How to Play

Chapter 1

Getting started

The Bastage RPG is a game you play inside our Discord, with a character sheet on this website. You fight monsters, level up, find gear, learn spells, tame pets, craft things, duel other members, and gang up on the occasional enormous boss.

Start with /fight, not with anything else

/fight works the moment you type it. It quietly makes you an account on the spot, and nothing you earn from that point is lost when you sign in properly later.

Most of the other commands are not like that. /rpg, /balance, /daily and the rest need you to have signed in to this website at least once, and until you have they will just tell you so. If your very first command was one of those and it turned you away, that is why — nothing is broken.

Signing in takes about a minute and it is free.

The only two things you need to remember

• /fight — opens your own battle panel. This is the game.
• /menu — opens everything else.

Almost half of this game has no command at all. Professions, crafting, crates, duels, abilities, prestige, free runes and raids all live as buttons behind /menu. If you go hunting for a /craft or a /duel command you will not find one — they are buttons.

Two places, one character

Discord is where you fight. The website is where you read the detail — the full inventory, the exact bonus each skill is giving you, your history. Dressing up works in both places now: /equip and /pets use do from a chat what the inventory and pets pages do here. What is still website-only is crafting, professions and prestige.

In Discord, typing !fight does nothing. The bot only answers slash commands and buttons there. The ! versions are for Twitch chat, which is a separate, much simpler version of the game.

Chapter 2

Fighting

How a fight works

You always have exactly one fight in progress. Open /fight and the bot picks a monster from wherever you currently are, then keeps that same monster until you win or lose. Attacking chips its health down over several goes — it is not one roll.

The twenty-minute rule

Attack, Pet Attack and Cast a Spell all share one cooldown, twenty minutes by default. Casting a spell instead of swinging does not dodge the timer — there is one timer for all three.

Elites

About one monster in eight is an Elite. It has half again as much health, and it pays double XP and Bucks with a better chance of loot. If you see the word, it is worth the fight.

Losing

If your health hits zero you lose some Bucks — half of what the monster would have paid you — and the fight resets. You do not lose levels, gear, or anything you have made. It is a bruise, not a disaster.

Explore does not move you anywhere. It redraws your panel with a fresh look at where you already are. Travel is the button that moves you. The bot's own older guide gets this wrong, so it has confused a lot of people.

Chapter 3

Levels — and what actually makes you stronger

Every monster you beat pays XP, and enough XP raises your level. Each level costs more than the last.

Levelling up does not raise your stats

This is the single most surprising thing about the game, so it is worth being blunt: your character's strength, defence, magic and health are written down once, when you make your character, and they do not change as you level. Levelling unlocks places and spells. It does not make you hit harder.

Gear is what makes you stronger

Better equipment is the whole progression. Everything you have equipped adds its bonuses to every fight you take. If your fights are getting harder, the answer is almost always better gear, not more levels.

Only four numbers matter in a fight

Health, strength, defence and magic power. Those are the ones combat reads.

Skills

All seventeen skills go up by doing the thing they describe — swing a sword and Swordsmanship rises, mine and Mining rises, cast a fire spell and Fire Magic rises. Each level is a small permanent bonus to that same thing.

They are deliberately a nudge, not a second set of gear. Every one is capped, most around a quarter better than where you started, and reaching a cap takes months rather than a weekend. Check what yours are worth on your skills page — it shows the exact bonus each one is currently giving you.

This is new. Until recently skills genuinely did nothing at all — they unlocked at level 1, sat on your sheet, and no part of the game read them. Everyone starts from the same place.

Chapter 4

Your character

Make yours on the website at your character page. You pick a name, a race, a class, and how they look.

Thirteen races, nineteen classes

Every one of them is drawn twice — masculine and feminine — and you choose which is yours, or leave it on "however it comes" if you would rather not think about it. You pick by looking at the artwork, not by reading a list.

Race and class are who you are, not how strong you are

They change your look, your hero card and your flavour. They are not a power choice, so pick the one you like the look of.

Some races and classes show a price in Bucks. They are all free — nothing on that page charges you.

Two different XP bars

/rpg shows your adventuring level, earned by fighting. /level shows your chat level, earned by talking and hanging out in voice. They are completely separate systems and neither one feeds the other.

Chapter 5

Gear, loot and crates

Where loot comes from

Roughly one win in four drops something you can use at your level — closer to two in five against an Elite. Crates and the occasional chat drop do the rest.

Put it on. This is the step people skip

Winning gear does nothing until you wear it, and for a long time the only way to wear it was your inventory page — so people collected a pile of good gear and never put any of it on. If your character feels weak, check this first.

You can do it from a chat now: /equip and the name of the thing, /unequip to take it off again (a slot works too — /unequip weapon). Say /equip on its own and it tells you what you are carrying that you could put on. In a Twitch chat it is !equip. The inventory page still shows far more about each piece.

Crates

Crates wait unopened until you press Open under /menu. There is a free one every twelve hours. Each pays out Bucks and a random item.

Drops in chat

Loot falls into the drops channel by itself through the day. First member to press the button gets it.

