User interface

Alpha-0 Launcher/login screen.

Pre-alpha unpolished UI screenshots.

Pre-alpha Arena UI.

The Ashes of Creation user interface (UI) is built with customization in mind.

UI settings

UI settings are able to be saved locally.

Various display elements can be toggled on or off:

• Character names
• Guild names
• Enemy names
• Party names
• Alliance members

Gear slots

Alpha-2 Fighter character sheet UI.

We wanted to create something that would handle a couple of different roles, with obviously your equipment slots for what we call a "paper doll", which is that display of your character. Eventually it won't just be a image of your character, we hope to have the 3D character and be able to rotate around, look at what you're wearing. And then we wanted to support a couple of different features here, with some base stats; the equipment, which will show what equipment you have available to quick swap, so you don't have to have your inventory and the screen open; detailed stats for those people who want to get into all of the details; and then of course gear sets. So this is going to be able to swap to your sets of gear quickly; and being able to save different loadouts. – Colby Marchi

There are multiple gear slots in Ashes of Creation.

• 3 Back slots.
  • 1 Ranged slot.
  • 1 Cloak/cape slot.
  • 1 Backpack slot.

• 3 Belt slots.
  • 1 Mainhand slot equips a player's primary weapon.
  • 1 Offhand slot can equip shields, spell focuses, sigils, and dual weapons.
  • 1 Potion/Pouch/Scroll slot.

• 8 Armor slots.
  • 1 Helmet slot.
  • 1 Shoulder slot.
  • 1 Chest slot.
  • 1 Wrist slot.
  • 1 Glove slot.
  • 1 Waist slot.
  • 1 Leggings slot.
  • 1 Boot slot.
• 5 Jewelry slots.
  • 2 Accessory slots.
  • 1 Necklace slot.
  • 2 Ring slots.
• 3 Artisan gear slots.
• 1 Artisan tool slot is used to equip gathering tools.
• There may be a specific slot for musical instruments, but this has not been finalized yet.

• Previously it was stated there were 16 gear slots.

• Gear is not subject to inventory weight limits.

Action bar

Alpha-2 Tank action bar (hotbar) user interface.

Players can build their characters with the active skills they want on their action bar (hotbar).

• The maximum number of skills a player can have on their action bar will be around 15-20.
  • Each archetype will have roughly 35-40 skills to choose from on average.
• There will be an option to include multiple action bars (hotbars) on a player's UI. For example: One Fighter will be different from another based on what active skills they have chosen.

Some people like to have a very minimalistic number of hot bars. They don't need necessarily to have three, four, five hot bars that are available; but some people do like that: They want to have all their items listed on their hotbar as well as their abilities, as well as as their mounts, as well as anything that they can essentially interact with as an icon. – Steven Sharif

• Players are not given skills as they level up, they must choose what skills they take.
• There is no spellbook requiring memorization.

There will be multiple hot-bars that you obviously have available, because you're going to have consumables, you're going to have active skills and whatnot. But the number of active skills are not going to overwhelm necessarily the character and be irrelevant especially at certain stages. – Steven Sharif

Control settings

Players will be able to customize their keyboard control scheme.

The game is not designed around controller support.

Camera settings

The developers aim to provide a variety of camera options.

• Camera field-of-view (FoV) is customizable.

World map

Updated Ashes of Creation map.

The new world map in all its 1,200 square kilometer glory. So you're gonna see some names here- a little bit of a reveal of some of these locations in these areas- and you're also of course seeing similar biomes that are present as well. But more importantly what you are seeing is the orientation of these continents and these islands that are facilitating specific types of inter-continental trade gameplay; and they support the relevance of these caravans moving across the land mass to locations that will now incorporate these harbor areas, which aren't identified on the map here... But the important part was providing a lot of coastal naval gameplay between these zones and trade routes between land base. – Steven Sharif

Alpha-2 work-in-progress map UI.

The world of Verra features an in-game viewable world map. This map is not randomly generated, and begins covered in a fog of war. Players will not be able to see the world until they have explored it or gathered information about it. The world is also full of imperfect information, which will require the player to act on it for verification.

For example, you may hear a rumor in a tavern that tells you the location of a cave full of weak Kobolds, but this was not accurate as the rumor was started by well-equipped bandits in order to waylay overconfident adventurers.

• Information about the world will be presented directly to players through the world map UI as it is gathered.
  • Node tax rates will be visible on the world map by hovering over a node location on the UI.
  • The map UI will potentially incorporate player created location markers that are visible by other party members.
  • Previously, detailed information about the world was only available through the Library unique node building.

• Not every server will share the same map, as player decisions will vary between servers.

• The map will have geographical choke points caused by non-traversable obstacles (such as Mountains).

Even though we're an open-world that doesn't mean that from a design perspective, especially with the way our economic systems work, that we will want to create Geographic choke points. – Steven Sharif

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• Zones in Ashes of Creation will cater to all levels.

Mini map

Alpha-2 minimap and compass UI.

There is an in-game minimap and compass user interface in Ashes of Creation.

• The goal is to allow pings and other forms of communication tools via the mini-map.

Character creator

Scars in the Alpha-2 character creator (first pass).

The cool thing about this character creator is that it's not just intended for your character. It has application with NPCs that you might hire. – Steven Sharif

We're gonna use similar tech for implementing things like Animal husbandry. – Zachary Mallet

Kaelar Alpha-2 character creation (first pass).

