Your Character

A level, three stats and a set of gear. Your power comes from the gear; the stats decide what kind of fighter you are on top of it.

Your fighter has a level, three stats, and a set of gear. Your power comes mostly from the gear. The other two shape it.

Where you started

You pick a background when you make your character, and each one has four looks to choose from.

• 

  Charter-Born

  Raised within the wardstone's reach.

• 

  Wildborn

  The fringe taught you what the zones teach the careless.

• 

  Accord Legacy

  Your grandparents wore that coat for an empire that abandoned them.

• 

  Fringe Outlaw

  The city-states collapsed around you.

None of it touches your numbers. Two fighters in the same gear hit exactly as hard as each other whichever coat they are wearing.

Levels

You gain experience for every kill and level up to 100. A level raises your health and hands you 2 points to spend on the stats below.

Every 10th level also pays a sealed cache. That is one item, held until you open it, matched to the depth you had reached when you earned it.

A level does not unlock a zone. Nothing in the world is held behind your level. The only gate is conquest, and you can walk into any difficulty of an open zone whenever you like.

The three stats

Each point is permanent until you pay to take it back, and each one is a percentage on top of what your gear already gives you.

• Might. 0.25% more damage per point. It lifts your whole damage total, so it is worth more the better your weapon is.
• Precision. 0.1% more critical chance per point, added straight on.
• Vitality. 0.25% more health per point. It lifts your whole health pool, including the health on your gear, so the two make each other better instead of competing.

Changing your mind is not fatal. Moving your points costs 50 gold for each level you have, so it gets steadily more expensive as you go.

Why your gear leads

Read those percentages again. A point of Might is a fraction of one percent, and a level gives you two points. That is deliberate. Gear is where your power comes from. Your stats decide what kind of fighter you are on top of it.

A weapon two zones deeper will do more for you than every point you have ever spent. That is the shape of the game: go somewhere harder, come back with something better.

Stats sharpen whatever you already have. Might turns a good weapon into a frightening one. Vitality turns a wall of armour into a fighter who does not fall over.

Health

Health comes from your level and from the health on your gear. Vitality then lifts the whole pool.

It decides whether you survive the hits that get through. At deeper difficulties it also decides whether a single blow can take you from standing to dead with a full belt of potions still unopened.

Armour and resistance reduce what lands. Health is what you have left when something lands anyway. Neither one stands in for the other.