Controls
One top-down map view; a fight opens in its own window over it.
Movement
Click or tap a floor tile you can see to walk there, one tile at a time; glowing pips mark the route, a ring where it ends. Movement triggers encounters (World).
| Out of sight | A tile past your sight, or a route leaving it, is refused |
| Wall or unreachable tile | Reported as an invalid destination; you do not move |
| Diagonals | Not possible |
| Rooms | Entered only through their door, never from a tile beside them |
| Room names | Hover a room within 12 tiles; on touch, tap it and the name stays a moment while you walk. Further off a room looks like floor |
| On the map | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Small pawn | A character, in its own look, coloured by its affinities |
| Ring under a pawn | You or your faction's members, in its colour |
| Halo on a pawn | Another faction's character, in its colour; a character in no faction has neither |
| Red disc with crossed swords | A fight against monsters |
| Shield split blue and red | A fight between players |
Every marker is in Reference: Map markers.
The way ahead
While you walk, a small first-person view at the top of the screen shows the corridor ahead, rooms the map shows you, and anyone or any grave within 12 tiles; it turns when you do. Tap it, or Stop walking beneath it, to stop. Off with Show the way ahead in Settings.
A fight is announced half a second before it opens: the way ahead shows the monster that started it, with a !, and up to three players on your tile or the eight around it.
Camera
| Action | Control |
|---|---|
| Zoom | Scroll wheel, or pinch with two fingers |
Always centred on your character; no panning. Zoomed fully out, the edge of your sight still reaches the edge of the screen.
Touch screens
Plays in a phone or tablet browser, either way up. Windows fill the screen, and whatever a mouse shows on hover (item details, job rewards, combat values) opens with a tap. In a fight, the technique or item you pick shows its details under it. Keys are for a keyboard only; on touch, use the menu.
Keyboard
One key opens each window, one window at a time: another key swaps it, the same key or Esc closes it.
| Key | Opens |
|---|---|
| C | Character |
| I | Inventory |
| E | Equipment |
| F | Fuse |
| J | Jobs |
| G | Your faction's window, or Found / Join while you belong to none |
| X | Settings |
| W | Your waymark, which opens and closes like a book |
| H | Your vitals for a moment, when they are folded into a button |
| Enter | The chat, small, with the cursor in its box; nothing with Chat window off |
| Keys do nothing | |
|---|---|
| Always | While typing in a field, with the game menu open, during the intro, or with Ctrl, Alt or Cmd held |
| I, E, F, J, W, H | Without a character in the world |
| Enter | While a control (button, link, tab, checkbox, slider) has the focus, or inside an open window |
They work everywhere else, fights included. The desktop menu shows each key beside its entry. Off with Keyboard shortcuts in Settings.
HUD
| Piece | Default place | Shows |
|---|---|---|
| Vitals | Top left | HP, stamina, mana, hunger, thirst; your faction's name, role and members under them |
| Position | Top right | Your sector and tile |
| Room button | Top right | Reopens the window of the room you stand in |
| Way ahead | Top centre | The view ahead while you walk |
| HUD buttons | Bottom left | The logo, then Character, Inventory, Equipment, Jobs, Faction, Waymark |
| Chat | Bottom right | The last few lines (Chat) |
Every piece moves, and the buttons hide, under HUD in Settings. On a phone the vitals fold into a button, the HUD buttons stand in a column on the right, and the chat sits bottom left.
The logo opens the game menu: HUD buttons not on the bar, Settings and
Logout (from the bottom of the screen on a phone). Its foot, and the title
screen, show the versions, as client x.y.z · server x.y.z; a red line means the server is on a
different major version from this page: reload it. The changelog heads
each change with the server version it arrived in.
| Button | Opens |
|---|---|
| Character | Stats, vitals, experience and techniques; its Equipment, Inventory, Fuse and Jobs buttons open those in its place |
| Inventory | Pack, equipment and the recipes in books you carry (Items) |
| Equipment | What you wear, slot by slot |
| Jobs | Every job you hold, from anywhere (Job Board) |
| Faction | Your faction's window, or Found faction / Join faction |
| Waymark | Five pages of places to walk back to (Job Board) |
| Logout | Disconnects to the login screen |
Fuse (shards, anywhere) opens from the character sheet or F. Crafting a material and fusing materials happen in a Foundry's own window (Crafting).
