you cannot take is never sent to you.

• IN GAMETake quests

  Four quests in Mudbury: The Rat Plague on the quest board in The Market Hall, The Herbalist’s Trial and The Delivery from the Guild of Herbalists, and The Letter to the Market Hall from the townsfolk. The Quests window tracks your progress and keeps a logbook and statistics of your own, and “Go there” walks you to where a quest is turned in.

• IN GAMEParty up

  Move as one unit, share discoveries, protect chains, five loot and gold distribution modes.

• IN GAMETake a companion

  Hire the Mercenary at The East Guardhouse for gold and upkeep, or, with Charisma 12 (a placeholder), talk a townsperson into following you. A companion fights in your fights, protects you by itself and carries what you give it; its killing blow is yours, and if it dies it is gone.

• IN GAMEFight other players

  Attack another player on your square; party members with auto attack on join in. Take one of four placeholder dispositions at The Tavern: outside the city, fights between different dispositions are lawful, and in its streets only a Wanted player may be attacked. Every unlawful act adds time to a Wanted clock with no ceiling.

• IN GAMETalk

  Local chat on your square.

Learn, craft and keep

• IN GAMELearn

  Buy levels in the fourteen schools that stand in Mudbury with gold and level tickets.

• IN GAMECraft

  Eight professions end to end: herbalism, mining, smelting, smithing, jewelling, alchemy, cooking, enchanting.

• IN GAMEBank and trade

  Bank per character, vault per city, NPC shops with buy-back, direct player trade.

• IN GAMEA room of your own

  Rent or buy one of two rooms in The Lodging House: a key that never leaves you, a door that opens only for you and your companions, and private storage. Let the rent run out and your things end up on the floor. A bought room can be sold on in a player trade.

• IN GAMEYour gear on a body

  Equipment is shown on a wooden figure in the bag window. Drag an item to its box, or double-click it in the bag to equip it.

On every screen

• IN GAMEOne layout, every screen

  The same main view on phone and desktop. The square’s picture fills the height, and the cards laid over it are the combat display.

• IN GAMEHotbar and windows

  A hotbar for potions and abilities. On desktop, windows dock beside the scene, the character screen opens in its own browser window, and the map, log and hotbar can pop out into theirs.

The look

Dark iron and worn oak

The interface is carried by pictures, so that it feels like a game rather than a web page. Buttons are shaped by what they do: like actions share a shape, different actions differ, and Attack breaks the pattern.

• IN GAMEControls you can feel

  Attack is a large oval forged plate with a dull ember-red glow; Flee is a smaller leather tab. Movement is a round forged disc with rest in its hub, and up and down are two iron studs.

• IN GAMEFive objects in the header

  The header is an oak plank, and its buttons are things: a parchment map, a leather sack, a helmet, a leather-bound book and a ring of keys.

• IN GAMEWindows of oak and iron

  Window frames of dark oak, with four different corners. Every window closes with the same iron rivet, and buying, learning or depositing is an oval oak tag. Small pictures replace emoji: a campfire for rest, a skull for a corpse, an hourglass for cooldown.

• IN GAMEWho is who, at a glance

  Card frames differ in shape: a quiet iron frame for others, an oak frame for your own card, a jagged frame for whoever fights you and for your target. Monsters and NPCs stand out from the square picture with a darkened backdrop and a faint glow along their outline.

• DECIDEDPlaces with a look of their own

  Windows that belong to a place (a shop, the bank, a guild) are to get their own background and sign on top of the same button shapes.

Placeholder art, like every picture in the alpha. The hotbar window on desktop keeps its square slots, and the map symbols are still drawn stand-ins.

Built, not reachable

In the game, behind a closed door

“In game” does not always mean “you can get there”.

• IN GAME120 schools

  All are in the data, most as names, requirements and grey levels. Fourteen stand on a square in Mudbury; the twelve other base schools wait for other cities.

• IN GAMEMany abilities and spells

  Built in data, sitting in schools that stand nowhere yet. Among them are Flanking, Hawk eye, Track, Soul drain and Weaken.

• IN GAMEHouses without a purpose yet

  The Harbour Office, the Archive and the Town Hall stand in Mudbury as named, protected houses, and nothing more yet.

• IN GAMEOpen PvP ground

  A kind of ground where any player may fight any other without a crime is built, but no square carries it yet.

• IN GAMEA claim deep in the mine

  The Deep Shaft Claim lies under a sealed square in Mine Mountain. It can be rented or bought only once the players’ shared digging has broken through to it.

Known limits

Where the edges are

• Placeholder content

  The city, regions, quests, items and every number are placeholders. Every street, house and area name except Mudbury is a working name.

• Not online yet

  The game runs only on the developer’s machine. Hosting, e-mail verification and password reset are part of the work towards the alpha.

• Player fights, a first part

  Fights between players are melee: spells and autocast work only against monsters. A lawful kill gives only a line in the log; disposition points, bounties and the Arena are not built.

• No tamed or summoned creatures

  Companions today are the Mercenary and the recruited townsperson. Tamed beasts, raised undead, summoned creatures and pets need schools that are not built.

• Chat

  Local only: no private or global chat.

• Social lists

  No friends, enemies or ignore lists.

• Traits

  Only 6 of 20 race traits and 8 of 30 personal traits have an effect so far; the rest are shown grey, marked “coming”.

• A hard start

  A new character has 0 gold, and the cheapest pickaxe costs 90 (both placeholder values). The first gold comes from selling rat tails, and herbs are hard to spot with starting Perception.

• A skull over Mudbury

  A new character is below the city’s survival threshold, so the map shows a skull over Mudbury, although the city is a safe zone. How to handle it is not decided.

• Roads that end

  Four roads end blind: west of the city, and east, west and north of the Burnt Coast. Nothing is built beyond them.

• Missing pictures

  Almost every place has its picture now: 309 of 310 squares, with only School Lane in Mudbury missing. The map symbols are still drawn stand-ins, and every picture is placeholder art.