How to Play Worldvale

Start Here: your first few minutes

Pick a class, a name, and a look, then step out of town. Everything you need to begin is already in your hands: a blade, a pickaxe, and a fishing rod.

Walk out past the plaza and you'll meet green slimes and bats. Swing at them (Space or click), grab the coins they drop, and bring that coin back to Pip's Trading Post for gear. Fill the XP bar to level up - more health, harder hits, a full heal.

Read the big ones. Ogres, golems, dragons and the like do not simply walk into you: they wind up. The ground under them turns red, a gold ring closes in, and they stand rooted while it does - that is your cue. Roll clear with Shift and the blow whiffs entirely, leaving them reeling and wide open; every hit you land into that window does half again as much. Stand in it and you take about double a normal hit. The tell is always the same, so once you can see it, you can beat anything in the vale.

When you're settled, talk to Elder Rowan by the fountain. He carries the story - eleven chapters of it, from your first slime to the deepest dark under the mountains.

Worldvale is a single-player game: the whole of it - eleven story chapters, ten realms, ten bosses, crafting, building, achievements - is yours alone, offline, saved in this browser. Co-op is built and planned, but it is switched off while it is made trustworthy; there is no date on it.

Controls

Combat & Classes

Combat is directional: you swing in the way you're facing, with knockback, damage numbers, and hurt flashes. Three classes play differently:

At level 8 each class awakens its special on R: the Warrior's Whirl Slam strikes everything around you and hurls it back; the Mage Blinks a stride ahead (through fences, over gaps - a mage does not walk around things); the Archer's Volley looses five arrows in a fan. Each runs on a short cooldown - the chip under your coin purse tracks it.

Later, that key is a choice. Three Tomes can be forged at the Field Forge, each from one Keeper's own material: the Tome of Fire (dragonscale) hurls a Fireball that bursts where it lands, the Tome of Rime (rime shards) erupts a Frost Nova that bites and slows everything around you, and the Tome of Storms (skyshards) throws Chain Lightning that leaps from foe to foe. A tome takes over R rather than adding a button, and the Spellbook at the top of the forge swaps between them - your own class special included, always one tap from coming back.

Gathering & Mining

Everyone carries a pickaxe. Swing at a node - or stand beside it and press E - to work it:

• Trees → wood
• Rocks → stone
• Ore veins → iron, with gold in the cave and the deep rock
• Crystal - only where the mountain runs deepest. See Carving the Mountains.

Nodes hold a few units, deplete when worked out (they fade), and regrow after a while - so gathering is a renewable loop. Rock and ore strikes also train your Mining skill, which speeds up carving and sweetens vein luck.

Carving the Mountains

Mountain ranges aren't walls - they're unmined ground. Swing your pickaxe at a mountain face and after a few blows the rock gives way, leaving a stone-floored tunnel (and a couple of stone for your trouble). Higher Mining ranks cut the swings needed from five down to three.

• Veins in the walls - carving can expose iron and gold right in the tunnel.
• Deep rock - bore far enough that rock surrounds you on all sides and the finds get richer: more gold, and the only source of crystal.
• Controller - plug in a gamepad: stick/d-pad move, A attack, B interact or close, X potion, Y eat, LB build, RB special, Start settings. A Reduce motion comfort toggle lives in Settings.
• The dark - deep tunnels go genuinely black. Place torches, or better, a Crystal Lamp (one crystal, two iron) whose wide violet glow is made for the deep.
• Delvers - pale things that erupt from deep rock, guarding the crystal. They drop what they hoard.
• Chasms - sometimes the floor under deep rock is thin, and a carve opens a hole into somewhere much darker…

Building & Your House

At level 5, press B to enter build mode. The menu is organised by category - defences, floors, furniture, lighting, décor, trophies, and groundskeeping - and a green ghost shows a valid spot. Click a placed piece to remove it for a half refund.

There's also a Storage Chest (a shared bank for materials), a Garden that grows potion herbs, a Bedroll that sets your respawn, and boss trophies - one for every boss you've felled, to mount in your hall.

Two builder's tools worth knowing: Bridges (4 wood, in the floors tab) lay planks over open water - walk where boats go, link the chest islands, raise a base on the lake. And the blueprint brush: hold the mouse and drag to lay whole runs of walls, floors, fences, or paths in one sweep, paying per tile.

Crafting & the Forge

Press C anywhere - or visit Bram at the Smithy - to open the forge. Recipes climb in tiers, and each one is a permanent upgrade to your character:

• Iron → Steel → Gilded - honest blades and plating from mined ore.
• Relic tier - bosses drop relic shards; forge them into runed gear. Matched sets (Ironforged, Barrow Regalia, Dragonscale Aegis) grant standing set bonuses.
• Keeper tiers - dragonscale from Emberreach, skyshards from Aetheria, rime from Frostmere, and crystal from the deep rock each unlock mythic gear: Dragonfang, the Stormheart, Wyrmfang, the Prismblade, and more.
• Starsteel - alloy a crystal into molten iron for a trade bar Pip pays top coin for. Not gear - pure profit.

Legendary gear shows on your character - the vale can see what you've earned.

