How to Play Ashveil

What is Ashveil?

Ashveil is a free, dark-fantasy idle RPG that runs in any web browser on desktop or mobile - no download, no install. It blends the deep, satisfying skill grind of old-school MMORPGs with the relaxed, always-progressing pace of an idle (or "incremental") game. You build a single hero, train more than twenty skills, forge your own gear, and push outward from a single walled town through six increasingly haunted regions toward the wound at the bottom of the world.

The hook of an idle RPG is simple: your hero keeps working even when you close the tab. Set them chopping yew logs, smelting star-iron, or hunting in the Sunless Reach, come back hours later, and collect everything they earned. Ashveil is built to be checked in on a few times a day and quietly enjoyed for months - it is server-authoritative and strictly not pay-to-win, so progress is always earned, never bought.

Getting started & choosing a class

When you first open Ashveil you can play instantly as a guest - no email, no signup. Your progress is saved to that guest hero, and whenever you like you can claim the account with a username and password to keep it forever and play across devices. Either way, your first decision is your class.

There are eight classes. Your class sets your starting stats, which weapons you can wield, a passive trait, and a signature combat mechanic. None of these choices lock you out of content - any class can train any skill and any stat - but each gives a distinct early identity and playstyle.

A class grows its two focus stats 25% faster than the rest, so a Warrior naturally becomes a Strength-and-Vitality bruiser while a Mage leans into Intellect. If you're undecided: Warrior is the most forgiving start (big health pool, simple melee), Ranger is great for the patient idler (faster travel, more loot), and Mage rewards players who enjoy the crafting and enchanting side.

The core idle loop

Ashveil revolves around a single, addictive loop: choose an action, and your hero performs it on repeat, earning experience and resources each tick. You're never required to click every swing - you set a task and the game does the work, including while your browser is closed.

• Active progress - while the game is open, you watch XP tick up, loot drop, and resources pile into your bank in real time.
• Offline progress - when you return after being away, Ashveil calculates everything your hero earned and shows a "while you were away" summary. Offline time banks up to 24 hours, so a night's sleep and a workday never cost you anything.

Stamina: the rhythm of the world

Most actions spend stamina. Chopping a tree, mining ore or killing a monster each costs a little, and higher-tier actions cost more. Stamina regenerates over time (and faster from food, potions or a built-up Hearth), and your maximum stamina rises with your character level and the Agility skill. When stamina runs low, a gathering loop simply pauses and resumes as you recover - so you're never punished, just paced. This gentle resource economy is what keeps Ashveil feeling like a living world rather than a number that only goes up.

Health, mana & auto-eat

In combat your hero spends health, and when it drops below half they automatically eat whatever food you've equipped in your food slot - so cooking and fishing feed directly into how long you can fight. Mana fuels spell-style abilities. All three pools - stamina, health and mana - regenerate passively, faster if you raise Spirit or upgrade your stronghold's Hearth.

The 21 skills

Skills are the heart of Ashveil. There are 21 of them, each levelled from 1 toward a cap of 120 (with a 130 capstone for the most dedicated), on a deliberately long, RuneScape-style XP curve - level 99 alone is over 13 million experience. They fall into four families.

Gathering - pull raw wealth from the world

• Woodcutting - fell birch, oak, yew and rare voidwood for logs.
• Mining - break ore and the occasional gem from the rock, copper up to abyssal.
• Fishing - land everything from sprats to leviathans and voidfin.
• Foraging - gather herbs and alchemical reagents from bramble and bog.
• Hunting - trap beasts for hides and meat.
• Farming - tend plots over real time, then cook the harvest into hearty meals.

Artisan - refine materials into power

• Cooking - turn raw fish and crops into healing food (with a burn chance that fades as you master each recipe).
• Smithing - smelt ore into bars and forge every weapon and armour piece.
• Fletching - craft bows, arrows and bolts.
• Leatherworking - tan hides into leather and stitch a ranger's armour.
• Tailoring - spin thread into cloth and sew a mage's robes.
• Alchemy - brew healing, stamina and combat potions from herbs.
• Jewelcrafting - cut raw gems into socketable gems that boost your gear.
• Enchanting - inscribe runes and enchant gear with powerful affixes.

Combat - the fighting arts

• Combat - your overall fighting level, raised by slaying monsters for XP and loot.

