Jobs of Vhael

TODO: chapter intro. What a job is in Second Calamity — main job, subjob, masteries, and why any job can wield any weapon it can lift. Two or three paragraphs, written to be read, not skimmed.

On the Job

Every character is built in six layers, stacked broadest to narrowest: main job, subjob, masteries, keystones, weapon, and gear. Your main job supplies your engine, your gauge, and the top-half abilities that make it what it is — and that engine flavors every cast you make, sub-granted spells included, so a Mage-granted nuke cast on a Dark Knight main still consumes Dark Knight stacks. Your subjob runs at half your main's level and grants access to nearly everything that job knows — abilities, spell grants, masteries, keystones — subject to that level cap, with frictionless swapping between combinations and no cooldown standing in the way. Masteries are per-job choices made roughly every ten levels, modifying how your engine behaves; they're meant to accumulate into a build you can point to, not vanish as isolated level-up popups, and masteries picked for a subjob persist even after you swap away from it. Keystones sit above masteries as main-only, build-defining choices — the concept is locked but the mechanics are still being forged. TODO: keystone mechanics once decided. Weapon and gear are the outermost layer, skinning your kit and rolling the affixes that shape it.

Tank, Healer, Support, and DPS describe what a job promises to five other people in a six-player party — not how it deals damage. Every job in Vhael can solo, and every job carries real damage output; a Cleric hunting alone isn't a lesser Cleric, just one not currently making that promise to a group. Roles aren't cages, either: gear and masteries can bend most jobs toward a different function, and tank and healer jobs in particular are built to support a competitive DPS alternative build, so switching between "the job that keeps the party alive" and "the job that kills things" doesn't mean re-rolling.

No job owns a weapon type. The weapon in your hands supplies the animation set and VFX skin for your abilities and nothing more — it never gates which of your abilities you can press. Spells carry their own range no matter what you're holding; every other ability is melee-gated unless it specifically declares otherwise, such as a thrown weapon or a shot. The weapon listed next to a job's name in this guide — great-katana for the Samurai, bow for the Bard — is a default rather than a requirement. Find a sword that out-rolls your bow as a Ranger and you keep your entire kit, full auto-attack reach and all, just skinned differently. Ability names in this guide stay weapon-neutral for the same reason — nothing is called an "arrow" or a "bolt," because whatever's in your hands might be neither.

What your job does decide is which weapons you can pick up at all, and how far up each weapon's tier ladder you can climb. That comes from your skill ranks, below.

You carry a skill value in each of the fifteen weapon classes, and it goes up by using the weapon. Land hits with a sword against something worth fighting and your Sword skill climbs on its own. There is nothing to spend and nothing to allocate. The climb is fast when you're far below your ceiling and slows as you approach it, so picking up an unfamiliar weapon at level 50 is an evening's work rather than a month's.

Skill is character-wide, not per-job. Your Sword skill is your Sword skill whether you're playing Paladin or Ninja. What changes when you swap jobs is the ceiling.

Nothing modifies a skill value. No gear, no food, no buff, no trait. Skill comes from use and nothing else, which makes it the one number on your sheet that can't be bought.

Every job holds a grade from A down to E in each weapon it can use, and the grade sets your ceiling: three points per level at A, scaled down by grade. A level 50 Warrior tops out at 150 Greatsword and 111 Staff. Where a job has no grade at all, the ceiling is zero and the weapon simply cannot be equipped.

Those gaps look small, and at the level of raw numbers they are. The gap that matters is what each ceiling unlocks. Weapon bases carry a required skill value, rising with tier, and the requirement is checked against your ceiling rather than your current skill, so you can equip a weapon the moment your job and level allow it and skill the thing up by swinging it. An A-rank job reaches the top tier of that weapon's ladder. A C-rank job stops a tier or more short.

Skill itself does exactly two things: it decides what you can hold, and it feeds your accuracy. It never multiplies your damage. An under-skilled character whiffs rather than tickling, and a fully skilled one is landing hits, not hitting harder. The damage difference between an A-rank job and a C-rank job in the same weapon class is entirely the weapon each is allowed to hold, which you can read off a tooltip instead of inferring from a hidden formula.

