Each adventurer is the sum of two choices: an origin (the body and bloodline you're born into) and a profession (the training and trade you bring with you). Your origin sets your starting body — health, stamina, mana pool, attribute baselines, and natural aptitudes. Your profession layers training on top — stat modifiers, starting items, and a set of initial skill ranks.

Some origins come in several appearances; the one you see is the one others will see.

Three pools drive every adventurer.

• Health ❤ — your life. Reach zero and your story ends.
• Stamina 💪 — fuel for attacks and heavy actions. Empty stamina doesn't kill you, but it slows you to a crawl.
• Mana 🔮 — required to cast spells. Replenishes more slowly than stamina.

Resting recovers stamina. Sanctuaries refill health and mana in full — out in the wild, potions, a night at a camp, and the odd curiosity are what keep you standing. Run stamina low and you become Exhausted: below half stamina your stride shortens, and at empty you crawl at a fifth of your speed.

You have three core stats — Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence — which influence damage, hit chance, dodging, mana, and many weapon perks.

Most level-ups raise a random stat. Every third character level is a milestone: you choose which stat to raise yourself. Pick deliberately — milestones are the only stat point you fully control.

Skills cover combat (one per weapon family, plus Unarmed), defence (Dodging, Armor, Vitality, Endurance), magic (Spellcasting), and the wild (Survival).

Each skill has two states: active and idle. Only active skills earn experience when you use them. When several skills are active at once, the experience from each turn is split between all of them — so focusing fewer skills levels them faster.

Focusing a single skill in the character screen is the simplest way to drive one skill hard. Your origin and profession also give some skills natural aptitudes that quietly speed up their levelling.

Abilities are special actions tied to your skills. As a skill rises, you unlock its abilities automatically — a notice marks each one you learn.

Every ability keeps growing stronger as its skill levels, up to its own mastery level, after which it stops improving. Abilities trade raw power for control, setup, or other effects rather than simply being a stronger version of what you already do — pick the one the moment calls for.

Open the Abilities screen to see every ability for your skills, unlocked or not, with each one's unlock and mastery levels and your progress toward them.

Almost everything you do — crossing a tile, swinging a weapon, drinking a potion, equipping armor — costs time ⏳. Time passes for everyone in the world while your action resolves, including the things that want you dead.

Some actions also cost stamina 💪 on top of time. Attacks always do; consuming an item usually doesn't.

Quick, light actions cost little time and resolve fast. Heavy actions take longer and leave you vulnerable while they finish.

Combat is turn-based but not strictly alternating — each actor's next move resolves on its own time clock.

• An attack rolls ⚔ against the target's 🤸 — higher hit chance and lower target dodge mean cleaner hits.
• 🛡️ Armor reduces damage dealt to the wearer. Some weapon perks cut through armor.
• 🎒 Encumbrance — heavy equipment slows your swings (⏳), throws off your aim (🎯), drains more stamina per attack (💪), and erodes your dodge (🤸). Train Armor to soften the penalty.
• 🪨 Block — equipped shields and bucklers give a flat chance to block an incoming hit cleanly. Block is rolled before dodge. Train Offhand to push your block chance toward each shield's cap and to shrug off shield weight.
• Hitting costs stamina. The less skilled you are with a weapon, the more it costs.
• 💨 Knockback — some blows (the sweeping polearm and mace abilities, a bear's swipe, a Warding Spin's guard) shove a creature one tile away. A shoved creature loses its footing: a walk in progress is cancelled and has to be given again — but a readied swing is kept, and a foe that follows you still eats it. Pinned against a tree, wall or another body, it takes +50% damage instead. ⏩ Lunge carries the attacker straight through its target to the far side (Lunge, wolves, spiders), trading places when there is no room. Arm a knockback ability and the world shows exactly who flies where.

Untrained weapons hit weaker, cost more stamina, and take longer to swing. Practice (and the right skill) erases all three penalties over time.

Beyond raw damage, weapons can carry perks that trigger on a successful hit.

• Critical 💥 — a chance for a strike to land for extra damage.
• Armor penetration 🛡️↘️ — ignores part of the target's armor.
• Disturb ⏳↗️ — adds time to the target's next action, breaking their rhythm.
• Cleave 🪓 — chance to sweep through and strike extra nearby foes with a free swing.
• Stamina drain 💪↘️ — saps stamina from the target on hit.
• Bleed 🩸 — opens a wound that drains health over several turns. Stops at sanctuaries (or with a bandage).
• Poison 🧪 — venom that gnaws at health over several turns, much like a bleed. Cleansed at sanctuaries.
• Corrosion 🫧 — acid that eats away armor and weakens the strength of every blow.
• Pierce 🎯↘️ — ignores part of the target's chance to dodge. Always-on.
• Quickdraw ⏳↘️ — on hit, a chance to gain a short burst of speed where your strikes ready faster.
• Vampiric 🧛 — on hit, a chance to drain the life you deal and heal yourself for part of it.
• Knockback 💨 — on hit, a chance to shove the target one tile away. Pinned against a tree, wall or another body, it takes +50% damage instead.
• Lunge ⏩ — on hit, a chance for the attacker to bound straight through you to your far side — or trade places when there is no room.

