Progression
Combat resolves on its own; progression is the part you actually play. Several separate systems grow a hero, and each draws on its own currency — skill points, talent points, rune shards, gold, Arcanite — so none of them competes with the others for the same pile. This page covers all of them, plus the difficulty tiers they are measured against. Gear itself is on Items and gear enhancement on The Forge.
Hero Level & Skill Points
Experience from every kill and floor clear levels your hero, up to level 99. Levelling raises base stats directly and pays out one skill point per level, to a lifetime budget of 80. Skill points rank up your basic attack and each of your class's abilities individually; every rank adds 5% to that ability's output. Ranking is per ability, so a build can pour everything into one signature spell or spread across the kit. See Abilities for what you are ranking up.
XP is shared across your whole roster: clearing a floor levels every hero you own, not just the one that fought.
Talents
Talent points are earned from hero level and spent in a permanent, per-class talent web, up to 25 spendable points. The web runs three tiers deep:
- Tier 1 and 2 — passive stat nodes and per-ability damage nodes. The connective tissue you spend through on the way down.
- Tier 3 — five keystone capstones, one per keystone kind: lifesteal, thorns (reflect), execute, last stand, and retribution (on-kill heal). Every class has access to all five, and every rank anywhere in the web costs one point — so the cap is what forces a choice between them, and choosing is what makes a build a build.
Talents survive a wipe. Each class page under Classes renders that class's own tree, node by node, and Stats explains what the keystone stats do.
Runes
Runes are account-wide and bought with rune shards, a separate currency that drops from the descent itself: 1 per floor cleared, +3 for a boss floor, and +1 the first time you set a new deepest floor. Unlike talents, runes do not raise combat stats at all — they shape the economy and the grind around it.
Economy
Riches & wisdom from every floor.
| Rune | Effect | Max rank |
|---|---|---|
| Avarice | All gold rewards are increased. | 3 |
| Enlightenment | All experience gains are increased. | 3 |
| Fortune | Find more rune shards from the depths. | 5 |
Repose
Rewards while you rest.
| Rune | Effect | Max rank |
|---|---|---|
| Restful Hearth | Unlock offline rewards. Earn gold & xp while away. | 1 |
| Long Slumber | Increase the maximum offline reward window. | 5 |
| Dreaming Coffers | Increase the rate of offline gold & xp. | 5 |
| Sentinel's Vigil | Automatically drink a potion when gravely wounded. | 1 |
Expedition
Tools for the long descent.
| Rune | Effect | Max rank |
|---|---|---|
| Swift Descent | Cleared floors replay faster, never your frontier. | 3 |
| Field Salvager | Unlock auto salvage. Pick a rarity; lesser drops melt to materials. | 1 |
The Cube: Fusion
The Cube turns surplus gear into better gear. Feed it 5 items of the same slot and same rarity and it returns one item in that slot. On a success the result is one rarity higher; on a miss you still get an item back, but at the rarity you put in — you keep one of 5, and lose the rest.
| You feed in | You can get | Upgrade chance |
|---|---|---|
| 5× Common | Uncommon | 100% |
| 5× Uncommon | Rare | 100% |
| 5× Rare | Epic | 50% |
| 5× Epic | Legendary | 40% |
The ladder stops at legendary on purpose. The apex tiers — cursed, mythic, and divine — are drop-only and can never be fused into, no matter how much legendary gear you feed the Cube. To reshape an apex relic you already own, see re-targeting on The Forge.
Difficulty Tiers
The same 100 floors, in the same order, at three levels of tuning. Hard unlocks when you clear floor 100 on Normal, and Nightmare when you clear it on Hard. Higher tiers scale enemy stats and your rewards together, and every tier keeps its own deepest-floor record.
| Tier | Enemy offense | Enemy HP | Enemy defense | Gold & shards |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Normal | ×1 | ×1 | ×1 | ×1 |
| Hard | ×3 | ×3.4 | ×2.7 | ×1.4 |
| Nightmare | ×3.3 | ×4 | ×3 | ×2 |
Nightmare is not simply Hard with bigger numbers: it also empowers elite enemies and steepens the final stretch of floors. Bosses carry their own per-tier tuning — see Bosses.
Hardcore
Hardcore is an opt-in toggle on a run, not a fourth difficulty. It changes exactly one rule: a wipe destroys the gear your hero is wearing. Your gold, levels, talents, and runes survive as always. In exchange, gold and rune shards pay out at a premium for as long as the run is flagged hardcore, and clearing under hardcore earns its own cosmetic titles.
Rebirth
Rebirth is the endgame ceremony, available once per account, ever. It unlocks when any hero reaches level 99, and costs a flat toll of 1,000,000 gold. Nothing about it is subtle:
- Every hero in your party resets to level 1, not just the one you rebirth.
- Every class's talent ranks are wiped.
- Every item is destroyed — equipped and bagged alike. Nothing is sold, nothing is refunded.
What you get back is permanent: the reborn hero carries a class-specific blessing folded into its stats forever, gains a 26th talent point that no other hero can earn, and unlocks a trans-only keystone at the bottom of its tree. Gold upgrades, runes, and account-wide progress are untouched. It is a deliberate, one-way trade, and nothing a new player needs to plan for.
Still working out where to start? The Beginner's Guide walks the whole loop in order.