The Market & Daily Deeds

Pip buys as well as sells. Wood, stone, ore, fish, crystal, and smelted bars all have a price - and prices drift daily, from 0.7× to 1.5× of base. The ledger shows today's quote with a ▲/▼ trend mark; everyone in the world sees the same prices, so there's nothing to reload - only good days to catch.

• Smelt before you sell - an iron bar (3 ore) sells far above 3 loose ore; gold bars more so; starsteel most of all.
• The Daily Deed - pinned atop the bounty board, one honest task a day (slay, mine, fish, sell, or carve). Finish it for coins, potions, and a guaranteed relic shard. Renews at midnight. It now rides on your HUD with a countdown, so you never have to walk to the board to check it - tap it to open the board.
• The streak - finish the deed on consecutive days and the chain grows, paying up to double by day eleven, with three relic shards every seventh day. A full week banks a grace day, so one missed Tuesday does not undo a month.
• Share a moment - Settings has Share this moment, which saves the screen as a card carrying your hero, your level and the vale's address, so a screenshot brings its own invitation with it.
• Combos - fell monsters one after another without taking a hit and each kill pays more, up to double. One wound ends the run. Clearing a patch no longer empties the field, but grinding the same spot for a long stretch pays less and less: the vale would rather you saw another realm.
• The Weekly Trial - every Monday the vale crowns one keeper (golem, dragon, sovereign, wyrm, gravelord, or queen). Fell it that week for two relic shards and a purse of coin. It's the same trial for every hero, everywhere.
• The Sealed Vault - endgame, for saga-finishers: a barrow remixed by the week's seed, under one curse (tougher, faster, or crueler foes) and one boon (double coins, relic-shedding kills, or bonus XP). Enter from the bounty board, fell 30 inside, and the seal breaks: four relic shards and a heavy purse, once a week.
• Bounties - three rolling hunt contracts below the deed, for coin and XP.

Fishing & Healing

Face a lake and press E to cast. After a moment your line tugs and you land a fish (sometimes two). Press F to eat one and heal on the move - the Chef skill makes each fish heal more, and the Fishing skill speeds the catch.

You also mend passively at the town fountain, near any well you build, and by your own hearth at home. Top up before a long trip out.

Progression & Story

Every level raises your max health, attack, and reach, and heals you fully. Alongside levels run five practice skills - Swords, Archery, Fishing, Chef, and Mining - that rank up simply by doing.

• Every 5 levels - your potion pouch holds one more flask.
• Every 10 levels - a stacking class perk: Warrior gains flat armour, Mage lowers its attack cooldown, Archer moves faster.
• The story - eleven chapters through Elder Rowan, from the first slime cull to the Delver Queen under the mountains. Finish it and New Game+ begins the world again, harder and richer.
• Achievements - 53 of them (V to browse), from your first fish to secrets the sea keeps.
• The Epilogue - finish the saga and Elder Rowan opens the Keeper's Testament: three final quests through the champion elites, the Leviathan, and the Sealed Vault.

The Overworld

One shared, hand-shaped 128×128 map: grassland, lakes, forests, mountain ranges, an ocean with sailable water, and roads leading out from a walled town. Monsters spawn in tiered rings - soft near town, dangerous at the far edges. A stone boss arena sits at the north end of the road, a lone Slime King heaves up in the south, and a harbor on the coast launches your boat.

The town's buildings are real - step through the doors of Pip's Trading Post, the Smithy, and Elder Rowan's hall. Click the minimap any time for the full map with points of interest.

The Cave

North-west of town is a cave mouth. Step onto it and the screen fades into a dark dungeon lit only by your torch and the sconces on the walls. Inside: winding corridors, fast spiders, deeper gold, and a chest with a real hoard in the farthest room. Step onto the glowing rune circle to climb back out.

Beyond the Vale

Follow the north road off the map edge and it carries you to the Frontier - a tougher wilderness that is also the gateway to four keeper realms. The last realm you must dig to yourself:

And sailors tell of a light far out on the open water, past the chest islands, where a keeper tends a lamp that never goes dark. They don't say what it keeps asleep. Bring a boat - and a finished saga.

Bestiary

The everyday trouble:

And the ones with their own health bars:

Co-op

Worldvale is single-player right now. A shared mode exists in the code - other heroes on the same map, shared monsters, duels, parties and trading - but it is switched off in the public game while the server is made able to referee it properly. Turning it on before then would mean a world where anyone could forge their own gear and standings, and that is not a world worth sharing.

It is planned. There is no date on it, and we would rather say nothing than promise a month.

Nothing you do now is wasted: your hero, your level, your gear, your base and your story all live in your own save, and they are the same hero whenever co-op arrives.

Tips

• Heal at the fountain before leaving town; carry a fish or two for the road.
• Mine iron before you try to build - towers and furnaces need it.
• Smelt, then sell. Ore is pocket change; bars are a living; starsteel is a fortune.
• Check the Daily Deed when you log in - if it's something you'd do anyway, it's a free relic shard.
• Carving into deep rock? Bring lamps and full health - the dark is real, and so are the Delvers.
• Fighting the golem is easier after a few levels of armour or a base of towers nearby.
• Lost in the wilds? Head back toward the crossroads - every road leads to town.