How to Play HollowBerry

Getting started

1. Download and run. Grab the client from the Play page, unzip it and start HollowBerry.exe. It updates itself every time you launch it.
2. Create an account. Pick a username and a password you use nowhere else, and enter the server address shared in the Discord.
3. Choose a class. Every class starts with one ability and unlocks more as its skill levels up. You can change class later (see the FAQ), and each class levels separately.
4. Spawn in Hollowmere. The central town is a safe zone with crafting stations and the roads out to the four wild regions.
5. Kill monsters to level your skill. Your first levels come after only a few kills. Each level unlocks a new ability.
6. Grab the starter tools. New characters receive a free Pickaxe, Axe and Spade, which let you gather ore, wood and herbs right away.

Controls

Your keybindings are saved on your PC. Reserved keys that cannot be rebound: Space, WASD, arrows, E, T, Enter, Tab, Esc, M and G.

The screen

• Health and shield bar: shield segments (blue) absorb damage before health.
• Ability bar: your four abilities plus the dash, with cooldowns. Abilities that target allies (heals, shields) can also be cast by clicking an ally's unit frame.
• Party and vanguard frames: health and shields of your group. Click a frame to cast a heal or shield on that ally.
• Danger rating: every wild area has a rating from Safe to Deadly. Higher ratings drop more materials and give more gathering XP, but are where other players are most likely to hunt you.
• Telegraphs: every damaging ability and boss attack draws its danger zone on the ground before it lands. Read the zone and move.

Combat

Combat is skill-based and decided by the server, so what you see is what hits. There is no auto-targeting and no stat grind: positioning, timing and reading your opponent matter more than gear.

Wind-ups and aiming

Many abilities have a short cast time. When you press the key your aim locks in at cast start and the cooldown is spent immediately. If you are stunned, die or change class mid-cast, the cast is cancelled. Enemies get the same telegraphed wind-ups, so you can dodge them.

Health and damage

• Every class has 500 health and the same base attack. Gear adds health and defence on top.
• Damage is either Physical or Magic. Wizard, Cleric and Necromancer spells (and casting monsters) deal Magic damage.
• Armor reduces Physical damage and Magic Resist reduces Magic damage. Both come from what you wear, by armor weight, slot and tier. Reduction is capped at 60%.
• Damage between two players is reduced to 60%, and heals on a player who was just hurt by another player are reduced to 70%, so fights last long enough to outplay someone.

Crowd control, and why you are never locked to death

Stuns, roots, silences and fear all have diminishing returns: each one applied in quick succession lasts shorter, so nobody can be chain-controlled to death. Healing and shielding are also dampened after about 15 seconds of continuous PvP combat to stop endless stalemates.

Stealth

Assassins can vanish: enemies cannot see or target them. Attacking breaks stealth, and the first hit out of stealth deals +75% damage. Area damage still reaches a hidden Assassin and reveals them for 1.5 seconds. Archers (Hunter's Mark) and Assassins (trap detection) have counters.

Classes & abilities

There are eight classes to choose from. Each has four equippable ability slots plus one dash (Space). Open the ability menu with Tab and put any unlocked ability into any slot; an ability can only sit in one slot at a time. Click a class below for its full ability list, in unlock order.

Cooldowns are base values and can be affected by gear and statuses.

The Tamer's companions

The Tamer has no damaging abilities of their own. All damage comes from one companion at a time: a Bear (stuns with Roar), a Dragon (burning Fire Breath cone) or a Spider (Web roots an area). Your companion only fights what you fight or select, and what attacks you, and it never starts fights on its own. It fights other players by itself, so against a Tamer the answer is to kill the Tamer. Your abilities heal, shield, speed up and protect only you and your own companion.

Retired classes

The Brawler and the Trapper have been retired. The Brawler's best abilities (Chain Grab, Counter Stance, Second Wind) moved to the Warrior, and the Trapper's traps (Bear Trap, Net Toss) moved to the Archer.

Class skills

Each class trains one skill: Magic (Wizard), Archery (Archer), Stealth (Assassin), Devotion (Cleric), Taming (Tamer), Necromancy (Necromancer), Strength (Warrior) and Nature (Warden). Levels run from 1 to 99.

