Jobs of Vhael

TODO: chapter intro. What a job is in Second Calamity — main job, subjob, masteries, and why any job can wield any weapon it can lift. Two or three paragraphs, written to be read, not skimmed.

On the Job

Every character is built in six layers, stacked broadest to narrowest: main job, subjob, masteries, keystones, weapon, and gear. Your main job supplies your engine, your gauge, and the top-half abilities that make it what it is — and that engine flavors every cast you make, sub-granted spells included, so a Mage-granted nuke cast on a Dark Knight main still consumes Dark Knight stacks. Your subjob runs at half your main's level and grants access to nearly everything that job knows — abilities, spell grants, masteries, keystones — subject to that level cap, with frictionless swapping between combinations and no cooldown standing in the way. Masteries are per-job choices made roughly every ten levels, modifying how your engine behaves; they're meant to accumulate into a build you can point to, not vanish as isolated level-up popups, and masteries picked for a subjob persist even after you swap away from it. Keystones sit above masteries as main-only, build-defining choices — the concept is locked but the mechanics are still being forged. TODO: keystone mechanics once decided. Weapon and gear are the outermost layer, skinning your kit and rolling the affixes that shape it.

Tank, Healer, Support, and DPS describe what a job promises to five other people in a six-player party — not how it deals damage. Every job in Vhael can solo, and every job carries real damage output; a Cleric hunting alone isn't a lesser Cleric, just one not currently making that promise to a group. Roles aren't cages, either: gear and masteries can bend most jobs toward a different function, and tank and healer jobs in particular are built to support a competitive DPS alternative build, so switching between "the job that keeps the party alive" and "the job that kills things" doesn't mean re-rolling.

No job owns a weapon type. The weapon in your hands supplies the animation set and VFX skin for your abilities and nothing more — it never gates which of your abilities you can press. Spells carry their own range no matter what you're holding; every other ability is melee-gated unless it specifically declares otherwise, such as a thrown weapon or a shot. The weapon listed next to a job's name in this guide — great-katana for the Samurai, bow for the Bard — is a default rather than a requirement. Find a sword that out-rolls your bow as a Ranger and you keep your entire kit, full auto-attack reach and all, just skinned differently. Ability names in this guide stay weapon-neutral for the same reason — nothing is called an "arrow" or a "bolt," because whatever's in your hands might be neither.

Nor does your job decide it. Anyone can pick up anything. A weapon base carries a level requirement and an attribute requirement — heavy weapons want Strength, finesse and ranged weapons want Dexterity, casting weapons want Intelligence — and that is the whole gate. A Mage who meets the numbers can swing a greatsword, and it will be a bad idea for reasons of damage type and stat allocation rather than because the game refused. The weapon listed beside a job is a recommendation the itemization backs up, not a lock.

Only one stance can be active on you at a time — full stop, no job stacks two. Every ability on your bar sits on the global cooldown (GCD) or off it; off-GCD abilities are generally the instant ones, meant to be woven between your GCD casts rather than replacing them. Every job also carries a triggered proc: a semi-random spark, mostly earned from landing autos, that lights up a single off-GCD response button with room for exactly one charge. Every job's first response arrives at level 2. What that response does is entirely class-flavored — most jobs get one answer, though the Brawler famously gets a choice of four. Gauges follow one hard rule: they enhance, they never gate. A gauge-spending ability is always castable at zero charge; the gauge only scales how big that press lands, never whether you're allowed to press it, and no gauge state can ever mode-swap a job between dealing damage and healing or leave its baseline kit weaker than it started. Spirit is Charisma spent as a reservation on top of all that: sustained effects like a Bard's songs or a Summoner's hexes hold a chunk of your CHR for as long as they're active, which is why CHR quietly caps how many of them you can run at once.

Your subjob operates at half your main job's level, full stop — a level 60 main brings a level 30 subjob along, no matter what your subjob's own level might otherwise be. That halving does most of the design work by itself: every job deliberately keeps its identity pieces — signatures, deep grant tiers, capstone abilities — unlocking in the top half of its own level curve, so a subjob naturally never reaches them, leaving only a sparse handful of main-only capstones to worry about. What a sub does bring is real: the bottom-half abilities, spell grants, and masteries of whatever job you've chosen, picked up exactly as if you were leveling it as a main. The one deliberate exception is the engine: a subjob's gauge never activates, so a gauge-spender ability tags along as inert flavor rather than a build pillar, though resource-sustained tools like a Bard's songs or a Summoner's hexes still function normally as a sub. You also only get to keep one proc lit at a time — your main's or your sub's, your choice.

One character covers every job. You do not roll a second one to see the other half of the game — you walk into a tavern or an Abode in any major city and change. Main job, subjob, or both, as often as you like. It costs nothing and there is no cooldown, so bringing a tank to a group that's short one is a two-minute errand rather than a week of leveling.

Each job keeps its own level. Swapping to something you've never played puts you back at level one in it, with your old job's level waiting untouched for when you swap back.

A handful of jobs are open at character creation, covering all four roles, so nobody starts locked out of how they want to play. The rest are advanced jobs, unlocked by quest once you meet their prerequisites. Each starting city has its own advanced jobs to offer, which is one more thing your opening choice colors — and, like everything else about that choice, not permanently.

Tanks

The Brawler weathers a hit before answering it, turning guards and counters into earth-and-water retaliation. As a tank, the promise is simple: hits land on you, but they're guarded or blocked more often than not, and every counter you throw back is retaliation, never a shield eating the damage for free. Solo, that same loop makes the Brawler self-sufficient — water-aspected magic keeps you patched up, earth keeps you standing, and the charge you're building never stops ticking whether anyone's watching or not.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Brawler's kit is entirely its own — no shared spells, no grants; its water and earth magic live in its abilities alone.

