Shadowrealm

Shadowrealm: Age of Darkness is a free, persistent, browser-based dark fantasy RPG. There is nothing to download, nothing to install, and no client to keep updated: you make a character in a browser tab and that character is still there, with every coin and every scar, the next time you open it. There is no season wipe and no server reset, so progress accumulates over weeks and months of ordinary play rather than over one long sitting.

It is a game of criminal ambition rather than heroism. You start as a nobody in a soot-choked city, with 100 gold and 10 points of energy to your name, and you claw your way up 8 character ranks, from Peasant to Wraithking, by taking work nobody respectable would touch. Rank is the single gate behind almost everything else in the realm: harder jobs, richer cities, rarer equipment, bigger scores. Read the game guide for the long version, or the reference wiki if you would rather see the actual numbers first.

The core loop is deeds. Every deed costs energy, and the boldest also cost mana, and each is a roll against a real success chance: there are 24 of them, from begging strangers for coin to moving against the Shadow King himself. Success pays gold, experience, and sometimes a crafting material or a piece of equipment. Failure can cost you health, or land you in a cell. The full list, with the odds and payouts of each, is on the actions page of the wiki.

Energy, health and mana all regenerate in real time whether or not the tab is open. A new character refills a full bar of energy in about 50 minutes, health in about 100 and mana in about 25, and however large those pools grow later, a full refill is never allowed to take longer than about 4.75 hours for energy, 133 minutes for health or 33 for mana. So the game rewards a few short visits across a day rather than one marathon. Most sessions are five minutes: spend what you have banked, sell what you looted, check what your guild has been doing, and close the tab.

The realm spans 4 cities, Ashenvale, Shadowmere, Duskholm and The Dark Citadel, each unlocked by rank and each grimmer, richer and more dangerous than the last. Where you stand matters: deeds, shops, casinos and heists are all tied to the city you are currently in. See the cities of the realm for what each one gates behind it.

Shadowrealm is not one loop with a coat of paint on it. Underneath the deeds there is a full set of systems, each with its own economy and its own reasons to come back:

• Gear and crafting: 12 equipment slots and 6 rarities from common to divine, the last never found, only forged. 21 raw materials, mostly earned from deeds and heists, feed 65 forge recipes, and you can reroll or upgrade a piece you already wear.
• Player versus player: open-world attacks, ritual duels with an optional escrowed gold wager, and a rated Arena ladder that runs in seasons. See Arena, duels and PvP.
• Guilds: a shared treasury, a permissions table, a jointly-built Stronghold that keeps producing while you are logged out, and a warcamp that pays the whole roster.
• Jail and jailbreaks: a failed crime has consequences. Serve the sentence, or have somebody break you out, and break other players and wanted NPCs out for the reward.
• The economy: a player-run marketplace, a fence, a bank that pays daily interest, and a black market that rotates its stock every day. Prices are set by players, not by a vendor table. See gold, banking and trading.
• Gambling: 8 casino games, including a real poker room, and the casinos themselves are player-owned businesses that bank the house edge on every bet placed at them.
• Crew work: 3 multi-player heists where a crew fills the roles and splits the payout, plus realm-wide city boss events.
• The endgame: reaching the final rank does not end the game, it opens Ascension, a prestige reset that trades your rank for permanent, stacking power.

Register an account, or take the guest path and start playing immediately with no email address and no password, upgrading later if you decide to stay. Either way you begin in Ashenvale with a full pool of energy. Spend it on the cheapest deeds until you can afford better equipment, put what you do not need in the bank so it earns while you are away, and pick up the daily quests, they pay you for playing the way you already were.

If you want to know more before you commit: the game guide walks through every system in order, the FAQ answers the short questions, the wiki holds every catalog and number straight from the live game, about Shadowrealm explains who makes it and why, and the rules of conduct set out what is and is not allowed in the realm.

Shadowrealm is free to play. It has an optional premium currency for cosmetic and convenience purchases, and nothing in it is gated behind a payment: every rank, every city and every piece of equipment is reachable by playing.