There is no class screen in this game. Whatever weapon is in your hands decides what you are. Draw the sword and you are a knight. Put it away and take out a dagger and you are a rogue, on the spot, in the street, with no menu in between.
You start with one of each, so the honest advice is to try them all before you settle.
The seven
| Fights with | Feels like | |
|---|---|---|
| Commoner | Nothing | What empty hands make you |
| Rogue | Dagger | Fast, light and close |
| Warrior | A two-handed blade | Everything in the swing, nothing in reserve |
| Knight | Sword and shield | Heavy, and hard to move |
| Ranger | Bow | Distance, and keeping it |
| Cleric | Wand and shield | Staying up, and keeping other people up |
| Mage | Staff | Fire, from further away than they would like |
The knight and the cleric are the two who can strap a shield on, and they are the only two: a shield needs a free hand, and a warrior swinging two-handed does not have one.
A class is three things at once
- A ladder of skills. Every skill belongs to one trade. Nothing you learn as a rogue is any use to you as a mage.
- A wardrobe. What you can wear and what you can hold.
- A level of its own. Experience, stats, health and mana are kept per trade.
What is not kept per trade: your bags, your name and your face. Those belong to you rather than to the job.
Changing your mind is cheap
Put the sword down and pick up a dagger and you are a rogue at rogue level one. Your knight has not gone anywhere. It is exactly where you left it, with its level, its skills and its points intact, and picking the sword back up puts you straight back into it.
Two things the game will not let you do:
- Swap kit in a fight, or in the few seconds after one. Being hit counts as much as swinging. Changing what you are between two blows would make a nonsense of every trade-off that gear is supposed to be.
- Pick up a weapon your new trade is not high enough for. The requirement is measured against the class the weapon would make you, which is why the very first knight can lift the sword that makes them one.
One more thing worth knowing: your cooldowns do not reset when you change. If they did, swapping weapons would be a way to skip every wait in the game.
What to take first
Whatever you enjoy holding. If you have no idea, the knight is the most forgiving thing to learn on (the shield is most of what keeps a new character alive), and the mage is the most fun to watch. The knight's one skill so far is Shield Throw, and it comes back to your hand.
Next: how a fight works, and then what your skills leave on people.