Game modes

Dawn of Embers has three ways to play: the Story campaign, Skirmish against AI opponents, and Multiplayer with ranked leaderboards. All three use the same rules, units and buildings. The game runs at one fixed speed in every mode, with no speed controls and no pause.

The game is in development. Modes, settings and ranked rules can change before release.

Mode	Players	Online needed	In short
Story	1	No	A campaign of missions as a captain in Ashmere's army
Skirmish	1, plus AI opponents	No	One match against AI opponents, on settings you choose
Multiplayer	2 to 8	Yes (online or LAN)	Play with or against other people; AI seats can be added
Ranked	2 to 8 (1v1 to 4v4)	Yes	A Multiplayer lobby setting that counts the result on the leaderboards

Story

In the Story campaign you serve as a captain in the army of Ashmere and play through its missions in order; each mission unlocks the next. The early missions double as the tutorial: each objective says what to do, where, and with which control. The first missions start with enough resources banked for every building they ask for, so a lesson never waits on gathering.

• Your Calling and Disciplines carry over from one story mission to the next.
• Missions save checkpoints as you progress, so a mission can be resumed from its last checkpoint or restarted.
• Some buildings and units are introduced over the course of the campaign and are hidden until a mission allows them.

The missions and their story are on the Campaign page. Story details are hidden behind spoiler boxes until you open them.

Skirmish

Skirmish is a single match against AI opponents, played offline on settings you choose in the lobby. It is the place to practise.

Lobby settings

Setting	Options
Players	1 to 8 seats in total, limited by the map size (see below)
Map type	The biome: Forest, Snowy Forest, Snowy Mountain, Desert, Ocean. See Biomes
Map size	X-Small, Small, Medium, Large, X-Large
Map seed	Optional. The same seed and settings build the same map; left empty, a seed is rolled
Resource density	How many resources the map holds: three levels, the middle one by default (the in-game labels need confirming)
AI difficulty	Very Easy, Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard, Brutal
Population limit	200 by default in the current build

Player limits by map size

Map size	Width	Most players
X-Small	200 m	2
Small	280 m	4
Medium	480 m	4
Large	720 m	8
X-Large	1,200 m	8

Snowy Mountain needs a Medium or larger map. A player count or map size the lobby cannot offer is shown greyed, with a tooltip.

AI opponents

AI opponents choose their own Calling and spend their own Discipline points at the start of a match. On the harder difficulties they scout for Pillars, send mages to charge them and send soldiers to drive off enemy mages. An AI may resign when its position is hopeless.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer matches hold 2 to 8 players. You can team up with friends against AI opponents, or play against other people. The main menu offers hosting an online game, hosting a LAN game, and joining a game. A hosted lobby can be public or protected with a passcode.

To play online you sign in with an Epic Games account from inside the game and claim a display name: 3 to 16 characters with at least one letter, unique across all players. One account and one shared ladder are used across the storefronts the game is sold on.

Ranked

Ranked is a lobby setting that the host turns on. A ranked match counts on the public leaderboards. The full rules are on the official ranked play page; in short:

• There are four ladders: 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4.
• Ranked matches are players only: no AI seats, both sides the same size, every player signed in and on the same game version.
• In 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4 both sides must be registered teams. A team is its exact group of players and has a rating of its own.
• Ratings start at 1500. Only the result counts: score, kills and match length never change a rating.
• A match is ranked only when the two sides' lifetime ratings are within 400 points.
• There are two boards: Seasonal (seasons last 90 days, with 10 placement matches each) and Lifetime (never resets).
• Every player's game confirms the result. If they disagree, the match is held for review and no rating changes.
• A new account must finish 5 matches before ranked opens to it.
• In ranked matches, cheat commands are off, and saving and loading are disabled.

Winning and losing

A player is defeated by resigning, or by losing every unit and building they own. A player who disconnects from an online match has two minutes to reconnect before the seat is forfeited.

The demo

The demo offers the first story missions and a limited Skirmish. Multiplayer and Ranked are not part of it. See Demo.

See also

• Getting started
• Biomes
• Gameplay mechanics
• Demo