Amaranth Source Online

You begin your path as a simple nameless soul. You will have to find a physical body for yourself, learn a craft or magic, decide on a class, and even earn your own name. After obtaining a body, at first you differ little from the common residents of the Empire ruled by the eternal Emperor, you are only a grain of sand in this system. Will you be able to change at least something? Your character has only one life, and death here is final. So starting a family and leaving offspring will be a good decision.

Movement and positioning are tied to tiles, like in turn-based strategies, but the entire gameplay and combat encounters happen in real time. Characters are physical and cannot pass through one another without special abilities, which allows you to hold a tight formation or form tactical combat formations. Mounts are also full-fledged physical objects, and they can be used in battle, for example by pushing aside and dealing damage to other characters.

The game is focused on slow character progression, interaction with factions, and characters in the world.

Other features of the game:

• One shared seamless world with an area of about 2000 square kilometers of land. There are no layers or channels at all. All players and characters exist in a single space.
  
• Every class has access to any type of equipment, with enormous potential for buildcrafting and a deliberate move away from meta builds. Pick rare pets, mounts, and familiars for yourself. Prepare for battle the way you think is necessary. But remember physics: an archer in heavy plate gauntlets will not be able to shoot effectively, and combat magic in most cases does not distinguish allies from enemies.
  
• Join any faction or serve faithfully for the good of the empire, capture locations or even entire cities, just do not think it will be easy, especially alone. There are more than a hundred cities and villages in the world, and many locations. When important objectives are captured, the game turns more into a strategy. Living trade is sustained by caravans, ships, and airships, all items and resources are gathered or created, nothing simply disappears.
  
• Players have access to 68 races and 340 subraces, many classes, types of magic, and equipment. The attribute system includes more than 2000 values, and there are additional racial and professional talents. Take care of your equipment and your character, watch their cleanliness, satiety, fatigue, thirst, and other indicators.
  
• A realistic combat system takes into account the height, weight, and exact position of the character's body, tracks damage to specific limbs, bones, and vital organs. A strike to the head checks the durability of the worn helmet, armor on the boots will not help the injured hand. A sword will almost never be able to pierce plate with a simple cutting motion, and pikes and spears are useless in point-blank melee. To protect yourself from injuries, it is necessary to use layered equipment and layers of clothing: wear a gambeson, chainmail, and even just a cloak to protect yourself from the cold.
  
• Any tree or bush in the world can be chopped down. Full destructibility is implemented, characters can completely destroy, besiege, and ravage any settlements or locations. For serious warfare, siege equipment, warships, catapults, mortars, cannons, or even a steam tank are available. Be prepared for the high cost of upkeep, shells, arrows, or simply feed for mounts, all of this is part of the economy.
  
• A deep crafting system, including the ability to model items directly in the game.
  Items are fitted to the race, sex, and body build of characters. Choose metals, leather, wood, and fabric while taking their properties into account. Improve your equipment. Weapons require tuning and balancing. Engraving, runes, gemstone inlay, weaving magical threads into fabric, and much more are available.
  
• There is no in-game cash shop at all. There are no lootboxes, paid skins, bought gold, items, or mounts here. No paid DLC of any kind. All content is available immediately and forever. The only form of support is a subscription, which gives access to creating guilds and some specific things that do not affect combat balance in any way.

Note:

This project was born back in 2017 and has now turned into a full-fledged MMO. With the exception of the graphical assets, the entire technical side, code, network architecture, and system simulation were created by one person. The project was made for the sake of the idea. The server will be maintained in any case as long as there are minimal funds to keep it running. I value what people invest into their characters. And since I do not expect a large online population, the world was made specifically so that it lives on its own without player participation, so even in solo you can continue playing, and players' characters will continue their existence even without direct control.

Because of budget limitations and the lack of a team, effort and resources went into network and graphics optimization and the mechanics themselves. For this reason, at this stage character animation is implemented in a simple minimalist style. Also, the smeared soap-like graphics often found in modern games were completely cut out. The focus was placed on a sharp optimized image with honest anti-aliasing and far draw distance.

Large online population has not been tested, but the architecture is designed to withstand huge battles within the visible area, with thousands of players. I apologize if you run into problems at launch. The architecture will continue to be improved.