How the game works

• Creatures give 10 × level + 5 experience at the level they spawn at – elites three times that, bosses fifteen times. Quests pay their own, and higher quests pay more.
• One ordinary creature in 50 from level 5 rises as a champion – a golden aura and a Champion tag, 4× the health and 1.5× the hit, and 6× the experience, gold, gear rolls and materials, with a herb every time. Instance copies and world events have none.
• A kill's experience is split by the damage each hero dealt. Party members within 60 m pool their shares and split them evenly, +30% for every member beyond the first and another +15% when all 5 fight together; a member more than 8 levels below the creature gets no share.
• Levels run from 1 to 100; the bar at the bottom of the screen shows how far you are into the current one.

• Click an enemy – or press Tab for the nearest one ahead and 1 to attack – and your hero keeps swinging or shooting on its own until the target falls, gets out of reach or you press Esc.
• Every creature keeps a list of who hurt it – a point of hate for each point of damage, a warrior's counts twice – and fights whoever tops it. It turns to someone else only when their hate passes its target's by 10% within its reach, or by 30% from farther away – it does not bounce between heroes trading hits. Shield Bash taunts it for 3 s (half as long on a boss) and Challenging Shout taunts it for 4 s (half as long on a boss): it fights the taunter and nobody else while it lasts, and their hate jumps 10% above the top of the list. The target frame shows whom it is attacking.
• Mages and archers shoot only while standing: stop for 0.4 s and the shot goes. A creature already chasing you is different – after you move, stand for a whole attack before the next shot, so stepping back between shots no longer keeps the full rate. Arrows and bolts are real projectiles – the hit lands when they arrive; creatures marked Ranged or Caster shoot at you the same way.
• Armour turns aside armour ÷ (armour + 100) of every hit, at most 80%. A critical hit deals 150% damage; gear and paths raise both the chance and the multiplier.
• Skills share a 1 s global cooldown. A stun interrupts a boss's cast, even while it is unyielding. Bosses take half of every stun, root and slow; a stun or a root makes a boss unyielding for 8 s, and until then it shrugs off further stuns, roots and slows. A slow never makes it unyielding.
• Out of combat for 5 s you regain 3% of your health every second. Bosses regenerate 0.15% of theirs every second while they live (a lair boss does not), so a boss fight is a race. Gear cannot be changed within 6 s of a fight.
• Yellow names wait to be attacked; red ones attack on sight within their notice range. A creature dragged too far from home gives up the chase, is whole again at once and ignores you until it is back.
• Inside a safe base (the Starfall Sanctum, the Watch fort, Heron's Rest, Cinderhold, Highwatch, Hearthspring, Miragewell, Candlewatch, the Last Vigil, Stormwatch, the Starwatch and the Broken Gate) nothing can attack and you cannot attack – enemies drop their chase at the border.
• When a boss falls, everyone who fought it gets a fight report: the damage each hero dealt and took and how often they fell.
• Death costs nothing: after 5 s press Rise again and you stand at the sanctuary of the zone you fell in with full health – in a borderland or the mountains, at Starfall Landing. A hero who logs out dead wakes at the sanctuary, healed.

See Bestiary.