Second Wind

Second Wind is the blood in the Brawler's veins: a bar from 0 to 100 that fills only when you get hit, and fills by how much of you the hit took. A punch that costs a quarter of your health banks a quarter of the bar, whether you're a level 1 with a thin bar or a level 50 with a fat one. It never drains on its own. What you bank while tanking waits for you.

You spend it by paying for a buff. Tidal Siphon, Brace, and Dig In are ordinary 8-second buffs you can press any time, even at an empty bar. Press one with something banked and nothing else being paid for, and the bar starts paying that buff's upkeep, five points a second. While the bar pays, the buff is much stronger, and it does not end when its eight seconds are up; it stays as long as the bar keeps paying. Keep getting punched and the bar keeps refilling under the cost, so a Brawler who stays in the exchange holds the buff; step out of the fight and it runs dry in about twenty seconds from full. The bar pays for one buff at a time. Press a second buff while one is being paid for and you get that buff's plain eight seconds; press the paid buff again and the bar stops paying, with whatever's left still banked. The choice each time the bar fills is the job: heal off it, guard off it, or hit off it.

The charge loop is the other half, and it never turns off. Every counter, every auto-attack, and every combo you complete adds a charge — capped at one — and once it's lit, you choose what to do with it: throw an enmity hit to hold aggro, a damage hit to press an advantage, an interrupt to shut a spell down, or a water-aspected heal to patch yourself up mid-fight. Nothing about the choice is timed or forced; it waits for you. The bar and the charge never touch each other. TODO: exact charge windows and follow-up numbers pending.

Every counter, auto-attack, and finished combo charges a single trigger, and when it lights up you choose the follow-up yourself — an enmity hit, a damage hit, an interrupt, or a water heal. TODO: expand.

The charge caps at one and never expires, so the question is never whether you have it — it's which of four things this fight needs next. That choice is the whole job.

The Paladin wears holy law as armor, trading incoming damage for outlasting endurance. In a party, that means holding the line for as long as the fight demands, turning holy damage dealt into the barriers and protections that keep everyone else standing. A shield is the natural fit for the hand not holding a sword, but it's itemization, not a requirement — what makes a Paladin is the holy damage feeding Radiance, not the offhand.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

Radiance

Every point of holy damage you land fills Radiance, and it only ever pays for defense — barriers for yourself, Aegis charges you can hand to the party. The framing is deliberate: a Paladin's offense is what funds a Paladin's protection, so pressing your damage rotation harder is never at odds with keeping people alive. TODO: fill rates and Radiance costs pending.

All your other heals are casted, but landing your trigger fires an instant self-heal for free. TODO: expand.

The Samurai reads an opponent's swing before it lands, turning a parry into the next opening. This is a tank built on pre-emptive defense rather than raw mitigation: skills exist to line attacks up before they happen, and a successful parry banks resources rather than just avoiding damage. Alone, that same discipline reads as patience rewarded — every clean parry, deliberate or passive off your gear, builds toward the cut that ends the fight.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Samurai's kit is entirely its own — no shared spells, no grants.

Poise

Poise builds from every successful parry or deflect — including passive parries your gear grants on its own, not just abilities you actively time. Bank it and spend it on Execution Cut, whose damage scales directly with how much Poise you cash in, so a patient Samurai who stacks a full bar hits dramatically harder than one who spends on reflex. Set Cut runs alongside the gauge rather than through it: declare the cut, and if you time it into an incoming enemy action, it resolves a beat later as a parry-and-punish rather than a straight attack. TODO: Poise costs and Execution Cut scaling numbers pending.

Landing your trigger banks an instant chunk of Poise, no parry required. TODO: expand.

Set Cut is the one thing in the Samurai's kit that doesn't touch the gauge. You declare the cut and it resolves a beat later; land that beat on an incoming enemy action and it stops being an attack and becomes a parry-and-punish instead. It rewards reading the fight rather than reading your own bar, which is why it sits alongside Poise rather than inside it.

TODO: the timing window, what counts as an enemy action for the purpose of the punish, and whether a missed read costs anything beyond the damage.

Poise builds from every successful parry or deflect, including the passive parries your gear grants on its own — so the bar fills whether or not you're pressing anything. Execution Cut scales directly with what you cash in, which makes patience the whole skill of the job: a full bar hits dramatically harder than two half bars.

The Ninja survives by not being where the blade arrives, layering evasion until it counts as armor. Throwing weapons and jutsu magic round the kit into a mystic glue that holds evasion tanking together, so a party leaning on a Ninja is trusting speed and misdirection over a shield wall. Solo, the same evasion becomes a genuine safety net once Ward starts absorbing the overflow from your own heals.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Ninja's kit is entirely its own — jutsu are signature job magic, not shared library spells.

Utsu

Every jutsu you cast fills Utsu. When it fills, a shadow image appears on its own — no button — and each one silently eats a single attack that would otherwise have landed, up to two standing at once. It's earned, deterministic mitigation rather than a dodge roll. The Ninja survives on top of that gauge through a passive quirk of the job: your evasion rating counts twice, once as evasion and once as if it were armor, so evasion-based gear becomes real tank stats only in Ninja hands. Overheals spill into Ward, a second HP pool that fills only after your main health caps and drains before it does, giving you a buffer that tops up deliberately slower than a straight heal. TODO: Utsu build/spend rates pending.

