By Blackmead · Development milestone:
A volcanic island. Two towns with very different rules. A dwarven hold under the mountain. Sail in with your main character, or take exile and start at level 30. This is the road to v175.
The mountain has company
There is a dragon in the crater, a dwarven hold under the mountain and a town on the far shore that is considerably less interested in your good character. The forests have fire wolves. The beaches have great crabs. Somewhere between all of that is the ore you came for.
Welcome to Cindermaw. Our fourth-tier island brings a new stretch of endgame exploration, gathering, quests and player conflict into the same place. Rivers of lava divide the landscape. Centaurs patrol the roads. Barghests and trolls give you reasons to look up from the harvest prompt. The island has a lot to offer. Very little of it is unattended.
v175 is in testing as of October 16. It is not on the live servers or launcher yet; v174 remains the published build. Here is what we have been putting together.
Take the boat. Or take exile.
There are two ways into Cindermaw. Bring your main-game character by ship and arrive with the equipment and progress you have earned. Eldvik and Brandstadir both have docks. This is another destination in your existing adventure, with a way home when you have had enough of the local hospitality.
Or choose Jump In from the main menu. Accept exile, pick one of the five classes and create a separate character at class level 30. You get a Common Tier 3 class kit, Reinforced gathering tools, a torch and a few supplies. Ranger starts with Steel Arrows. Your starting talent points are yours to spend. The kit gets you through the gate; choosing what to do with it is still your job.
The creator lets you inspect your equipment and class tree before committing. Assign your starting attributes, give the character a name and arrive in Eldvik. You do not need to repeat the early islands to help test the new one.
Read the sentence before accepting it
Jump In characters are exiles, the Skogarmenn. They have their own saves and their own progression. Your main character stays exactly where you left it. You can keep one exile per primary class, so trying a Cleric does not require throwing away your Ranger.
Class level 30 does not mean every other number starts at the top. Combat proficiencies and professions begin at level 1. Exile Saga progression is shared among your exiles, separately from your main-game Saga. There is still training to do, gear to replace and a backpack to fill.
Exiles use personal vaults, not the account vault, and can trade directly with other exiles rather than main-game characters. Voluntary ground drops are restricted. They can explore Cindermaw and travel into Emberdeep, then return to the island. The boats to the other islands are off-limits. This character is staying.
Being an exile does not automatically make you a criminal. What you do after arriving is what matters.
Two towns. Different welcomes.
Eldvik is your foothold: a palisade, a harbour, crafting stations, a personal vault and people with jobs for you. Its sanctuary boundary protects the town from combat. Criminals and murderers are kept outside. If you want a quiet place to sort your kit, start here.
Brandstadir accepts less respectable visitors. It has its own dock, stations and personal-vault access, but it is not a sanctuary. Its guards punish people who start fights in front of them. Being allowed through the gate is not permission to swing at the nearest customer.
Fourteen guards cover the two towns, with melee fighters and archers enforcing their different rules. The bow guards actually draw and release their arrows. They are not scenery, and testing that theory is a poor use of your afternoon.
Know what you are starting
Cindermaw separates criminal standing from contested PvP participation. A blue dove, grey bandit mask or red skull shows a player's legal status. Crossed swords indicate contested participation. Party members keep green names, but their legal icon stays visible. Friendship is useful information. So is the skull.
Entering a contested area gives you a visible ten-second warning before the flag activates. Leaving does not instantly erase participation; the remaining timer is shown. Eldvik's sanctuary is a boundary, not a portable shield you carry down the road.
Assault, self-defense and assistance are checked separately. Helping someone can matter as much as hitting someone, and ongoing spells do not get to forget the rules halfway through their effects. Victims can report eligible murders through the menu. Reconnecting is not a clean criminal record.
Wear the good gear. Bank the spare stuff.
Equipped gear stays with you when you die. The risk is what you are carrying. In the current rules, an NPC or environmental death drops ten percent of carried materials, excluding ammunition, with no gold or loose equipment loss.
A player kill is more expensive. Innocent characters lose a quarter of carried materials, ten percent of carried gold and one eligible loose item. Criminals lose half the materials, a quarter of the gold and two loose items. Murderers lose three quarters of materials, half the gold and three loose items. Those loose items come from your carried inventory, not the armor and weapons you have equipped.
Death bags expire fifteen minutes after the death. Your own bag remains yours to recover while it exists. Looting an unflagged innocent's bag without owner or party rights is theft; criminal, murderer and contested bags are free to loot. Resurrection does not manufacture another copy of something already taken.
A personal vault is starting to sound rather attractive.