Support - the wide world of utility

• Thieving - pickpocket marks for gold (get caught and you lie low a moment).
• Agility - run regional courses to raise stamina, dodge and travel speed.
• Construction - build and upgrade rooms in your stronghold.
• Archaeology - dig ancient sites for fragments, restore artifacts and complete lore collections for lasting bonuses.
• Stargazing - chart the constellations and attune to a Standing Stone for an always-on boon.

Mastery: getting better at what you do

Every action you repeat builds mastery, a second progress bar capped at 99. High mastery makes an action up to 30% faster and grants up to a 25% chance of double yield. On top of that, each skill has a shared mastery pool with checkpoints at 10%, 25%, 50% and 95% that buff the whole skill. Better tools (from basic up to abyssal) and crafted potions stack on top, so a maxed gatherer with great gear works many times faster than a beginner.

Stats & combat power

Your hero has seven core attributes. You don't spend points manually - using a skill trains the stats it relies on, so the way you play sculpts your character. Mining builds Strength; fishing and foraging build the finesse stats; combat builds them all.

Stats feed into your combat power - a single number that summarises how strong your hero is. Combat power is the gate for almost everything dangerous: it decides which regions you can enter, which monsters you can fight, and who you can raid. It's worth noting that stat caps scale with your character level, so monsters of your level stay a genuine threat - you can't simply out-level the danger.

Combat explained

Combat in Ashveil is resolved automatically, blow by blow, but it rewards smart preparation. Three things decide a fight: the combat triangle, your gear and stats, and your stamina and food.

The combat triangle

Every attack has a style - melee, ranged or magic - and they form a rock-paper-scissors triangle. Melee beats Magic, Magic beats Ranged, and Ranged beats Melee. Fighting with the favoured style grants roughly +10% accuracy and +10% damage; fighting at a disadvantage costs you both. World bosses each have a weakness style, so bringing the right weapon turns a brutal fight into a winnable one.

The combat stats

Your gear contributes six combat stats that the resolver uses each round:

• Accuracy vs the enemy's Evasion decides your hit chance.
• Max Hit sets your top-end damage per swing.
• Damage Reduction blunts incoming hits (capped to keep fights fair).
• HP is your health pool; Crit is your chance to land a 1.5× hit.

Stamina, food and death

Each kill costs stamina, so a fighting session is a budget you spend down. Below half health your hero auto-eats from the food slot, which is why a stocked larder matters as much as a sharp blade. Bosses and dungeons add real teeth: bosses enrage over time, heal themselves (forcing a damage check) and wind up heavy attacks on a rhythm. Die in the open world and you lose a chunk of your on-hand gold and your backpack - bank often before anything risky.

Gear, gems & enchants

Power in Ashveil comes from twelve equipment slots - weapon, off-hand, helm, body, legs, gloves, boots, cape, amulet, ring, ammo and food - filled with gear you forge, find or buy. Every item sits on two ladders.

Grade and rarity

The grade is the metal: Copper → Bronze → Iron → Steel → Silver → Cobalt → Tungsten → Titanium → Star-Iron → Orichalcum → Adamantine → Abyssal. Each step up is a strict upgrade. The rarity stacks on top, adding stat multipliers, random attribute bonuses and gem sockets:

Gems and sockets

Epic and better weapons and body armour have gem sockets. Mine or loot raw gems - sapphire, ruby, diamond, voidstone - then use Jewelcrafting to cut them into socketable forms that add accuracy, damage, evasion or huge health bonuses to whatever they're slotted into. A well-gemmed weapon can rival the next grade up.

Enchants and set bonuses

With Enchanting you inscribe runes and roll affixes onto your gear - minor, major and grand tiers, including ability-boosting enchants like of Cataclysm or of Immortality. And matching pieces of a legendary armour line grant escalating set bonuses at two, three and five pieces - sets like the Ironclad Vanguard, Bloodfang Reavers and Abyssal Dominion each lean into a combat identity (burst, sustain or damage-over-time). Chasing a full set is a classic end-game goal.

Quests & approaches

Every region has its own quest line of escalating tiers, told with real narrative flavour. Quests are the spine of progression: clear a region's quests to unlock travel to the next region. They cost stamina and a little mana, take real time to run, and pay out gold, experience, renown and sometimes loot.

Before you set out you pick one of three approaches, which reshapes the run:

Repeating a quest builds quest mastery, which compounds its rewards (+20% per level) and improves your odds. A lucky critical success doubles the gold and guarantees every loot drop. You only need to clear a tier once to open the next, so you're free to push forward or farm a favourite quest for mastery and renown.