Landing your trigger readies Sleight: a free, empowered throw — still following the stance-modal rule, so it provokes under Yonin and damages otherwise. TODO: expand.

Shadow images are the only thing Utsu buys, and it buys them on its own: fill the gauge and one appears, up to two standing. Each one silently eats a single attack that would otherwise have landed — it doesn't reduce the hit, it deletes it. That makes Ninja mitigation countable in a way no other tank's is: you always know exactly how many more attacks you can ignore.

TODO: whether area attacks strip more than one, and what a jutsu cast is worth in Utsu.

A passive quirk of the job does most of the heavy lifting: your evasion rating is counted once as evasion and once again as though it were armor. Evasion gear is dead weight on every other job in Vhael and real tank itemization only in Ninja hands, which is why a Ninja's gear list looks nothing like a Paladin's. Blur stacks a window of extra evasion on top of it.

Overheals don't spill on the floor. They fill Ward, a second pool that only begins filling once your health is capped and always drains before your health does — a buffer that tops up deliberately slower than a straight heal. Jutsu: Kekkai refills it directly when nobody is overhealing you, and Substitution and Afterimage pay dodges back into it.

Healers

The Cleric is a healer who fights. At range you are a capable spellcaster with the deepest heal list in the game, but the job's heart is in the melee pack: light Immolation and your own body becomes the offering — holy fire burns your health away and charges the Oblation gauge, and every swing of your mace spends that charge to heal everyone around you, yourself included. Keep swinging and the healing outruns the burning. The aura you carry — one at a time, swapped freely — decides what the flame itself does, so a Cleric's loadout is a single ongoing decision rather than a wall of toggles.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

Oblation

Oblation has exactly one source: your own burning. Light Immolation and holy fire begins eating your health, and every tick of that sacrifice charges the gauge. Your melee strikes then spend it — each swing that draws on Oblation blooms healing across the whole party, you included, which is how a burning Cleric stays standing. The math is deliberately against you: swinging spends charge faster than burning builds it, so the flame gives you windows of tremendous healing rather than a switch you leave on. When the well runs dry the fire keeps burning anyway, and if your health ever falls to a third, the flame douses itself — the worst a bad window costs you is throughput, never your life. The craft of the job is choosing when to burn, and what aura to burn under: Resist feeds your own sustain, Dread and Clarity give the flame away to the room. TODO: burn, charge, and heal numbers pending balance.

Your casts occasionally kindle Zeal: for ten seconds your active aura burns half again as strong — and if Immolation is lit, the flame itself does too. Spend it when the aura matters most: on Resist into heavy magic, on Dread when the pack is surrounded.

You carry one aura at a time and swap between them freely, and that single standing choice decides who the flame is for. Resist keeps it — it tames your own burn, so you hold the fire longer and the whole party rides your resistance. Dread and Clarity give it away to the room instead, and neither does anything for your own survival while Immolation is eating you.

The Druid tends a healer's garden through the turning seasons, timing costly magic to the year's favorable windows. In a party, that means reading the season and choosing when to Hold the Sun in a good one or Force of Nature past a weak one, layering heal-over-time and preparation over raw reaction. Alone, the ambient cycle still turns in the background regardless, so even without a party to plan around, a Druid is never without a seasonal edge to lean on.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Year

An ambient year turns beneath every Druid, cycling roughly every thirty seconds through Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, each pass granting a different passive edge to your healing: Spring makes HoTs stronger and longer, Summer speeds up MP refresh, Autumn cuts the cost of your heals and refunds some of it back, and Winter converts any overheal into shields instead of wasting it. None of it is a downside season — your kit stays fully competent year-round, and the cycle is pure bonus on top. There is no gauge. Two buttons steer the year: Hold the Sun pauses it for about ten seconds, and Force of Nature advances it one season right now. HoTs remember the season they were cast in.

Landing your trigger stacks a buff that makes your HoTs and DoTs tick harder per stack. TODO: expand.

The year turns underneath you whether you touch it or not, roughly thirty seconds to a season. None of the four is a bad season — your kit is fully competent in all of them and the cycle is pure bonus on top — so the question is never how to survive a season, only which one you'd rather be standing in when the fight gets loud.

Two buttons steer the year and nothing else does. Hold the Sun pins the current season in place for about ten seconds. Force of Nature advances the year one season, immediately, on a ninety-second cooldown. HoTs snapshot the season they were cast in, so a Spring garden keeps its Spring numbers after the wheel turns.

The Arbiter walks the line between light and dark, never quite settling on either side. A party built around an Arbiter gets a healer whose casts double as damage depending on where the needle sits — dark casts and sanctuary heals both come from the same hands. Solo, the needle still rewards commitment to one side or a deliberate stay in twilight, so how you play alone is a real statement about which side of the balance you favor.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Needle

Light casts push the needle toward sanctuary and dark casts push it toward attrition, and it never actually rests dead-center — twilight is a band you thread, not a spot you can park in. Where the needle sits changes what every cast does: deep in dark, your casts carry a bonus DoT; in the twilight band, every cast fires an opposite-aspect sliver at your target's target, so healing someone lashes their target with dark and damaging something drops a heal on whoever it's fighting; deep in light, a small ambient heal pulses out to everyone in a large radius around you. There's no dead zone anywhere on the needle — wherever you sit is a playstyle statement, not a mistake. TODO: needle movement rates pending.

Landing your trigger makes your next cast fire its opposite-aspect sliver regardless of where the needle sits. TODO: expand.

There is no dead zone anywhere on the needle. Every position does something, so wherever you end up is a playstyle statement rather than a mistake — and twilight in particular is a band you thread, not a spot you can park in.