Your subjob raises ceilings it's better at, capped at half your main's level. The higher of the two wins and they never add together. A subjob can hand you a weapon class your main lacks entirely, at the subjob's half-level ceiling — which is often the difference between a weapon being unusable and being merely mediocre.

Most jobs carry low ranks in a lot of weapons. Identity is the distance between a job's A ranks and its Es, not a list of things it's forbidden to touch. The exclusions that exist are deliberate: the Samurai is the only job that rises above the bottom grade in Katana, and the pure casters have no grade at all in the heavy two-handers, so a Mage cannot pick up a greatsword under any circumstances.

The fifteen classes are Sword, Greatsword, Axe, Hammer, Mace, Dagger, Fist, Polearm, Scythe, Staff, Wand, Bow, Katana, Great Katana, and Marksman. Marksman is the odd one: it governs the ranged offhands rather than a main-hand weapon, which is why it shows up as the Rogue's A rank and the Ranger's B.

Only one stance can be active on you at a time — full stop, no job stacks two. Every ability on your bar sits on the global cooldown (GCD) or off it; off-GCD abilities are generally the instant ones, meant to be woven between your GCD casts rather than replacing them. Every job also carries a triggered proc: a semi-random spark, mostly earned from landing autos, that lights up a single off-GCD response button with room for exactly one charge. What that response does is entirely class-flavored — most jobs get one answer, though the Brawler famously gets a choice of four. Gauges follow one hard rule: they enhance, they never gate. A gauge-spending ability is always castable at zero charge; the gauge only scales how big that press lands, never whether you're allowed to press it, and no gauge state can ever mode-swap a job between dealing damage and healing or leave its baseline kit weaker than it started. Spirit is Charisma spent as a reservation on top of all that: sustained effects like a Bard's songs or a Summoner's hexes hold a chunk of your CHR for as long as they're active, which is why CHR quietly caps how many of them you can run at once.

Your subjob operates at half your main job's level, full stop — a level 60 main brings a level 30 subjob along, no matter what your subjob's own level might otherwise be. That halving does most of the design work by itself: every job deliberately keeps its identity pieces — signatures, deep grant tiers, capstone abilities — unlocking in the top half of its own level curve, so a subjob naturally never reaches them, leaving only a sparse handful of main-only capstones to worry about. What a sub does bring is real: the bottom-half abilities, spell grants, and masteries of whatever job you've chosen, picked up exactly as if you were leveling it as a main. The one deliberate exception is the engine: a subjob's gauge never activates, so a gauge-spender ability tags along as inert flavor rather than a build pillar, though resource-sustained tools like a Bard's songs or a Summoner's hexes still function normally as a sub. You also only get to keep one proc lit at a time — your main's or your sub's, your choice.

Tanks

The Brawler weathers a hit before answering it, turning guards and counters into earth-and-water retaliation. As a tank, the promise is simple: hits land on you, but they're guarded or blocked more often than not, and every counter you throw back is retaliation, never a shield eating the damage for free. Solo, that same loop makes the Brawler self-sufficient — water-aspected magic keeps you patched up, earth keeps you standing, and the charge you're building never stops ticking whether anyone's watching or not.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Brawler's kit is entirely its own — no shared spells, no grants; its water and earth magic live in its abilities alone.

TODO: Engine Name

The Brawler's loop never turns off. Every counter, every auto-attack, and every combo you complete adds a charge — capped at one — and once it's lit, you choose what to do with it: throw an enmity hit to hold aggro, a damage hit to press an advantage, an interrupt to shut a spell down, or a water-aspected heal to patch yourself up mid-fight. Nothing about the choice is timed or forced; it waits for you. TODO: exact charge windows and follow-up numbers pending.

Every counter, auto-attack, and finished combo charges a single trigger, and when it lights up you choose the follow-up yourself — an enmity hit, a damage hit, an interrupt, or a water heal. TODO: expand.

