Ember Sword is a Free-to-Play Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game (MMORPG) taking place in a player-driven dystopian fantasy universe with a classless and fast-paced combat system.
Create a character, pick a home region, and venture into the mysterious world with your weapon of choice to prove your worth in the action-packed classless combat system by defeating monsters, bosses, and other players, or explore the world as a peaceful forager of goods and rares making a name for yourself as a talented refiner and craftsman of weapons and armor.
Ember Sword is rich on both PvP and PvE.
Outlaw zones are free-for-all PvP & PvE areas where you travel to collect the rarest resources, slay high level monsters, or fight other players. Point-of-Interest PvP to conquer and protect camps in these Outlaw zones will see you teaming up with your guild / group of friends in fierce fights against other players. But be careful – dying in an Outlaw zone means losing most of your gear, much to the joy of your opponent.
In Wilderness and Kingship zones, you gear-up to help your friends defeat mighty open world PvE bosses, or venture into the dangerous world as a lone wolf to defeat thousands of monsters and beasts with your trusted weapons and abilities.
If you prefer PvE, you can acquire even the best items through resource collecting and crafting, but for those daring to engage in PvP, the rewards are plentiful, making the risk worth it.
There are no classes in Ember Sword. You’re never bound to a single weapon type or play-style. Want to use a bow for the next hour? Go for it. Want to switch back to your sword and shield for some melee combat? The choice is yours.
The more you use each weapon type, the more you level it up, which unlocks new abilities for that weapon type
No. We hate Pay to Win, and we’ll keep Ember Sword skill-based and competitive by never implementing any Pay-to-Win mechanics.
We monetize Ember Sword through an optional premium subscription, which unlocks non-pay-to-win convenience features (extra bank slots, exclusive titles, cosmetics etc.). Additionally, we earn a small fee on transactions of Land plots and Cosmetic collectibles on the Ember Sword Marketplace.
The Artist Workshop is our way of providing fans with a talent for 3D modelling, animation, and drawing, a chance to have their art immortalized within Ember Sword.
Artists can submit skins, emotes, animations etc. to our Artist Workshop. Every month, the community then votes on the best ones, and we ultimately implement some of them as in-game cosmetic items that gets rewarded through end-game PvP and PvE (as explained earlier in this FAQ).
The artists who end up having their works implemented into the game, will be compensated with a transaction fee every time that cosmetic item gets traded between players, in perpetuity!
In Ember Sword, we collectively call all skins, avatars, emotes etc. “Cosmetics”. Cosmetic items never have any impact on gameplay (aka, they do not make you stronger).
All cosmetic items in Ember Sword exist in a finite quantity. Every month, new cosmetics are introduced and distributed through PvP and PvE objectives (or, occasionally, sold through themed sales), and after the month is gone, those cosmetics will never be re-introduced.
That’s what makes collectibles; they are truly scarce, digital items. And they all have an item history as well, detailing who has owned them, how they were first forged, and more. This makes every item 100% unique. Each cosmetic item has its own story to tell!
Players who wish to acquire a certain cosmetic that is no longer being distributed will have to buy them from other players.
There’s nothing like a teleportation load screen that can throw you out of the immersiveness of an MMORPG. Luckily, there are no loading screens in the Ember Sword World!
Ember Sword is an entirely open-world. We’ve built our own (fancy) server infrastructure from the ground up to ensure that you can run around in the entire world without being annoyed by loading screens. But not only that, we’ve also avoided splitting the playerbase into server “silos” that prevent you from playing with your friends.
We do of course have EU, US, and Asian datacenters, but no matter where you live, you’ll have the option of playing with all of your friends from around the world at any time using your existing character and account (if you connect to the US datacenters from EU, you will of course experience a slight delay).
No, you do not.
We’re spending thousands of hours making sure that all parts of the game, from code base to art assets, are optimized to the very core, ensuring that Ember Sword can be played on most PC’s, even ones with older hardware. This is also what allows Ember Sword to be played directly in your browser.
Specific “recommended hardware” specifications will be released closer to launch.
That’s true. We use blockchain technology (Ethereum) to allow players to trade cosmetic items, even on secondary markets (no more having to go against the “Terms of Service” to sell your rare item on shady black markets) , and to prove the digital scarcity and uniqueness of all cosmetics items (skins, avatars, emotes etc.) and land in Ember Sword.
We firmly believe players should be allowed to do what they want with the items they’ve fought long and hard to acquire, and that they should be in charge of defining the game world as active participants. And using Blockchain tech allows us to ensure that.
