Wyrmcourt

About the game

Wyrmcourt is a browser RPG you play one click at a time. Everything below is generated straight out of the same files the server reads - so a monster's damage here is the damage you will take.

Some things are left out on purpose: riddle answers, what is buried in the caches, the walk events, and the text of the quest briefings. The island is meant to be walked, not read.

A day on the island

Everything you do costs a click. Walking a field, swinging a sword, buying bread, praying, gambling: one click each, out of a quota that refills at midnight UTC and does not roll over. Your quota is 240 + 20 per level, so a level 1 gets 260 clicks a day and a level 20 gets 640.

Chat, your character sheet and changing your face cost nothing. Clicks are the only thing that accumulates while you are away.

Health is 20 + 6 per level + 2 per point of Endurance. Resting at the roadside costs a click and heals 2 + your Endurance. The magic chair in your house costs a click and heals all of it.

Carrying capacity is 15 + 2 per Strength + 1 per Endurance kilos. Go over it and you cannot walk at all. Sell something, eat something, or put it in the house.

45 achievements, on their own page behind the Adventure menu. They survive ascension. A few of them open a title on the roll - the Crowns still have to be paid, the achievement only unlocks them. The list is not printed here.

Dying sends you home with an empty pack - what you are wearing and holding stays on you, and the house is untouched. Temple insurance (150 silver) saves your backpack once. Every new character gets one free save.

Experience needed for the next level is 30 × level^1.85, and each level gives you 3 attribute points.

Attributes

Six of them, 3 points per level, spent whenever you like and never refunded. Everyone starts at 3 across the board with 6 points to spend.

Initiative decides who acts first in a round: your Speed plus a 0-4 roll against the monster's plus its own. Ties go to you, so equal Speed is a 60% chance of striking first, and a four point lead is a certainty. A killing blow ends the round, so going first can mean never being hit at all.

Attribute points, once spent, are spent for good. The fort's desk, though, refunds trait points for silver, so a calling can be rethought without starting again.

Skills

Weapon skills grow as you land blows, and faster if you pay the drillmaster at the fort: 40 × (skill + 1)^1.5 silver for the next whole point. Magic is exercised at the tower on a steeper curve, 90 × (magic + 1)^1.6. Theft and robbery are exercised at the casino.

Monsterology is on the character sheet and locked - the skill itself does nothing yet. The bestiary is a different thing and it is open: every kill fills in that species' page, and the pages hand back what a thing carries and what it does the round before it does it.

However lopsided the arithmetic gets, no blow is ever quite certain or quite impossible: your chance to land one stays between 10% and 95%, and a monster's chance to land one on you is between 15% and 95%.

The island

40 fields by 30 = 1200 tiles, of which 889 can be walked and 137 have a name, a description and a picture of their own. The home island is the northwest corner: the Quillwash runs down the middle and can only be crossed at Northbridge (8,5) and the Sunken Bridge (8,10), the Barrow plateau in the northeast is walled by cliffs with exactly one gap at the Stone Stair (11,3), town sits west of the river at x3-5, y6-8, and you start at (4, 7).

The causeway at (13,8) leads east onto the mainland, which is most of the world. Its regions run from tilled ground and orchards nearest home out to glacier, ash, salt pan and jungle, and the monsters scale with the distance rather than with your progress.

BridgeWindward StrandMeadowmarchGloomtangleScree HillsTangle FenHollow BarrowWyrmcourt TownThe KingswaySallowmere TillageCider ReachBlackpine UplandsThe RimewasteCinderfallQuillcutDelvemouth SpoilSunder DunesThe White PanVerdigris DeepMycelia HollowOpen waterCliffsThe QuillwashThe Slow RiverThe GlacierThe ChasmBlack Lagoon▼ a way down◇ a Waygate

Each terrain has its own monsters and its own chance of an event per step.

7 named gates are the only ways through walls that would otherwise be solid. Before you spend a click walking, the compass on the world screen tells you what is each way: the name of the gate if one stands there, or what is blocking you - a wall, the river, the cliffs - if not.

Every named place, and what it contains.

Every named place you stand on for the first time is written down and pays you 8 + 4 per level in experience for finding it, and the world screen keeps your count against all 137 of them. The ledger starts empty again each time you ascend.

Most caches can be looted once a run - they don't refill until you ascend - only a few of them refill daily. Contents are not listed here.

Towns and settlements

23 places with a door, across 13 fields. Wyrmcourt town is the three-by-three block west of the river; the rest are the four mainland settlements, each with a shop and a bar that stock and pour what that region has. 2 of them are not built yet.

Drinks at the Sulking Goose, and what they cost you.

Dice at the casino pay even money on a 48% chance. Buying the old man at the tavern a drink costs 10 silver and buys one rumour, in order, and the list starts again at the top when it runs out. The woman at the end of the bar is the one who genuinely runs dry.

Trade, the lists, and the bank

The market

Anybody can rent a stall on Market Lane. You put an item from your pack up at a price of your own choosing, in whole silver, and it sits there until somebody buys it or you take it down again - a listing does not expire. The label is what a buyer pays: the crown's 5% comes out of the seller's end, not on top, so the number you write is the number they see.

