Player guide

Build your own role

Dawn Under Ash is a top-down isometric MMO. Equip four skills, improve them through use, and swap them in your home town.

Current demo Early Access Combat Crafting & trade PvP & territory Full game

Development build

Sunhold Vale

The demo supports solo play or two players in Sunhold Vale. It includes all 15 quests, gathering, vendors, a working forge, and character progress saved locally on the host.

Four disciplines in the demo

Swordsmanship

Use a sword or starter blade for Riposte, Cleave, and Lunge.

Archery

Use a bow or crossbow for Quick Shot, Aimed Shot, Crippling Arrow, and Disengage.

Pyromancy

Cast Firebolt, Fireball, or Wall of Fire. Casting builds Heat. Its tuning is still being playtested.

Restoration

Mend, Purify, Greater Heal, and Guardian Light work with any weapon. Target a friendly player or heal yourself.

Rules being playtested

Sprint, jump, or dodge with a brief window of invulnerability. One-handed weapons can be dual-wielded, and swing times vary by weapon. Nineteen derived stats appear on the character sheet, including Toughness, Willpower, and Poise for resisting status effects.

Everyone who damages a normal monster receives full kill XP. A corpse window shows its loot. These demo rules remain subject to playtesting.

Planned Steam release

Eight skills, four active

Choose from Swordsmanship, Mace Fighting, Dagger Fighting, Archery, Defense, Pyromancy, Restoration, and Songcraft. An archer can take Restoration to heal a partner while still fighting at range.

Early Access targets character level 25 and equipment tiers 1–3. Skills can still reach level 50. Greymaw, the Rat King, and the Drowned Prince are the three planned bosses. Crossroads Market serves both factions, and the Sunken Throne is the sole stronghold.

Follow the starter routes →

Targeting & progression

A target for each strike

Click or Tab to select an opponent for most abilities. Aim area effects on the ground. Range and line of sight matter, so cover can protect you from an incoming attack.

Weapon techniques spend stamina and spells spend mana. Each point of a skill’s primary attribute above 10 improves its effect by 1%. Each secondary point above 10 adds 0.5%. Each attribute caps at 30 after racial bonuses.

Equipment & economy

Your first crafted weapon

In the Sunhold quest A Blade of Your Own, a Copper Shortsword starts with 12 copper ore and three pine logs. The smith supplies leather for your first craft. A finished tier 1 weapon upgrades your Crude starter gear.

Top gear in the full design comes from crafters. Local markets and banks give traders a reason to move goods between towns. Waystones require an empty material load. A miner bringing ore home has to find a way back on foot or arrange transport.

PvP & guilds

What you risk outside town

New players have PvP protection inside their starter region. Leaving ends it permanently, and it expires at level 10. Early Access includes flagging, reputation, guild wars, and simple sieges. Flagged deaths drop 25% of carried goods. Criminal exile is reserved for the wider game.

Holding ground in the full game

The planned guild stronghold has a vault, workshops, gathering tax, and a respawn point. Characters carrying goods can only respawn in the zone where they died. A stronghold can gain a fresh 72-hour shield at most once every seven days.

1.0 design target

Beyond the Sunken Throne

The full design targets six races, three factions, 28 skills, character level 50, gear tiers 1–5, and 24 strongholds. Maw’s Rest, criminal exile, player-funded bounties, and the shared Abyss belong to this wider world.

Reputation has eight tiers. Dropping to −2,500 exiles Concord and Dominion criminals to Maw’s Rest. Ashborn already belong there. Posted bounties draw their reward from player escrow, with a 10% posting fee.

Explore the Ashlands →