Getting Started
Make your hero, learn your way around Emberfall, and spend your first hour well.
Welcome to Ashenvale
Ashenvale is an action RPG set in a land buried under ash. You fight through packs of monsters, and loot pours out of them: magic, rare and unique gear with randomly rolled properties. There are no classes. Everything you do trains a permanent skill from 1 to 99, whether you are swinging a sword, chopping a tree or cooking a fish.
You share the world with other players. Fight beside them, visit their houses, and trade with them on the Grand Market, where every good drop has a real price.
Creating your hero
The first time you open the game you create a hero:
- Name: 3 to 12 letters or numbers. Names are unique, so pick one you like.
- Body: man or woman. You can change it later in Settings.
- Fighting style: Warrior (sword), Ranger (bow) or Mage (staff).
Your fighting style only decides which starter weapon you hold. The other two starter weapons are waiting in your bag, so you can try every style from the first minute. Equip a different weapon and you fight a different way. See Combat Styles & Abilities.
You also start with a few health potions, some cooked shrimp, an 
Identify Scroll, two Ashgate Scrolls, and a pickaxe, hatchet and fishing rod already in your tool slots (see Gathering Tools).
Your first steps: the clearing
A brand-new hero doesn't land straight in Emberfall. You wake in a small clearing of your own, with a marker showing exactly what to do next — no reading required:
- Fight. A couple of weak monsters are close by. Tap or click one and your hero fights it, auto-attacking and auto-retaliating for you.
- Loot and equip. They drop gold and a piece of gear. Walk over it (or tap its name) to pick it up, then equip it from your bag.
- Mine and smelt. Mine copper and tin from the rocks nearby, then use the
Furnace to smelt them into a bar. - Fish and cook. Catch a fish at the pond, then cook it at the
Cooking Range.
Once every step is done, a card reminds you that auto-attack, auto-retaliate and your skills can all be turned off in Settings if you'd rather fight by hand. Click or tap the gate, then step through it, and you're in Emberfall.
If you'd rather skip straight to town, Skip tutorial in the corner takes you there at once — nothing here is required, and heroes who already know their way around never see it at all.
Emberfall, your home town
You arrive in Emberfall, the last lit town in the ashlands. Monsters never come inside the town ring, so it is always safe to stand here, rest and sort your bag. Everything you need is within a few steps:
| What | What it's for |
|---|---|
 Bank Chest | Store the gear you want to keep. See The Bank. |
 Grand Market | Buy and sell with other players. See Price Check & the Grand Market. |
Furnace and  Anvil | Smelt ore into bars, then smith bars into weapons and armour. |
| Cooking Range | Cook raw fish into food that heals you. |
 Crafting Bench | Make bows, staffs, planks, jewellery and cut gems. |
| Brann | The Ember-Warden by the campfire: your guide for your first tasks. |
| Waystone | Warp to any other town whose waystone you have touched. |
| Bounty Board | Three daily contracts for gold and crafting orbs. See Bounties. |
| Old Harl | Potions, Identify and Ashgate Scrolls, a starter weapon of every style and spare gathering tools. |
| Brynja | Magic weapons and armour for a new adventurer. |
 Rift Altar | Just outside the south-west wall: the Ember Rifts, for heroes of combat level 40 and up. |
Around the town, in rough compass directions:
- North-west: copper and tin rocks, then iron further out.
- North-east: oak trees.
- South: the river, with fishing spots along its bank.
- South-east: the entrance to the Ashen Depths.
- North: the house row, where every hero keeps a house.
- Far north-east: the Warden's Altar.
- West:
The Old Mine, your first lair. - Far north-west: the Wilderness. Stay out until you have read about it.
Roads lead out of the ashlands: west to the Sunscorch Desert, south across the river to Mirefen Swamp, and north to the Cinder Wastes, with the Rimefall Highlands and the Gloamwood further north still. Those regions are for stronger heroes. See The World.
Meet Brann
Brann, the Ember-Warden waits by the campfire. If you came in through the clearing, fighting, looting, equipping, mining and smelting are already behind you, so he has one last task:
- Into the Depths: step into the Ashen Depths south-east of town.
The reward is gold, an experience boost, and a Chaos Ember and an Ashen Shard (see Crafting Orbs).
Your current task sits in the card at the top left of the screen, with its progress. A gold arrow over the target (or at the edge of the screen when it's out of sight) and a gold diamond on the minimap show you where to go. Tap or click the card to talk to Brann again: he explains the task.
Your first kill and your first magic item are worth celebrating, and the game does: watch for the banner. New heroes also get a head start on loot: your first gear drop is always magic, and gear drops much more often until your combat skill reaches level 9.
Follow the Objective card
Once Brann's tasks are done (or skipped), the Objective card shows one goal at a time, with an arrow pointing the way. It walks you through every system in the game: your first kills, picking up and equipping loot, Price Checking an item, mining and smelting, the market, the Depths, bounties and your first lair. (If you finished Brann's tasks, it skips what he already taught you.)
If you're not sure what to do next, do what the card says. It will get you from a fresh hero to your first boss without wasting time.
Your first hour
Here is a good path through your first session. Brann and the Objective card cover most of it.
- Leave town and fight. The monsters closest to Emberfall are gentle. Walk out, tap a monster (or click it), and let your hero fight. Watch the coloured level tag over each monster's head: green is easy, yellow is an even fight, orange and red mean trouble.
- Pick up loot. Gold and materials fly into your pouch on their own. Gear shows a coloured name on the ground: tap it to pick it up.
- Equip upgrades. When something better than what you wear drops, an UPGRADE tag appears in your bag, and a card offers to equip it in one tap.
- Price Check something. Open your bag, tap an item and choose Price Check to see what other players have paid for items like it. Identify it first: unidentified gear can't be priced. This is the heart of the economy.
- Mine and smelt. Mine copper and tin north-west of town, then smelt a Bronze Bar at the furnace. Now you're training Mining and Smithing too.
- Visit the Grand Market. Have a look at what people are selling, and what your drops might be worth.
- Take a daily bounty. The Bounty Board gives you three contracts a day. They pay gold plus crafting orbs, which you'll want later.
- Enter the Ashen Depths. Go down a floor or two, open chests, and use the shrine for a boon.
- Clear the Old Mine. Once you can handle the monsters around Emberfall comfortably, head west and defeat Foreman Grisk for your first boss kill.
Staying alive
- Heal: press the potion button (or Q on a computer). It drinks a potion if you're low, and otherwise eats your best food.
- Dodge: tap the boots button (or Space on a computer) to dash out of a swing or a glowing circle. You can't be hit during the dash.
- Rest: out of combat your life comes back on its own, faster while you're new. In town it comes back quickly.
- Dying isn't the end. On the surface you wake up back in town with everything you were carrying. In the Depths or a lair, dying ends the run, but you keep your loot. The one big exception is the Wilderness, where another player can take everything you carry.
Where to next
- Controls for phones and computers.
- How Fighting Works for auto-retaliate, danger levels and more.
- Skills Overview to see how the twelve skills fit together.
- Loot & Rarities to understand what drops.