Light casts push toward sanctuary and dark casts push toward attrition, which would make the needle a cage if the kit didn't include ways out of it. Shadowmend is a heal that counts as a dark cast, so you can top somebody up without surrendering attrition; Radiant Lash is its mirror, a nuke that counts as light. Judgment strikes with both at once and doesn't move the needle at all, and Equinox pulls it one step back toward twilight when you've drifted further than you meant to.

The Apothecary throws chemistry at the problem, mixing venom, vitriol, and balm from the same satchel. Every ability is a vial with a reagent tag, so a party can lean on the same kit for healing, debuff support, or poison damage depending on which reagent gets poured most. Solo, that flexibility means never being locked into one lane — the last three pours decide what Release Mix throws, so the kit adapts to whatever the fight in front of you actually needs.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Mix

The Mix remembers your last three reagent pours — Venom, Vitriol, or Balm — and Release Mix throws whichever the majority calls for: three Venom pours out a heavy spreading DoT, three Vitriol a heavy defense-and-attack debuff, three Balm a big instant heal. A two-and-one mix throws the majority effect plus a minor dose of the leftover reagent, and a perfectly mixed rainbow of all three throws a small dose of everything. There's no wrong way to build a mix — a sloppy pour is always a small boon, never a penalty, so the worst-case outcome of ignoring the Mix entirely is still free value. TODO: exact potency numbers pending.

Landing your trigger instantly throws a free copy of your current brew at your target, without touching the Mix. TODO: expand.

The Mix remembers your last three pours, and Release Mix throws whatever the majority calls for. There is no wrong way to build one: a sloppy pour is always a small boon rather than a penalty, so the worst case of ignoring the Mix entirely is still free value on top of a kit that already works.

Every ability in the kit is a vial carrying a reagent tag, and that includes the healing you'd expect to sit outside the system — Heal, Regen, Cleanse and Revive all pour Balm. There is no neutral action. Whatever you were going to do anyway is already loading the next Release Mix, which is why the Apothecary rewards thinking one throw ahead rather than committing to a lane.

Support

The Bard tours the battlefield like a circuit-rider, handing every ally in earshot a verse to carry. In a party, that means physically moving through the formation, painting buffs onto people one at a time rather than blanketing the whole group from a fixed spot. Solo, the songs still buff the Bard directly, so there's no dead weight to performing alone — every verse you play works on you too.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Bard's kit is entirely its own — songs and Chord are signatures; the performance is the job.

Volume

Volume climbs as you play the fight — damage casts and ticks landed while your songs run all feed it, and crits pump it especially hard, which doubles as the class's participation hook in place of a separate proc. Release is the one button that spends it: press it and every song currently playing surges, hitting stronger and lasting longer the more Volume you cashed in. TODO: Volume build/spend rates pending.

The Bard is the one job with nothing to press. There is no separate off-GCD trigger — crits landed while your songs are running pump extra Volume, so the participation reward is folded into playing well rather than bolted on beside it. TODO: expand.

Songs are the job. Each one is a standing buff on everyone in earshot, and what separates Bards is not which songs they know but which few they choose to have running when the fight turns.

Three tools exist purely to manage who is carrying what. Hum toggles your songs to self-only, so you can rebuild a setlist without stripping the buffs your party is already carrying. Encore re-sounds what's playing, extending the timers listeners walked away with. Serenade projects your whole current set onto one ally at range — the answer for somebody who is never in earshot when it matters.

The Beastmaster fights beside a tamed companion while a signature hawk carries aspects earned from a growing monster journal. A party gets melee damage plus a support minigame: steering the hawk to spread your aspects while the buddy fights and the master keeps swinging. Solo, taming is the acquisition loop rather than the combat loop — the journal fills from the wild, and when the hawk is not out, aspects radiate from the Beastmaster themselves.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Beastmaster's kit is entirely its own — no shared spells, no grants.

TODO: Engine Name

Every tameable species in Vhael goes into your monster journal, and taming one enough times in the wild masters it permanently — rare species in dangerous places become their own collection chase. Two companions stay with you at all times: the hawk, your signature constant, which you steer around the battlefield as a beacon carrying your bound gifts (perch it over your casters, wheel it back to melee, and everyone near it catches and carries what it's broadcasting); and the buddy, a chosen mastered creature that fights beside you full-time and takes your commands for its damaging abilities, its output normalized across species so the choice is about identity, not a damage ranking. Bonds tie mastered creatures' gifts to your Charisma the same way a Bard's songs do — each bond reserves CHR while active, so CHR sets how many gifts your hawk can carry at once, and the whole set swaps like a setlist through Manifests, six saved loadouts you build in the journal UI and switch between with ceremony as bonded creatures burst out, leap into the hawk, and vanish. Calls are the fast, cheap layer on top: instant cameo summons on their own cooldowns, no CHR involved, the creature flashing in to act and leaving. Fighting as the master fills the gauge, and its single spender, Great Roar, scales an intimidate effect plus a party damage and shield boost by how much you spent. TODO: engine name, tame mechanics, and exact numbers pending.

When your trigger lands, a random mastered creature cameos for free — no cooldown consumed, and the pool it draws from grows richer the more of your journal you've filled. TODO: expand.

The hawk is your constant, and it is not a pet you fight with — it's a beacon you steer. Your aspects radiate from you. Send the hawk out and they radiate from the hawk instead, and everyone standing near it catches and keeps them. Perch it over the casters through a burn window, wheel it back to the melee pack when the fight collapses inward. Perch puts it somewhere; press it again to bring it home.