The way this works, in simple terms, is that we connect each in-game item, and land to a unique “token” on the blockchain. The blockchain itself is essentially a public database, which means everyone and anyone can see all transactions that take place.
The tokens that get connected with cosmetic in-game items are “created” every month by a program that runs on the blockchain (called a “smart contract”). It is this little program that ensures the digital scarcity of all cosmetic collectibles. Nobody, not even us as game developers, can ever create more copies of a cosmetic item because the “smart contract” says we can’t.
What this means for you as a gamer is a couple of really cool things:
- The underlying tokens behind all cosmetic, land, are truly owned by you, which means you can freely trade it in-game or outside the game.
- True digitally scarce collectibles; nobody can ever create copies or increase the supply of any cosmetic item – not even by hacking our servers.
- No more hacking; the smart contract controls all player-to-player trading of cosmetics, and it will not let a transaction go through unless verified first. And attempting to “hack” a server to falsely verify a transaction is impossibly difficult too, as there’s no single-point-of-failure server to attack. Instead, all transactions are verified by the thousands of computers in the Ethereum blockchain network.
- Community websites and portals will have access to lots of interesting unfiltered / uncensored data because all transactions of cosmetics, land etc. are stored on a public database (the blockchain). This opens up lots of opportunities for community projects.
There’s no mining of crypto currency involved in Ember Sword (nor is there any cryptocurrency involved).
We use blockchain technology, but no cryptocurrencies nor “mining”.
Official launch is scheduled for 2022.
Alpha and beta tests (private & later public) will start in late 2020 and 2021.
Ember Sword will release on PC first, accessible from both Mac and Windows directly in your browser, or as a stand-alone client.
After launch, we have plans to start working on mobile cross-play (yes, the exact same game and same accounts, just playable on mobile).
Our vision is to support as many platforms as possible over time.
There are three weapon types; melee, ranged, and energy. Within each type, there’s a variety of different weapons, like 1-handed swords, two-handed swords etc. for melee, and likewise for ranged and energy weapons. The more you use any of the weapons within a weapon type, the more you increase the level of that weapon type’s skill.
There are 3 types of armor: Heavy (plate), Medium (leather), and Light (cloth), and you can mix and match these different sets to fit your preferred playstyle. Each armor type provides a bonus appropriate to that particular type (this is something we’ll elaborate on at a later time).
Progression in Ember Sword is based on advancing your skills from level 0 to 100. Improving your skills allows you to craft better gear, equip better weapons, collect better resources etc.
The following 16 skills are scheduled for the full release of Ember Sword:
Mining, Lumberjacking, Fishing, Skinning, Harvesting, Smelting, Tanning, Weaving, Woodcutting, Armorsmithing, Weaponsmithing, Firemaking, Cooking, Melee, Ranged, Energy.
We want as much of your equipment to be visible on your character. The visible equipment slots include:
- Head
- Chest
- Gloves
- Legs
- Boots
And then some cosmetic-only item slots like Capes and Hats.
The world of Ember Sword is exciting and ever-changing, ensuring a slightly different experience every time you login.
The world is split into 4 major regions, of which you pick one as your home region during character creation. Each region consists of 3 types of territories; Kingship, Wilderness, and Outlaw.
Outlaw territories are the most dangerous, and are found on the edge between two regions. These territories are home to rare resources and high level monsters, but be careful; anyone you run into will be able to attack you. It is also in these territories that you fight over the control of Outlaw camps, which reward with you a rare collectible cosmetic, and allows you to place buildings only accessible by you or your guild and friends. Anyone can destroy your camp, so watch out!
Wilderness territories are primary PvE areas and are rich in resources, monsters, and NPCs. You can attack players from opposing regions if they wander into your region’s Wilderness areas and start collecting resources. Open-world bosses also spawn in the Wilderness (and Kingship) territories. Get to them first and slay them for rare cosmetic rewards.
Kingship territories are strictly for PvE and resource collection, NPCs, quests etc. The kingship territories are controlled by the community through a total of 1344 landowners who decide what to place on each parcel of kingship territory land; NPCs, buildings, monsters etc..
Owning a parcel of land is not at the core of the Ember Sword gameplay experience (it doesn’t give you in-game advantages, nor access to content others can’t also access), and as such is not for most players, but it IS at the very core of the world design. We wanted to create a world that was to a large extent controlled by the community of players as a whole, and those 1344 parcels of land was what fit the size of the Ember Sword world (more Kingship land would mean the open-world would become too large).