• XP comes from kills. It is split evenly between everyone who damaged the monster (including the owners of pets and summons) and their party members in the same region. Player kills, training dummies and summoned thralls give no XP.
• XP is stored per account, per class. Switching class never loses progress on the old one.
• A level only unlocks abilities. There is no hidden damage or health bonus, so a level-99 character is not stronger than a level-1 one with the same ability, just has more options. A class's strongest ability unlocks at level 95.
• The curve: level 2 needs 30 XP, and every level costs about 8.4% more than the one before. Level 99 takes roughly 967,000 XP in total.
• Your class skill level also gates dungeon tiers and the strongest weapons.

Press K to see your class skill, your three gathering skills and your five crafting skills together.

Items & gear

Inventory

Press I. You have a 30-slot bag and 9 equipment slots: Weapon, Helmet, Body, Legs, Cape, Ring, Bracelet, Boots and Shield. Gear pieces are unique items; materials stack. Items only ever move, they are never copied.

Weapons

• There are 112 weapons in tiers 1 to 5, plus legendary weapons with special effects.
• Weapons are locked by category: Melee, Magic or Ranged. You can only wield a weapon from your class's category.
• Tiers 1 to 4 are shared between classes of the same category. Tier 5 and legendary weapons are tied to a single class, and every weapon needs a minimum class skill level.

Armor and accessories

• There are 110 pieces of armor and accessories. Armor weight follows weapon category: heavy for Melee, light for Ranged and cloth for Magic.
• You cannot wear a shield together with a two-handed or dual-wielded weapon.
• Some legendary pieces carry special effects. What you wear is drawn on your character, so other players can read your gear at a glance.

Where gear comes from

• Monster drops. Monsters drop weapons and armor into an open pile. Everyone can see the contents. Players who took part in the kill have priority for 2 minutes, then anyone can take items. Loot with right-click.
• Crafting. Tier 1 to 4 weapons and gear can be crafted from gathered materials.
• Dungeons and bosses. Boss and chest loot is personal: each player gets their own.
• Trading. See Trading.

Hollow Coin

Hollow Coin is the currency. It drops from monsters and bosses and can be traded between players. There are no shops yet.

Regions

The world is one persistent map. Hollowmere, a safe town, sits in the middle. Around it lie four wild regions, each linked to its neighbours and to the town.

Safe camps and danger ratings

Each wild region contains safe camps with level-1 resource nodes to start from. Monsters stay at least 16 tiles away from safe areas. Every wild area has a danger rating:

SafeGentleWildDangerousDeadly

Danger is the intended PvP risk of an area, not just how tough its monsters are. Higher danger means more materials from every node and more gathering XP (from 1× up to 2.5×). The open-world monster density is deliberately low: most XP is meant to come from dungeons.

Open the map with M.

Gathering

Mining, Woodcutting and Foraging are account-wide skills (they are not tied to your class) from level 1 upward. Their levels decide which nodes you may harvest.

1. Find a node. Nodes are drawn in the world and a hint shows the level you need.
2. Right click it. You channel for about 3 seconds and automatically keep gathering until the node is empty.
3. Moving, taking damage or casting interrupts the channel.

• Each node holds 3 to 5 harvests and refills after 60 to 120 seconds.
• You need the right tool: Pickaxe (mining), Axe (woodcutting) or Spade (foraging). New characters get all three free. Tools are never lost in PvP and cannot be destroyed.
• Other players see your tool animation, so they can see where you are working.

Better nodes award more XP, and the same node in a higher danger area gives more of everything.

Crafting

Right-click a crafting station in Hollowmere or a safe camp to open its window. Crafting takes time, and you can salvage items back into materials.

• First refine raw materials into ingots, planks, cloth and leather, then craft weapons and gear from them.
• Crafting covers the shared tier 1 to 4 weapons and gear. Tier 5 and legendary items are found, not crafted.
• Some monsters drop hides (Dune Hide, Bog Hide, Grave Shroud) used for leatherworking.
• Each crafting skill levels up with use and appears on your K Skills page.

Trading

1. Right click another player and send a trade request.
2. Each side places up to 10 items from their bag into the offer.
3. Both players press Accept, then a short delay passes before Confirm, so nothing can be swapped at the last second.
4. The swap is atomic: either both sides get their items, or nobody does.