The Paladin wears holy law as armor, trading incoming damage for outlasting endurance. In a party, that means holding the line for as long as the fight demands, turning holy damage dealt into the barriers and protections that keep everyone else standing. A shield is the natural fit for the hand not holding a sword, but it's itemization, not a requirement — what makes a Paladin is the holy damage feeding Radiance, not the offhand.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

Radiance

Every point of holy damage you land fills Radiance, and it only ever pays for defense — barriers for yourself, Aegis charges you can hand to the party. The framing is deliberate: a Paladin's offense is what funds a Paladin's protection, so pressing your damage rotation harder is never at odds with keeping people alive. TODO: fill rates and Radiance costs pending.

All your other heals are casted, but landing your trigger fires an instant self-heal for free. TODO: expand.

The Samurai reads an opponent's swing before it lands, turning a parry into the next opening. This is a tank built on pre-emptive defense rather than raw mitigation: skills exist to line attacks up before they happen, and a successful parry banks resources rather than just avoiding damage. Alone, that same discipline reads as patience rewarded — every clean parry, deliberate or passive off your gear, builds toward the cut that ends the fight.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Samurai's kit is entirely its own — no shared spells, no grants.

Poise

Poise builds from every successful parry or deflect — including passive parries your gear grants on its own, not just abilities you actively time. Bank it and spend it on Execution Cut, whose damage scales directly with how much Poise you cash in, so a patient Samurai who stacks a full bar hits dramatically harder than one who spends on reflex. Set Cut runs alongside the gauge rather than through it: declare the cut, and if you time it into an incoming enemy action, it resolves a beat later as a parry-and-punish rather than a straight attack. TODO: Poise costs and Execution Cut scaling numbers pending.

Landing your trigger banks an instant chunk of Poise, no parry required. TODO: expand.

The Ninja survives by not being where the blade arrives, layering evasion until it counts as armor. Throwing weapons and jutsu magic round the kit into a mystic glue that holds evasion tanking together, so a party leaning on a Ninja is trusting speed and misdirection over a shield wall. Solo, the same evasion becomes a genuine safety net once Ward starts absorbing the overflow from your own heals.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Ninja's kit is entirely its own — jutsu are signature job magic, not shared library spells.

Utsu

Every jutsu you cast fills Utsu, and you spend it on Utsusemi to raise shadow images — the number summoned scales with how much you spend, and each one silently eats a single attack that would otherwise have landed. It's earned, deterministic mitigation rather than a dodge roll. The Ninja survives on top of that gauge through a passive quirk of the job: your evasion rating counts twice, once as evasion and once as if it were armor, so evasion-based gear becomes real tank stats only in Ninja hands. Overheals spill into Ward, a second HP pool that fills only after your main health caps and drains before it does, giving you a buffer that tops up deliberately slower than a straight heal. TODO: Utsu build/spend rates pending.

Landing your trigger throws a free, empowered shuriken — still following the stance-modal rule, so it provokes in enmity stance and damages otherwise. TODO: expand.

Healers

The Cleric heals by prevention first — simply standing near one means less damage gets through. The kit runs on resist and prevention auras rather than reactive heals alone, so a party built around a Cleric takes less damage overall, not just recovers from more of it. Solo, the same auras keep a Cleric standing through fights a purely reactive healer would struggle with, since the damage barely lands in the first place.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

Aegis

Aegis fills from damage your auras and barriers actually prevent — the more effectively you're shielding the party, the faster it charges — and you spend the bank on an instant burst heal or an emergency party-wide bubble when things go wrong despite the prevention. It rewards playing the Cleric's real identity: this is a healer whose value shows up before damage lands, not after, since simply standing near one already means less damage gets through in the first place. TODO: the engine doesn't yet have a stat lane of its own to scale off (aura potency isn't tied to a stat) — open design question, numbers pending.

Landing your trigger increases your aura power for a short time. TODO: expand.