The buddy is a mastered creature that fights beside you full-time and takes your commands — Command for single-target, Maul for an area swing, plus Attack, Stay, Heel and Release for handling. Output is normalized across species deliberately: which creature you walk around with is a statement about who you are, never a damage ranking to solve.

Aspects are your auras, and they work the way a Bard's songs do. Each one is a button: press Aspect of Fang and allies in your field carry more damage; press it again to turn it off. Each active aspect reserves Charisma, so your Charisma is the hard ceiling on how many the field can carry at once. Fang, Hide, Blood, Scent, Wing, Horn — pick the set the fight wants.

Calls are the cheap layer sitting on top of all of it: instant cameo summons on their own cooldowns, reserving no CHR at all. Pounce flashes in for a strike, Snare for a bind, Weaken softens the target, Shellguard puts a crab in front of one ally to eat a single hit. The creature acts and leaves.

Every tameable species in Vhael has a page, and taming one often enough in the wild masters it permanently. Rare species in dangerous places are a collection chase in their own right — and since the trigger draws from what you've mastered, a fat journal is a mechanical advantage as well as a trophy case.

TODO: tame mechanics — what a tame attempt costs, how many it takes to master, and what happens on a failure.

The Rogue is the party's thief and its lucky charm. Magical shots fired through the formation, mainhand steel woven in close, and everything of value on the battlefield ends up in the crew's pockets: Steal robs the enemy of its own stats for your party to wear, a full Haul gauge gilds your next shot so every ally in its flight path walks away richer, and an enhancer's spellbook covers whatever the dice didn't hand you. All that generosity makes the enemy hate you — which is what Trick Attack is for: fire through the tank and drop half your heat where it belongs. Solo, the loot and the luck all land on one person; the Rogue alone is a self-buffing skirmisher with loaded dice.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Rogue carries an enhancer's spellbook from the shared library — the chosen half of its support, beside Steal's lucky half: the Ward line (Fireward, Frostward, Galeward, Stoneward, Shockward, Tideward — party-wide elemental resistance), the Mantle line (Ember, Frost, and Storm Mantle — damage-return skin on an ally), Hone (weapon damage up), the en-spell line (elemental weapon coats), Regen I (a trickle, never healer-grade), and Brace (flat physical damage reduction on an ally).

Haul

Every weapon press pays into the Haul — a little from each shot, a lot from each mainhand slash, so darting into melee is how you charge faster. At 100 the gauge doesn't ask for a new button: your next shot simply fires Gilded — gold light the whole room can read — and every ally standing in its flight path gets buffed while a share of their enmity slides onto you. Then the bank is empty and your shots are ordinary again. Positioning is your job, not the party's: they stand where they fight, you pick the firing angle that threads the most of them. TODO: fill rates and the Gilded buff itself pending.

Your trigger lights a pair of dice. Press the button and they fly — a fixed table by total, every total pays something, and doubles hit the jackpot. Players learn the table, and then they pray at it. TODO: the outcome table.

Steal doesn't take what you pick. It robs a random stat the enemy still owns — the enemy loses it, the whole party wears it — and your Charisma sets how many you can hold at once. The hand is first in, first out, so robbing past capacity pushes the oldest steal back onto the enemy, which is why knowing when to stop pulling is a real decision. Lift runs the other way: one motion that strips a random debuff off the party and a random buff off the enemy.

The Summoner keeps a knapsack of sustained hexes lit while an ever-present avatar partner answers every cast. A party gets a support built around a knapsack decision — knowing many hexes, sustaining only a few at once, and re-deciding as the fight turns — plus a partner whose role bends to whatever the Summoner's subjob calls for. Solo, the partner is always there from level one regardless of party size, quietly acting on every cast you make.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

Resonance

Two separate reservations run at once: Charisma holds your hexes in place, and max MP feeds the avatar partner manifested at your side from level one. Hexes are sustained rather than timed — once placed, a hex holds until you release it or its bearer dies, with only one instance of any hex ever active, and each one is an anchored aura that afflicts the bearer plus every enemy in a radius around it, the inverse of a Bard song. Placing a hex requires concentrating it first, a toggle that reserves CHR by the hex's weight; heavy hexes like Sundering, Conduction, and Exposure are fat universal amplifiers, while lighter ones like Burden, Stammer, and Unraveling are cheap, situational tools — the fun is deciding which few you can afford to keep running as the fight turns. The partner itself acts automatically off your landed casts, no commands and no targeting, its role imprinted by your subjob: a damage lane strikes your target, a buff lane pulses a nearby ally, a mend lane heals whoever's lowest. Resonance builds from casts landing on hexed enemies and spends on Invocation, which has the partner perform its role-act at a magnitude set by how much you spend — always castable, always scaled by the bank. TODO: hex weight/CHR costs and Resonance rates pending.

The partner acts on its own when your trigger lands: a free instant act at your current form's tier, off-GCD. TODO: expand.

A hex is the inverse of a Bard song: an anchored aura that afflicts its bearer and every enemy in a radius around it. They are sustained rather than timed — once placed, a hex holds until you release it or its bearer dies — and only one instance of any given hex is ever active. Placing one means concentrating it first, which reserves Charisma by the hex's weight, so your CHR is a budget and the fun of the job is deciding what you can afford to keep running as the fight turns.

TODO: exact CHR weight per hex, and confirm where Withering, Faltering Might and Erosion sit on that scale.

Your avatar partner is manifested at your side from level one and never takes an order. It acts automatically off your landed casts — no commands, no targeting — and its role is imprinted by your subjob rather than chosen: a damage lane strikes your target, a buff lane pulses a nearby ally, a mend lane heals whoever is lowest. It's fed by a reservation against your maximum mana, separately from the Charisma your hexes are holding.