A trade cancels automatically if you move out of range, take damage, enter combat or disconnect.

Dungeons

Dungeons are where most XP and loot come from. Each door opens an instanced, randomly generated dungeon for you and your party. The layout changes every run.

Tiers

You choose a tier at the door. Higher tiers have bigger dungeons, tougher monsters, better loot and stronger boss moves, and need a higher class skill level.

Inside a run

• Parties of up to 5. Only the party leader starts a run, and party members standing near the door join automatically.
• Rooms wake up when a player gets within about 15 tiles, so you can plan your pulls.
• The boss waits alone in a large arena at the deepest point, behind a door that opens when you defeat the key elite.
• There are chests, secret rooms behind hidden walls, and treasure rooms. Right-click chests to open them.
• Lives are shared. The whole party has a pool of lives instead of checkpoints. When you die you respawn in the start room and a life is spent.
• Boss and chest loot is personal, so nobody can steal your drops.
• Monsters inside a dungeon do not respawn.

World bosses

Besides the dungeons, five sealed doors lead to shared boss arenas that anyone can enter at the same time. Every 3 hours the next boss of the cycle appears. An arena stays open until the boss dies (plus 5 minutes to loot) or one hour has passed. There is no player cap and no level requirement. Damage taken by the boss is divided by the size of the crowd, so more people means a fairer fight, not a trivial one. Loot is personal.

Boss tuning is still being adjusted during the playtest.

PvP & death

• Dying to a monster loses nothing. You respawn and keep everything.
• Dying to another player (hostile, outside safe areas) drops 10 random occupied inventory slots and 3 random worn pieces into a pile where you fell.
• The pile works like a monster drop: everyone can see what is in it. The killer and their party have priority for 2 minutes, then anyone may take items, one at a time. It disappears after 10 minutes, and a server crash destroys it rather than duplicating items.
• Combat lock: for 10 seconds after dealing or taking damage you cannot manage your inventory. Looting is still allowed.
• Your gathering tools are never lost and cannot be destroyed.

Wild areas rated Dangerous or Deadly are where PvP is intended to bite hardest, and also where materials are best.

Parties & guilds

Parties

A party holds up to 5 players and lasts for your session. Party members share kill XP in the same region and see each other on unit frames. Use Middle click to Mark an enemy so the whole group sees it.

Guilds

• A guild has a unique name and a unique 3-letter tag shown above its members' names, and holds up to 100 members.
• Ranks, from lowest: Recruit, Member, Veteran, Officer, Leader. Veterans and above invite and accept applications. Officers and above can kick, promote, edit the guild and organise vanguards. The Leader can transfer or disband the guild.
• Recruitment mode is Closed, Applications or Open. Browse and apply to guilds on the Guild Board (G).
• Guilds can mark each other as allies (blue tag) or enemies (orange tag) so a battlefield reads at a glance.

Vanguards

A vanguard unites up to 6 parties of one guild. It is led by an Officer or above who also leads one of the parties.

Invites expire after 30 seconds. Accept with F5 or decline with F6.

Glossary

Stun

You cannot move or act. Cancels casts.

Root

You cannot move, but you can still attack and cast.

Silence

You cannot use abilities.

Fear

You run away uncontrollably and cannot act.

Slow

Reduced movement speed.

Bleed / Burn / Poison

Damage over time. Cleanse-type abilities remove them.

Exposed

Take +40% damage. Applied by abilities such as the Assassin's Fan of Knives.

Marked

Take extra damage (+30%). Exposed and Marked add together.

Wounded

Healing received is halved.

Sundered

Armor is reduced. Stacks up to 3 times.

Shield

A blue health-bar segment that absorbs damage before health.

Diminishing returns

Repeated crowd control in a short time lasts progressively shorter.

Telegraph

The danger zone drawn on the ground before an attack lands.

Cooldown

Time before an ability can be used again. It starts when you press the key.

Loadout

The four abilities you have equipped, plus the class dash.

Danger rating

An area's PvP risk, from Safe to Deadly. Also scales gathering rewards.

Key elite

The dungeon monster that drops the key to the boss door.

Pile

A pile of dropped items that anyone can see and take from.

Chat commands

Type these in chat (T or Enter).

FAQ