The Druid tends a healer's garden through the turning seasons, timing costly magic to the year's favorable windows. In a party, that means reading the season and choosing when to Linger in a good one or Quicken past a weak one, layering heal-over-time and preparation over raw reaction. Alone, the ambient cycle still turns in the background regardless, so even without a party to plan around, a Druid is never without a seasonal edge to lean on.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

Seasons & Attunement

An ambient year turns beneath every Druid, cycling roughly every thirty seconds through Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, each pass granting a different passive edge to your healing: Spring makes HoTs stronger and longer, Summer speeds up MP refresh, Autumn cuts the cost of your heals and refunds some of it back, and Winter converts any overheal into shields instead of wasting it. None of it is a downside season — your kit stays fully competent year-round, and the cycle is pure bonus on top. Attunement builds from your healing casts and HoT ticks, and you spend it on one of two calls: Linger, which holds the current season in place, or Quicken, which fast-forwards the year to the next one. Force of Nature cuts through all of that on a five-minute cooldown, setting the year to whichever season you need immediately. TODO: Attunement build/spend rates pending.

Landing your trigger stacks a buff that makes your HoTs and DoTs tick harder per stack. TODO: expand.

The Arbiter walks the line between light and dark, never quite settling on either side. A party built around an Arbiter gets a healer whose casts double as damage depending on where the needle sits — dark casts and sanctuary heals both come from the same hands. Solo, the needle still rewards commitment to one side or a deliberate stay in twilight, so how you play alone is a real statement about which side of the balance you favor.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Needle

Light casts push the needle toward sanctuary and dark casts push it toward attrition, and it never actually rests dead-center — twilight is a band you thread, not a spot you can park in. Where the needle sits changes what every cast does: deep in dark, your casts carry a bonus DoT; in the twilight band, every cast fires an opposite-aspect sliver at your target's target, so healing someone lashes their target with dark and damaging something drops a heal on whoever it's fighting; deep in light, a small ambient heal pulses out to everyone in a large radius around you. There's no dead zone anywhere on the needle — wherever you sit is a playstyle statement, not a mistake. TODO: needle movement rates pending.

Landing your trigger makes your next cast fire its opposite-aspect sliver regardless of where the needle sits. TODO: expand.

The Apothecary throws chemistry at the problem, mixing venom, vitriol, and balm from the same satchel. Every ability is a vial with a reagent tag, so a party can lean on the same kit for healing, debuff support, or poison damage depending on which reagent gets poured most. Solo, that flexibility means never being locked into one lane — the last three pours decide what Release Mix throws, so the kit adapts to whatever the fight in front of you actually needs.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Mix

The Mix remembers your last three reagent pours — Venom, Vitriol, or Balm — and Release Mix throws whichever the majority calls for: three Venom pours out a heavy spreading DoT, three Vitriol a heavy defense-and-attack debuff, three Balm a big instant heal. A two-and-one mix throws the majority effect plus a minor dose of the leftover reagent, and a perfectly mixed rainbow of all three throws a small dose of everything. There's no wrong way to build a mix — a sloppy pour is always a small boon, never a penalty, so the worst-case outcome of ignoring the Mix entirely is still free value. TODO: exact potency numbers pending.

Landing your trigger instantly throws a free copy of your current brew at your target, without touching the Mix. TODO: expand.

Support

The Bard tours the battlefield like a circuit-rider, handing every ally in earshot a verse to carry. In a party, that means physically moving through the formation, painting buffs onto people one at a time rather than blanketing the whole group from a fixed spot. Solo, the songs still buff the Bard directly, so there's no dead weight to performing alone — every verse you play works on you too.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Bard's kit is entirely its own — songs and Chord are signatures; the performance is the job.

Volume

Volume climbs as you play the fight — damage casts and ticks landed while your songs run all feed it, and crits pump it especially hard, which doubles as the class's participation hook in place of a separate proc. Release is the one button that spends it: press it and every song currently playing surges, hitting stronger and lasting longer the more Volume you cashed in. TODO: Volume build/spend rates pending.

The Bard has no separate off-GCD trigger button — crits while playing pump extra Volume, so landing crits is your participation reward. TODO: expand.

