Settlers of Yore

Who you are determines what you can do

Every account in Settlers of Yore carries a role. The core four inherit upward — a Moderator can do everything an Author can, and an Admin can do everything anyone can. A fifth role, Translator, sits off to the side rather than in this ladder (see the note below).

Your role is assigned by an Admin. You cannot request or change it yourself.

Nameplate icons

Look closely at a nameplate in the world and you may spot a small icon on its left edge — a quick way to recognize who you're dealing with without opening their profile:

Only one icon shows at a time: Admin and Moderator take priority over the Supporter icon if more than one applies to you. The matching slot on the right edge of the nameplate is reserved for a future guild affiliation icon and is empty for now.

Playing Settlers of Yore

The game runs in your browser at the server's root address. No download or install required.

Creating an account

1. Open the game URL and click Register.
2. Enter your email address, choose a username (3-32 letters, numbers or underscores), and pick a password of at least 8 characters.
3. Check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the link inside. Your account is not active until this step is complete.
4. Log in with your email or username. Your character is created automatically on first login.

Movement & controls

Customizing your keybindings

Every control — movement, actions, hotbar slots, and more — can be rebound to whatever you're comfortable with, on both keyboard and controller. Open Settings (the gear icon on the bottom bar, or press Esc) and click Key Bindings… to open a dedicated window with separate Keyboard and Controller tabs, grouped into Movement, World, Interface, and Quick Slots.

Click a binding slot, then press the key or button you want to use for it — it listens for a few seconds. Backspace clears a slot instead of setting one. If your choice is already in use elsewhere, that other action is freed automatically and you're told what changed. Escape can never be rebound, since it's always your way back out of a menu — including this one. A Reset to Defaults button is there if you want to start over.

Chat

Press Enter to open the chat bar. Messages are visible to everyone in the same area. Settlers of Yore bridges in-game chat with Discord — if your server has a linked Discord channel, what's said in-game appears there and vice versa.

Two things happen automatically to every message before it's shown: common profanity is masked, and if you write in a language other than English, a translation is appended in brackets — for example Bonjour! (Hello!). Neither is something you turn on or off yourself; a server operator controls both.

Your profile

Click your character name in the top bar to open your profile. From there you can see your character details and change your account password. Every character also has a public profile page anyone can view without logging in, listing your level, attributes, skills, achievements, and monster kills.

Expressing yourself

There are two separate ways to emote — a quick icon reaction, and a full-body dance.

Reactions

Press R, or tap the Emotes tab hanging off the right edge of the screen, to open a small radial menu with six reactions: Heart, Beer, Fish, Cheese, Heal, and Question. Click one, or press its matching number key — 1 through 6 — once the menu is open, to pick it instantly. Your choice appears as an icon above your nameplate for a few seconds, visible to everyone nearby, and plays out for its full duration even if you move or do something else in the meantime. Picking another reaction while one is still showing restarts the timer.

Dancing

Type /dance in chat, or press G, to bust out one of several dance animations, picked at random each time. Unlike a reaction, a dance loops for as long as you let it — moving, attacking, harvesting, or crafting all stop it immediately.

Interacting with other players

Press H, or tap the Player Menu tab hanging off the right edge of the screen, to open a radial menu aimed at whichever other player is nearest you — within about 2.5 tiles. If nobody's that close, nothing happens, and the tab itself stays hidden. Three options appear: Friend, Follow, and Trade — click one, or press its number (1, 2, or 3) once the menu is open.

Friend requests

Choosing Friend opens a confirm dialog — confirm it and the request is sent. You'll get a system message either way, including if they're already your friend, a request is already pending, or they've recently ignored one from you (there's a short cooldown before you can try again with the same person).

Managing requests and friends

Open your Profile (click your character name, or press P) and switch to the Friends tab. Incoming requests appear under Pending Requests with Accept and Ignore buttons; your current friends are listed below with a Remove button — either side of a friendship can end it. There's no limit on how many friends you can have.

You'll see a toast notification whenever a friend logs in. There's currently no notification when one logs out.

Following

Choosing Follow opens a local confirm dialog only you see — the other player isn't asked, and is never told even after you confirm. Once you do, your character walks toward them on its own, closing to about 1.25 tiles and matching their pace from there, steering around minor obstacles and tagging along through ordinary portals — even into an area being run by a different server behind the scenes. Nothing appears on-screen to mark either of you as following; the only feedback is a system message when it starts.