What the vast majority of players will get out of the landowner feature, however, is a world that is ever-changing and truly alive instead of one that grows boring and stale over the years. It’s a world that adapts to the players at any given time, and one that is not just controlled by one group of game developers, but by over a thousand actual players.
End-game content in Ember Sword has to be meaningful and exciting for both PvP and PvE players. End-game PvP and PvE is something we spend a lot of time designing, and something we’ll continue tweaking even post-launch based on community feedback.
For PvP players, Ember Sword’s end-game content is competitive (no pay-to-win), skill-based (being “good” beats having great gear), and high-stakes (if you die, you lose most of your gear). If you’re good at PvP and win the end-game fights over Outlaw territory camps, you will be rewarded with scarce limited-edition cards that have a unique history detailing the epic feat that lead you to acquire that card. And once you’ve acquired all cards in a collection, you can unlock its cosmetic item. These cosmetics you can show-off, or even sell to other players. We’re not holding you back!
For PvE players, the world of Ember Sword is filled with unique monsters and fearless beasts. However, if you’re among the PvE elite, you’ll be fighting every day to become the first to kill the open-world bosses that spawn at random locations throughout the world. Kill the boss, and it’ll reward you with a scarce limited-edition card that has a unique history detailing your legendary battle against the boss. Once you’ve acquired all cards in a collection, you can unlock its cosmetic item. These cosmetics you can show-off, or even sell to other players.
Caravan Trading is for all of our merchants out there. We hear you, and we’ve designed a system that will allow you to live as a merchant inside Ember Sword. You’ll be risking your life, but the rewards will be worth it, and your fellow players will thank you for your duty!
Acquire the valuable resources unique to your home region and launch a caravan trade from the nearest Township, across the dangerous Outlaw Territories, and into foreign regions to sell your resources to other players at a profit.
Without a central worldwide marketplace, players from foreign regions are eager to buy resources from travelling merchants, and with limited inventory space, a caravan trade is your most efficient way to move large quantities of goods and turn a profit as a merchant. But the slow caravans make you an easy target for thieves hiding in the Outlaw Territories, so team up with your friends and allies to protect you on your journey.
No, they do not, and they never will.
Owning a parcel of land is not at the core of the Ember Sword gameplay experience (it doesn’t give you in-game advantages, nor access to content others can’t also access), and as such is not for most players, but it IS at the very core of the world design. We wanted to create a world that was to a large extent controlled by the community of players as a whole, and those 1344 parcels of land was what fit the size of the Ember Sword world (more Kingship land would mean the open-world would become too large).
Every NPC, building, monster spawn point, or resource node a landowner places of his/her parcel of land is accessible by all players. And even if a landowner quit the game without selling his/her land to another player, the land will remain accessible as-is forever (not unlike a traditional game where the game developers design an entire world that never changes)
As a landowner, you’re incentivized to create the best possible gameplay experience for everyone, as creating what’s in demand is likely to increase your land’s popularity among players (and who doesn’t want to be the most popular landowner around, right?).
But most importantly, you get to become part of molding an MMORPG world actively played and enjoyed by players all around the world, as everything you build will be accessible by everyone. On the flipside, this also means that if you go against what the community wants, your land might not remain relevant.
Landowners also have limited space available to them. So in order to create the best possible place in Ember Sword for all of us, they’ll have to work together with their neighbors to agree on what to place on their land. For example; if landowner A places trees, landowner B might choose to place a sawmill NPC, effectively creating an amazing place to power-level woodcutting. Continue like this, and your land might grow more and more popular among other players training their woodcutting skill, which increases your land’s popularity.
Additionally, landowners are rewarded with a transaction fee whenever cosmetic items are sold by and between other players through an Auction House placed on their land. And if a cosmetic item is dropped from a boss monster that spawned on your land, you’ll also get a reward every time that cosmetic is traded between players in the future.
It’s this healthy balance and economy that keeps landowners incentivized to do a good job maintaining their land, to the enjoyment of all Ember Sword players.
The cosmetics of the month can be acquired through PvP and PvE objectives. Afterwards, you will have to buy them from other players.
As an avid PvP and PvE player, this also means you can earn PIXEL without ever having to spend any money yourself by acquiring cosmetics through gameplay and selling them to others. PIXEL that you can then use on the optional monthly subscription, other cosmetics, and more.
NOTE: PIXEL is only used in-game for buying the optional monthly subscription, cosmetics, and other non-pay-to-win in-game purchases. PIXEL cannot be used to buy anything that makes you stronger.
