How it works

The league

72 rival guilds spread across a six-tier league. League Trials pit your party against a named rival through the same dungeon, ending in a guild meeting; results move you up or down the tiers across a seasonal calendar. Sevenregions each bind their own dominant races, dungeon biome and environmental condition.

The calendar & travel

The realm advances one day at a time through a fixed 120-day year: four 30-day seasons, with Trials and major fixtures placed on readable dates. An optional delve occupies its party for several days while the rest of the world keeps moving. Tavern signings travel for one day before becoming available. In the current web bundle, a successful Rival Guild poach joins immediately; that executable behaviour differs from the earlier patch-note wording that grouped signed and poached heroes together.

The economy

Wages, upkeep and patron stipends settle every six days; ages, Oath terms and season results tick over by year. The gap between each settlement's costs and dungeon income is where guilds go broke. Theeconomy planner maps the bankruptcy line, and the dungeon yield calculator shows what a delve pays by danger tier.

Combat, Orders & formations

Delves resolve as a deterministic simulation from your heroes' attributes. A class'sattribute weights decide what it rolls high; a hero's traits multiply combat-AI behaviour like aggression and discipline; and party synergies add small percentage bonuses for the right pairings.

Formation tells Auto-pick which party shape to build. Orders then change who each hero prioritises and how they behave: the five default orders are distinct, and every class has one exclusive order of its own. These tactics also apply in the Crucible, whose opponents now field proper line-ups and use the same tactical layer instead of ordinary monster AI.

What Veterancy measures

Level is now Veterancy: experience earned by coming back from delves and realm jobs, surviving Wars, and clearing The Deep. It does not grant raw attributes or make attacks hit harder. It records what a hero has lived through, controls their named seniority stage, makes assigned training progressively faster, and lowers the chance that a downed hero's wound proves fatal. Ability and Potential remain the measures of present strength and growth ceiling.

• Untried1+ survived delves
• Blooded3+ survived delves
• Roadwise7+ survived delves
• Grizzled10+ survived delves
• Unshaken15+ survived delves

A mentor's Veterancy and Leadership determine how much they can teach; matching the student's class works best, matching only their role is neutral, and an unrelated role is much less effective. The student's own Veterancy still improves how quickly they learn.

A hero's honeable attribute ceilings are shaped by how that hero was originally rolled; the ceilings are no longer flattened across the whole roster. Two heroes of the same class can therefore finish with meaningfully different strengths.

The Deep

From Year 5, the hall can face a dungeon that never resets. One named floor opens each year in Deepwinter, six heroes may enter instead of four, and every descent is kept in the hall's logbook and the Chronicle. Refusing the invitation is a recorded choice. The stair has no fixed final floor; the current hotfix repairs the crash that previously stopped progress at floor 11 and keeps the system playable beyond Year 10.

Oaths & renewals

Heroes serve on fixed-term Oaths. When one lapses you negotiate a renewal, and the odds swing on the hero's standing and your offer. The Oath negotiator estimates the success chance before you commit.