There's no button to stop following — it ends the instant you move, attack, harvest, craft, or interact with anything yourself, or if the person you're following logs off, dies, or gets moved somewhere ordinary walking can't reach (an admin teleport, for instance). Each of those gives you an explanatory system message. If you go 5 straight seconds with no way to reach them, the follow also gives up on its own.

Trading

Choosing Trade sends a request the other player sees as an on-screen toast with an Accept button, which expires after 5 seconds if they don't respond. You need to be within 3 tiles of each other, both when you send the request and when it's accepted.

Accepting opens a trade window for both of you at once: their offer, your inventory to drag items from, and your own offer with a gold field beside it. Drag items in to add them — a stackable item prompts you to choose how many to offer — and set a gold amount directly. Changing anything on either side resets both players' confirmation, so there's no way to lock in a deal and have the other person sneak in a worse offer afterward: once you've both clicked Accept on matching terms, the swap happens at once and both windows close. Either of you can cancel at any point before that, and walking too far apart, changing area, or disconnecting cancels it automatically.

Only items from your main inventory can be offered — equipped gear and anything sitting inside a container has to come out first.

Fighting monsters

Click a monster to attack it. Your character winds up and swings — the hit itself lands slightly after the swing starts, so if the monster moves out of range or behind cover in that instant, the hit won't land. Attacks need a clear line of sight: a wall or tree trunk between you and the monster blocks the swing, so you can't poke something safely from around a corner.

Damage & combat styles

Every weapon has a combat style — slash, smash, pierce, shooting, throwing, lobbing, or one of four elemental magic styles (fire, ice, earth, water). Each swing trains the skill matching that style, and your Strength, Dexterity, or Intelligence attribute (melee, ranged, or magic respectively) adds a small damage bonus above its base value of 10. Unarmed attacks always use the smash style and deal minimal damage — bring a weapon.

Some weapons and armor carry extra modifiers — elemental attack or defense, or a flat bonus to a specific skill. Bows and thrown weapons consume ammunition per shot; spells cost mana or focus, checked before the swing goes out.

Weapon condition

Every landed hit wears down your weapon's condition a little. At zero, it breaks, unequips itself, and is gone — keep an eye on the condition bar on its icon (see Equipment below) and have a spare ready.

Monsters

Monsters are either aggressive, attacking anyone who wanders within their aggro range, or passive, only fighting back once you hit them first. Stray too far from a monster mid-fight and it gives up the chase, flees briefly, and resets.

Death

If your health reaches zero, you're fully healed and returned to your area's spawn point. There's no other penalty — no item loss, no experience loss.

Gathering resources

Stand near a resource node (a tree, rock, ore vein, fishing spot, and so on) with the right tool equipped and click it to start harvesting. A swing animation plays; walk away before it finishes and nothing happens — the swing is simply cancelled, no cooldown penalty. Stay put and it resolves, consuming a little of the node and your tool's condition whether or not you got a drop.

Every possible drop on a node rolls independently, so a single swing can occasionally yield more than one item, or none. A depleted node shows a countdown until it respawns.

Fishing

Fish at any water's edge with a rod equipped. Casting plays out in phases — cast, wait, reel, and (if something bit) catch — and each cast consumes a little of the fishing spot regardless of whether you hook anything, so a spot eventually runs dry and needs time to recover, the same as any other resource.

Harvestable animals

Some passing animals in the world can be harvested with the right tool, separately from combat — these are never attackable and never fight back. Each individual animal has its own short cooldown after being harvested before it can be approached again.

Crafting & recipes

Stand near a crafting station and open the crafting window to see recipes you can make. Some recipes accept more than one valid set of ingredients — for example, a wooden axe might take either a stack of sticks or a couple of logs — pick whichever set you're carrying.

You can queue a batch of more than one at a time. Ingredients are only spent as each individual item finishes, not all up front — so walking away, losing your crafting tool, or running out of materials mid-batch only costs you the one item in progress; anything already finished is yours to keep. Recipes may also require a minimum skill level and a specific tool equipped for the whole batch.

Bags & containers

Some inventory items are containers in their own right — bags that hold more items inside them. Double-click one in your inventory, or select it and click Open, to look inside; the inventory window swaps to show the container's own grid, with a < Back link at the top to return to your main inventory. You can't open a container that's sitting inside another container.