• Each class learns 12 skills, at levels 1, 4, 8, 13, 21, 30, 41, 51, 61, 71, 81 and 91. You fight with a loadout of 5 of them – action bar slots 2–6 after the attack in slot 1, the five buttons of the phone's arc – and keep two loadouts (A and B), changed in the Skills window (K) out of combat.
• In the Skills window (K) every skill trains to rank 10 for gold: rank 2 opens 1 level after the skill and rank 10 26 levels after it (a skill learnt late reaches rank 10 by level 100), and each rank adds 5% to damage and effects and cuts the cooldown by about 3%.
• From level 10 every class has its rhythm – pips under your portrait: the warrior's Retaliation (blows taken power the Heavy Strike), the mage's Arcane Charges (every fifth spell is Empowered), the archer's Concentration (standing still sharpens the aim, Power Shot and Aimed Shot spend it) and the rogue's Combo Points (Backstab builds them, the finishers - Envenom, Rupture, Kidney Shot, Crimson Tempest - spend them). A skill never waits for pips; it just hits harder with them.
• The Talent Tree (T): a point every level from level 2, one for each of the 19 boss quests and one for each of the 7 trials (a raid boss's fall, a world event won, Moonhorn in the Moonwell Glade, gear at +7, a level-3 horse, 12 zones walked, 100 gatherings) - 125 at level 100. A core of seven talents and three branches, one for each path; a branch's rings open with 5 / 12 / 22 / 30 / 40 points spent lower in it. Core and minor talents cost 1 point a rank, the path talents 2 (from their level, one a tier - the paths' talents of one level exclude each other), the notables - each a mechanic - 2, keystones 3 (one at a time), and each branch's apex 3 from level 50 - it awakens that path's ultimate. Plan the points and press Apply; Reset returns every point - free below level 20, then 50 gold a level.
• The path talents are the three paths' picks at levels 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 and 100: in the tree you may hold picks of different paths at one level when your points allow. Auto-fill plans the points left along your strongest branch.
• From level 50 every class has three ultimates, one for each of its paths – warriors: Indomitable, Bloodrage and Warlord's Banner; mages: Solar Flare, Glacial Tomb and Arcane Ascension; archers: Hawk's Wrath, Minefield and Galeforce; rogues: Plaguebringer, Umbral Form and Blade Waltz. One at a time sits in the loadout's golden slot (key 7, the inner ring on a phone), changed in the Skills window (K) out of combat. An ultimate has no ranks, and kills, control and Arcane Echo never shorten its long cooldown; the apex at the top of each branch of the talent tree awakens that path's ultimate.
• Past rank 10 a skill climbs mastery stars, ★1 to ★5, read from Tomes of Mastery in the Skills window: ★n takes n tomes and gold, ★1 opens at level 50 and ★5 at 90, and every star adds 3% to the skill's power. Elites (0.15%), champions (1.5%) and bosses (2%, a dungeon's boss 7.5%) of level 41 and above drop tomes; a raid boss of that level gives one to every hero it credits, a won world event of that level sometimes one more and, from level 41, the weekly task always one. Tomes trade on the Market.

See Classes.

• Gear drops as a piece with a grade: Common ×1 stats, no affixes; Uncommon ×1.1 stats, 1–2 affixes; Rare ×1.24 stats, 2–3 affixes; Epic ×1.4 stats, 3–4 affixes; Legendary ×1.6 stats, 4–5 affixes.
• Quest gear comes at the quest's level – uncommon or better from level 3, rare or better from level 12.
• Affixes: of Striking, of Warding, of Vigour, of Precision, of Ruin, of Haste, of the Wind, of Plenty, of Fortune, of Sorcery, of Affliction, of Alacrity, of Reach, of Parrying, of Evasion, of Fortitude, of Mending, of the Adept, of Readiness, of the Schools.
• Regular creatures drop a piece of gear 5% of the time, elites 20%, bosses 50% of their kills, rare or better. The piece has the creature's level – a level-30 wolf drops level-30 gear.
• Elites drop a set piece of their tier 1.5% of the time, bosses 18%. Every boss also carries a unique of its own – epic or legendary, with signature affixes – in 5–18% of its kills.
• Moonhorn, the daily lair boss, rolls lower: a piece at your level 50% of the kills – uncommon 45%, rare 50%, epic 5% – and a set piece 5% of the time.
• 55% of gear drops are picked for the killer's class and the rest come from the whole tier, so about eight in ten are wearable.
• A creature 8 or more levels below you pays less: a quarter of the gear chance, half the materials and gold, and no Tempering Stones or herbs.
• The hero who dealt the most damage owns the pile for a minute (two for a boss). A party shares it – the leader may switch to round robin – and its gold is split among the members nearby. Loot left lying vanishes after 5 minutes.
• Tempering Stones drop from every creature – stronger ones more often, bosses up to 50% of the time; an account gets at most 20 a day, the daily tasks' included.
• Herbs: Herb of Life (heals 20% of your health), Herb of Strength (+15% damage for 30 s), Herb of Fury (+15% attack speed for 30 s) and Herb of Swiftness (+25% speed on foot for 30 s). A regular creature leaves one 2.5% of the time, an elite 7.5% of the time, a boss 50% of the time and a champion every time – one at most a pile – and the hero who picks the pile up eats it at once: it never takes a bag slot, and the timed ones add to the class buffs and the elixirs.

See Items, Sets.