Some perks scale with strength or dexterity; all of them grow stronger as you level the matching weapon skill.

The world is full of things that can stick to you — good and bad. A blessing might quicken your travel; a bleed might drain you while you fight; spoiled food might cramp you for many turns.

Effects tick at their own pace. Each tick can wound, heal, or buff you, and after a fixed number of ticks the effect fades. Some effects refresh if reapplied. Others stack up, piling on more punishment the more they hit.

Sanctuaries cleanse most negative effects. Some items, like a bandage, cleanse specific ailments on demand.

Your pack holds items you can carry. Each item lives in a slot; stackable items share a single slot when their kind matches.

Items in the pack can be:

• Consumed — eaten or drunk, gone after one use.
• Used — pointed at a target (a bandage on a wounded ally, a potion on yourself).
• Equipped — moved to an equipment slot (mainhand, offhand, head, torso, hands, feet). Equipped items apply their stats and stay there until you unequip them in the equipment screen.

Destroyed items are gone forever — there's no undo. Stash anything you can't bear to lose in your Vault before the next risky descent.

Old fire pits lie scattered through the wilds. Walk up to one to make camp. Each camp serves you once, takes a good while, and leaves you open — nothing can be done at a camp while an enemy is in sight, and an attack will cut the rest short.

• Repose — a long rest that restores health and stamina. Companions at your side rest with you.
• Meditate — quiets the mind, restoring mana and a little health. Companions meditate alongside you.
• Scavenge — search the surroundings for food, sticks, stones, and the occasional rarity.
• Cook — turn firewood and raw ingredients into a meal. A cooked meal grants a lasting benefit; only one meal works at a time. Tannenhall's public hearth cooks too — as often as your pack allows, no camp needed.

Choose wisely — once the fire has served you, it will not serve again.

Sanctuaries are the safe places on the map — villages, halls, hidden glades. While you stand in one:

• Your health and mana refill in full, and most negative effects are cleansed.
• Vendors trade goods (food, weapons, armor, the occasional rarity) and buy from your pack at a fraction of value.
• Bankers safeguard your Vault — items you deposit there survive your death.
• A public hearth lets you cook meal after meal without spending a camp.
• NPCs sometimes have offers, bulletins, or companions willing to join you. Read every notice; help every soul who asks.

Hostiles will not enter a sanctuary. You can step out whenever you choose to leave.

Every location is a field of tiles. Left-click a tile to walk there — your adventurer finds the path and follows it step by step, stopping at once if something hostile comes into view. Walking costs time but no stamina, and every step moves the world along with you.

• Sight 👁️ — how far you can see. Tiles you have never seen stay black; tiles you saw once but can't see now fade to grey, and creatures last spotted there linger as faint shadows until you look again.
• Move 🥾 — tiles per turn. Diagonal steps cost a little more. Low stamina makes you Exhausted and slows every step.
• Camera — the view follows you. Scroll the wheel or press Shift+Q / Shift+E (or Pg Dn / Pg Up next to the numpad) to zoom; hold the right mouse button to look around, release to snap back.
• Right-click a creature to inspect it. Left-click a hostile within reach to attack it — or arm an ability first and then pick the target.

Chests, encounters, and townsfolk are reached the same way: click them and your adventurer walks over and opens the interaction. Nobody shares a tile — a foe standing in your path has to be dealt with, or walked around.

Each location has exits along its edges — marked, labeled tiles that lead to a neighboring place. Click one as your destination to travel. Merely walking across an exit, or ending up on it mid-walk or after a shove, does not trigger it — step off and click it again. A new location is laid out fresh every time you enter, and whatever was chasing you stays behind; only companions close at your side come along.

Fleeing is always allowed, but the road out is part of the fight — anything within reach keeps swinging while you run for the edge.

The map shows the places you have visited and the paths between them. The further from Tannenhall you roam, the harder the wilds become.

Sanctuary NPCs each have a role:

• Vendors — buy and sell. Each one accepts only certain wares; check what they're after.
• Bankers — keep your Vault , an account-bound stash that survives death. Buy more vault slots as your fortunes grow.
• Quest-givers — offer trades and tasks. Some require a specific item or companion; others unlock the moment you arrive.
• Bulletin boards — short notices about the world, the people, and the things lurking just off the path.

Speak to everyone. The Black Forest keeps its secrets, but its people seldom do.

Out in the wild you will stumble on curiosities — a chest in the moss, a tethered animal, a body slumped against a tree. Most curiosities reward investigation, but some demand the area first be safe — nothing opens while a hostile lurks close by.

Open every chest. Approach every encounter. The handbook can't list every possibility — that's what the journey is for.

Some choices in the world unlock new origins and professions for your account. Reach a remote sanctuary, finish an offer, defeat a particular foe — and a new option appears in your character creation forever, even after you die.

You start with the Human origin and the Beggar profession. Every other origin and profession waits to be discovered.

When your health runs out, your adventurer's story ends. Their gold, their pack, their hard-earned equipment — all left behind in the dark.

Your Vault survives. Items you deposited with a banker are still yours when you build your next adventurer. Plan for the worst; the forest will deliver it eventually.

When the death screen appears, the only path forward is the Abandon button — it returns you to the welcome screen, where a new character awaits.