Chat
A small window; its header holds Global, + (make a room; asks the name), your rooms, who is here, maximise, the grip and fold. Chat window off in Settings takes it off the screen.
| Control | Does |
|---|---|
| Grip | Drag anywhere (arrow keys with it focused); it stays, and Settings' chat place becomes Where you dragged it |
| Corner | Drag to resize; the handle sits in the corner nearest the middle of the screen, or bottom right once you have dragged the window elsewhere |
| Maximise | Opens it large |
| − | Folds it to a Chat button showing what you have not read |
| […] | Whatever does not fit in the header; the open room always shows |
| Line time | UTC hours and minutes; tap for the full date |
| Who is here | A window at the chat's edge: in Global, everyone online and their level; in a room, its members with the online marked, Invite (anyone online not in it, or a name; in at once) and Leave |
A line in Global rises in a bubble over the speaker on the map for a few seconds, yours included; room lines do not. Its place is under HUD in Settings; Chat window and its opacity are under Map.
Faction controls
In a faction, its name, your role and member count sit under your vitals, with a menu:
| Entry | Notes |
|---|---|
| Treaties | Agreements with other factions; officers and leaders only |
| Invite | Officers and leaders only |
| Delete faction | Leaders only |
The faction window (Faction or G) shows members, tiles held and contested, and the leader, with tabs Members and Territory, plus Invite and Treaties for officers and leaders.
Under your vitals, a banner offers each invitation (Accept / Decline) and an open raid (dismiss). A contested border, treaty proposals and revocations arrive as toasts.
Room windows
A room's window opens as you step in. Closing it — stash, sanctum, well, Fabrication Bay, Foundry, market, job board, Maintenance Bay, or a fight to join — leaves a button named for it, top right by default, until you leave the room. With Open room windows on entering off, a room starts with only its button. A stash closed to its button still searches each storage cell you step onto: you rummage on the map, and the button shows what the search came to for a moment.
The water window opens wherever you can drink: a well, or a river or lake (washed blue on the map). It offers cupped hands and filling any vessel you carry. A vessel's pack row offers Drink, Fill here where there is water, Pour out and Make water (Fluids).
Proximity to other players
On another player's tile, or orthogonally beside it, you can open a fight.
| Position | Opening |
|---|---|
| Adjacent tile | Ambush |
| Same tile | Request (Challenge) |
When someone sends you a Request, or you spot their Ambush, you get a prompt with a ten-second countdown; no answer is a refusal. See Fighting Other Players.
During a fight
The fight opens in its own window over the map (Show fights in 3D picks its layout). A turn lasts at most ten seconds and resolves as soon as everyone has acted, so a slow submission holds up the whole fight. Actions are in Combat.
Settings
From the game menu, or X. With a mouse and room for it, Settings is a window: a tab each for Sound, Map, HUD and Controls, the tab's settings on the left, and on the right a drawing of what the chosen one changes, with its default. On a phone it is a sheet. Esc, X or Done closes the window, and a fight starting closes it.
| Key, in the window | Does |
|---|---|
| ↑ ↓ | Choose a setting |
| ← → | Change it |
| Space | Switch it on or off |
| 1–4 | Pick a tab |
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Show the way ahead | The small view of the corridor ahead while you walk |
| Show fights in 3D | The fight's tile in first person; off, the fight is lists, roomier and lighter on a slow phone |
| Open room windows on entering | Off, a room's window waits for its room button |
| Use tile sprites | Tile art on the map; off, plain drawing. Characters and monsters are drawn either way |
| Animation | Figures walk and turn, and storage cells are rummaged; off, figures stand facing you and jump from tile to tile, and so does the way ahead |
| Chat window | The small chat window; off, it is gone and Enter opens none. Under it, the chat's opacity (Chat) |
| Music | The music of where you are, with a volume slider |
| 8-bit music | The older square-wave sound instead of the 16-bit one |
| Sound effects | Footsteps and blows, with a volume slider |
| HUD | Each piece's place, the chat's included; HUD buttons as pictures, words or both; vitals as bars or a button; the chat's opacity sits under Chat window above (HUD) |
| Keyboard shortcuts | The single keys; off, they do nothing outside a text field (Keyboard) |
Sound starts with your first tap or key press.
| Music | Plays |
|---|---|
| Walking | Follows the biome underfoot, rearranged from sector to sector |
| In a room | The room's own theme |
| Fight against monsters | One theme within four sectors of the origin (the larger coordinate), a deeper one from five out |
| Fight against a player | Its own theme |
| Jingles | A win, an escape, a level gained, a death, sitting down to a parlour game |