• Ten slots: weapon, off-hand, head, chest, hands, legs, feet, amulet and two rings. Warriors wear plate and leather; mages, archers and rogues wear leather and cloth. Warriors carry swords, axes and maces (one- and two-handed) with shields; mages wands, staves and foci; archers bows and quivers; rogues a dagger and an off-hand dirk.
• Every level's gear is worth about 3% more than the last. Gear Score rates a piece by its stats alone – the same stats, the same score; the bar at the bottom adds up what you wear.
• The smith crafts a rare piece of any ordinary item from its tier's materials and gold, at your level (capped at the recipe's top level), and salvages pieces back into materials – higher grades give more.
• Enhance (+1 to +10) adds 5% to a piece's base damage, armour and health per level (+50% at +10). +1 to +3 always work, then 80%, 60%, 45%, 30%, 25%, 20%, 10% for +4 to +10; a failure costs the price, never the piece or its level. Each try takes gold, the tier's material and Tempering Stones – 1 for +1 up to 8 for +10.
• Reforge rolls one affix again – any the slot allows – inside its grade's quality; a unique's signature affixes stay.
• Every boss unique also carries a gear effect – Leech, Slayer, Executioner, Shatter, Lifeblood, Vigor, Thorns, Ambush, Frenzy, Last Stand, Swiftness, Guardian – and every full set its armour class's: plate Last Stand, leather Frenzy, cloth Guardian, stronger with the tier. The same effect from two pieces counts once, a path's effect of the same name adds to it, and Gear Score rates the stats only; the character window lists what you wear.
• The alchemist beside the smith brews 4 elixirs – Might (+10% damage), Ironhide (+10% armour), Precision (+3% critical chance), Haste (+10% attack speed) – from the materials of your level's zones and 40 gold × your level a brew. Each lasts 30 minutes in the world (the time stops while you are away) and stays through death and travel; one of each works at a time, and another of a kind can be drunk only in its last 5 minutes. Elixirs are bound to their brewer: no trade or mail. On the potion bar its ⚙ keeps one up in fights.

See Crafting, Items.

• The backpack starts with 30 slots and the bank with 40; a banker sells more – 5 backpack slots or 10 bank slots a step, up to 60 and 100.
• The bank is the same at every Starfall Exchange banker – in Starfall Landing, Blackpine Woods, Hollow Mere, Ashen Mines, Grimtusk Highlands, Frostpeak Mountains, Emberfall Wastes, Shadowfen Necropolis, Voidrend Chasm, Dragonspine Peaks, The Astral Reach and Titanfall Ruins – and opens only while you stand at one.
• Letters go to any character of the realm and are sent and collected at a banker: a text, gold and up to 6 items, for 30 gold plus 20 per item. A letter waits 30 days; what is not taken goes back.
• /trade Name – or Trade in the menu of a player's name – opens a trade with someone within 10 m: both lay out up to 12 items and gold, both press Ready, then Accept.
• The Market (F2) trades with the whole realm from anywhere: list up to 10 items for 48 hours at your price; a sale pays you the price less 3% by letter, and what does not sell comes back by letter. Bound items cannot be listed.
• Merchants buy anything at 30% of its value – except boss uniques, which no one buys.
• Health potions share a 10 s cooldown. The potion bar (Q, Z) can drink by itself below a health share you set – the ⚙ on the bar, or hold the potion button on a phone. The teleport scroll takes you to Starfall Landing.

See People.

• Ore veins, bog blooms, bone piles and frost crystals grow in the zones, the borderlands and along the coast. Stand within 2.6 m and gather for 2.2 s – moving or a hit breaks it.
• A node gives 1–3 of its tier's crafting material and, 4% of the time, the tier's rare one too; then it stays empty for everyone for 5 minutes. No fight and no tool – a full backpack leaves it standing.