Above the partner sit the grand avatars, called for a single purpose rather than kept: Call the Aggressor for heavy strikes, Call the Bulwark for party mitigation pulses, Call the Mender for heal blooms.

Damage Dealers

The Elementalist rides a wheel of elements, always striking the weakness it just created. A party gets a DPS whose damage never stops finding a fresh vulnerability, since every cast either lands on the wheel's current element for one effect or rotates it for another. Solo, the checklist nature of the wheel — cast all six, in any order, to bank a Prismatic charge — means there's always a next step, never a dead rotation.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

Revolution

Casting all six elements, in any order, banks a Prismatic charge and resets the checklist — landing on a particular wheel position doesn't matter, only that the casts happened. Every non-Prism-Bolt ability carries Alignment: two meaningfully different modes, one when you cast it on the wheel's current element and land on it, another when you cast it off-wheel and rotate the wheel there. Neither mode is simply stronger — they do different things, so reading the wheel before you press is part of the job. Prism Bolt, your main nuke, always fires whatever element the wheel currently sits on, which means you're perpetually hitting a weakness you just created. TODO: Prismatic charge payoff and Alignment numbers pending.

Landing your trigger fires an instant bolt of the wheel's current element that counts as every element at once. TODO: expand.

Every ability except Prism Bolt carries Alignment: two meaningfully different modes, one when you cast it on the wheel's current element and land on it, another when you cast it off-wheel and rotate the wheel there. Neither mode is the stronger one — they do different things — so reading the wheel before you press is a real part of the job rather than an optimisation.

TODO: the two modes, spelled out per ability. Static Lash, Tailwind, Stoneskin Chorus and Cloudburst each need both halves written.

Prism Bolt always fires whatever element the wheel currently sits on, which means your main nuke is perpetually striking a weakness you created a moment ago. Casting all six elements in any order banks a Prismatic charge and resets the checklist — where the wheel finishes doesn't matter, only that the six casts happened.

The Mage commands six elemental attunements and a lane of forbidden dark magic besides. A party gets the roster's deepest spell list and debuff toolkit in one job, with elemental casting quietly funding a separate dark lane on the side. Solo, the six attunements mean a Mage is rarely caught without an answer to whatever's standing in front of them, elemental resistances included.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

Umbra

Six elemental attunements sit under one button-set — swap attunement and the same buttons cast a different element, so you're never juggling six separate spellbooks. Dark magic runs alongside all six as its own fixed lane rather than another attunement, and it's fed by Umbra: every elemental cast, in any attunement, builds Umbra, and the dark lane spends it, so pushing your elemental rotation harder is what funds your forbidden work. The job's other identity piece — a mana pool that doubles as a Ward battery, with spell power tied to how full it is — is still open in its specifics. TODO: Ward/mana interplay numbers pending.

Landing your trigger makes your next spell cast instantly. TODO: expand.

The Mage never juggles six spellbooks. Six elemental attunements sit under a single set of buttons — swap attunement and the same presses cast a different element. The decision is which element the fight wants, not which thirty-slot bar you left it on.

Dark magic runs alongside all six as its own fixed lane rather than a seventh attunement, and Umbra is what pays for it. Every elemental cast in any attunement builds Umbra; the dark lane spends it. Pushing the elemental rotation harder is what funds the forbidden work, so the two halves of the job are never in competition.

The Reaver spreads venom from twin blades, striking from an angle the front never sees. A party gets sustained poison damage plus a positional dance — Flank Strike rewards any angle except head-on, so a Reaver is always working an enemy's side or back. Solo, the wraith-serpent toggle turns accumulated poison into a second attacker on a fixed tempo, letting a Reaver keep pressure on even between their own swings.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Reaver's kit is entirely its own — its venoms are abilities, not the library's water DoT spell, though how the two scale against each other is still an open question.

Virulence

Every poison you land builds Virulence at a flat rate, no scaling tricks. The wraith-serpent is a toggle you lay on top of that bank: while it's manifested, it drains Virulence at a steady rate and strikes your target on a fixed tempo, each strike applying its own Envenom stack and damage — and critically, those serpent strikes build nothing back, so the whole thing is pure spend. Managing uptime — when to summon it, when to let it lapse and rebuild the bank — is the entire gauge economy. It reads on-screen as a spectral viper coiled at your side, but mechanically it's just a periodic effect ticking on you, never a real creature the enemy can target. TODO: Virulence build/drain rates pending.

Landing your trigger instantly ticks every poison you have on the target once, free. TODO: expand.

Serpent is a toggle laid on top of the bank rather than a summon. While it's manifested it drains Virulence at a steady rate and strikes your target on a fixed tempo, each strike landing its own Envenom stack and damage — and those strikes build nothing back, so the whole thing is pure spend. It reads on-screen as a spectral viper coiled at your side, but mechanically it's a periodic effect ticking on you: nothing the enemy can target, taunt or kill.

Envenom stacks, Virulence ticks slow and heavy, and Flank Strike crits from any angle but the front — each crit adding another poison instance on top. Fester extends and deepens everything already running. Detonate does the opposite: it consumes your damage-over-time effects outright for immediate burst, which makes it the one button that trades your patient work for a number right now.

The Ranger loads a clip. Every two arrows load one round, and what those two arrows were decides what the round is. Tip your arrows with an element between shots, slot the cooldown ice shot in the right half of a pair, and the rounds combine: Bloom and Plasma make Inferno, Rime and Shatter make Blizzard, all four make Maelstrom. Let Fly empties the clip in one bang. A party gets a marksman whose big hit is built, not rolled; solo, the choice is whether to fire early or hold for the fusion.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Ranger's kit is entirely its own — shots are ranged-gated abilities, not spells.

