The town is safe; the world is not, and it gets dark in ten minutes.

1. Talk to somebody with a ! over their head

Press E beside anyone with a golden ! and you have a quest — the quest board in the square has bounties on it as well.

2. Light a star before dark

A stone star saves your progress, and its light is safe ground nothing hostile will walk into — which is where you wait out the ten minutes of night, or fight from the edge of.

3. Spend your points

Every level is five points: C opens your stats and 1–6 spend them.

Stat	What it does
Strength	Melee damage, +2% a point
Agility	Dodge chance, and a shorter wait on your roll
Vitality	Maximum health, +5 a point
Dexterity	Movement speed
Health	How fast you regenerate
Critical	Critical hits, from 5% up by half a percent a point

4. Wear what you find

I opens your bag: click a piece of gear to put it on, eat from the belt across the top with 1–6, and drop something with the x in its corner.

The four foods trade size against speed — a cookie is back in your hand fast, a slice of cake is worth a meat and a half but takes half again as long.

The shop sells you the next thing up; Smith Cinder’s forge makes what you already have better, up to +10.

5. Then the temples, and everything guarding them

One keeper in each of the five zones with an orb behind it, and after that the raid caves, Skull Isle by ferry, and the three guarded landmarks.

Every keeper goes bright for half a second before it throws itself at where you are standing — that half second is the whole fight, so do not be where you are.

6. South, through the wall

The world does not start again when you beat it: it keeps going south, through a door the Shadow King is carrying the key to, into Act II — the Sundered March and then Act III — the Hollow, where the sun does not come up.

Nothing is reset when you go, and because it is all one map a friend who started this morning can stand in Act I and wave at you through the gate.

Against the things that throw, X buys you a third of a second in which anything thrown near you is caught, turned round and sent back harder.

7. The stars are a road

Stand in a lit star, press E, and twenty coins will put you down at any other star you have ever lit, in any act.

Everything you have ever done

Z is Deeds — thirty-five achievements and seven item sets that pay out the moment you finish them — and J is the collection log.

The keys

Phones and tablets get an on-screen pad with all of the same buttons.

Playing with other people

Three ways, and they are different roads:

• The always-on world. Up whether anybody is watching or not, with an orb on the fountain at eight every evening — open Worlds and walk in.
• Host your own. Your browser tab becomes the world and you get a link to send, so keep it open.
• Same wifi. npm run host runs a world for the whole house with no internet.

Every world keeps its own characters — you start at level 1 on a world the first time and pick that hero back up on every visit after, and the hero at home is never touched.

Stuck on something this page does not answer? The FAQ is the other half of it.