Travel & the six regions

Ashveil's world is a line of six regions, each colder and greyer than the last as you descend toward the Abyss. Travel takes real time (a few seconds per hop, less for Rangers and high-Agility heroes), and you unlock each new region by clearing the quests of the one before and meeting its combat-power requirement.

Each region has its own gatherable resources, monster bands, quest line and a pair of world bosses, so travelling onward isn't just harder fights - it's a whole new set of skills to feed and treasures to chase. Read the full story of each region on our World of Ashveil lore page.

World bosses, dungeons & the Arena

World bosses

Each region holds two world bosses - twelve in all, from Gristlemaw the Cellar Tyrant in Embergate to the Devourer of Light in the Voidmaw, the realm's single hardest fight. Bosses are timed, mechanically rich encounters: they enrage, heal and throw heavy attacks, and many gate the main story or demand you bring food and consumables. They drop guaranteed best-in-slot materials and rare uniques like Ashmaw's Fang and the Warden's Aegis. Meet the full bestiary on the lore page.

Dungeons

Dungeons are multi-stage expeditions - several waves of monsters and then a boss, all in one locked-in run that carries your health from fight to fight. Bring food: you auto-eat, and dying mid-run fails the whole thing. They run from the Orc Warren up to the Hollow Throne, and they're among the best sources of legendary armour.

The Arena

The Arena lets you test yourself against tiers of gladiator champions - the Pit, the Colosseum and the Abyssal Trial - in safe practice fights that cost only stamina. It's the perfect place to check whether your build is ready before you risk a boss or a real opponent.

Raids, the Warband & the Bazaar

Raids (PvP)

When you're ready for live opponents, raid rival players (and a roster of NPC lords) in your power bracket to plunder their on-hand gold and, sometimes, an item. Winning swings renown - the realm-wide ladder of prestige - and there's a bonus for taking revenge on someone who raided you. New players get three days of protection, and a defeated attacker can't be hit straight back, so raiding stays spicy rather than punishing.

The Warband

Recruit companions - footmen, archers, houndmasters, battlemages and more - into your Warband. Assign them to offense to speed your quests, dungeons and bosses, or to defense to fend off raiders. They draw a small hourly wage, so a warband is an investment in your power that you keep paid up.

The Bazaar

The Bazaar is the player-to-player market. List spare gear and materials for other players to buy (a small tax feeds the realm), and snap up the gems, bars and gear you need rather than grinding for every piece. It's the beating heart of Ashveil's economy.

The Tavern, the digs & the stars

Ashveil is wide. A few systems exist purely to give your gold and curiosity somewhere to go:

• The Tavern - a provably-fair gambling den. Flip coins, roll the bones or spin the Wheel of Fate. The house always keeps a small cut, so it's a gold sink and a thrill, never a strategy.
• Archaeology - dig the ancient sites of each region for fragments, restore them into artifacts, and complete collections that grant permanent gather and XP bonuses - and unlock the realm's deepest lore.
• Stargazing & Standing Stones - chart the constellations and attune to one Standing Stone for an always-on boon: more gather yield, more combat gold, more XP or far better gem luck.
• Your Stronghold - build and upgrade a keep with the Construction skill: a Granary that slows your holdings filling, a Hearth that speeds all regeneration, and Ramparts that harden your raid defence.
• Orders (guilds) - found or join an Order for a quest-success bonus and team up on shared guild bosses with health pools in the hundreds of thousands.
• Seasons & leaderboards - every month is a fresh Battle Pass season earned simply by playing, while the all-time leaderboards rank the realm's greatest heroes by Renown and Level forever.

Ten tips for new players

1. Always be doing something. Before you log off, set your hero on a long gathering or combat task so you bank progress while away.
2. Train Agility early. It raises max stamina and shortens travel - quality-of-life that pays off in every other skill.
3. Keep your food slot stocked. Auto-eat is what lets you fight for long stretches; fish and cook before big sessions.
4. Buy a better tool. A single tool upgrade can speed a gathering skill by 20-40% - often a better buy than gear early on.
5. Match the triangle. Carry a weapon of each style; bringing a boss's weakness style is a huge swing.
6. Bank before anything risky. Death costs on-hand gold and your backpack - deposit first.
7. Use the Bazaar. Don't grind every material; buy the bottleneck and sell your surplus.
8. Push quests to unlock regions, then farm what you enjoy. You only need one clear per tier to progress.
9. Socket and enchant your main weapon. Gems and a good enchant are cheaper power than a full grade jump.
10. Claim your guest account. Add a username and password so your hero is safe across devices.

Frequently asked questions