The Helbreath Forever game guide

Getting started

Helbreath Forever is in private beta and access is invite-based. Once you have an account, sign in and pick one of four character slots, or create a new character in an empty one.

1. Choose a look. Male or female, three skin tones, eight hair styles, sixteen hair colours and eight underwear colours — the same options the original creation screen offered.
2. Choose a starting build. The client currently offers a Warrior (14 STR / 12 VIT / 14 DEX / 10 INT / 10 MAG / 10 CHR) or a Mage (10 / 12 / 10 / 14 / 14 / 10). The server also accepts a Priest or a custom spread of the same 70 points, but those are not offered in the current client.
3. Enter the traveler map. New characters start at level 1 as a neutral traveler. There is no city yet: two cathedral doors lead to Aresden and Elvine.
4. Choose a city. Walk through a door to swear citizenship and be taken to that city's start point. Your appearance, attributes and inventory travel with you.

Your first character receives a starter kit once: two small red, two small blue and two small green potions, plus a Dagger (Warrior) or a Magic Wand (Mage) already equipped. A created character also knows the four starting spells — Magic Missile, Heal, Create Food and Recall — and can cast them without meeting the table's Intelligence requirement, which their starting stats do not reach.

Character & stats

Helbreath has no locked classes. A build emerges from six attributes, the skills you train and the gear you wear. At creation each attribute starts at 10 and the pool is 70 points, so you distribute 10 points and no attribute may exceed 14.

There is no class system, so the three templates are starting spreads rather than locked roles. A warrior weights STR, VIT and DEX around a weapon skill; a mage weights INT and MAG, carries a wand and keeps the off-hand empty. A priest-style build favours CHR and VIT with enough INT or MAG to cast support magic.

Levelling

Experience follows the original cumulative curve: level 2 arrives at 150 XP and level 3 at 300. Each level grants three points; open Character → Distribute stats to spend them. Levelling stops at level 180. Allocated points are permanent, and losing XP never takes back a level you have already earned.

This port caps each attribute at 200, following the original client, even though one community server tree raised the cap. Masteries are set to 100% during the beta so that every weapon works as intended.

Derived pools

Formulas divided by two use integer arithmetic, as in the original.

Controls

• Move with the eight-direction joystick in the lower-left. There is a walk and a run mode; running spends stamina.
• Attack by tapping the attack button, or tap a target on the world to select and strike it.
• Cast from the spellbook or one of four assignable shortcuts. Tap an empty shortcut to bind a spell or item, and hold it to edit.
• Dash attack: drag the attack button upwards to leap one tile and strike a target two tiles away in a straight line — subject to the original rules on run mode, stamina, mastery and weapon type.
• Look around by dragging the map; pinch to zoom in and out.
• Panels: the character sheet, bag and equipment, spellbook and menu are reached from the HUD. Open Character to check stats, equipment and unspent points.

Combat

Combat is resolved on the server. The client sends the intent and the server decides the hit, the damage and the death, so the same rules apply to every player and monster.

• Hit chance compares your hit ratio (weapon mastery and gear) against the target's defence ratio (mostly DEX and armour), then clamps to 15–99%. A target struck from behind defends at half its ratio.
• Weapon damage is the weapon's dice plus its flat bonus, scaled by Strength. Monsters are rolled against the large-target line when they are big and the small-target line otherwise; players always use the small line.
• Charged criticals come from the original SuperAttack: your capacity is level ÷ 10, they need 100% mastery in the matching weapon skill, and a charge is spent even on a miss. Charges build back up over time and through surviving melee hits.
• Combos cycle every few swings and add the weapon's combo bonus.
• Armour rolls a struck location, then applies that piece's percentage absorption at the location, capped at 80%. A successful hit always does at least one point.
• Hunger and stamina matter: at 10 hunger or less, or with no stamina, one attack in ten misses.

Spell damage uses the spell's own dice and scales with Magic instead of Strength, which makes it grow faster per point. See magic for casting.

Weapons

Every one of the 135 equippable weapons uses its own recovered damage dice, skill and endurance. Damage is listed for small or medium targets and for large targets. Dexterity governs the weapon skills; wands use Magic. During the beta every mastery is 100%.

Loading weapons…

Values come from the recovered community-lineage item tables. Where the two pinned copies disagree, this site follows the selected base table. Weapons marked not sold still drop and can be used; they are simply not on a shop list.

Armour & equipment

Equipment has seven worn slots plus accessories. The server currently implements these pieces; the rest exist in the catalog but cannot yet be worn.

Defence adds to the wearer's defence ratio, which lowers the chance of being hit. Absorption is applied after the hit, at the struck location, as a percentage. A physical hit rolls roughly half to the body and the remainder across legs, arms and head.

Durability and repair

Weapons and armour carry endurance and wear down with use. Repair them at the blacksmith (weapons and metal armour) or the general shop (cloth), paying by how much life is missing. A completely worn item costs half its price to restore. Weight is recorded for every item but the carry limit is not enforced yet.

Items & potions

These consumables are implemented in the beta. Potions restore HP, MP or SP; green potions also clear poison. Food does not heal instantly: it adds to a deferred health stock and raises hunger.

