Classes

On top of your character level there are six parallel trades. You don't pick one; you play one whenever the right weapon is in your main hand. Equip a bow, you're an archer. Switch to a sword, you're a knight. Each trade levels much faster than character XP and decays much faster too — the deliberate trade-off that lets a returning player ramp back up in an hour instead of a week.

The six classes #

| Class | Weapon kind | What it's good at | |-------------|------------------------------|------------------------------------------------------------| | Archery | Bows / crossbows | Long-range damage, dependable single-target. | | Wizardry | Wands / staves | Magic damage, AOE, mana economy. | | Knightry | Swords + shields | Front-line melee, defense soak bonuses. | | Roguery | Daggers | Crit rate, movement speed, fast cooldowns. | | Monkery | Maces + prayer beads | Magical melee + Party Heal; the support craft. | | Merchantry | (in development) | Better loot rolls, lower vendor prices, gold per kill. |

The active class is whichever one the weapon in your main hand maps to. Switch weapons mid-fight, you switch classes — your character XP stays put, but the rank displayed on the HUD swaps to the new trade's rank.

Rank — separate from level #

Each class has its own rank (1–100, then beyond) and its own XP pool. Rank-up unlocks:

• Damage bonuses at every rank, capped at rank 100.
• Skills at named ranks (e.g. Triple Shot at Archery rank 80, fired with R when MP + cooldown allow).
• Long-range cap lifts at higher ranks of the ranged classes.

The class HUD lives at the bottom of the screen. The XP bar fills with every kill that lands with that class's weapon equipped.

Decay rates #

Class XP slips much faster than character XP. The exact curve is tuned to push veterans down toward the active class within days of not playing — so a returning player can re-rank into a new class in about the same time it took the first time. There's no "I was once a rank-100 archer" pedigree; you're whatever rank you currently are.

Skills #

Each class has its own list of active abilities — open the Class panel with the K key to see them all at a glance, with current ranks, XP bars, and the skills each unlocks at each rank threshold.

| Class | Skill | Unlock | MP | Cooldown | What it does | |----------|--------------|--------|----|----------|------------------------------------------------------------------| | Archery | Triple Shot | Rank 80 | 30 | 3.0 s | Looses three arrows in a tight forward fan in one breath. | | Monkery | Party Heal | Rank 5 | 30 | 1.5 s | Heals you + every party member nearby; a softer pulse for any non-party ally close enough to feel it. |

More skills land as the other classes ship their signatures. The Class panel will list every one as soon as it's playable.

Binding skills to the skillbar #

The skillbar — the row of seven slots above your chat — accepts both inventory items (potions, scrolls) and class skills. To bind a skill:

1. Open the Class panel with K.
2. Click a skill card to slot it into the first empty skillbar slot, OR
3. Drag the card onto a specific skillbar slot to place it there exactly. (Both pipelines work — keyboard / mouse / pointer-locked in-game cursor.)

Right-click any bound slot to clear it. Slot 1 (the leftmost) is always your weapon attack and can't be rebound.

Press the slot's number key (1–7) to fire the skill. Skills flash a brief golden border when ready, dim when on cooldown, and go red when you don't have the MP to cast.

Tips #

• Want to level Wizardry fast? Equip a wand and find a dense low-tier monster zone. Wands are designed to chew through small mobs at a high rate.
• Don't over-commit. The slow-decay trap is "I want to keep my rank-100 archer pristine"; the design assumes you don't.
• Class skills consume MP. The Stats panel (P) shows MP regen per second. Out-of-class weapons still rebuild your MP between swings, so a brief weapon swap can refill before the next skill.

In code #

The full class spec — XP curves, rank rewards, decay tuning, the exact damage multipliers, and per-class skill catalogue — lives in design/balance.md §9 for the developer-curious.