Your character

Press Q or the character button on the bottom panel. The character window has five tabs along the top; it opens on the one you left it on. The first, Equipment, shows your character wearing what you have on, with a slot round the edge for each piece.

The slots

Wearing and taking off

• To wear something, right-click it in your bag. Or pick it up and click its slot, or click anywhere on the portrait and it goes where it belongs. A ring or bracelet goes to whichever side is free; if both are full it replaces the left one.
• While you hold a piece, it's drawn faintly on your body where it would go, so you can see how it looks before you put it on.
• To take something off, right-click it, in its slot or on the body. It goes back in your bag.
• Click a worn piece to pick it up and move it somewhere else.
• Middle-click locks or unlocks it, the same as in the bag. See locking an item.
• Shift and click with the chat line open puts a link to the item in your message.

The second tab adds up everything about your character: your level, your gear, your hermit points and your class. Scroll it with the mouse wheel or the bar on the right.

A figure that is nothing is drawn dim, so the ones that matter stand out.

Character

Attack

Defence

Other

Elements

Eight elements: fire, ice, lightning, wind, holy, dark, phantom and physical. Attack is the element your blows carry, in blue. Resist is green for a resistance and red for a weakness. Physical has a resistance but no attack.

You level by earning experience: mostly by killing monsters, and also from quests and dungeon rewards. The level cap is 80.

When you level

• Your maximum health goes up, and your health and mana are filled.
• Everyone near you sees blue light rise round you. On every 10th level (10, 20, 30 and so on) it's a blue dragon instead.
• New quests may open up for your level.
• From level 20 you earn a hermit point.

Hunt near your level

A monster up to 3 levels below you pays full experience. Below that, you get 12% less for each level further down, never less than 15% of its value. A monster above your level never pays more than its value.

In a group

When you kill something in a group, every member who is alive and close enough to see the body shares the experience. The total is 6% more per member than the monster is worth, and it's split by level, so a higher-level member takes a bigger share. The level rule above then applies to each member's own share.

Experience rates

Your experience rate (from gear, buffs and your guild) is added up and applied to every kill. Your weapon takes a tenth on top, for its own progress, and so do accessories that level. None of it is taken from you.

Every character starts with 5 accuracy and 15 agility (a taoist 18). On top of that, your class gains a point of each every few levels, for good. Nothing to do: it just happens as you level.

So the warrior is the accurate class and the assassin the hardest to hit. A wizard gets agility first, because spells never roll accuracy. The points are already in the figures on the Stats tab; there's no separate line for them.

From level 20 you earn a hermit point every level: one at 20 and one more at every level after it, 61 by level 80. Spend them on the third tab of the character window, one stat at a time.

What a point buys

Spending

1. Press Q and open the Hermit tab.
2. Click the + beside what you want, or Shift and click for up to ten.
3. If Confirm each point is ticked, choose Yes. The stat goes up straight away.

Getting points back

A point stays spent until you take all of them back. You can't take back one option on its own. There are three ways:

The Reset button always asks first, and names the price if there is one. Point at it to see what it would cost you now.

Hermit Point items

A Hermit Point is an item that gives you one extra point when you read it. You buy it on the experience pot's shelf for 1,000,000 pot experience, and you have to be level 80 to read it, though anyone can buy, trade or sell one. Points from these items are yours for good: a reset hands back what you spent, but never takes these away.

The fifth tab lists what you have to spend.

A dash means the figure hasn't arrived yet. It's not the same as nought.

The fourth tab will hold the things you own rather than wear for their stats, such as costumes. For now it says Nothing here yet.

Click your name at the top of the Equipment tab. The appearance window changes your hairstyle, your body, your name and your caption. Each change uses up an item from your bag.

A button is drawn brighter when your bag holds the item it needs, but every button can be pressed: if you don't have the item, you're told so.

The inspect window is someone else's character window. Open it by holding Ctrl and right-clicking another player, by choosing Inspect on their name (on your partner, in your group, in a guild roster or in the rankings), or by typing /inspect name in chat.

• It has three tabs: Equipment, Stats and Hermit. Their wardrobe and their purse are nobody else's business.
• Everything is read-only. Point at a piece for its tooltip, but you can't take anything, spend their points or change a thing.
• It works on players who aren't online too. Then it shows them as they were when they last logged out, and there's no green light.
• Their Stats tab shows their most health and mana, not what they have right now, and leaves out their experience and their bag.
• Right-click their partner's name to inspect the partner too.
• It opens beside your own character window, so you can compare the two.