There is nothing to install and nothing to pay. Play now opens the game in the tab you are already in. The same page works on a phone held sideways, and you can add it to your home screen if you would rather it opened without the browser around it.
Make an account, then a character
You need a name, a password and an email address. The address is only used to get you back in if you forget the password, so use one you can still read.
Then build somebody: a skin tone, a hair style and colour, and the colours you start out wearing, with the figure updating beside you as you choose. None of that changes how you play. It is what everybody else in the street sees when they walk past you.
The one choice that does is the class you start in, which decides the weapon in your hand when you arrive. You can change it later by picking up a different one.
You wake up in town
Everybody starts on the quay of a harbour town built in terraces, with a cobbled square and a fountain up the stair. You arrive in plain clothes with your class's weapon in your hand, and most of the people you need are a short walk away.
The keys that matter
Walk with the arrow keys: tap to turn on the spot, hold to move. Hold CTRL to attack. Enter puts the cursor in chat. Every window has a key of its own, such as I for your bags and K for your skills, and the Controls tab in the settings lists them all.
Right click somebody to see what you can ask of them, or hold your thumb on them on a touch screen. If nothing opens, they have nothing for you yet. Shops and the bank are indoors: walk into a door once and it opens, walk again and you are inside.
Spend your points before you go anywhere
A new character starts with a point to spend. Open your skills, learn your class's first skill and put it on the action bar: drag it down, or select it and press a number. The second way is there because a thumb cannot drag.
When it goes wrong
Health and mana come back on their own once you have been out of a fight for a few seconds. Every blow, even a miss, starts that clock again, so the way to heal is to back off. If you cannot wait, the general store sells potions.
If you die you come apart into your own pixels and wake up somewhere safe, carrying everything you had on you. All it costs is the walk back.
Then what?
- Choosing a class, once you have tried a couple of weapons.
- How a fight works, before your first real one.
- Your first quest, because somebody in town needs a hand.
- Trades, if you would like a trade as well as a class.