One person may keep 12 listings up at a time. Bound and unique items cannot go on a stall. Listing, buying and taking a listing down each cost a click.

The lists

The arena behind the fort is the one place a player takes something off another with both of them agreeing to it first. Put your name on the board and anyone from level 5 up and within 6 levels of you can call you out; take your name down and they cannot. A bout costs 3 clicks and is fought there and then against your opponent as they last stood - they are not present for it, and hear how it went afterwards.

Both fighters stake 250 silver. The winner takes the pot minus the crown's 10% cut and the loser loses the stake; a draw hands both stakes back and the crown takes nothing. Nothing else moves - no goods, no experience, and whatever health you spend in the ring you have back the moment you step out of it. You carry a rating that rises with a win and falls with a loss, and moves most when the result was the surprising one - beating someone well above you is worth far more than beating someone you were expected to. Any one name will fight you once a day.

The bank

The Bank of Wyrmcourt keeps silver where a housebreaker cannot reach it: a robbery lifts what is loose in your purse and never what is behind the counter. It takes nothing to hold your money and pays nothing for the keeping of it. The one hand it does not shut out is the crown's - on the day the king releases you, he counts what is in the strongbox along with what is in your pocket.

Monsters

51 of them in the wild and 13 more underground. Defence is subtracted from your damage per hit, and it is listed per weapon class: a crab with 4 slash defence and 0 crush defence takes far more from a cudgel than from a sword.

The Aggro column is the chance a monster opens the fight itself when you walk in rather than waiting to be attacked. Ranged monsters hit you while you are still walking up. Speed decides who swings first. Tame is whether a net can take it alive - the odds and the how are under Pets.

Some monsters wind up before a heavy blow, and they give the same warning every time. Meet a telegraphed blow with a guard and it comes off your shield and you strike back; guard when nothing is coming and you have only softened a lighter hit. Which of them telegraph, and what the tell looks like, is what the bestiary keeps for you once you have seen it.

Where each of them lives.

Dungeon monsters. You will only meet these underground, in a room you cannot flee.

Items

Spread shows how much a weapon’s damage can vary from its listed value. For example, a spread of 40% means the damage can roll anywhere from 60% to 140% of the base damage. Anything you can hold in one hand can be used to attack, including shields - a buckler deals 1 damage, while a tower shield deals 2.

Slash

Crush

Ranged

Ranged weapons hit at distance.

Every fight starts with a gap, a distance, measured in rounds - 1 by default. If you're at range and holding a melee weapon, your whole round is spent closing: "You charge your opponent with a wild yell!" - no damage dealt, you just set the distance to 0. If you're holding a ranged weapon, you shoot across the gap instead of charging - so you deal damage in that round.

Armour

Defence is subtracted from every blow a monster lands, and it stacks across slots - it is the same number the character sheet shows under that name. It does nothing against traps or poison.

Food, cures and oddities

The last column says where an item comes from. shop means somebody sells it - the town list or a settlement's - and found means nobody sells it anywhere.

Monster leavings

Monster drops. The board by the palace gate pays above list for whichever one it wants that day; the shop buys the rest at 50% of list.

Magic

Mana is 4 + 2 per level + 2 per IQ + 2 per point of magic skill. Resting gives back 3 + IQ/3 of it and the magic chair at home fills it. The island's shrines fill it too, but only when they have health to heal as well. Attack spells are considered ranged attacks.

Spells are bought once and learned forever. Each one has a minimum magic skill.

Dungeons

11 of them, each a web of rooms with dead ends in it. You walk them with the compass. There is no fleeing underground, and a room you have cleared stays cleared for as long as you stay down there, and its cache is empty for the rest of the day even if you walk out and come back.

What lives down each of them, and which attribute its traps tets.

Finishing a dungeon pays its silver once a day; go back down the same day and the monsters and drops respawn, but the completion silver is gone until midnight UTC. Each dungeon is counted separately. Riddle answers are not printed here.

Theft, robbery and traps

Both Theft and Robbery are taught at the casino. Theft is done at the town square against residents; robbery is done the house street against other players, and it is the only mechanic that takes something from a player who did not agree to it.

A pickpocket (using the Thief skill) costs one click. Success is 0.42 + 0.06 × (theft skill + 0.25 × Dexterity + 0.25 × Luck − difficulty), floored at 5% and capped at 90%. Each mark lets you near their purse once a day, then keeps a hand on it. Theft pays no experience, only silver, and less per click than fighting.

Failure has three outcomes. A guard fine costs 18 silver plus 4 per level. A scuffle costs 6 health. Being made unwelcome shuts every door in town for 20 minutes - no trading, no training, no praying - and it is much the worst of the three. Sometimes you simply drop the purse and walk on.

Robbery

A night's work (using the Robbery skill) costs 4 clicks and is done from the house street. You take one stored item, or - if the shelves are bare - 8% of the owner's purse, capped at 400 silver. Any given house can be robbed once a day per player. The owner is told your name whether you were successful or not.

