Lastshard / The world
Aldermere has no classes and no levels. You can be a smith, a mage, a sailor, a tamer, a thief or a lord. Most people end up some mix of them.
You don't pick a class or earn levels. You get better at what you do.
Swing a sword and your swordsmanship rises. Chop wood and your lumberjacking rises. Cast spells and your magic rises. Every skill works the same way.
There is a cap on how much you can know in total. To get good at something new, you let something old slip. A warrior who wants to learn smithing gives up some swordsmanship to do it.
That cap is what makes characters different. Two players can both be great smiths. One might also fight, and the other might also sail.
Everything worth owning in Aldermere is made by a player. Smiths forge weapons and armour from ore that miners dig. Tailors sew from cloth and leather. Carpenters, bowyers and cooks each feed someone else.
Getting good at a craft means making the same thing many times. A new smith makes a hundred daggers before anyone wants one. Tradeskill quests give that work somewhere to go. The townsfolk post orders for goods, and they pay in gold and rare materials.
Good gear wears out and gets lost on the road. Crafters always have customers.
Mages learn spells into a spellbook. Every cast burns reagents: roots, pearls, ash, silk and stranger things. You gather them in the wild or buy them from the townsfolk and other players.
A mage with an empty pouch is a person in a robe. Planning what you carry is part of the craft.
Spells heal, harm, bind, reveal and carry you across the land. The strongest need the rarest reagents.
The animals of Aldermere live their own lives. Wolves hunt deer, and deer graze whether anyone is watching. A patient tamer can win some of them over.
A tamed animal follows you, fights for you and answers to its name. Start with a hound or a pack horse. Work up to a bear, and further.
Break a horse and ride it. A mount gets you to the next town, and away from trouble, faster.
Buy a boat and the coast opens up. Sail to islands, fish the deep water and chart the shore.
Fishing at sea pulls up more than fish. Old bottles hold treasure maps. The maps lead to chests buried by people from shards that are gone.
Something large lives out past the shallows. It does not like boats.
Raise a house in the open world. It holds your things, it locks, and it marks a piece of Aldermere as yours.
Hire a vendor to stand in your shop and sell your goods while you are away. Set your own prices. Other players browse and buy.
Build near your friends and it becomes a street. Enough streets and it becomes a town, with a name its founders choose.
Every dungeon in Aldermere is a piece of a shard that died. Castles, crypts, mines and sunken halls washed up whole, with whatever lived in them.
Each holds monsters, treasure and relics from a world that ended. Go deep and the fights get harder and the loot gets better.
Bring friends. Bring bandages. Don’t bring anything you can’t afford to leave behind.
Inside guarded towns the guards keep the peace. Outside them, any player can attack any other.
Fall outside town and your body keeps everything on it. Whoever finds it first can take it. You wake at your tetherstone and walk back for what is left.
Murder has a cost. Killers carry their name in red for all to see. Guards hunt them, and other players post bounties on their heads.
How you behave changes how Aldermere treats you. Help people, keep your word and fight the things that prey on travellers, and your name means something. Shopkeepers, guards and other players notice. So do the people you robbed.
An optional storyline follows why the shards went dark, and whether Aldermere is next. Side quests pay in special loot and income. You never have to do any of it. Read the story.
New souls get tutorials in and around Highmarch. They cover moving, fighting, gathering, the bank and the shops, then let you go. After that, the world is yours to work out.
Much of this page is the plan. Lastshard is in pre-alpha, and today's build has Highmarch, gathering, the bank, shops and combat. The dev log shows what is built, and the roadmap shows what comes next.
Real screenshots from today's build. The art, the interface and almost everything else will change.
The market square in Highmarch, with the minimap open
The town green, seen through an apple tree
A grey wolf at the town gate
Death, and the trip back to the tetherstone
Buying a bow from the fletcher
Making a character and choosing starting skills
Wheat fields at the edge of the forest
The woods outside the walls