The Clip

Every two arrows load one round into a clip of ten. Your chain shots are physical, so two of them load a plain round: size and nothing else. Press a tip between shots and your next four arrows carry that element. Two of the same element load a plain elemental round. Two that pair up load a recipe round, and recipe rounds are what the clip is for.

Let Fly fires the whole clip as one bang, off the global cooldown. Every round adds size. The recipe rounds decide the face: Bloom and Plasma together make Inferno, a big hit that burns. Rime and Shatter together make Blizzard, which spreads to everything near the target. All four in one clip make Maelstrom, both at once at the top multiplier. The clip combines as a set — the order you loaded it in does not matter, and nothing you loaded is wasted.

Landing an ability can light Quick Draw: a free instant arrow that also loads a wild round. A wild counts as whichever recipe round the clip is missing when Let Fly combines, so a Bloom plus a wild is already Inferno.

The Dark Knight lets every landed strike stack toward an escalating, magic-fueled cashout. A party gets a melee-caster hybrid whose "fat nuke" moments are earned rather than scripted — the deeper the stack when a nuke lands, the bigger the payoff, dark or elemental alike. Solo, that same stack-and-spend rhythm means a Dark Knight is always building toward something, never just auto-attacking in place.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

Stack Gauge

Weapon abilities build stacks with every landed hit, and any nuke you cast — dark or elemental, it doesn't matter which — consumes the entire bank for a hit whose damage scales with how deep it was, the job's "fat nuke" being nothing more than a deep stack cashed out in one motion. Utility casts like Endark or Drain don't touch the gauge at all, so weaving them in costs you nothing. Because more ability uses means deeper stacks means fatter nukes, Cooldown Recovery Rate is this job's stat soul — it's the one number that compounds everything else the Dark Knight does. TODO: stack caps and nuke scaling numbers pending.

Landing your trigger throws a quick off-GCD strike that deals damage, adds a stack, and grants a short cooldown-recovery buff. TODO: expand.

Weapon abilities build stacks with every landed hit, and any nuke you cast — dark or elemental, it makes no difference which — consumes the entire bank at once for a hit scaled to how deep it was. The job's fabled fat nuke isn't a separate button; it's a deep stack cashed out in one motion. Utility casts like Endark and Drain don't touch the gauge at all, so weaving them in is free.

More ability uses means deeper stacks means fatter nukes, so Cooldown Recovery Rate is the one number that compounds everything else the Dark Knight does. Most jobs treat their stat soul as a modifier. This one treats it as the engine behind the engine, which is why Dark Knight gear reads differently from every other damage job's.

The Warrior commits to the big, heavy swing, trading speed for numbers that matter. A party gets the roster's simplest, heaviest melee damage — big, telegraphed, full-commitment hits instead of a flurry of small ones. Solo, opening a Form and matching its prompted swings rewards patience with a finisher scaled to match, so even alone there's a real decision in every wind-up.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Warrior's kit is entirely its own — no shared spells, no grants.

Forms

Opening a Form swaps your whole button row for a sequence of heavy, full-commitment swings and slows you into a juggernaut wind-up — every hit in the sequence lands for real damage, not just a wind-up animation. The gauge prompts each swing Simon-says style, and the release at the end is a colossal finisher scaled by how many prompts you actually matched; missing some never punishes you, it just shrinks the finisher. Onslaught is the short version, a roughly thirty-second cooldown for two prompted swings into a big finisher, while Rampage is the long one, a two-minute cooldown for four swings into the earth-splitting finisher. TODO: exact Form timings and finisher scaling pending.

Landing your trigger unleashes Heavy Overhead, an instant empowered swing, off-GCD. TODO: expand.

Opening a Form swaps your whole button row for a sequence of heavy, full-commitment swings and slows you into a wind-up. Every hit in the sequence lands for real damage — none of it is animation you're waiting through. The gauge prompts each swing Simon-says style, and the release at the end is a colossal finisher scaled by how many prompts you actually matched. Missing some never punishes you; it only shrinks the finisher.

The Dragoon fights bonded to a wyvern partner, turning the jump into real, weaponized displacement. A party gets a polearm DD whose wyvern breathes on combo finishers, its element and effect shifting to match whatever subjob the Dragoon has equipped. Solo, the wyvern is never a pet to manage — it never dies, never needs commands, and simply fights alongside its bonded partner for as long as it's called.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Dragoon's kit is entirely its own — no shared spells, no grants.

Bond

Breaths fill Bond at a flat, capped rate, and the wyvern fires them automatically on your combo finishers — a triggered effect on you, never a command you issue, since the wyvern is a partner and never targetable or killable. What breath it fires depends on Temperament, which re-imprints from your subjob every time you call the wyvern: no sub or a DPS/Support sub gives you Fang, an elemental bolt at your target that always picks its lowest resist; a tank sub gives you Scale, a small refreshing barrier on you; a healer sub gives you Mend, a modest heal on you or the lowest-HP ally nearby, built for solo sustain rather than competing with an actual healer. Bond never locks anything — it only ever enhances Wyvern's Gift, an off-GCD self-heal that also grants your next finisher an extra breath, or Dragon Dive, a paired dive with the wyvern that scales toward colossal — both stay fully castable and baseline-competent at zero Bond, so the only decision is which one gets the bank and whether to spend now or wait. TODO: breath damage-share tuning and Bond rates pending.