The Beastmaster fights beside a tamed companion while a signature hawk carries gifts earned from a growing monster journal. A party gets melee damage plus a support minigame: steering the hawk to spread bound gifts while the buddy fights and the master keeps swinging. Solo, taming is the acquisition loop rather than the combat loop — the journal fills from the wild, and even without the hawk deployed, gifts radiate from the Beastmaster themselves.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Beastmaster's kit is entirely its own — no shared spells, no grants.

TODO: Engine Name

Every tameable species in Vhael goes into your monster journal, and taming one enough times in the wild masters it permanently — rare species in dangerous places become their own collection chase. Two companions stay with you at all times: the hawk, your signature constant, which you steer around the battlefield as a beacon carrying your bound gifts (perch it over your casters, wheel it back to melee, and everyone near it catches and carries what it's broadcasting); and the buddy, a chosen mastered creature that fights beside you full-time and takes your commands for its damaging abilities, its output normalized across species so the choice is about identity, not a damage ranking. Bonds tie mastered creatures' gifts to your Charisma the same way a Bard's songs do — each bond reserves CHR while active, so CHR sets how many gifts your hawk can carry at once, and the whole set swaps like a setlist through Manifests, six saved loadouts you build in the journal UI and switch between with ceremony as bonded creatures burst out, leap into the hawk, and vanish. Calls are the fast, cheap layer on top: instant cameo summons on their own cooldowns, no CHR involved, the creature flashing in to act and leaving. Fighting as the master fills the gauge, and its single spender, Great Roar, scales an intimidate effect plus a party damage and shield boost by how much you spent. TODO: engine name, tame mechanics, and exact numbers pending.

The wild answers when your trigger lands: a random mastered creature cameos for free, no cooldown consumed, and the pool grows richer the more your journal fills. TODO: expand.

The Rogue is the party's thief and its lucky charm. Magical shots fired through the formation, mainhand steel woven in close, and everything of value on the battlefield ends up in the crew's pockets: Steal robs the enemy of its own stats for your party to wear, a full Haul gauge gilds your next shot so every ally in its flight path walks away richer, and an enhancer's spellbook covers whatever the dice didn't hand you. All that generosity makes the enemy hate you — which is what Trick Attack is for: fire through the tank and drop half your heat where it belongs. Solo, the loot and the luck all land on one person; the Rogue alone is a self-buffing skirmisher with loaded dice.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Rogue carries an enhancer's spellbook from the shared library — the chosen half of its support, beside Steal's lucky half: the Ward line (Fireward, Frostward, Galeward, Stoneward, Shockward, Tideward — party-wide elemental resistance), the Mantle line (Ember, Frost, and Storm Mantle — damage-return skin on an ally), Hone (weapon damage up), the en-spell line (elemental weapon coats), Regen I (a trickle, never healer-grade), and Brace (flat physical damage reduction on an ally).

Haul

Every weapon press pays into the Haul — a little from each shot, a lot from each mainhand slash, so darting into melee is how you charge faster. At 100 the gauge doesn't ask for a new button: your next shot simply fires Gilded — gold light the whole room can read — and every ally standing in its flight path gets buffed while a share of their enmity slides onto you. Then the bank is empty and your shots are ordinary again. Positioning is your job, not the party's: they stand where they fight, you pick the firing angle that threads the most of them. TODO: fill rates and the Gilded buff itself pending.

Your trigger lights a pair of dice. Press the button and they fly — a fixed table by total, every total pays something, and doubles hit the jackpot. Players learn the table, and then they pray at it. TODO: the outcome table.

