DarkSpar: Basic Gameplay Guide for New Players

On the left hand side of the screen you will see 5 boxes. The top three are slots where you can recruit Champions. The fourth one allows you to build upgrades for your settlement. The fifth one is for research.

At the start of the game, recruit a champion. It doesn’t really matter whether you pick the Might, Speed, or Magic based champion, all three are viable to start the game. If you click Re-roll you will get different portraits and slightly different stats.

After you’ve recruited and named a champion, take a look at the Build and Research menus.

You will see a Camp upgrade which costs 200 wood.

There are 3 research projects available. Pick one of them. There’s no cost for research (except time) and you’ll need to research everything eventually so it’s a good idea to keep something happening in this box.

Now you have a choice, you can either set your champion to gathering wood so that you can build the camp ASAP, or you can explore to try to uncover new zones. If your goal is to progress as fast as possible the camp is the better option. If you are in a hurry to get to combat, try exploring.

Now you have to wait a bit before you can recruit more champions. Once you get more champions you can diversify your tasks.

Progression in DarkSpar goes like this:

• Get something building to improve your settlement. The goal of the game is to re-establish civilization in the wild/corrupted continent of DarkSpar so this will involve building lots of improvements.
• Continue researching, to unlock upgrades and new technologies.
• While you wait for stuff to build, send your champions out to Gather, Explore, or Fight

Gathering will increase resources for building upgrades and improving weapons and armor.

Exploration will uncover new zones, which either provide new resources or things to fight.

Fighting raises the Combat level of the Champion. For each Combat level the champion gains 15 Hitpoints and 2 Might, Speed, and Magic.

Eventually you will research Archaeology. Once that happens you will be able to find Artifacts and Runestones which are also important to progression.

Artifacts can be found during Gathering and Exploration missions. Some Artifacts can be found anywhere, while others are tied to specific activities or locations. Artifacts are the only equippable items in Darkspar and provide a bonus to one specific Champion while that Champion is using the item. Some are build- defining.

Runestones can be dropped by monsters during Combat. Some Runestones are specific to certain monsters (check the Monsterpedia in the lower-right menu), others are dropped on a tier- based system from any monster. Runestones provide global bonuses to all of your Champions and do not need to be equipped or activated specifically, other than finding them.

In addition to Runestones and Artifacts, you can increase the power of your Champions by allocating skillpoints.

Skillpoint(s) are earned every combat level. There are three kinds of skillpoints. Core skillpoints (white) are earned every level and are spent in the first three columns of the skill tree. Vanguard (blue) skillpoints are earned every 5 levels and are spent n the fourth column of the skill tree. Ascension (yellow) skillpoints are earned at level 25, 50, and level 99, and are spent in the far right column of the skill tree.

Some Runestones, Buildings, or Research Projects award bonus skillpoints in addition to those earned by leveling.

Equipment: Equipment is very important to the power level of your Champions. If you are not doing well against the highest level monsters available to you, upgrading your equipment is likely to make the biggest difference. (Skills and artifact selection can also be impactful)

Once you discover a new material (Ore in the case of Swords, Maces, Daggers, Armor, and Arrows; Wood in the case of Staffs and Bows), research the necessary technology, and build the related Forge or other building, you will be able to make new weapons and armor based on this material, which will be much more powerful than the previous version.

In addition to outright replacing your weapons and armor when the next material becomes available, you can also upgrade existing weapons and armor using more of the same material that was used to build them. This option becomes available once you research Advanced Metalworking and Advanced Woodworking. If you don’t yet have the materials or technology to replace your current gear, upgrading can be a good alternative.

Don’t forget to save the game (Escape key, Right mouse button, or the Save icon in lower right), but if you do forget to save the game, you can find the autosaves under “A” from the load game menu.

Like most true idle games DarkSpar provides offline progression.

When you reload from a saved game, your research progress, building progress, population growth, and whatever activity your Champions were doing will all have progressed by the amount of time that passed since you saved.

Note that Combat progresses slower offline than online, and you cannot find any new zones, Runestones, or Artifacts while offline.

Offline leveling is capped at 12 hours or 20 levels gained.

Some achievements provide permanent bonuses to your champions. Check the Achievement screen in the lower-right menu. Others are simply there for end-game goals.

Why does this Runestone say “Cannot be doubled”, you may ask?

This is because at a certain point in the game you will be presented with a choice between two very powerful upgrades, one of which doubles the effect of all of your Runestones. All of the Runestones except the ones that say they “cannot be doubled”, that is.

Once you complete every building available for your encampment including the castle, you will gain access to an additional powerful upgrade tree.

There are three special dungeons you can only get access to by building everything you can.

Long live the new kingdom of DarkSpar!