• Hunger fills to 100 and falls over time. At zero, health, mana and stamina recovery stop and you begin to starve, so eat before a long hunt.
• Gold is a bag item, not a separate wallet, so it saves with your inventory and cannot be duplicated away from it.
• Recall scrolls return you to your home city. A prepared mage can also cast Recall directly.
• Ground loot: a killed monster can leave gold, potions or equipment on its tile, and materials or rarer treasure when the corpse fades. Walk onto the loot and stop to make Pick up appear — one tap takes the top item or a whole stack.

Magic

The complete spellbook holds 65 spells across ten circles. Each spell has a mana cost and an Intelligence requirement. Buy spells from Gandlf, who stands beside the shopkeeper in the general shop. He sells 53 of the 65; the eight whose recovered cost is negative — Ice Storm, Mass Fire Strike, Bloody Shock Wave, Cancellation, Haste, Inhibition Casting, Resurrection and Earth Shock Wave — cannot be bought yet.

How to cast

1. Select the spell in the book or on a shortcut to begin preparing it.
2. Wait for Ready. Holding a ready spell costs no mana.
3. Tap a target or a ground tile, press Fire, or tap the shortcut again to release it. Beneficial spells and Summon Creature default to self; Resurrection targets a fallen ally.

Moving, attacking, changing spells, taking damage, dying, disconnecting or changing map cancels a preparation. To cast at all you must have an empty off-hand, no two-handed weapon, and any weapon in the casting hand must be a wand or staff. A plain wand adds a flat 20 mana to every cast; the MS wands save a percentage instead.

Loading spells…

Circles map to spell ids, so that the book keeps the original numbering and its gaps. A starting spell is known at creation and castable below its listed INT.

Bestiary

These are the monsters imported into the beta, with their recovered combat values. Health, experience, gold and attack are the ranges the server rolls per spawn; the beta multiplies experience and loot (see beta rates).

Drops

When a monster dies the server makes one primary roll. If it passes, the result is gold about 60% of the time and an item otherwise. A second, independent roll can add body materials or rarer treasure when the corpse fades — so it is worth watching the tile for a moment before moving on.

Where to hunt

• Slimes, ants, rabbits and cats fill the low-level maps and the fields between the cities — the safest place to learn the combat flow.
• Orcs are the first real step up, and the random level-one spawn table can still produce one.
• Zombies, scorpions and skeletons hit harder and reward more; go in groups or over-levelled.
• Golems and cyclopes are the heavy hitters of the current roster.
• Guards protect each city. They do not attack neutral travelers, so you can walk in safely — but provoke them and they hit very hard and give no reward.

Cities, shops & economy

The two nations are Aresden and Elvine, bitter rivals that share the traveler map and the field beyond. A citizen's city and faction label travel with their character. In this beta the farms and Middleland are not imported; every city gate leads to Promiseland, the shared field, which in turn leads back to each city. Treat that as a deliberate shortcut rather than classic geography.

Shop and service NPCs

Buying, selling and repairing

• Buying costs the item's price times the quantity, with a Charisma discount: each point above 10 saves a quarter of a percent, clamped so it never cuts the bill below half.
• Selling pays half price for cloth, tools and consumables. Weapons pay half price scaled by how much life is left, so a worn-out weapon cannot be sold at all. A neutral character is paid half again.
• Repairing costs the missing share of the item's life; a completely worn-out item is half its price. Weapons and metal armour are repaired at the blacksmith, cloth at the general shop.
• Reward money builds up while you play and is collected from Gail in the command hall.

PvP, death & reputation

Aresden and Elvine are at war. Faction combat is supported, with a Safe attack toggle so ordinary allies are not caught by a stray swing or spell. Turning it off lets you attack other players.

• Unlawful kills carry the classic penalties: a criminal count and the red-name treatment that lets anyone attack you.
• Jail holds criminals for a server-controlled countdown, shown in the HUD.
• Death drops items and experience follows the original rules, with corpse recovery; restart returns you to your city or, for a traveler, the traveler map.
• Resurrection can bring a fallen ally back at half health, with a ten-minute cooldown.

The beta does not yet include castle sieges, crusades or the full guild systems of the live game.

Beta rates

To let testers see the content, the beta server raises rewards well above the classic values. These are server-side numbers; nothing about your client changes.

Shop and repair prices, death rules and stat points are unchanged. Expected gold income rises about fivefold and equipment about threefold.

Tips for new adventurers

• Keep food and both colours of potion stocked. Hunger stops recovery before it kills you.
• Train one weapon skill rather than spreading across several; in the beta masteries are already at 100%, which unlocks charged criticals.
• Tap a monster to target it, then use the attack button. A prepared spell fires on the same button once it is ready.
• Watch the ground after a kill — the second, rarer drop arrives as the corpse fades.
• Bank your progress with better gear before pushing into golems and cyclopes.
• Leave Safe attack on around allies and turn it off only for faction fights.
• Recall home when overloaded with loot, and repair before durability runs out.
• Use the in-game Feedback / Report a bug button when something looks wrong.