The Summoner keeps a knapsack of sustained hexes lit while an ever-present avatar partner answers every cast. A party gets a support built around a knapsack decision — knowing many hexes, sustaining only a few at once, and re-deciding as the fight turns — plus a partner whose role bends to whatever the Summoner's subjob calls for. Solo, the partner is always there from level one regardless of party size, quietly acting on every cast you make.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

Resonance

Two separate reservations run at once: Charisma holds your hexes in place, and max MP feeds the avatar partner manifested at your side from level one. Hexes are sustained rather than timed — once placed, a hex holds until you release it or its bearer dies, with only one instance of any hex ever active, and each one is an anchored aura that afflicts the bearer plus every enemy in a radius around it, the inverse of a Bard song. Placing a hex requires concentrating it first, a toggle that reserves CHR by the hex's weight; heavy hexes like Sundering, Conduction, and Exposure are fat universal amplifiers, while lighter ones like Burden, Stammer, and Unraveling are cheap, situational tools — the fun is deciding which few you can afford to keep running as the fight turns. The partner itself acts automatically off your landed casts, no commands and no targeting, its role imprinted by your subjob: a damage lane strikes your target, a buff lane pulses a nearby ally, a mend lane heals whoever's lowest. Resonance builds from casts landing on hexed enemies and spends on Invocation, which has the partner perform its role-act at a magnitude set by how much you spend — always castable, always scaled by the bank. TODO: hex weight/CHR costs and Resonance rates pending.

The partner acts on its own when your trigger lands: a free instant act at your current form's tier, off-GCD. TODO: expand.

Damage Dealers

The Elementalist rides a wheel of elements, always striking the weakness it just created. A party gets a DPS whose damage never stops finding a fresh vulnerability, since every cast either lands on the wheel's current element for one effect or rotates it for another. Solo, the checklist nature of the wheel — cast all six, in any order, to bank a Prismatic charge — means there's always a next step, never a dead rotation.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

Revolution

Casting all six elements, in any order, banks a Prismatic charge and resets the checklist — landing on a particular wheel position doesn't matter, only that the casts happened. Every non-Prism-Bolt ability carries Alignment: two meaningfully different modes, one when you cast it on the wheel's current element and land on it, another when you cast it off-wheel and rotate the wheel there. Neither mode is simply stronger — they do different things, so reading the wheel before you press is part of the job. Prism Bolt, your main nuke, always fires whatever element the wheel currently sits on, which means you're perpetually hitting a weakness you just created. TODO: Prismatic charge payoff and Alignment numbers pending.

Landing your trigger fires an instant bolt of the current wheel element that counts as every element at once. TODO: expand.

The Mage commands six elemental attunements and a lane of forbidden dark magic besides. A party gets the roster's deepest spell list and debuff toolkit in one job, with elemental casting quietly funding a separate dark lane on the side. Solo, the six attunements mean a Mage is rarely caught without an answer to whatever's standing in front of them, elemental resistances included.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

Umbra

Six elemental attunements sit under one button-set — swap attunement and the same buttons cast a different element, so you're never juggling six separate spellbooks. Dark magic runs alongside all six as its own fixed lane rather than another attunement, and it's fed by Umbra: every elemental cast, in any attunement, builds Umbra, and the dark lane spends it, so pushing your elemental rotation harder is what funds your forbidden work. The job's other identity piece — a mana pool that doubles as a Ward battery, with spell power tied to how full it is — is still open in its specifics. TODO: Ward/mana interplay numbers pending.

Landing your trigger makes your next spell cast instantly. TODO: expand.

The Reaver spreads venom from twin blades, striking from an angle the front never sees. A party gets sustained poison damage plus a positional dance — Flank Strike rewards any angle except head-on, so a Reaver is always working an enemy's side or back. Solo, the wraith-serpent toggle turns accumulated poison into a second attacker on a fixed tempo, letting a Reaver keep pressure on even between their own swings.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Reaver's kit is entirely its own — its venoms are abilities, not the library's water DoT spell, though how the two scale against each other is still an open question.

Virulence

Every poison you land builds Virulence at a flat rate, no scaling tricks. The wraith-serpent is a toggle you lay on top of that bank: while it's manifested, it drains Virulence at a steady rate and strikes your target on a fixed tempo, each strike applying its own Envenom stack and damage — and critically, those serpent strikes build nothing back, so the whole thing is pure spend. Managing uptime — when to summon it, when to let it lapse and rebuild the bank — is the entire gauge economy. It reads on-screen as a spectral viper coiled at your side, but mechanically it's just a periodic effect ticking on you, never a real creature the enemy can target. TODO: Virulence build/drain rates pending.

