None! Chronicles of Elyria is a fully skill-based system, in which the skills you use determine which skills you're good at. There are, however, schools you can join which will provide certain benefits such as ranks and titles, and will help you develop certain skill sets more quickly.

For more information on skills, check out the Skills page of the Game Guide.

Correct! To the adventurer it's mostly an ARPG (action role-playing game). If you purchase land and start building a town it takes on more sim-like elements. Running a county or duchy will feel a lot more like a 4X game and, for the rulers of kingdoms, it plays more like a kingdom management/grand strategy game. At each level of play new user experiences become available help make managing your new role easier. Unlike in most RTS/4X/Grand Strategy games, in CoE, your units or citizens are the other players!

Yes! As part of character creation you pick a family. This impacts everything from where you start, to which possible skill bonuses you begin with, to what physical attributes you can select. You'll also have a home and some resources when you start out.

No. You can select NPC parents as well, but they tend to be less talkative in Family Chat.

You can opt to start as a ward of the state. You get more flexibility in character creation, but lose most of the starting benefits of a family.

Absolutely! With a metric ton of new features I'd say we're really the first MMO to support guilds.

Great! We'll be providing codes which will allow you to bring your entire guild into your family or guild so you can get a jump on building a powerful dynasty or enterprise.

When you provide a friend with a game code it will allow them to create a character on your server, even if the server population is capped.

As part of character creation they will have an opportunity to pick a family that is close in proximity to yours.

Yep. When we thought long and hard about what we wanted to achieve with this game - dramatic story telling, rich, evolving history, a balanced skill based system, etc... - it became clear to us that the only way to achieve that was if characters were constantly cycling. But don't worry, we're spending a lot of time thinking about how we can make the process of death, and birth, an enjoyable and interesting part of the game.

Correct. During normal play you can get knocked out or receive a fatal wound in which your soul temporarily leaves your body. Neither of those are permadeath. But each time your soul leaves your body your soul's connection to Elyria gets weaker, shortening your total life span. When you reach your maximum age, you will sleep the Final Sleep and be no more. That's the end of that character, but the soul lives on and you may reincarnate into a new character, and even as your heir with all your stuff.

There are no experience points in Chronicles of Elyria. However, you may have some skill atrophy if you're dead for long. And also, the process of being ripped from the physical world takes a toll on the soul. Each time you die, it will reduce your total life span.

Yeah. Lots. Everywhere. Kingdoms go to war, assassins wage their silent battles in the night, highwaymen lay wait in ambush on the unsuspecting passer-by. However, except in times of war, PvP is illegal, and the penalty is stiff. So, while PvP is possible everywhere, it's highly unlikely around civilized areas.

Actually, more or less. In Chronicles of Elyria, crimes such as attacking other characters is punishable with a shortened lifespan if caught. So, while we haven't removed the incentive around griefing, we've dramatically increased the risk of doing so.

There is a system of law and government that allows players to bring justice to other players when they break the rules. Instead of breaking the fourth wall and getting outside assistance from a GM, bad behavior will be discouraged by the laws in your region. Enforcement of law becomes another activity for play and allows a lucrative profession in bounty hunting. Game-breaking exploits, however, will be dealt with by studio staff.

There isn't any. No, seriously. This game is about being a part of an epic, ongoing story-line. Fill your characters' days adventuring, siegeing, farming, running a town, county, or kingdom. Spend time increasing your family's holdings or building your Noble House. And then, in your characters' final days, let them sleep the final sleep, while your soul grows young again and is re-born into another character to make their own mark.

No.. and yes. There are no static raid dungeons. However, world events will frequently cause big, bad, nasties that need to be dealt with to roam free or take shelter in an abandoned ruin.. Also, as players amass a large amount of wealth and hide it in their castles, other, less savoury players may choose to break in and steal it. Finally, kingdoms will often go to war and siege each others' castles. All of these can and will require a varying number of players to be successful.

Really, really big. You wouldn't be able to travel all of it in a single character's lifetime.

The game will be finished when it's done. That means the completion of our scalable platform, implementation of all Alpha 1 and Alpha 2 game mechanics, creation of all necessary art & design content, and various stages of private, exclusive, and public testing. While no public date has been set for the release of the game, we encourage backers to stay involved, join our Discord, and check back occasionally as we run events that allow players to have a permanent, lasting impact on their Bloodlines and the world of Elyria. While the game is not yet playable, there are plenty of ways to participate in the development process.

There will be a beta. When available, invitations will be sent automatically to our backers, in order, based on pledge rewards and influence.

Great question! We are not currently hiring.

Chronicles of Elyria uses a unique business model that harkens back to the days of coin-op arcade machines. Rather than charge people a regular monthly subscription, we instead charge people on a 'per life' basis. In CoE, a Spark of Life allows a character to live approximately one real-world year before it dies of old age. As a result, people will typically buy a life once per year.

Charging people 'per life' isn't just a revenue model for us. It also ties in closely with one of our core design principles. We believe heroes should be truly heroic and villains should risk real consequences for their actions. As a result, risky, adventurous, or illicit behavior often shortens your overall lifespan if unsuccessful. By tying the cost of the game to a player's lifepsan we force them to make meaningful choices about their in-game behavior.

No exact price has been set, but we anticipate it will be on par with the retail cost of other PC games. Lives will be roughly the cost of a game expansion - between $20 and $40 USD.

Our plan is to push the limits on the number of players available on a single server. As a result, it's our goal to keep the number of servers small. At the moment, there are only four planned servers.

Yes. We do plan to have regional servers in order to provide players an optimal connection and reduce latency. We currently have planned 4 Regional Servers: Angelica in NA-West, Luna in NA-East, Selene in EU, and Oceanus in the Oceania region.

We're currently using the Unreal Engine.

When you think of a typical "game engine" you think of the set of libraries used to perform model/terrain/water/particle rendering, camera movement, animation, physics, user input, and sound. These are all, in general, things that the user experiences directly on the client-side and defines the look and feel of a game. For these things we're using the Unreal Engine. In contrast, there are a set of services/libraries running on the back-end that drive the soul pool, the dynamic story engine, etc. These services are scanning for and initiating dramatic situations and controlling the hierarchical, goal-based AI of the NPCs. These services also define the rules/mechanics which make Chronicles of Elyria different from other games that use the Unreal Engine. This collection of server-side logic and services is the Soulborn Engine.

It's too early to tell exact requirements, however it will require a PC running Windows 7+, with a video card that supports DirectX 11+.

As we're currently built on the Unreal Engine, it will run on desktop PCs. We are looking at compatible consoles as well, and the game controls are being built with a controller in mind.