This tech is 100% created in-house at Intrepid and is not metahuman. – Steven Sharif

We'll be adding many, many more customization options to the character creator. – Cody Peterson

The character creator (or character customization system) allows players to define the look of their in-game characters, hired NPCs; and potentially creatures raised by the animal husbandry profession.

• Character appearance can be adjusted through a wide range of presets and sliders.
• Character blending provides easy to use customization by morphing together two or more character presets.
• Character sculpting allows detailed customization of every aspect of the body.

The Ashes of Creation character creator is 100% developed in-house by Intrepid Studios and is not MetaHuman.

Additional character creator features include.

• There will be unlockable features for character customization.

You have that scar because you participated in this siege, or these many sieges; or you have this tattoo because of your of a cultural background, or because of a quest that was accomplished where you're able to get that. – Steven Sharif

• The ability to save and potentially to share characters with other players.

The beauty of it is that you can save your character- and we already have some of those features available- and load them; and in the future we want people to be able to share those characters amongst each other. – Margaret Krohn

• The ability to undo changes (Ctrl + Z) will be supported, including undoing changes that were made several edits earlier.
• Choosing base idle animations of characters will be possible in future.
  • Certain animations, such as blinking, will be present when they don't interfere with the customization process.
• Certain ability sound effects will adhere to character customization selections, such as race.
• Adjusting the background scene and lighting is a planned feature.

There's going to be a lot of environmental controls that are offered to the character creator so that people can set it up their scene the way they want to grab screenshots or to grab recordings or whatever they want to do. – Steven Sharif

• Asymmetry in terms of manipulating different components of the body or different body features such as hair, beard, and eyes.

Asymmetry is going to be functionality that's possible in manipulating either different components of the body or different features like hair. The beard we saw a little bit of that blending with highlights that you can do. Margaret talked a little bit about the eye asymmetry that you can include. Obviously those are going to exist within certain parameters that we want to define on a per-race basis, but it is something that we think is cool. – Steven Sharif

• Body adornments, such as piercings will be possible within cultural limits.
• The developers are considering whether to allow custom tattoos to be uploaded by users.

The aim is for the character creator to be on par if not much better than that of BDO.

Accessibility settings

There will be settings to aid colorblind players.

Blood/gore filter

There may be an option to turn off blood and gore in the game.

Addons/mods

Addons will not be allowed, in general.

• The developers don't want addons/mods to be necessary to experience the game.
• The developers believe that parsers (DPS meters) can have negative effects.
  • There will be leader boards.
• The design of the game API is still under consideration.

In-game chat

Alpha-1 work-in-progress chat interface.

We are working on a new chat log! The new log includes tabs for general, party, siege, guild, and more!

In-game text chat channels.

Channel	Command
Local chat.	/say.
Shout.	/yell.
Party.	/party.
Raid.
Guild.
Private messages (PM).	/tell (playername).
Tavern.
Node citizen chat.
Global (Enabled for Alpha-1 testing).	/global.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• Trade chat.
• Alliance chat.
• Social organization chat.
• Religion chat.
• Chat initiated with people on a player's friend list.
• User created chat channels.

Importing images

No image import functionality is planned for sails, shields and cloaks.

• Emblems and symbols will be able to be designed in-game.

Logging out

There will be a logout delay to prevent players from immediately logging out of combat.

Multi-boxing

Multi-boxing/multi client polices haven't been finalized. In general, if a user has a legitimate account and is not botting then multi-boxing will be permitted.

Mobile/web application

Farmhands and NPC assistance

Based on node type and progression, players will be able to hire NPCs to work as farmhands on their freehold farms. Players will be able to command these farmhands in-game as well as potentially offline via an application (mobile app) or web interface.

• Crop rotation management.
• Plant or harvest specific crops.

City hall

Winstead Village (stage 3) node town hall in Alpha-2.

We want the City Hall to be the place where big decisions are made for each Node. It should be where the “ruling class” comes together and decides what to do (these decisions can quickly make them the “old ruling class” too).

Town hall (also called City hall) is a default service building that comes pre-built with nodes.

• Players can interact with the node board to get a list of its citizens. Clicking on a citizen will reveal information about their guild, society, religion, and property ownership.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• Mayors and node governments use city hall to visualize and control activities within their node. These capabilities will also be available via mobile/web interface.

• Status of the node's economy.
• Status of upcoming elections.
• Status of trade agreements.
• Status of caravans.

Character page

There is no planned in-game functionality to leave personal notes regarding player characters.

We don't plan to have in-game tools to provide that tracking. Instead you will be expected to track that yourselves. – Steven Sharif

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

A character sheet will be available closer to live launch that shows the following:

• What a character looks like.
• Achievements and server firsts.
• Info on a player's class.
• Character's back story via journal entries (that are shared publicly by the player).
• Traits can be applied that describe a character's history.

You will have a unique homepage for each character and that homepage will be able to be customized by the user to display unique information. It will have a small out-of-game RPG component where you can construct background and traits and stuff like that. – Steven Sharif

The character page will be accessible in game by opening a browser through the UI.

That's part of the character sheet desire for us which hopefully will be accessible in game as well by opening a browser through our UI where you can get back history of a character that that character has input themselves into journal entries that they may choose to share with others... For role play perspective we want people to be in depth with their characters. – Steven Sharif

The player can manage what info is shown on the character page.

Item rendering

In-game rendering of dropped items (such as Gear and Currency) is not a planned feature.

User interface commands

• There will be a "/roll" feature to simulate a dice roll.

See also

• Character creator
• Ashes of Creation