Landing your trigger instantly ticks every poison you have on the target once, free. TODO: expand.

The Ranger freely imbues every shot with an element, weaving pairs together for a bigger payoff. A party gets an elemental marksman who can match whatever resistance a fight demands, since imbues switch on the fly rather than being locked to gear. Solo, staying mono-element trades those weave payoffs for steady, specced damage — a real choice between reliability and burst, not just a rotation to memorize.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Ranger's kit is entirely its own — shots are ranged-gated abilities, not spells.

Reactions

Imbues let you switch your active shot element freely, and sequencing two of them together makes the second shot a weave with its own bonus effect: Fire into Wind blooms into a burst, Ice into Lightning shatters for a big single hit, Water into Lightning echoes with a conduction follow-up, and Earth into Fire buffs you into heavier shots for a time. Staying mono-element skips all of that for steady, specced damage instead — a real choice between reliability and the bigger weave payoffs, not just a rotation to memorize. TODO: weave payoff numbers pending.

Landing your trigger makes your next shot auto-weave, counting as a completed pair no matter what element it fires. TODO: expand.

The Dark Knight lets every landed strike stack toward an escalating, magic-fueled cashout. A party gets a melee-caster hybrid whose "fat nuke" moments are earned rather than scripted — the deeper the stack when a nuke lands, the bigger the payoff, dark or elemental alike. Solo, that same stack-and-spend rhythm means a Dark Knight is always building toward something, never just auto-attacking in place.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

Stack Gauge

Weapon abilities build stacks with every landed hit, and any nuke you cast — dark or elemental, it doesn't matter which — consumes the entire bank for a hit whose damage scales with how deep it was, the job's "fat nuke" being nothing more than a deep stack cashed out in one motion. Utility casts like Endark or Drain don't touch the gauge at all, so weaving them in costs you nothing. Because more ability uses means deeper stacks means fatter nukes, Cooldown Recovery Rate is this job's stat soul — it's the one number that compounds everything else the Dark Knight does. TODO: stack caps and nuke scaling numbers pending.

Landing your trigger throws a quick off-GCD strike that deals damage, adds a stack, and grants a short cooldown-recovery buff. TODO: expand.

The Warrior commits to the big, heavy swing, trading speed for numbers that matter. A party gets the roster's simplest, heaviest melee damage — big, telegraphed, full-commitment hits instead of a flurry of small ones. Solo, opening a Form and matching its prompted swings rewards patience with a finisher scaled to match, so even alone there's a real decision in every wind-up.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Warrior's kit is entirely its own — no shared spells, no grants.

Forms

Opening a Form swaps your whole button row for a sequence of heavy, full-commitment swings and slows you into a juggernaut wind-up — every hit in the sequence lands for real damage, not just a wind-up animation. The gauge prompts each swing Simon-says style, and the release at the end is a colossal finisher scaled by how many prompts you actually matched; missing some never punishes you, it just shrinks the finisher. Onslaught is the short version, a roughly thirty-second cooldown for two prompted swings into a big finisher, while Rampage is the long one, a two-minute cooldown for four swings into the earth-splitting finisher. TODO: exact Form timings and finisher scaling pending.

Landing your trigger unleashes Heavy Overhead, an instant empowered swing, off-GCD. TODO: expand.

The Dragoon fights bonded to a wyvern partner, turning the jump into real, weaponized displacement. A party gets a polearm DD whose wyvern breathes on combo finishers, its element and effect shifting to match whatever subjob the Dragoon has equipped. Solo, the wyvern is never a pet to manage — it never dies, never needs commands, and simply fights alongside its bonded partner for as long as it's called.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Dragoon's kit is entirely its own — no shared spells, no grants.

