How to play

Waking

You choose a calling, and you wake in Rootfall by the Hearth, with no memory. Corvin, the Elder, will train you, and the training targets by the Hearth are there to practise on. The townsfolk have work for you, and each floor tells its story through about ten tasks.

The wilds grow stronger the further you go from the Hearth. Each floor covers a few levels, and the levels go up to 35 on the first ten floors.

Fighting

Tap a creature to fight it, or let the nearest one be chosen for you. Melee skills walk you to the target; ranged ones stop at their range. Your plain blows come in threes: the first two quick, the third the heaviest, followed by a breath to recover. A skill sets up your next plain blow as the third, so a skill and a blow make a pair.

Arrows and spells that reach ten metres or more are loosed standing, with a short draw: range keeps you safe, and the price is standing still.

Creatures show their big blows before they land. The ground under them fills red, or a cone or a line opens in front of them. Step out, or roll: the roll carries you through the blow untouched.

Switch

Roll through a creature's blow at the very last moment and the blow misses. The creature staggers for a moment (a boss for less), and for three seconds the first blow of each of your party's members lands twice as hard. Their screens call it out: Switch!

A creature can be staggered this way once every eight seconds.

Parties

A party is up to six Seedborn. Members within sixty metres of a kill share its experience, and the party earns ten per cent more for every member. Loot goes round the members in turn, and every task counts for everyone who fought. If your phone loses the network, your place in the party is kept for two minutes.

There are three ways to talk: aloud to those nearby, a shout to the whole floor, and the party's own channel.

Field bosses, dungeons and guardians

Every floor has a field boss that wakes on its own, about every half hour, somewhere in the wilds. The whole floor hears it rise and fall.

Every floor has a dungeon for a party. Each party walks its own copy: packs of creatures that stand guard and do not come back once they fall, and two bosses, the last of which opens the way out.

At the top of every floor waits its guardian, in an arena open to everyone who climbs: they fight it together, and it grows with their number. The first time a guardian falls, the floor above opens for everyone in the world. After that it returns every couple of hours, to be fought again for what it leaves.

Growing stronger

Every level gives you three points for your stats and one point for your skills. Your calling's main stat powers everything you do; Agility gives everyone critical blows and evasion, Intellect quickens everyone's resource, and Vitality keeps everyone standing.

Skill points go wherever you like among your calling's three paths. A skill can be ranked up to five times, each rank asking a little more level. The Elder who trains you in each town will let you forget your choices and make them again: the first time is free, then the Tree asks for gold.

You can put six skills on your bar. Passive skills need no place on it.

Gear and runes

You wear a weapon, a shield if your calling carries one, a helmet, armour, gloves, boots, a necklace and two rings. Gear comes in five rarities: Common, Fine, Rare, Epic and Legendary. The rarer it is, the more random properties it rolls, up to four, and Rare gear and better may come with one to three sockets.

Runes go into sockets, and add their worth to the piece: Might, Grace, Vigor, Insight, Edge, Ward and Life, stronger the higher up the Tree they fall. Your bag holds thirty stacks.

Falling

When you fall, you stay where you fell for a moment. After two seconds you may go back to the Hearth; after a minute you are taken there anyway. Until then, a Hearthkeeper can call you back where you lie.

Every fall costs a twentieth of the experience you have gathered in your current level: it flows into the roots. A Seedborn who falls in a dungeon wakes at its gate.

Travel

Every town has a Hearth Gate. It takes you to the town of any floor that is open. A floor you have not been to is fetched the first time you go there, and kept.