Captures from a real save, not mock-ups. Click any of them to see it full size.

• 

  The title screen

  Where every session starts. The town at the foot of Azhar, the forge lit in the middle of it, and smoke going up.

• 

  Depth 7 — Ul'Mareth

  Zero-input combat. The enemy, your health, a three-slot potion belt, and the log. Along the top: the depth you are in, the areas either side of it, and the day's calendar buff — here Deepdelver, +2% mastery XP. Nothing to press but Fight.

• 

  The town, fully restored

  Act I at 100%. Ten cards — home, storage, the five machines, the trade post, the forge, and the Reignite that closes the act. This is the restoration screen: a list of projects, each one raised by pouring materials into it, not a map you lay out.

• 

  The Enjin Forge

  Heat to keep up with charcoal, an output bin that fills while you are away, and a bar on the go. Each recipe shows what it needs, what you actually have, and how far its mastery has come — and Iron Bar sits greyed out until Smithing 15.

• 

  Masteries

  The four ladders in one place — gathering, production, weapons, consumables — every recipe and every node with its own track, and rungs waiting at 25.

• 

  Milo's Emporium

  The shop, and the closest thing the game has to a second character — you can ask him something. Prices in silver and copper, and the day's specials sitting at the bottom with a few left.

• 

  Professions

  Two gathering professions live and five still to come; six production buildings standing and two still to come. The chains are stated outright — Ore → Dust + Gems, Logs → Planks + Resin.

• 

  Mining

  Three veins open in Act I and six more locked behind the acts below it. Every node carries its own mastery, so the vein you have been hitting all evening is also a ladder.

• 

  The Skill Web

  Pan and zoom. Defence, offence, utility and the tech cluster, all radiating from the free Awakening node at the centre. Respec sits in the corner, free today.

• 

  Compendium

  Creatures, items and lore, filled in by meeting them. Each card carries what the thing drops, how many you have killed, and which depth it belongs to.

Seven commitments the game is built around. They are not aspirations; they are the constraints every new system gets checked against, and they have survived every rework so far.

The five Acts

Five acts are authored as a shape for the whole game. Only the first exists in the build — the rest are design intent, stated here so the arc is legible, not because they are close.

1. I

   The Descent In the build

   Nine depths of Azhar. Combat, loot, gear, and the gear-check that replaces level locks. Ends by recovering three components and relighting the forge.

2. II

   Rebuilding Enjin Hollow Not committed

   Crafting and smelting come into their own; the settlement grows past machines into a place with residents. Intended to open the dungeons.

3. III

   The Age of Exploration Not committed

   Dungeons running a deliberately different combat model — exploration, random encounters, turn-based fights against several enemies, and a party recruited from a rebuilt tavern. The largest promise in the design docs and the one with the least behind it.

4. IV

   Into the Abyss Not committed

   An endless scaling depth for build optimisation, once there is a build worth optimising.

5. V

   The Convergence Not committed

   Deliberately not completable by campaign progress alone. Intended to require something from every system in the game.

Act I — the nine depths

Descriptions below are the in-game text, unedited.

1. 01

   Brakka Hollow

   The active mine front. Timber supports groan in the dark. Coal dust coats everything.

2. 02

   Veyr'Thal

   Ancient tunnel network predating the village. Something vast weaves its web in the dark.

3. 03

   Khoruun Reach

   A vast glowing crystal expanse. The walls pulse with cold light. Nothing here is natural.

4. 04

   Draal'Mor

   A collapsed labyrinth claimed by troll-kin and things that burrow. The floor trembles.

5. 05

   Narthuun Vaults

   Ruins of an ancient mining civilization carved directly into the mountain. Their golems still walk.

6. 06

   Kael'Rhaz Forgeworks

   A forgotten underground forge district. Dead furnaces, ancient machines — and something that still guards them.

7. 07

   Ul'Mareth

   Spectral depths where lost miners and forgotten smiths wander without rest or purpose.

8. 08

   Azh'Korum

   The deepest known mines. The walls pulse with Enjin energy so intense it blinds.

9. 09

   The Heartvein

   The mountain's beating heart. A colossal vein of living Enjin pulses through the mountain's core. Every fragment ever mined traces its origin to this place.

Grouped the way the game groups them in its own menu. Status labels are read out of the build, not written by hand.

Adventure

Everything that happens below ground.

The Act I campaign

In the build

Nine authored depths with their own enemies, arrival text, clear quotas and resources. Clearing a depth is permanent. Bosses are an explicit choice at the quota rather than an automatic gate — the regular enemies keep spawning if you would rather keep grinding.

Zero-input combat

In the build

Swing timers, regeneration, critical hits, death and respawn, all running on their own. You choose the fight and the gear; the fight resolves itself. Damage numbers, floating combat text and a full pause are all in.

Crushing Defense

In the build

The gear check that replaces level requirements. Your power rating is compared against the area's, and a deficit costs you accuracy and damage on a fixed curve. You are never shown the numbers — just a verdict, Undergeared or Badly undergeared. It is the reason the game has no locked doors.

The rare merchant

In the build

A small chance, after an ordinary kill in the mountain, that something other than another monster is waiting. Table-driven, so more encounters are a data change rather than a code change.

Dungeons

Not committed

Flagged off in the build. Designed as a different mode entirely — turn-based, multi-enemy, party-based — rather than more of the same combat in a new room.

Raids

Not committed

Flagged off. High-stakes encounters intended to sit behind dungeon and abyss progression.

The Abyss

Not committed

Flagged off. The endgame idea: infinite scaling depth, no authored content, purely a measure of how good your build actually is.

Hero

What you carry, and what you have learned.

Character and derived stats

In the build

Every stat on the sheet is derived from equipment, skill web and masteries rather than stored, so nothing can silently drift out of sync with its source.