Bond

Breaths fill Bond at a flat, capped rate, and the wyvern fires them automatically on your combo finishers — a triggered effect on you, never a command you issue, since the wyvern is a partner and never targetable or killable. What breath it fires depends on Temperament, which re-imprints from your subjob every time you call the wyvern: no sub or a DPS/Support sub gives you Fang, an elemental bolt at your target that always picks its lowest resist; a tank sub gives you Scale, a small refreshing barrier on you; a healer sub gives you Mend, a modest heal on you or the lowest-HP ally nearby, built for solo sustain rather than competing with an actual healer. Bond never locks anything — it only ever enhances Spirit Link, an off-GCD self-heal that also grants your next finisher an extra breath, or Dragonfall, a paired dive with the wyvern that scales toward colossal — both stay fully castable and baseline-competent at zero Bond, so the only decision is which one gets the bank and whether to spend now or wait. TODO: breath damage-share tuning and Bond rates pending.

The wyvern acts on its own when your trigger lands — Empathy: an instant free breath, off-GCD, no input needed. TODO: expand.

The Spellblade swings between steel and sorcery, building toward a mirror blade that echoes its own attacks. A party gets a melee-dominant hybrid caster where landed hits fund fast, strong casts, and self-cast en-spells layer elemental damage onto every swing. Solo, sustaining that pendulum high enough manifests the Mirror Blade itself, echoing the Spellblade's own abilities back at reduced potency for as long as the melee keeps it topped up.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

Arcane Charge

Landed melee hits build Arcane Charge, and your casts spend it to hit faster and harder — roughly an 80% melee, 20% cast split, with the melee half feeding the magic half. En-spells are core to the loop: self-cast weapon enchants like Enfire or Enfrost add their element to every swing you make. When Arcane Charge runs high enough for long enough, it manifests the Mirror Blade, an aetherial echo that repeats your abilities at reduced potency for as long as melee keeps the charge topped up — the exact manifest condition is still unconfirmed. TODO: Mirror Blade manifest trigger and Arcane Charge numbers pending.

Landing your trigger makes your last ability echo once more at full potency, off-GCD. TODO: expand.

The Juggernaut swings a weapon so heavy its attacks are cast, not pressed — every primary blow is a wind-up with a real cast bar, hauled through its arc while you trudge forward at a heavy walk. A party gets a melee powerhouse whose damage arrives in visible, ground-breaking cycles; solo, the rhythm of cranking the mass up and riding it down makes every fight a slow crescendo. When the Momentum bar fills and the Avalanche begins, the wind-ups stop being casts at all: every swing lands instantly, at full stride, and the earth erupts under each one.

TODO: recruiter hook?

TODO: in-fiction recruiter voice.

The Juggernaut's kit is entirely its own — no shared spells, no grants.

Momentum & the Avalanche

Every landed hit banks Momentum, and nothing ever takes it away — not dodging a mechanic, not a phase transition, not standing still. Wind-up casts bank the most; the small instant hits and weaves add their share. When the bar fills it goes primed and simply waits, as long as you like, until your next landed wind-up cracks it open. Then the Avalanche: your wind-ups lose their cast bars and their movement slow entirely, and every one that lands sets off an earthquake under the target — a second hit as the ground itself gives way. Each swing in the Avalanche spends a piece of the bank, so roughly ten great blows ride down before the mass comes to rest and the cranking begins again. Because primed Momentum keeps forever, the timing of the crack is yours: hold it for the party's burst window, or for the moment a fight finally lets you plant your feet.

Landing your trigger readies Backswing: an instant pre-hit that supes up your next wind-up, its bonus landing as an earthquake of its own. The two-beat — crack, then boom — is sweetest saved for Megalith or a chain finisher.

Raising a Character

TODO: what the opening levels of a job feel like, and what to expect from your starting kit.

TODO: the first story mission a new Awakened takes on, and what it teaches.

TODO: the level and content point where solo play stops being the default and party play opens up.

TODO: how leveling maps onto the regions of Vhael, and when to move on.

Once unlocked, your subjob always runs at half your main job's level, and you can swap either half of that pairing freely, whenever and wherever, with no cooldown standing between you and a new combination. TODO: the level and quest that unlocks the subjob slot, and how to pick a first sub.

TODO: what comes after the leveling arc — masteries, keystones, and endgame systems this guide covers elsewhere.

TODO: the earliest recommended hunting grounds and camps for a fresh job.