The wyvern acts on its own when your trigger lands — Wyvern's Will: an instant free breath, off-GCD, no input needed. TODO: expand.

Your wyvern is a partner, not a pet. It is never targetable and never killable, it takes no commands, and you never spend a global on it — it fires breaths automatically off your combo finishers as a triggered effect on you. Nothing you do manages it. What it fires is decided entirely by Temperament.

Temperament re-imprints from your subjob every time you call the wyvern, so the support job you're carrying quietly decides what kind of partner you brought. None of the three is a damage ranking — Mend in particular exists for solo sustain rather than to compete with an actual healer.

Bond fills at a flat, capped rate and never locks anything behind itself. It only enhances two things: Wyvern's Gift, an off-GCD self-heal that also grants your next finisher an extra breath, and Dragon Dive, a paired dive with the wyvern that scales toward colossal. Both stay fully castable and baseline-competent at zero Bond, so the only question is which one gets the bank — and whether to spend now or wait.

The Spellblade hits with a sword and fills a bank. At 60 the Mirror Blade appears and copies every sword hit at a quarter strength. Casting spends the bank; drop below 40 and the Mirror vanishes. A party gets a melee-lean hybrid whose spells are paid for in steel and whose en-spell colours every swing and every copy. Solo, the job is riding the plateau: bleed the excess with casts and never dip under.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

Arcane Charge

Every landed sword hit adds to the bank: 2 per auto-attack, 4 to 12 per ability. The bank caps at 100 and never decays on its own. Only casts lower it. Elemental Nuke I bleeds 30 per press and fires instantly while the bank is at 60 or more; below that it is a 1.5s cast. Runeburst empties the whole bank in one hit.

At 60 Charge the Mirror Blade manifests. While it stands, every single-target sword hit — on or off the global cooldown — is copied at 25%, en-spell included. It never copies casts, auto-attacks, or Spellsweep. It stays up until a cast takes the bank below 40. Nothing the enemy does can drop it; only your own cast can. So the loop is: hit to 60, bleed one nuke at a time from the top, and never spend the bank under 40. Quicksilver widens the copy to 45% for 12s. Twin Soul locks the Mirror on at 100% for 15s and lets you cast freely underneath it.

One of six en-spells enchants your sword for 60s and rides every swing and every Mirror copy. Only one is worn at a time. Elemental Shift swaps it off the global cooldown and bursts the old element out on the target as it goes. Runescar marks the target to take more of whatever element you wear, which is what makes the choice matter.

Landing an ability can light Echo: your last ability repeats once, free and off the global cooldown. The repeat is not copied by the Mirror.

The Juggernaut swings a weapon so heavy its attacks are cast, not pressed — every primary blow is a wind-up with a real cast bar, hauled through its arc while you trudge forward at a heavy walk. A party gets a melee powerhouse whose damage arrives in visible, ground-breaking cycles; solo, the rhythm of cranking the mass up and riding it down makes every fight a slow crescendo. When the Momentum bar fills and the Avalanche begins, the wind-ups stop being casts at all: every swing lands instantly, at full stride, and the earth erupts under each one.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Juggernaut's kit is entirely its own — no shared spells, no grants.

Momentum & the Avalanche

Every landed hit banks Momentum, and nothing ever takes it away — not dodging a mechanic, not a phase transition, not standing still. Wind-up casts bank the most; the small instant hits and weaves add their share. When the bar fills it goes primed and simply waits, as long as you like, until your next landed wind-up cracks it open. Then the Avalanche: your wind-ups lose their cast bars and their movement slow entirely, and every one that lands sets off an earthquake under the target — a second hit as the ground itself gives way. Each swing in the Avalanche spends a piece of the bank, so roughly ten great blows ride down before the mass comes to rest and the cranking begins again. Because primed Momentum keeps forever, the timing of the crack is yours: hold it for the party's burst window, or for the moment a fight finally lets you plant your feet.

Landing your trigger readies Aftershock: an instant pre-hit that supes up your next wind-up, its bonus landing as an earthquake of its own. The two-beat — crack, then boom — is sweetest saved for Big Bang or a chain finisher.

Nothing takes Momentum away. Not dodging a mechanic, not a phase transition, not standing still doing nothing at all. Wind-up casts bank the most and the small instant hits add their share, and when the bar fills it goes primed and simply waits — as long as you like — until your next landed wind-up cracks it open. Every other gauge in Vhael punishes you for leaving; this one waits.

Crack it and your wind-ups lose their cast bars and their movement slow entirely, and every one that lands sets off an earthquake under the target — a second hit as the ground gives way. Each swing spends a piece of the bank, so roughly ten great blows ride down before the mass comes to rest and the cranking begins again.

Two buttons bend the economy. Ballast instantly adds a chunk of Momentum, and Deadweight makes your next few Avalanche swings spend none of the bank at all. Rockslide and Epicenter are the exceptions on the other side: area damage that builds no Momentum whatsoever.

Raising a Character

TODO: what the opening levels of a job feel like, and what to expect from your starting kit.

TODO: the first story mission a new Awakened takes on, and what it teaches.

TODO: the level and content point where solo play stops being the default and party play opens up.

TODO: how leveling maps onto the regions of Vhael, and when to move on.

Once unlocked, your subjob always runs at half your main job's level, and you can swap either half of that pairing freely, whenever and wherever, with no cooldown standing between you and a new combination. TODO: the level and quest that unlocks the subjob slot, and how to pick a first sub.

TODO: what comes after the leveling arc — masteries, keystones, and endgame systems this guide covers elsewhere.

TODO: the earliest recommended hunting grounds and camps for a fresh job.