Gear generation and rarity

In the build

Gear is generated from a power budget across sixteen slots and nine tiers rather than hand-authored piece by piece, so the curve stays honest. Anything above an ordinary common also rolls an individual quality value that sets its item level — two swords of the same name are not the same sword.

Inventory and the storage vault

In the build

Bags, stacking, two-handed conflict rules, and a drag-and-drop vault with sorting and deposit-all. Machine recipes count what is in storage, not just what is on you, so a full bag never stops a job.

Masteries

In the build

Four ladders, not one: every gathering node, every production recipe, every weapon type and every dish carries its own mastery track to 99, with rungs at 25, 50, 75 and 99 that cut action time or add a bonus-output roll. Doing the same thing for a long time is a progression system, not just a wait.

Weapon mastery

Partly built

Kills are counted per weapon type and levels are awarded, and the ladder already gates what you can forge at the Enjin Forge. The wider prestige and access layer designed on top of it does not exist yet.

The Skill Web

Partly built

A pannable, zoomable web of around fifty nodes with real effects, draft allocation and cascade removal. Respec is free once a day and costs silver after that, so changing your mind is cheap but not weightless. The engine is complete; the layout is an early one rather than the full designed web, and a few node effects are stored but not yet read.

The town

Six machines, one settlement, and the reason to come back up.

Village restoration

In the build

Rebuild the settlement project by project — home, storage, the machines, the trade post, and finally the forge itself. Each is a card you open: pour gathered wood, stone and rope into it against a live requirements bar, and complete it once the bar is full. Costs are materials you mined and cut, never gold. Progress is banded by act, and only Act I is open in this build.

The Enjin Forge

In the build

Smelting ore into bars, with a heat system, a hopper and fuel to manage. Unlocked once the forge foundation is restored — and relighting it is what closes Act I, so every other project in the town is on the way to this one.

Weapon forging

In the build

Nine weapon types, each forgeable at any bar tier you have the mastery for, costed in bars and gated by your weapon mastery — including a masterwork rung at the top of each ladder. This is where mastery stops being a number and starts being access.

Ore Crusher

In the build

Crushes raw ore into dust. Reserve-on-start, refund-on-stop job queues and an output bin, like every machine in town.

Lumber Mill

In the build

Saws felled logs into planks. Its own experience curve, its own mastery, its own queue.

Stonecutter

In the build

Cuts raw stone into dressed slabs for the building projects that need them.

Charcoal Kiln

In the build

Burns logs slowly into charcoal — the fuel the forge runs on.

The Campfire

In the build

Cooks monster scraps into simple food. As the game itself puts it: a campfire can only do so much.

Milo's Emporium

In the build

The shop, and the closest thing the game has to a second character. Categories, a rotating daily special, buyback, and a stock tier that improves as you rebuild the trade post.

Gold Coin Press

Designed, not built

Designed as the single place gold is minted, by pressing rare pure gold ore into coin. The currency it would feed is live; the mint itself is a document.

Trade orders

Not committed

Flagged off. Working code exists but no route reaches it, and the design has not been settled.

Progress

The long record.

Quests and quest chains

In the build

Daily, weekly, monthly and yearly quests with their own refresh cycles, plus a multi-chain story engine. The descent itself is a quest chain, read out loud by Milo, depth by depth.

Compendium

In the build

Creatures, items and lore, discovered by encountering them, with a flip reveal and filters. Kept per save file — a new game starts the collection over.

Achievements

In the build

Around fifty entries awarding achievement points, claimed automatically. The milestone system was folded into this one rather than kept alongside it.

Statistics

In the build

A permanent lifetime record — kills, gathering, crafting, gold, playtime — with the per-weapon and per-profession rows generated from the registries rather than hand-listed. Including, permanently, Skills Cast: 0.

Offline progress

In the build

Every machine keeps working while the game is shut, up to an eight-hour cap, depositing through inventory to storage to overflow so nothing is ever lost to a full bag. Combat is deliberately not included — crediting kills while away would bypass the gear check and make closing the game strictly safer than playing it.

The Living Calendar

In the build

Each weekday carries a themed economy buff, read by loot, gathering, mastery and village contribution alike. Deliberately power-neutral: it greases the economy, it does not make you stronger.

Byproducts and collectors

Partly built

Upgrades that make a machine yield something extra — gems from crushed ore, resin from milled logs — and they work online and offline alike. Two collectors exist against a longer designed list, and both are currently unreachable: buying one costs tech points, and nothing in the game grants tech points yet.

Two kinds: gathering professions that pull material out of the world, and production professions that turn it into something else. Each has its own experience curve and its own mastery.

Everything that has been written down, sorted by how real it is. No dates appear anywhere on this page, because there are none.

Design decisions that are genuinely unresolved. They are listed because a reference that only shows the settled parts is not much of a reference.

• Should epics drop from ordinary farming, or only from bosses and quests?

  The rarity roll is deliberately decoupled from item tier so a lucky drop is possible anywhere. Restricting epics to bosses would make them feel earned and make the pillar about loot never walling you easier to hold — at the cost of the thing that makes every kill worth watching.

• Should there be farming gear and fighting gear?

  Gathering-focused and combat-focused loadouts would make the profession half a real build decision. It also risks turning every trip to the mine into an inventory chore, which is exactly the kind of friction the game keeps trying to remove.

• What are damage types for?

  The character sheet already shows fire, frost, nature and shadow resistances, all sitting at zero, with nothing in the game that grants or requires them. Described in the working notes as a long-standing blocker: either they get a real source and a real threat, or they come off the sheet.

• How much of the interface pass is one project?

  The visual work is written down as a set of separate passes, but the notes concede it is really one project wearing several hats. Splitting it keeps it shippable; treating it as one is more honest about what it is.