Shadowrealm
Age of Darkness
A dark-fantasy RPG. Forge your path through ashen cities and shadowed plains.
Forge a Legend
Build your character across 8 ranks of dark power
Battle for Dominance
PVP duels, arena seasons, and guild wars
A Living Economy
Trade in the marketplace, gamble at the casino
No Download
A free dark-fantasy RPG that runs in your browser
About the game
A persistent dark-fantasy RPG with no wipes and no download. Four things to do, as long as you like. Tap any screenshot to see it full size.
01 · Rise
Climb from nobody to Wraithking
You start with 100 gold and a bad reputation. Deeds earn gold and experience, experience earns ranks, and each of the 8 ranks, from Peasant to Wraithking, opens harder work, richer cities and rarer gear.
- Spend talent points on Attack, Defense, Speed, Luck, Stamina and Magic Power to shape your build.
- Reach the top and Ascend: start the climb again for a permanent edge and a tree of prestige talents.
- Feed gold into your Heirloom, a relic that grows tier after tier and never leaves you.
- Hunt lore books for the Library, each found through deeds in a different city.
The World Map
Pick your next destination, from the four cities to the Stronghold at the centre of the realm, and see the wars being fought.
Talents
Spend talent points on Attack, Defense, Speed, Luck, Stamina and Magic Power to shape your build.
Ascension
Reach the top, then climb again for a permanent edge on a constellation of prestige talents.
The Heirloom
Feed gold into a relic that grows tier after tier, adding attack, defense, speed and dodge for good.
The Library
Collect lore books about the history of the Shadowrealm, each one found through deeds in a different city.
02 · Fight
Settle it in the arena, or the street
Shadowrealm is dangerous on purpose. Duel other players, climb the monthly arena ladder and take on bosses that nobody can beat alone.
- The Arena runs ranked seasons that reset every month, with Glory and gold for where you finish.
- City Bosses are fought by the whole realm at once, so every player who strikes counts.
- PVP is played with your real health, so a wounded fighter wins less often.
- Get caught and you do time. Friends can break you out, and charms and riots tilt the odds.
The Arena
Climb a ranked ladder that resets every month, earn Glory and watch your tier and record.
City Bosses
The whole realm fights the same boss, like the lantern-carrying Hollow Tollkeeper haunting Duskholm.
The Jail
Caught? Friends can break you out. Use charms, or start a Jail Riot to raise the bust chance across the realm.
Tavern Contests
Practise, or take one ranked attempt a day at arm wrestling, knife throwing and drinking contests.
03 · Build
Forge gear, work a trade, raise a Stronghold
Your power is what you carry and what you own. Wear gear in 12 slots across 6 rarities, work a profession, and build a Stronghold of your own at the heart of the realm.
- Four professions, each with its own levels, rank titles and tools.
- Craft from 21 materials across 65 recipes, then wear it, sell it or trade it.
- Build the Keep, Forge, Vault, Armoury and more on a map you can zoom and plan.
- The Blood Shrine trades blood for vigour and stamina when you need to keep going.
Professions
Mine ore at Grimspire Peak, level your trade and fill your satchel with materials to craft and sell.
Your Stronghold
Raise a walled stronghold on a zoomable map: the Keep, Forge, Vault, Armoury and more.
Gear and Heirloom
Fill 12 gear slots and see your Heirloom boost attack, defense and speed on top.
Inventory
Check your equipped gear, resource pools, character stats and rarity breakdown in one place.
The Blood Shrine
Visit the Blood Altar, Witchwood Font and Mending Sanctum to trade blood for vigour and stamina.
04 · Prosper
A living economy, run by its players
Gold is only worth what it can do. Trade with other players, bank it, gamble it, and chase the weekly jackpot. Nothing resets, so a fortune built over months stays built.
- The Marketplace lets players list gear and materials for each other.
- Casinos owned by players, with 8 games including roulette and blackjack.
- Gold in the bank earns daily interest while you are away.
- A weekly lottery, tavern contests and the Chronicles of the realm keep the economy moving.
Roulette
Stack your chips on the table and pray to the croupier, at player-owned casinos in every city.
Blackjack
Twenty-one or bust. Hit, stand or double down against a dealer who draws to seventeen.
The Lottery
Buy tickets for a weekly jackpot and watch the pot swell toward the next draw.
The Chronicles
Realm-wide statistics: circulating gold, banked gold, shadowgems and total renown.
Questions, answered
Is Shadowrealm free to play?
Yes. Shadowrealm: Age of Darkness is free to play in your browser with no download. The full game, including the competitive endgame, is playable without spending anything. Optional Shadowgems can be earned for free through play or purchased to support the game and save time, but they never sell wins.
Do I need to download or install anything?
No. Shadowrealm runs entirely in your web browser on desktop or mobile. You can also add it to your home screen as an app (it is a Progressive Web App), but that is optional. Just register and play.
What kind of game is it?
