Getting Started

Installing

Play in the browser — the latest release is hosted at play.athanor.games (best in a landscape window). It is free and ad-supported: the ads sit in the margins beside the board, never over it. There is a Fullscreen switch in the settings menu.

Or grab the latest Android APK from the releases page — pick the arm64-v8a file for modern phones — and sideload it (your browser will offer to install it; allow installs from that source if asked). The game plays in landscape.

Starting a campaign

The game opens on a short intro cinematic — tap Skip ▸ any time to jump straight to the menu, or let it play out and the menu arrives on its final frame.

From the main menu choose New Game (or Custom World to pick the world seed — the same seed always forges the same world). Continue lights up once you have a campaign saved, and Settings opens the sound and play options.

A guided first turn

Your first campaign walks you through the opening: the screen dims to the one thing to tap next, with a note on why. It covers taking command, raising a soldier, putting your city to work, beginning a study, settling a field, and taking your Grand Athanor back — and there is a Skip tutorial button on every card.

It never appears twice, never interrupts a saved game you resume, and never shows up at all once you have won a campaign. You can switch it back on — or start the whole tour again — from Settings.

1. Choose your Lord's calling

Your Lord is the guild: if they fall, the campaign is lost. Each calling plays differently:

• Warrior — front-line steel. Rally, the art they study first, hardens the whole party.
• Alchemist — fragile, but opens battles with a devastating Transmute Blast of raw Essence.
• Rogue — fastest on the road, deadliest from ambush, and the only calling that can sneak parties through dungeon floors.

2. Choose your guild

Seven seats ring the chamber floor, and Entropy holds the middle — the same shape the world has, with the rot at the heart and everyone else around it. Tap a seat and a tray rises from the floor with everything that guild is worth choosing for: its perk, its home ground, its sworn rival, its story, and the exact Lord this calling would start with. Tap another seat and the tray swaps to it; the ✕ lowers it out of the way.

Every guild has a distinct perk — Sulfur's blades hit harder, Aether marches faster, Aurum's vaults run deeper, Salt's shield walls hold.

3. Lore, stats, and go

The last screen lays out what you are committing to: your Lord's exact starting stats, the art their calling studies first, what the treasury opens with, the guild's story and ground — and what the campaign is going to ask of you. Press Choose and it begins.

Your first campaign runs at the gentlest setting — there is no difficulty to weigh before you know what any of it means. Finish the Great Work once and the choice appears here; finish it on Hard and Entropy itself becomes playable. See Settings & Unlocks.

Your first days

You start with your Lord and two followers in your capital city. Your own Grand Athanor stands nearby, held by the Faithless Marauders — liberating it is your first quest, and it pays: renown for your Lord, followers and infamy for your guild, and its income and territory afterward.

From there the shape of the campaign is simple to say and long to do: grow your ring of territory, raise heroes and armies, and fight inward toward the world's blighted heart, where Entropy's own Grand Athanor waits. Do not dawdle: after the opening days the blight itself creeps outward, swallowing unclaimed lands, and only territory under a guild's banners holds it back. Cutting down Entropy's roving heroes wins a battle, never the war; only that furnace-temple's fall stills the rot. Take it, and the Great Work is yours.