• Asteria is one continent: Starfall Landing in the middle, the zones around it, borderlands between them and the coast all round. Walk anywhere – nothing stops you on foot; a zone's creatures show how dangerous it is. The world map (M) shows where you are.
• The travel window (N) works inside any safe base: pick a zone you have the level for; the light takes 5 s, and moving or a hit breaks it.
• Dungeons are entered on foot through their entrance in the zone above; the stairs at the bottom lead back up.
• Caught behind the scenery? /stuck – or Stuck? in the menu – frees you after 5 s standing still out of combat, once every 15 minutes: to the nearest open ground, or the zone's sanctuary.
• Horses: a stablemaster in any safe base sells your first horse, a Watch Pony, for 5,000 gold from level 10. X calls it (the horse button on a phone) – standing still, outdoors and 6 s out of combat; the call takes 2 s (1 s at ★6) and moving or a hit sends it away. No horse enters a dungeon or an instance.
• A horse is for travel and changes no combat stat: ★1 Watch Pony 6.1 m/s, ★2 Riding Horse 6.5 m/s, ★3 Courser 7.0 m/s, ★4 Destrier 7.4 m/s, ★5 Warhorse 8.1 m/s and ★6 Starborn Steed 9.0 m/s, against 4.5 m/s on foot – speed from gear and paths does not add to a horse's. Attacking, a skill, gathering or travel puts you on foot, and so does a hit – though a ★3–★4 horse shrugs off one hit within 10 s and a ★5–★6 horse two hits; creatures 8 or more levels below you never throw you.
• A stablemaster raises your horse a level at a time for horseshoes, the step's relic and gold, never failing: ★2 Riding Horse at level 20 – 10 horseshoes, a Bog-Iron Bit, 20,000 gold; ★3 Courser at level 35 – 20 horseshoes, a Highland War Saddle, 75,000 gold; ★4 Destrier at level 50 – 35 horseshoes, a Frostforged Chamfron, 175,000 gold; ★5 Warhorse at level 65 – 50 horseshoes, a Grave-Iron Barding, 300,000 gold; ★6 Starborn Steed at level 80 – 70 horseshoes, a Star-Silver Caparison, 600,000 gold. Horseshoes drop from any creature – bosses 35% of the time, ones 8 or more levels below you never; each relic from the bosses and world-event leaders of its levels, and Moonhorn in the Moonwell Glade carries the relic of the highest step your level opens. The Horse window (Menu › Horse) shows what the next step still needs.
• Starfall Rift – the Instances window (U), from level 5: Entry fee 100 gold per level (at least 300). Open 60 minutes of play a day (the day turns at 00:00 UTC). Your party shares one copy; its creatures match the strongest member's level and never strike first. Kills pay ×1.5 experience and ×1.5 gold.
• Moonwell Glade – the Instances window (U), from level 10: Entry fee 50 gold per level (at least 200). Its boss falls once a day; the instance then stays shut until 00:00 UTC. You enter alone, even in a party; its creatures match your level, attack on sight and stay down once slain.

See Zones.

• Parties of up to 5: /invite Name, /leave, and for the leader /kick and /promote. Members within 60 m share kill experience, quest kills and a pile's gold.
• Click a player's name in the chat, or the hero in the world, for the player menu: invite, trade, inspect their gear, add a friend, ignore or report.
• The Group Finder (F3) lists heroes looking for a party – for a dungeon, a raid boss, a world event, a zone or anything – with the levels and the seats they want; ask to join and the post's owner takes you into the party. A post lasts 60 minutes.
• Emotes – /sit, /wave, /bow and /dance, or Emotes in the menu – are seen by everyone near; moving or a fight ends them.
• Social (P): friends (up to 100, both must agree) and the ignore list, which stops a player's chat, whispers and requests from reaching you.
• Guild (Y): founded for 100,000 gold with a name and a short tag, up to 100 members, ranks leader, officer and member; /g talks to the guild. It climbs 10 levels with its members' deeds (Guild levels below).
• Chat: "Name text or /w Name text whispers, /r text answers the last whisper, /p text talks to the party and /g text to the guild; /help lists every command.

See People.

• A guild earns reputation from what its members do – a world event won 30, a dungeon boss 20, a zone boss 8, a champion 3, a quest 5, a repeatable quest 1 and a level gained 5. A member brings at most 120 a day (the server's day, UTC); a raid boss's kill pays every guild with a credited hero 300 on top of that.
• 10 levels: 2 at 1,200, 3 at 3,600, 4 at 7,500, 5 at 13,500, 6 at 22,500, 7 at 34,500, 8 at 51,000, 9 at 72,000, 10 at 99,000 reputation. Every level gives the guild a clan skill point – 10 at the top.
• The leader spends the points in the Guild window's Skills tab on clan skills every member carries all the time, three ranks each: Clan Vitality (rank 3: +6% maximum health), Clan Aegis (rank 3: +9% armour), Clan Might (rank 3: +4% damage), Clan Guidance (rank 3: +3% critical chance), Clan Haste (rank 3: +4% attack speed), Clan Wind Walk (rank 3: +4% movement speed), Clan Lifeblood (rank 3: health potions heal 30% more) and Clan Fortune (rank 3: +9% gold from enemies). Rank 1 is open from the founding, rank 2 from guild level 4, rank 3 from 7; once a week the leader may unlearn them all for 100,000 gold and spend the points again.
• From guild level 3 the leader raises an emblem – a shape, a symbol and two colours – shown beside every member's name; it can be changed again after 10 minutes. The Guilds ranking orders them by reputation.