Eldvik needs more than another sword
Four quest chains pull you out of town for different reasons. Jarl Torvald wants the island's threats dealt with, from wolves near Eldvik through centaur archers and great crabs to the wandering troll and mountain dragon. Ragna needs materials for the walls and gates. Bragi wants the stories carved into the island's stones. Halvard wants proof that you can work a forge.
These are chains, not four isolated errands. The jobs grow into harder hunts, more distant landmarks and better materials. Tracked objectives appear on the compass and map. Quest conversations handle turn-ins and rewards, with voiced dialogue giving the town something to say beyond a shop price.
Rewards include Saga XP, gold, supplies and equipment choices as you work through the chains. They do not hand a level-30 exile more Class XP. And there is a practical reason to help Ragna: her gathering chain awards a Wyrmsteel pickaxe, opening the next stretch of the resource climb.
A letter for the other side of the island
Signy has an errand of her own. Take her sealed letter to Orm the Courier on the east shore, collect his parcel and bring it back to Eldvik. Orm has a camp, a conversation and his own reasons to stay away from the Jarl's wall.
This is an ordinary quest delivery. The parcel does not flag you for PvP. The separate courier PvP delivery system is still to come. For now, get the letter there and bring the parcel back. Preferably in one piece.
Better tools. More ambitious shopping lists.
Your Reinforced starter tools are a beginning, not a universal key to the island. Wyrmsteel adds Tier 4 axes, pickaxes, knives and shovels. Ragna's pickaxe reward gives you a route into the black basalt and Wyrm ore; the forge and workbench take the next steps from there.
The gathering and crafting quests connect those steps. Bring back the ore. Smelt the ingots. Make the tool that lets you harvest the next material. Halvard's chain works through steel, mithral, Wyrmsteel tools and star-iron, while Ragna sends you after increasingly demanding wood, stone and fibre.
Both towns have Master crafting stations and personal vaults. A proper expedition needs somewhere to unload, repair the plan and discover which ingredient you forgot. Probably the one furthest away.
Under the mountain
Emberdeep is Cindermaw's dwarven hold. A sealed entrance leads into long bridges, halls, a throne room and a treasure hall. The route climbs through the interior on a working lift, with dwarves, hounds and a drake among its inhabitants.
The dungeon has had repeated walking passes: stairs, bridge ends, doorways and lift landings all needed to work for an actual character, not just look connected from above. It also has its own music rotation and a back exit that warns you before a one-way departure.
Jump In exiles can make the trip into Emberdeep and back without becoming main-game characters or losing their separate progress. Exile means staying in Cindermaw's part of the world. It does not mean standing outside the dungeon door.
A few better arguments
The wider patch has combat changes too. A new Crude Bow fills the early end of the bow progression, the Hunting Bow gets a stronger place above it, and arrow type and rarity contribute to damage. What you put on the string matters.
PvE kill credit now looks for two of three claims: the first tag, more than half the damage and the killing blow. Eligible nearby party members share the winning party's XP. Landing the last hit alone is no longer the whole argument.
Vanguard melee hits work while a banner is active again. Ground-targeted abilities look for nearby usable ground instead of simply rejecting a placement. Shields, class gear, inventory previews and hotbar readability have also had another pass. These are the sorts of repairs you notice immediately when they are missing.
Leaving should be a decision, not a guessing game
The logout choices now say Leave Now, Wait Here and Stay. Leaving the client does not necessarily remove your body from a dangerous world immediately. The server keeps track of the departure, the body and its recovery, including reconnects and travel.
Town rules still matter. Eldvik allows immediate departure. Brandstadir can allow it when you are clear of combat and contested participation, but its gates do not cancel an active fight for you. Watch the countdown rather than assuming the menu has made you safe.
The shared world-chart loading screen covers entry and travel. Resolution changes now use a dropdown and apply when you choose a value. The island map marks Eldvik, Brandstadir, docks and Emberdeep. Small things, until you need them.
Next stop: v175
Since the last website update, v173 brought the new character menu and inventory portraits to the live game. v174 followed with performance work, the in-game Help menu and punch and shield-to-attack repairs. Cindermaw and Emberdeep are the next step, not destinations secretly hiding in v174.
We are finishing v175 testing before publishing the matching client and server update. PvP courier deliveries are still to come, and Faction Island remains a separate destination in development. Cindermaw's criminal law is its own system; blue, grey and red are legal states, not faction colours.
Pick a class. Think about the build. Leave a little room in the backpack. The mountain has plenty of ways to fill it, and a few ways to empty it.