Is it PvP only? No — but you cannot switch PvP off
Every normal run is PvPvE: monsters and other squads share the map, and no setting removes the other squads. What softens that in practice is threefold. Lobbies are padded with bots — permanently, by design, per the developer AMA — and your first hours are mostly against them. Deaths to monsters or the mist are recoverable through Soul Form, so players are the only opponents who can permanently end a run. And a pure PvE mode is in development, confirmed in the same AMA, though it has no date. The solo queue coming to Brandrgarde in September is not it — that removes trios from your lobby, not PvP.
- No PvP-off toggle exists in any current queue.
- Bots pad lobbies and are a permanent part of the design; matches get honest around level four or five.
- A pure PvE mode is in development per the community AMA — the thing to watch if PvP is your blocker.
Players are the only permanent threat
Monsters and the mist can be recovered from through Soul Form. Players cannot. That asymmetry should drive every decision — it makes aggressive PvE learning cheap and it makes every player contact the moment the run is genuinely on the line.
Spotting and being spotted
Enemy players are marked in red, in the tradition of Dark Souls invaders, so identification is not the hard part. Position is. The reliable openings are the ones where your target has already spent something: mid-boss, deep in a loot zone, or committed to an extraction channel that announces itself with a bell.
- Extraction is loud by design. A ringing bell tells everyone still alive exactly where you are.
- Killing a player pays extremely well because they are carrying both what they brought and what they have scavenged.
- Denying an extraction is sometimes worth more than the kill, because it keeps the map from emptying out around you.
Breakaway decides close fights
After two instances of impact damage in quick succession, a dodge triggers Breakaway, which breaks stagger and ignores unit collision. Good players use it to escape your opening combo, which means your third light attack often whiffs into thin air. Kits with curving follow-ups or instant re-application answer this; raw light-attack chains do not.
Not every kit can force one — and that cuts both ways
Every class has Breakaway defensively. Being able to trigger it on someone else is a different question, and it is one the tier lists do not ask. It takes two instances of impact damage in quick succession, which a melee chain supplies for free and a ranged kit built on damage-over-time mostly does not. A leaderboard Blackarrow puts it flatly: the class cannot reliably force a Breakaway at all, and the one route it has is a light stagger followed immediately by Scattershot, which knocks the target away and usually makes them spend it.
- If you cannot force it, your opponent chooses when to spend it — so the opening combo you were saving is being read, not landed.
- If you can force it, making them spend it early is worth more than the damage: the second engage is the one that kills.
- Waiting is a real option. Against a kit that does a two-hit combo and stops, holding your own Breakaway until the third attack lands is what stops you being roll-caught the moment you use it.
What a slow actually stops
Movement slows read as universal crowd control on a talent tree and behave very differently in a fight. Against a class whose gap closer is a lunge, the slow does close to nothing — the lunge covers its distance regardless — which is why "kite them out" advice fails against half the roster. This table is the same leaderboard Blackarrow’s account of what his own debuffs do and do not reach, and it generalises to any kit that is trying to hold distance.
| Their movement | Does a slow stop it? | Does it progress a dodge-punish debuff? |
|---|---|---|
| Ordinary running | Yes — this is where stacking slows pay off | Not applicable |
| A dodge | Not while it is happening | Yes — this is what a debuff like Barbed Arrow is counting |
| A lunge or gap closer | No. It arrives on top of you anyway | No. The tally you were building does not move |
| Withered Knight Polearm & Shield charge | No | Reported as the one exception that does proc — a single observation, treat it as a lead |
Ordinary running
- Does a slow stop it?
- Yes — this is where stacking slows pay off
- Does it progress a dodge-punish debuff?
- Not applicable
A dodge
- Does a slow stop it?
- Not while it is happening
- Does it progress a dodge-punish debuff?
- Yes — this is what a debuff like Barbed Arrow is counting
A lunge or gap closer
- Does a slow stop it?
- No. It arrives on top of you anyway
- Does it progress a dodge-punish debuff?
- No. The tally you were building does not move
Withered Knight Polearm & Shield charge
- Does a slow stop it?
- No
- Does it progress a dodge-punish debuff?
- Reported as the one exception that does proc — a single observation, treat it as a lead
The current duel and squad meta
Shadowstrix remains the best pure duelist even after losing its ability to stack stuns on an already-stunned target. In trios the support Seer is close to mandatory, largely because Death Ward outright prevents an ally death for a window. The composition the early lists converge on is Blackarrow, Stardust Sorcerer and support Seer.
Fair play enforcement is now explicit
Bellring's 3 August fair-play announcement says confirmed cheating receives a permanent account and device ban. The same post was later clarified because some translations made "Illegal Teaming" sound too broad: the punishable case is multiple players deliberately entering the same match to team up against others or otherwise ruin the match experience. The 7 August server notice keeps that policy live: report suspected cheating or arranged teaming in-game, and Bellring says successful reports will soon trigger feedback emails. That does not change normal trio PvP or split-second in-match decisions, but it does mean arranged lobby collusion is a reportable offense rather than just poor etiquette.
Matchmaking is the honest complaint
The loudest community grievance at launch is the absence of meaningful matchmaking, with fully geared squads wiping lobbies of newer players, alongside requests for EU servers. The developers have confirmed bots are a permanent part of the design and that there is no duo queue in the short term. Until that changes, gear-gating your own difficulty tier is the only lever you actually control — which is what the Hallowgrove Normal blue-quality cap is for.