It is a persistent, text-and-menu dark-fantasy RPG in the tradition of classic browser crime games. You spend energy on deeds to earn gold and experience, climb eight ranks of power, gear up, trade in a player-driven economy, join a guild, gamble in the casino, run heists, and eventually prestige through the Ascension system.
How does energy work?
Energy is the main resource you spend on actions. It refills gradually over real time, even while you are offline, so you can play in short sessions throughout the day. Health and mana regenerate the same way. You can also refill energy instantly with Shadowgems if you are in a hurry.
Can I play with friends?
Absolutely. Add friends, chat in global and guild channels, trade gear on the Marketplace, form a guild of up to twenty players, wage siege warfare on rival guilds, and team up on four-player heists. Shadowrealm is built to be played alongside other people.
What are Shadowgems and do I have to pay?
Shadowgems are the premium currency. You earn them for free from daily rewards, login streaks, quests, and optional ad rewards, and you can buy them if you want to support the game. They buy convenience and cosmetics such as instant energy refills, gear rerolls, and name changes. You never need to buy them to compete.
More answers in the full FAQ.
What Shadowrealm is
Shadowrealm: Age of Darkness is a free, persistent, browser-based dark fantasy RPG. There is nothing to download, nothing to install, and no client to keep updated: you make a character in a browser tab and that character is still there, with every coin and every scar, the next time you open it. There is no season wipe and no server reset, so progress accumulates over weeks and months of ordinary play rather than over one long sitting.
It is a game of criminal ambition rather than heroism. You start as a nobody in a soot-choked city, with 100 gold and 10 points of energy to your name, and you claw your way up 8 character ranks, from Peasant to Wraithking, by taking work nobody respectable would touch. Rank is the single gate behind almost everything else in the realm: harder jobs, richer cities, rarer equipment, bigger scores. Read the game guide for the long version, or the reference wiki if you would rather see the actual numbers first.
How you play
The core loop is deeds. Every deed costs energy, and the boldest also cost mana, and each is a roll against a real success chance: there are 24 of them, from begging strangers for coin to moving against the Shadow King himself. Success pays gold, experience, and sometimes a crafting material or a piece of equipment. Failure can cost you health, or land you in a cell. The full list, with the odds and payouts of each, is on the actions page of the wiki.
Energy, health and mana all regenerate in real time whether or not the tab is open. A new character refills a full bar of energy in about 50 minutes, health in about 100 and mana in about 25, and however large those pools grow later, a full refill is never allowed to take longer than about 4.75 hours for energy, 133 minutes for health or 33 for mana. So the game rewards a few short visits across a day rather than one marathon. Most sessions are five minutes: spend what you have banked, sell what you looted, check what your guild has been doing, and close the tab.
The realm spans 4 cities, Ashenvale, Shadowmere, Duskholm and The Dark Citadel, each unlocked by rank and each grimmer, richer and more dangerous than the last. Where you stand matters: deeds, shops, casinos and heists are all tied to the city you are currently in. See the cities of the realm for what each one gates behind it.
What there is to do
Shadowrealm is not one loop with a coat of paint on it. Underneath the deeds there is a full set of systems, each with its own economy and its own reasons to come back:
- Gear and crafting: 12 equipment slots and 6 rarities from common to divine, the last never found, only forged. 21 raw materials, mostly earned from deeds and heists, feed 65 forge recipes, and you can reroll or upgrade a piece you already wear.
- Player versus player: open-world attacks, ritual duels with an optional escrowed gold wager, and a rated Arena ladder that runs in seasons. See Arena, duels and PvP.
- Guilds: a shared treasury, a permissions table, a jointly-built Stronghold that keeps producing while you are logged out, and a warcamp that pays the whole roster.
- Jail and jailbreaks: a failed crime has consequences. Serve the sentence, or have somebody break you out, and break other players and wanted NPCs out for the reward.
- The economy: a player-run marketplace, a fence, a bank that pays daily interest, and a black market that rotates its stock every day. Prices are set by players, not by a vendor table. See gold, banking and trading.
- Gambling: 8 casino games, including a real poker room, and the casinos themselves are player-owned businesses that bank the house edge on every bet placed at them.
- Crew work: 3 multi-player heists where a crew fills the roles and splits the payout, plus realm-wide city boss events.
- The endgame: reaching the final rank does not end the game, it opens Ascension, a prestige reset that trades your rank for permanent, stacking power.
Starting out
Register an account, or take the guest path and start playing immediately with no email address and no password, upgrading later if you decide to stay. Either way you begin in Ashenvale with a full pool of energy. Spend it on the cheapest deeds until you can afford better equipment, put what you do not need in the bank so it earns while you are away, and pick up the daily quests, they pay you for playing the way you already were.
If you want to know more before you commit: the game guide walks through every system in order, the FAQ answers the short questions, the wiki holds every catalog and number straight from the live game, about Shadowrealm explains who makes it and why, and the rules of conduct set out what is and is not allowed in the realm.
Shadowrealm is free to play. It has an optional premium currency for cosmetic and convenience purchases, and nothing in it is gated behind a payment: every rank, every city and every piece of equipment is reachable by playing.