Getting started

In short: open the game, read the season's join screen, choose your hero's name and press Join. You start in the town of Oakhaven with a small starter kit and 20 turns to spend. Note your recovery code: it is the only way back to your hero on another device.

How it works

Joining a season

The game runs in seasons of a few months each (see Seasons). The first time you open it during a season you see the join screen: the season's number and name, a short introduction, New this season (what this season brings; the narrator reads it when you join, once it is recorded, and your first dawn shows it again), how many days are left and when it ends. Press Join Season N to create your hero for that season.

If you join late, the join screen does two things for you:

• It warns you if the season may close before you can reach the dragon. It compares the days left with how long a typical adventurer needs (about 57 days), shortened by your bonus. You can still join and climb as far as you can; if another season is coming, the screen tells you when it starts.
• It gives you a catch-up bonus: +1.5% experience for every day the season has already run, up to +100%. The bonus is fixed when you join and applies to every bit of experience you earn all season.

If you earned an honour in an earlier season, the screen also shows it, and you start with 1 extra potion as a veteran. Between seasons the join screen is replaced by "The realm rests": when the next season begins and what is new in it, and a look back at the season just ended (see Seasons).

A notice from the team, such as a coming change to the terms or the privacy policy, shows at the top of both screens as it does in the game, until you close it (see The interface).

Your hero's name

The join screen offers four names for your hero, each a given name and a place: "Maren of Kelford", "Edric Ashburn". Choose one, or press Roll again for four more; after twenty rolls the first names come round again. The button then reads Join Season N as your choice.

Names are made by the game, never typed, so nobody has to check them. No two heroes of a season share a name: one another hero already goes by is never offered. Your name is yours for the season. Other players read it when you meet on the road (see Crossings and cairns), on your cairn, in the hall and in the Daily Happenings, the paper at dawn. Your hero's name is the only thing about you other players ever see. If you would rather stay out of the paper, Settings has Your name in the Daily Happenings: Off keeps your heroes out of it, and out of the papers already printed.

Heroes who joined before names existed are called Playtester followed by a few characters of their id. They choose a name once: the next time you open the game, after the dawn, a sheet offers four names and Roll again. Take this name keeps it for the season. Later puts it off, and Choose a name at the top of the Hero tab brings the sheet back until you choose.

Your account

There is no sign-up. The first time you open the game, your browser makes up a random player id and remembers it, so you come straight back to your hero on the same browser. Your account itself is created the moment you first join a season.

When your account is created you get a recovery code: six characters, digits and the letters A to F. You find it on the Hero tab, and between seasons or before you join a new one at the foot of the season screen. Keep it somewhere safe: if you clear your browser data or switch devices, the code is the only way back.

To use a code on a new device, press Already have a hero on another device? on the join screen and type it in (upper or lower case both work); you do not need to join first. Inside the game the same option is on the Hero tab as Use a code. Either way the game switches to the account the code belongs to and reloads.

Signing in with Google

Where the game offers it, a Google button sits under the recovery code on the Hero tab and on the join screen. It is an alternative to the code, not a replacement:

• On the Hero tab, it links your account to your Google account. The tab then says so, and from then on signing in with Google on any device brings you back to this hero.
• On the join screen of a new device, it brings back the hero already linked to that Google account. If that Google account is not linked to anyone yet, it is linked to the account on this device instead.

Signing in takes two taps. The first button is the game's own, and until you tap it nothing on the page comes from Google. Your tap fetches Google's sign-in, and Google's own button takes its place: tap that one to choose your Google account in Google's window. If Google's sign-in cannot load (you are offline, or something on your device blocks Google), the game says so and offers Try again.

The game keeps only Google's id number for your account: never your email address or your name. One Google account can be linked to one player, and a player to one Google account.

Download a copy of your data

You can have a copy of everything the game keeps about you, whenever you like. Open the Hero tab, then Settings, and press Download my data near the bottom; between seasons, or before you join a new one, the season screen has it under your recovery code. The game puts the copy together there and then, keeps none itself, and saves it as one file named ashen-dragon-data- and the day's date. With the game on the Home Screen of an iPhone or iPad, press Save the file once it is ready and choose Save to Files.

The file holds your account (when it was made, and your choices in Settings); each of your heroes, in every season, with their journal, map, bestiary, quests, cairns, nemeses and meetings with other heroes, and the headlines of the Daily Happenings that name them; your honours; the heroes you ignore; the play statistics counted for you; your bug reports, with our replies and notes; the errors the game reported by itself while you played; the messages you asked for; and the game's answers to your last actions. It opens with a few lines on what each part is, and points to the privacy policy. It is a JSON file: any text editor opens it, and other programs can read it.

