Note: Work in Progress.

Ashen Paths

Ashen Paths is a real-time, grid-based fantasy roguelike built around deep character creation, enormous loot variety, persistent companions, online co-op, and a procedural world that continues changing around the player.

The ancient roads connecting the world are breaking. Settlements have become isolated, forgotten dungeons are stirring, and strange forces are spreading through the wilderness. Beginning in the city of Embercross, adventurers must restore the shattered Pathstones, explore the lands beyond them, and survive whatever has begun travelling beneath the roads.

Every world is generated as its own persistent campaign. Characters can explore alone, recruit rival adventurers, build a travelling party, or join other players online.

Current Content Highlights

The current build includes:

• 40 playable classes
• 40 playable races
• 1,600 possible race and class combinations
• 144 skills
• 182 spells
• 326 total skills and spells
• 151 traits and passive identities
• 409 base items
• 161 weapon bases
• 169 armour and off-hand bases
• More than 60 rings and amulets
• 65 authored Unique items
• 70 item prefixes and suffixes
• 7 equipment rarity tiers
• 73 authored monster and boss types
• 152 dynamic world events
• 29 persistent rival adventurers
• A complete five-act opening campaign
• Procedural overworlds, settlements, dungeons and hidden locations
• Online cooperative multiplayer

These totals describe the underlying content catalogue. Procedural equipment generation, monster affixes, elemental brands, curses, Random Uniques, dungeon conditions and Ashmarked evolution create far more possible variations during play.

Create an Adventurer

Ashen Paths offers 40 races, ranging from Humans, Elves and Dwarves to Drakekin, Revenants, Automatons, Minotaurs, Kitsune, Yuan-Ti, Elementalborn and many others.

These can be combined freely with 40 classes, including:

Warriors, Rogues, Sorcerers, Priests, Rangers, Paladins, Necromancers, Druids, Hexblades, Berserkers, Monks, Wardens, Bards, Beastwardens, Assassins, Summoners, Battlemages, Chronomancers and many more.

Each class has its own progression to level 50, with new active abilities, passive talents, refinements and late-game capstone powers. Fighters gain additional attacks, archers develop additional shots, casters unlock faster spellcasting, summoners command growing forces, and hybrid classes combine martial and magical progression.

Characters and worlds are created separately, allowing multiple adventurers to inhabit the same persistent campaign.

For players seeking higher stakes, Hardcore characters permanently die when defeated and are recorded in the Hall of the Fallen, where their final level, accomplishments and equipment remain preserved.

Hundreds of Items, Millions of Possibilities

The current item catalogue contains 409 base items, including more than 160 weapons, more than 160 pieces of armour and off-hand equipment, and over 60 rings and amulets.

Weapons include swords, axes, blunt weapons, polearms, bows, crossbows, slings, magical staves and wands. Armour ranges from light equipment to heavy plate, alongside shields, cloaks, helmets, gloves, boots and jewellery.

Equipment can appear across seven rarity tiers:

Common → Magical → Rare → Legendary → Relic → Unique → Random Unique

Higher-tier items may carry powerful stat bonuses, resistances, immunities, elemental damage, spell triggers, additional attacks, skill bonuses, speed increases and unusual passive effects.

The game currently includes 65 handcrafted Unique items, while Random Uniques are procedurally named and generated during play. Item prefixes and suffixes create further combinations, while extremely rare elemental and rainbow brands can dramatically change an item’s identity.

Magical equipment is often unidentified when discovered and may occasionally be cursed. Players can identify unknown treasures through scrolls, magic or settlement services—but equipping something mysterious is always an option for the dangerously curious.

Skills, Spells and Summons

The content catalogue contains 144 skills and 182 spells, supporting player classes, rivals, monsters, bosses and summoned creatures.

Abilities include:

• Melee strikes, cleaves, executions and counterattacks
• Ranged techniques and specialised ammunition attacks
• Fire, frost, lightning, acid, poison, shadow and arcane magic
• Healing, restoration, protective wards and battlefield support
• Curses, draining magic and damage-over-time effects
• Teleportation, movement and positioning abilities
• Stealth, backstabs and assassination techniques
• Totems, auras, brands and reserved magical effects
• Animal forms and magical transformations
• Undead, elemental, animal and other summoned companions

Classes do not simply receive stronger versions of one attack. Their ability sets expand across the campaign, allowing different builds and combat identities to emerge as they level.

A Living Procedural World

Each campaign creates a large world filled with roads, wilderness sectors, towns, villages, cities, castles, shops, quests and multi-level dungeons.

Procedural generation is combined with handcrafted story locations and settlement districts, allowing major locations to have a deliberate identity while the surrounding world remains unpredictable.

The world currently contains 152 dynamic events, ranging from minor roadside discoveries to dangerous encounters, difficult decisions and mythic occurrences.

Events may offer treasure, healing, followers, bargains, traps, battles or permanent changes to the world. Many events pause nearby hostilities while a decision is being made, preventing an unfortunate death halfway through reading a mysterious inscription.

A five-act opening campaign follows the restoration of the broken Ashen Paths. Local quests, optional dungeons, world events, rival stories and exploration continue beyond the main story.

Ashmarked Enemies

Some defeated enemies refuse to stay defeated.

Eligible monsters may escape, gain a name and title, grow stronger, acquire abilities and equipment, and return later as an Ashmarked enemy with a personal grudge against the player.

Ashmarked enemies persist within the campaign. Defeating one may end a rivalry—or deepen it further.

Important bosses and irreplaceable quest targets cannot become Ashmarked, ensuring the revenge system creates new stories without disrupting existing objectives.

Persistent Rival Adventurers

Every new world selects 20 rival adventurers from a catalogue of 29 authored characters.

These adventurers have their own names, races, classes, personalities, goals, equipment and histories. They may wander through the world, appear in settlements, visit the Adventurers’ Guild, fight monsters, gain experience, improve their equipment, become injured or die.

Rivals are persistent individuals rather than disposable hirelings.

Players may recruit up to two rivals into their personal party. Recruited rivals retain their levels, equipment, inventory and relationship history. They can fight, rest, travel between floors, use their own abilities and even command summons of their own.

Online Cooperative Multiplayer

Ashen Paths can be played alone or through online cooperative multiplayer.

Players can explore together, share quest and boss credit, enter dungeons, trigger events and build separate personal parties within the same world. Each human player retains ownership of their recruited rivals, pets and summons.

Group members can remain together or explore different locations. The group interface tracks players and their companions across settlements, overworld sectors and dungeon floors, with the option to teleport to another group member when it is time to reunite.

The world host remains authoritative over combat, movement, rewards and persistent world state, while compressed floor streaming helps players move between large dungeon areas more quickly.

Built for Long Campaigns

Ashen Paths is designed around persistent worlds rather than isolated dungeon runs.

Characters grow, merchants restock, rivals travel, Ashmarked enemies return, quests alter the campaign, explored floors remain remembered, and rare equipment becomes part of a character’s history.

The result is a roguelike where a campaign can develop its own stories: a rival who becomes a trusted companion, an unknown ring that turns out to be cursed, a monster that returns with a name, or a seemingly ordinary dungeon expedition that permanently changes the world.

Active Development

Ashen Paths is currently in active early development.

Its systems, content, interface, balancing and multiplayer foundations are continuing to expand. Bugs, unfinished presentation, balance changes and occasional save resets should still be expected as development continues.

The roads are open—but they are far from safe.