Chapter 6

Spells, runes and pets

Spells cost runes

Not mana. Every spell has a mana number printed on it and nothing in the game reads that number — runes are the real cost. You unlock spells purely by reaching the right level; your class never blocks one.

Getting runes

• Free Runes under /menu — three to five, once a day.
• Craft them from Raw Essence if you have taken up runecrafting.
• They turn up in crates.

Choose which spells you carry into a duel under Abilities — up to three.

Every so often a cast will cost you nothing and the panel will say so. That is your Magic Control skill holding the rune — it goes up every time you cast, so the more you use magic the more often magic is free.

Pets, and the Wild Hunt

There are two ways to get a companion.

• Catch one. After you win a fight there is a small chance a wild beast appears for five minutes, and you get that window to snare it. Snares improve your odds, and you craft those.
• Buy one. The store sells eight of them for Bucks, from the Bone Hound at the cheap end to the Mini Dragon at the top.

You can have one pet active at a time. Choose which on your pets page, or from a chat with /pets use and its name — /pets none sends it home again. An active pet adds a bonus to every fight and can attack on its own.

Wild Hunts happen in chat too now, not only on the Discord panel. Win a fight and a beast may break cover: /beast looks at it, /snare tries to keep it, /scare drives it off and takes its snares, /slay puts it down for XP. Five minutes, one beast at a time.

Chapter 7

Professions, crafting and quests

Three trades

Mining, Herbalism and Hunting, each on its own ten-minute timer, all under /menu → Professions. Each go brings back materials and a bit of skill XP.

Crafting

Turn those materials into runes, potions and snares under /menu → Craft. There is no /craft command — it is a button.

Quests

Daily and weekly quests are handed to you automatically when you open your fight panel. /quests shows what you are on, /quests list what is on offer, /quests start takes one, and /quests claim collects on a finished one. The quest page does the same with more detail.

Chapter 8

Duels, raids and Bucks

Duels

Challenge someone under /menu → Duel. They get Accept or Decline, and then a public arena panel appears that anyone can watch. Your first three wins each day pay a crate and full XP — five a day if you are a Member. After that you can still duel, for less.

Watching one? You can back a fighter with your own Bucks before round three.

Raids

One enormous boss, a shared health bar, and the whole guild swinging at it against a timer. The best loot in the game comes from these. Only a staff member can start one, so keep an eye on the raids channel — and every finished raid gets written up on the raids page.

Bastage Bucks

One currency across the whole site. Ways to get some:

• /daily — once every 22 hours, and the streak grows.
• /work — once an hour.
• /bastagedaily — an adventurer's version that also pays RPG XP.
• Winning fights, opening crates, and finishing quests.

Check yours with /balance and see who is richest with /leaderboard. You can send Bucks to another member with /gift — up to 500 at a time and 1,000 a day.

What you can spend them on

The Tavern takes Bucks and nothing else — there is no real money anywhere in this. It sells eight pets, four profile frames, a title, a badge, a shoutout, and a shield that protects your daily streak for a week.

You can shop from a chat as well as from the page. /shop lists what is on the shelf and what your Bucks actually cover; /shop with a name prices one thing. /buy and a name quotes it back to you and waits for /buy yes before it takes anything, so a mistyped name costs you a second message rather than your balance. In a Twitch chat both are the ! versions.

You cannot trade items or pets with another member. Bucks are the only thing that can change hands between people. There is no market and no auction house — the store is the only shop.

Reference

Every command

Type these in Discord. Anything not on this list is a button under /menu.

• /fight — Your battle panel — attack, pet, spell, potion, heal, travel.
• /menu — Everything else: professions, crafting, crates, duels, abilities, prestige, runes.
• /rpg — Your hero card: level, XP, health, stats, Bucks, pet, where you are.
• /character — A quick summary of your character, plus a link to your public card.
• /inventory — What you own.
• /equip — Put something on. /unequip takes it off — by name, or by slot.
• /shop — What the Tavern is selling and what your Bucks cover. /shop <name> for one thing.
• /buy — Buy one of them. It quotes the price and waits for /buy yes before spending.
• /pets — Your companions. /pets use <name> picks which one walks with you.
• /beast — The wild beast in front of you. /snare, /scare or /slay decide what happens to it.
• /quests — What you are on. /quests list, /quests start <name>, /quests claim.
• /legends — The RPG leaderboards — top by XP, top monster slayers, the duel ladder.
• /daily — Once every 22 hours: 100 Bucks, and your streak grows.
• /bastagedaily — Once every 22 hours: Bucks and RPG XP.
• /work — Once an hour: a few Bucks.
• /balance — How many Bucks you are holding.
• /gift — Send another member some of your Bucks.
• /leaderboard — Who has the most Bucks. (The money board — /legends is the RPG one.)
• /level — Your CHAT level. A separate thing from your RPG level.
• /howtoplay — This guide, inside Discord, one chapter at a time.
• /help — Every command you can use.

Staff can tie a command to one channel. If the bot quietly tells you it will not answer where you are, try the bot channel.

Ready

Go and hit something

Open Discord, type /fight, and press Attack. That is the whole first step. Come back here when you want to know why a number changed.

Make your character look right on your character page, and see every monster and place in the World Codex.