A few things are left out on purpose. Your recovery code, the id your device signs in with, and the address and keys that deliver your messages would let anyone who saw the file take over your account or send you messages, so the file only says that they exist. Other players appear only as the game shows them to you, by their hero's name. Nor does the file tell you anything the game keeps from you in play: what each choice of the encounter in front of you would bring, the later stops of a quest under way, or whether another player chose never to meet your hero, or came upon them and walked on. The server's logs and the backups are not in it either (the privacy policy says how long they are kept). You can download up to ten copies a day.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account at any time. In the game, open the Hero tab, then Settings; at the bottom, Delete account… asks you to type DELETE, and Delete for good does it. Between seasons, or before you join a new one, there is no Hero tab: the season screen shows your recovery code and Delete account… at its foot instead. Without the game, the page /delete-account on the game's own address (play.legacyoftheashendragon.com/delete-account; the old address, game.eguys.network, sends you there) does the same with your recovery code. If you only ever signed in with Google and do not know your code, sign in with Google in the game and delete from there, or read your code first.

Deleting takes everything the game keeps for you, at once and for good: your hero in every season with their gear, gold, journal, quests, bestiary and map; your honours; your cairns, your meetings with other heroes and the heroes you ignore; every headline that names your hero in the Daily Happenings, past papers included; the messages you asked for, on every device, so none reaches you again; your bug reports; the play statistics recorded for you; your recovery code, which stops working; and the link to your Google account. Nothing in the game can bring them back. The error reports the game sends by itself stay: each counts one error for everyone who hit it, so only your account is taken off them. A few things stay for a while, and the deletion page lists them with their periods: copies in the game's backups (on the game's server for 14 days, and encrypted copies kept elsewhere for up to 12 months; if one is ever restored, your account is deleted again straight away, so it never comes back); your account's random id and the date (and when you last turned play statistics off, if you did), for 13 months, which is what deletes it again after a restore; the server's logs, which hold your account's id (and, for a request that failed, your address and browser) until they fill up or the game is next updated; copies of your bug reports in the team's issue tracker, without your ids, until 12 months after they are closed, as reports in the game are; and your emails to support, for two years after your last one, or less if you ask. Lines already written in other players' journals that name your hero stay as they were written.

Afterwards the game on that device starts again at the join screen, as a new player. A game still open on another device finds no hero there either, and joining from it makes a new account.

Your starter kit

Every new hero starts the same way:

You have no gear yet. The kit is small on purpose: enough gold for a night at the inn and two potions, so your first day is survivable without being easy.

Your first day

1. You wake in Oakhaven, the town at the centre of the map. Nothing hunts in town, so you have to walk out. Every step costs a turn (see The daily loop).
2. Near town the monsters are gentle. Close to Oakhaven they are a level below you; the further you go, the tougher and richer they get (see Combat and The world and the map).
3. Hunt on any wild tile. Each fight costs a turn and is settled at once. Winning gives gold, experience and a little health back.
4. Encounters happen as you walk: a stranger, a creature, a strange noise. Choosing costs nothing (see Encounters).
5. Drink a potion when you are hurt; it is free. Walk back to Oakhaven to rest at the inn, buy potions and look at the market (see Oakhaven, settlements and gold).
6. When your turns run out, the day is over. At the next daily reset you get fresh turns and recover some health overnight, and the dawn screen greets you with a short chronicle of your day (see The daily loop and The chronicle and the story).

About three good fights take you to level 2, which fully heals you and makes you stronger (see Levels and gear).

The Rumours tab offers a quest from your first day: three stops over at least two days, ending with a named foe (see Quests).

Tips on screen

In your first days, short tips appear one at a time on a parchment card, about whatever is in front of you: your first encounter, dangerous ground, your stance, a site, low health, running out of turns, falling in battle. Got it hides a tip for good, Tell me more opens the matching page of How to play, and No more tips turns them all off. How to play, the player half of this guide, is always on the Hero tab.

Playing from your home screen

On Android, open the game in Chrome and choose Add to Home screen or Install app. It then opens full screen from its own icon. See The interface.

Messages, only if you ask

The game sends you nothing unless you ask: in Settings you can ask for a message on the day a new season opens and, after the beta, one when your turns are back (see Messages). Asking keeps, for that device only, the address your browser's push service gives it, the keys that let only your device read the message, and your time zone's name (to keep quiet at night where you are, not to know where you are). Nothing else, and nobody else sees it. Turning the messages off deletes it, leaving your account only when that device was last sent a message (so asking again the same day brings no second one); deleting your account deletes all of it.

What the game counts

Nothing before you join. Once you have, the game counts a few things you do (which actions and screens, how long a day takes), tied to your random account, so we can balance the game and fix it. Nobody else sees them and they are never sold; Download my data shows you every one. Share play statistics in Settings turns this off and deletes what was counted so far; between seasons, or before you join a new one, it is on the season screen under your recovery code. See Analytics and feedback.

Tips

• Write your recovery code down on day one, or link a Google account if the game offers it. Nothing else can bring a lost hero back.
• Leaving for good? Delete your account from Settings rather than just clearing your browser: a cleared browser leaves the account behind, unreachable without the code. Want your history first? Download my data before you delete.
• Take your time over the name: you cannot change it later in the season.
• Do not wander far on day one. The first ring around Oakhaven is where a level-1 hero wins.
• Keep your two potions for real trouble. A fight is settled in one go, so drink before you hunt, not during.
• A late joiner's bonus is generous. If the join screen says you may not finish, you can still climb the boss ladder and earn an honour for how far you got.