Nobody below level 5 can be robbed, and nobody more than 6 levels below you. Success is 0.34 + 0.055 × (robbery skill + 0.25 × Dexterity + 0.25 × Luck − defence), where defence is 0.5 × the owner's level + 0.34 × their Luck. It is capped at 85%: the house always gets a roll. Getting caught costs 55 silver plus 10 per level and 45 minutes of being unwelcome.

Traps

The fort's back room sells them and a house holds 3 at once. Each one contests a different attribute, so a robber need only fall short in one of them. A trap does not call the guard and does not fine anybody - it simply goes off, and it can kill. Trap damage is reduced by 0.4 per point of the robber's IQ. The fort buys a trap back for 40% of its price.

You cannot see what is fitted in another player's house.

Fair play

One rule catches people off guard, so it is written down here rather than left to be met at a counter that will not explain itself. If the crown's clerks come to read two of your characters as one household, those two cannot rob each other, meet in the lists, or buy from each other's stalls. Everything else on the island stays open between them.

It is a blunt rule and it is meant to be one. It will catch people who honestly share a household - a couple, a family, a hall of residence, anyone reaching the island down one shared line. There is no ban in it and no black mark: the three doors between the two accounts are shut, and that is the whole of it. Trade with, fight and rob anybody else, not eachother.

Clans

A Clan charter costs 2,500 silver and buys a name, a roster of up to 30, a leaderboard place and a room to talk in. It buys nothing else: no shared purse, no shared storage, and nobody in a clan can reach into anybody else's pockets.

What a clan can do together is build. A clan project is paid for out of members' own pockets in silver and gathered materials, and what they finish is a standing perk for everybody on the roster - which is the only thing in the game one player can hand another.

Invitations are how you get in - up to 40 outstanding at a time. Leaving is always yours to do.

Talking to people

None of this costs a click - talking is free and looking is free. The island has one shared channel, and everyone reads the same tail of it wherever they are standing; the world screen tells you who else is nearby and how many people are about. Swearing in the channel is starred out.

A whisper is a line only its two ends can see, and you can only send one to somebody on your friends list. A friend is a request the other has to accept, and once they do you can see whether they are on the island and roughly which way and how far - never the exact field, and only while they are online.

Letters are the slower way and the one that reaches somebody who is not online: mail threads into conversations and waits to be read. Blocking somebody stops their letters, their whispers and their friend requests in one stroke. It does not hide what they say in the open channel, because the open channel is open.

A profile is public, and it says what you have done rather than what you own: your level, your kills and deaths, how many deeds you have earned, how many times you have gone round, and what you are wearing. It does not show your silver, your strongbox, your attributes, or where you are standing.

Three boards keep score. The island board ranks players by level; the clan board ranks clans by the levels of everyone on the roster; and the arena keeps its own, by rating, of the players who have put their name up to be called out.

Pets

Some monsters can be kept rather than killed. Throw a catching net at one that is already hurt and it may come home with you: the odds climb as its health falls, cap at 85%, and nothing can be caught above 30% health. The net tears whether it worked or not.

The stable holds 12. One of them walks with you at a time and fights on its own, adding a fraction of your own hit every round and, now and then, something more. What that something is depends on the pet. A hungry one sits the fight out, so they are fed as well as kept.

A pet cannot be traded, and it does not carry anything.

Getting about

Walking costs one click. The airship calls at 13 masts and charges 40 + 6 per field of distance, measured as the longer of the two axes. Waygates cost one click and no silver. Each one goes to exactly one other Waygate.

Every fare on the network, from mast to mast.

Quests

The crown's chain runs in order and there are 16 links in it. The Sulking Goose hands out 44 jobs in any order it likes. You can have several quests at once - the crown's chain, a job from the bar, a labyrinth contract and your teacher's line are separate ledgers, and one dead boar counts for whoever asked for it, so multiple quests could be completed with the same action.

Goals, levels and pay.

The crown

The Sulking Goose

Your calling's line

Each calling has a chain of its own, and it runs alongside the crown's and the bar's - you can carry one from each at once. Five steps, in order, one in the journal at a time, and you take the next by standing at your teacher's door once you are the level it asks. The teachers keep to their trades: the knight's is at the fort, the ranger's in the tavern, the magician's at the mage tower.

The last step of each line teaches a recipe that calling alone can make, and earns a deed that opens a unique title. The briefings, and what those titles are, are left for you to reach.

The daily board

The board by the palace gate gives you quests apart from the crown's chain, and does not take up the same slot - you can be on a royal errand and a board notice at once. It posts one notice a day, the same one all day, and it asks for a number of some monster's leavings brought to the gate. Bring them and it pays silver well above what the shop would give for the same drop, and experience that grows with your level. It turns over at midnight UTC with the rest of the day.

Faces

16 of them. Picked when you sign up and changed whenever you like, at no cost and no click.

The WandererThe BrawlerThe ScholarThe PoacherThe Disgraced KnightThe HerbalistThe Beached SailorThe GamblerThe Grave-DiggerThe CartographerThe Temple NoviceThe SmithThe FenceThe ShepherdThe Runaway ClerkThe Goose Enthusiast