Join the current front¶
Edition scope — 9 September 2026: Chapter One focuses on frontier advancement, basic parties, three tutorial lessons, repeatable timed gathering and crafting anywhere. Deeper RPG systems are disabled but retained for the full MMO. Six-frontier, naval, custom-equipment and extended-story designs below describe that larger world. The current roadmap takes precedence over earlier milestone/group-size wording.
Status: Implemented for Frontiers 1–2 · The same entry contract is required for Frontiers 3–6
Campaign progress raises a shared equipment baseline. Join late and you can fight with the group immediately. Personal effort earns a modest improvement over that baseline, practical experience, supplies and useful specialist choices. It must never create an insurmountable numerical gap between friends.
Two ways into play¶
Play tutorial starts in Greyfen with first-frontier field equipment. Two quick quests teach the loop: land two sword and two mace hits, report to Rusk, inspect the west-fork wagon, defeat two wolves, then return to Elen. The wolves respawn permanently and do not disappear when territory changes. Goblin territorial combat begins beyond them on the north road at Reedwatch.
Join frontier equips all four weapons and protection for the highest frontier the campaign has unlocked, issues the current field supply bundle and deploys to the furthest connected, stocked, uncontested rally with a clear arrival. No old quest chain or character level gates this choice on an established front. When no forward territory has ever been won, both choices start with the Greyfen tutorial; finishing it opens the first push at Reedwatch.
The arrival choice opens for new characters. Return to M → Join Frontier, Greyfen's muster board by the north gate at any time. When every forward rally is threatened or cut off, the same equipment is issued in Greyfen and the objective becomes reclaiming the road. Players are never dropped directly into an enemy-held fortress.
A field bundle contains three supply packs, three healing draughts, three timber planks, three field dressings, twenty arrows and two mana draughts. It is issued once per character per unlocked frontier. Revisiting or reconnecting cannot farm extra bundles. Existing recipients of the earlier starter kit receive its missing support items without duplicating the old supplies.
Everyone rises when the frontier advances¶
Capturing Fenline first unlocks Frontier 2. That unlock is saved independently of current ownership. Everyone who has chosen to join the war receives the higher field-equipment floor immediately; new arrivals get it through Join Frontier. Tutorial players can finish their first-frontier practice before joining. Losing ground does not take equipment tiers away.
Field equipment is bound to the character and always usable. It cannot be sold, banked or transferred. A crafted item in an equipment slot remains equipped; the greater of the working crafted bonus or the field baseline applies. Breaking crafted equipment removes its extra advantage until repaired, but never removes the field baseline. Supplies still require gathering and crafting after the initial bundle.
| Current frontier | Field-issue weapon bonus | Crafted weapon bonus | Field protection | Crafted protection |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| F1 · Greyfen March | +2 | +4 | 10% | 15% |
| F2 · Drowned Reach | +6 | +9 | 18% | 25% |
These bonuses apply equally to sword, mace, bow and staff attacks. Carried melee trophies together add at most +3, regardless of how many different trophies are carried. A fully upgraded F2 sword with trophies deals 30 damage on a normal hit versus 24 for an issued sword: a 25% advantage, before enemy mechanics. There are no character-level damage multipliers in the current combat implementation. Skill, positioning, blocking, aim and coordinated objectives remain decisive.
Contract for all six frontiers¶
The design repeats at every frontier: shared unlock → new common field kit → fight and gather together → modest crafted upgrades → coordinated victory → next shared baseline.
At Frontier 5, for example, a brand-new account must receive Frontier 5 field equipment and a useful crew assignment quickly. They must not grind through Frontiers 1–4 while friends fight at sea. Regular players retain crafted refinements, ship knowledge, supplies and practiced teamwork. A fresh arrival can still fight boarders, repair and help fire a cannon effectively.
F3–F6 equipment values, ships and encounters are not implemented yet. Each pack must add its actual field tier, resource and upgrade recipes, a viable rally or embarkation path, and tests for a completely new account before it can be accepted. New baseline equipment must be sufficient to participate, with the top encounter rewarding the group's earned upgrades and strategy. A new frontier cannot require its own victory-only crafting drops to enter.
Roles without fixed classes¶
Sword, mace, archery and aimed magic remain available together. Fight, interrupt, scout, gather, haul, repair a wagon, operate a sluice or tend a nearby ally. Join an open company or form one with friends. Useful recent contributors share nearby war-kill and quest credit. Support actions change real health, supply or encounter state.
Future packs add parallel siege and ship jobs for larger groups. At Frontier 4 the target is ten to twenty appropriately equipped players working on several simultaneous tasks. Group sizes remain human balance targets, not proven capacity.
Prove the promise¶
Current automated checks cover new F2 accounts without tutorial prerequisites, free-bundle replay prevention, campaign unlock and regression, server restart, stronger crafted equipment, unsafe rally fallback and failed-save rollback. Human testing must still measure time from character creation to useful contribution, tutorial clarity and the newcomer/veteran gap.
Target: the two tutorial lessons should fit a short first session, and an experienced newcomer should equip and reach a clear forward rally in under two minutes after entering the world. These are targets to measure with people. Every future frontier repeats fresh-account, returning-player, lost-rally and whole-campaign regression tests. Balance passes must include both field-issued newcomers and fully upgraded regulars in the same group.
Solo and group encounters¶
The full campaign is designed to be difficult but mechanically possible solo, while cooperation is the preferred way to progress. The two currently playable frontiers use nearby living combatants, not server population or people idle in Greyfen, to scale enemies. Future frontiers must follow this rule; group-size examples in the atlas are recommended teams, not minimum entry gates.
Each additional nearby player adds 55% of base health and 10% of base attack damage, with damage capped at 160% and health attendance capped at twenty players. Two players face 155% health and 110% damage; five face 320% health and 140% damage. Team damage therefore grows faster than enemy health. Current health percentage is preserved when a group grows; enemies never heal to full on arrival. Peak attendance stays fixed during the fight and resets after twenty seconds with nobody nearby. Death or briefly stepping out does not instantly weaken enemies.
Veyr has 900 base health before group scaling. Solo operators get thirty-two seconds to turn the second sluice and twenty-eight seconds of exposure; groups get sixteen and twenty-two seconds respectively. His phase reinforcements remain finite. These are initial playtest values; automated mechanics checks do not replace solo and group human balance testing.
After the two combat lessons, A Road Built by Hand teaches gathering and refining. Every capture also displays next-step guidance for players who skipped the tutorial. Only Reedwatch capture is free. Ironroot costs two timber planks and all later authored capture recipes remain required.