• A world day lasts four real hours, but its night – 19:00 to 07:00 – passes in thirty minutes.
• 12 of the 12 zones have a world event once per world day, each in its own hours: a boss – or a band of elites – appears with guards for ten minutes. Every player online is warned 15, 5 and 1 minutes ahead; when its leader falls, every hero within 60 m of the spot gets 2% of a level in experience, up to what the event's own level pays.
• Weather follows each zone's climate; dungeons have none.
• Festivals: Hallowtide runs every year from 25 October to 8 November (UTC); the bases dress up and at night the Hollow Harvester rises in five zones. While Hallowtide lasts the creatures carry Hallow Candles: an ordinary one now and then leaves 1, an elite often 2, and a champion 3, a boss 5 and a raid boss 15 every time – none from a creature 8 or more levels below you – and every hero credited with a kill gets their own, straight into the bag. When the Hollow Harvester falls at night, every hero within 60 m of the spot gets 10 more. Wenna the Lantern-Keeper by the Starstone trades them for a title (100), a nameplate colour (150), an aura (250) and a horse look (400) – looks that stay the account's for good.

See World events.

• A raid boss is a fight for three to five heroes. It returns 12–24 hours after it falls. A hero 9 or more levels above it cannot hurt it. After 11 minutes of a fight it rages and hits four times as hard – and twice as hard again every minute after, up to 256 times. 11 of them hold lairs in the open, one in every zone from Blackpine Woods up, at its zone's top level. The Raid Bosses window (Menu › Raid Bosses) shows which are alive, who slew the others and between which hours they return; the world map shows every one of them too - a skull beside its zone, its lair close in, alive or when it may be back - and a press on it opens the boss's card.
• Its health is for four heroes and grows or shrinks 15% with every hero more or fewer fighting it (up to ten) – a hero counts once they have dealt 0.5% of the four heroes' health and stand no more than 8 levels below it. It notices heroes only within 8 m of its lair, follows a fight up to 45 m from it and regenerates 0.05% of its health a second; its rings fall on any hero it can see, not only on the one it fights.
• A fallen raid boss comes back at a random moment 12 to 24 hours later – a restart does not bring it back sooner. The Raid Curse keeps the high levels off the low zones' raids: such a hero's blows do no damage and earn nothing.
• The pile goes to the party – or the hero – that dealt the most damage: 4 pieces of rare to legendary gear, a set piece, big stacks of the tier's materials and now and then the boss's own jewel. Every hero credited with the kill shares 10 times a world boss's experience by damage and earns raid points equal to the boss's level (the Raids ranking adds them up); each of their guilds gains 300 reputation.

See Bestiary, Zones.

• Achievements (B): 151 in 8 groups – progress, combat, hunts, bosses, world, crafting, social and time; 32 of them grant a title to wear by your name. Only for show: they give no stats, items or gold.
• Daily tasks (F8, or Menu › Daily tasks): up to 3 tasks a day fitted to your level (a beginner has fewer: one below level 4 and two at level 4) and one a week – new at 00:00 UTC, the week on Monday – for gold, your tier's materials, Tempering Stones and guild reputation, never experience; a task finished but left unclaimed is paid by itself when the day turns. Entering the world on each day builds a login streak of 7 gifts, the biggest on the last day; a missed day starts it again. The Tempering Stones of tasks and gifts count toward the account's 20 a day – past it they come as gold.
• Settings › Account can switch on browser notifications – a raid boss back in its lair, a world event soon, a Market sale, a letter – sent only while you are not playing.
• Rankings (Menu › Rankings): the realm's top 50 by level, Gear Score, bosses slain, raid points, achievement points and guilds by reputation.
• Photo mode (V) hides the interface for a clean shot; What's new lists every update.

See Achievements.

Every key can be changed in Settings › Controls. Esc is fixed: it closes the top window, then clears your target, then opens the game menu. On a phone: the joystick moves, the arc around the attack button holds the potion and the skills, and the Menu button opens everything else.