Drag an item from your main inventory onto a container's own slot to store it — stackable items merge automatically if a matching stack is already inside. To take something back out, drag it up onto the header bar at the top of the open container, where it'll prompt Take out of <name>; drop it there to move the whole stack to your main inventory, merging into a matching stack if you have one or landing in a free slot otherwise. If you only want part of a stack, split it first with Split — the same way as anywhere else in your inventory — then drag the smaller pile out on its own.

Each container has its own fixed number of slots. Try to store something in a full container and it's refused; try to take something out with your main inventory full and that's refused too.

Skills, attributes, and leveling

Open the Skills & Statistics window (from your profile) to see both. Skills rise from use — harvesting, crafting, and fighting all train the specific skill tied to that action. Your character Level is the average of every skill you've actually trained; skills you've never touched don't drag it down.

Attributes

Four attributes — Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Constitution — start at a base value of 10 and only rise when you spend a point on them (they're never trained by use, the way skills are). Each level-up grants attribute points to spend from the Statistics tab.

Mana and Focus regenerate on their own while you're out of combat, the same way health does. Some gear and consumables grant attribute bonuses while equipped or active, and a handful of items require a minimum attribute value to equip at all.

Gearing up

You have seven equipment slots: head, face, back, body, left hand, right hand, and legs. Every equippable item has a condition bar drawn right on its icon — green when healthy, yellow as it wears, red when it's about to break. Weapons and tools drain condition as you use them; some armor drains slowly just from being worn, whether or not you're in a fight. At zero condition, the item breaks and is removed from your inventory.

Achievements

Achievements track a single goal each — harvesting, defeating, or crafting a certain quantity of something — and complete automatically as you play; there's no achievements list to check mid-progress. When you unlock one, a toast appears on screen, everyone in the game (and your Discord, if linked) sees an announcement, and any gold or item reward is granted immediately. Completed achievements show up on your public profile page.

Consumables & active effects

Select a consumable item in your inventory and choose Consume to use it. Some consumables are instant — a quick heal to your Health, Mana, or Focus — while others apply an ongoing effect for a set duration (or, occasionally, permanently), the same kind of bonus a piece of equipment might grant. Timed effects persist even if you log out and back in before they expire.

Gold, shops, and leaderboards

Gold drops from monsters and is earned through quests and achievements. Some NPCs run shops through their dialogue — buy items outright, or sell items back for roughly half their value. The public /web hub page (no login required) lists top-10 leaderboards for playtime, monster kills, crafting, resources gathered, and net gold earned, each with both an all-time and a this-week ranking.

Your own island

Every player has a personal island, reached through an animated portal tile found in the world (currently near the start of the game). Step onto the portal to open the Island Access window; it's created automatically the first time you visit. If you're already on your island but away from the portal, the /island chat command reopens the same window. Leaving takes you back to wherever you entered the portal from.

Shaping your island

Terrain editing happens live, in-world, from a tool palette on your hotbar: place land, remove land, raise terrain, lower terrain, and add slopes. Each edit (other than removing land) costs essence, a currency you earn passively as an active subscriber. An essence bar next to the tool palette shows your current balance, and each tool shows its cost. A small protected zone around your portal can never be edited, so you can't accidentally strand yourself.

Elevation goes up to three tiers, but raising that high requires the surrounding terrain to already be built up — you can't punch a single tower straight out of flat ground.

Visitors & contributors

Your island is private by default. From the Island Access window you can grant another player visit access (they can walk around) or edit access (they can also spend their own essence shaping your island) — the two are independent, so a visitor isn't automatically able to edit. Revoking access sends anyone currently there straight back home.

Sharing your island

Every island has a public page, viewable by anyone without logging in, that renders a shareable image of the layout — handy for showing it off outside the game.

Account management

Changing your password

Log into the game, open your profile (click your character name), and use the Change password form. You'll need to enter your current password to confirm.

Forgotten password

1. On the login screen, click Forgot password.
2. Enter your registered email address and submit.
3. You'll receive an email with a reset link valid for one hour. Click it, choose a new password, and log in.

Getting a higher role

Roles are assigned by an Admin through the admin console. There's no in-game way to request a role change — contact an Admin directly if you believe you should have elevated access.

Something broken?

If you get stuck in geometry (clipped through a wall) or end up somewhere you shouldn't be, open chat and ask a Moderator or Admin — they can check the server logs and teleport your character if needed. Report the location so the map designer can investigate the tile collision.