Levels and gear

In short: experience raises your level up to 30, and every level makes you tougher and heals you fully. Gear adds attack and defence: the best weapon, armour and relic you carry all count. Better gear comes in seven tiers, and beating bosses unlocks the higher ones.

How it works

Experience and levels

You earn experience (XP) from fights and encounters. Your first level-up needs 150 XP, about three fights. After that each level needs 1.4× as much as the one before, so the early levels come in a day or two and the last ones take weeks. The curve is meant to last a season: a steady player reaches the top level in roughly 57 days.

Each level adds:

Levelling up also restores your health completely, which can save a bad day. At level 30 your experience on the Hero tab reads MAX; you keep earning experience but gain no more levels.

Gear

There are three kinds of equipment: weapons add attack, armour adds defence and relics add a little of both. You never equip anything by hand: for each kind, the single best item in your pack counts in every fight (the strongest weapon by attack, the toughest armour by defence, the relic with the most of both). A second sword does nothing, so sell spares (see Oakhaven, settlements and gold). The pack marks the items that count with a tick.

Loot tiers

Gear comes in seven tiers. Each tier of weapon gives +2 attack, each tier of armour +2 defence, and each tier of relic +1 to both.

The tier you find depends on your level: tier 1 up to level 4, tier 2 from level 5, and one more every five levels, up to tier 7 at level 30. Each find can land a tier lower or higher than that.

Bosses cap your loot. Before you beat the first boss you never see anything above tier 2, however high your level. Each boss you defeat lifts the cap by one tier. This makes the boss ladder the real measure of progress (see Bosses).

Some finds roll a tier higher, still within the cap: encounters deep in the wilds (ring 3 and beyond), ruins, treasure caches, a creature's den and a quest's reward (see Encounters, Sites and rumours and Quests).

Unique items

Every boss drops one unique item the first time you beat it (on each climb: after a Rebirth the ladder, and its uniques, start again). Uniques are stronger than normal gear of their tier and never appear in the market.

The blacksmith can improve any piece of gear, uniques included (see Oakhaven, settlements and gold).

The codex: bestiary and atlas

The Journal tab has three pages: the journal itself, the Bestiary and the Atlas. They keep count of what your hero has fought and seen this season. Collecting is its own reason to wander: every kind of land has five kinds of monster, and the world has more regions than anyone will see.

• The bestiary lists every kind of monster in the wild, 40 in all, grouped by the land they live in. Those you have fought show their name, their trait and how many you have slain and lost to (a hunt you slipped away from counts as neither, but the kind is met); the rest read "Not yet met". The kinds you have met also show on the location card, for the land you stand in, so you can set your stance for a hunt (see The world and the map). A monster's title (Veteran, Savage…) does not make it a new kind, and a quest's foe counts as its kind (the One-Eyed Wolf is a Wolf). Above them is the boss ladder, each name revealed once you have slain it, and your trophies: every nemesis you slew, by name, and whether it was revenge or a claim (see Nemesis). A trophy is a record, not an item: it adds nothing to a fight.
• The atlas counts the places you have seen, the regions (with their kind of land), the farthest ring you have reached, the shrines, ruins, watchtowers and hermits you have found, and every settlement with its coordinates. A watchtower's view counts.

The codex starts empty with each season's hero, and the season's end tells some of it back (see Seasons).

Beginning again

Once the dragon has fallen to you, you may begin again at level 1 in the same season (a Rebirth, see Bosses). Your level, experience, stats and gear start over from a new hero's (with the starter kit's gold and potions), and the loot cap drops back to tier 2 until you beat the first boss again. Your codex does not start over: every kind of monster in the bestiary, every trophy, every place in the atlas stays. The second climb is on the same curve as the first, so what you carry into it is knowledge, not power: which stance each land's monsters want, where the sites and settlements are, where each lair lies.

Tips

• Look at the tick in your pack: only those three items matter. Everything else is gold waiting to be sold.
• If your finds stop improving, you have hit the boss cap. The next boss is the way forward, not more grinding.
• A level-up heals you fully; if you are close to one, one more fight can be worth more than a potion.
• Once your level outruns your finds, the deep rings help: every item from an encounter there rolls a tier higher, up to your cap.
• A quest's reward rolls a tier higher too, and quests follow you outwards as you level (see Quests).
• The bestiary shows which kinds of land you have barely hunted in: a new biome is a new set of monsters to learn.