Project Ebonhold - A Custom Wrath of the Lich King Exprience, Rebuilt for Discovery.

A Rogue-Lite action experience inspired by Vampire Survivors, set in the universe of Wrath of the Lich King. You play in Runs: short-to-medium progression loops where you start at level 1, stack powerful Echoes (special abilities), and push as far as you can. When the run ends, you keep long-term progress through an account-wide Skill Tree.

What This Means in Practice

• Fast combat with constant decision-making (build choices every level)
• Long-term progression that carries across runs and characters on your account
• A more dangerous world than standard WotLK (see Difficulty & Intensity below)

Runs

A Run starts when you begin at level 1 and ends when you accept death (or can't continue). During a run you earn resources (including Soul Ashes) and build your character through Echoes.

Death Options During a Run

• Use limited revives (free pass / other player / class-resurrection). Increase the limit through the Skill Tree.
• Pay Soul Ashes to revive (cost increases each time).
• Or end the run and convert your Soul Ashes into permanent upgrades (spendable in the Skill Tree).

What You Keep vs Lose

• Lose: your run build (Echoes) and your level (back to 1).
• Keep: long-term character/account progress (gear, gold, professions, etc.) and Skill Tree upgrades.

Echoes

Echoes are run-only perks offered as you level up: each time, pick 1 out of 3. Echoes shape your build and enable different playstyles from run to run.

Echoes come in different rarities: Common → Uncommon → Rare → Epic. Higher quality is stronger and shows up less often.

Your Skill Tree contains nodes to increase your luck. It's a new statistic that increases your chances to get higher quality Echoes.

You don't like the Echoes that you get offered? You can reroll or banish a limited number of times through each run. Specific Skill Tree nodes increase your allowed rerolls and banishes count.

Your choices shape your build: echoes are assigned to families. Choosing echoes in a family reinforces your chances of drawing echoes in that family.

Unlock additional and thematic Echoes by defeating certain dungeon/raid bosses (drop guaranteed) or on specific mobs in the open world (low drop chances).

New echoes will be added with each patch, expanding the variety of builds you can create.

Skill Tree

The Skill Tree is account-wide, permanent progression: it boosts all characters on your account. This is where "progress through death" happens: ending a run is how you turn Soul Ashes into lasting power.

The Skill Tree has multiple branches, each focusing on different aspects of gameplay (combat, survivability, resource gain, etc.).

You can change your choices in the Skill Tree any time you are out of combat.

Once you unlock all the nodes available in the current patch, you no longer accumulate soul ashes. However, through dedicated achievements you can unlock permanent soul ashes multipliers.

In each patch, we will add new nodes to the Skill Tree, and thereby increase the maximum limit of soul ashes that you can accumulate.

We use custom difficulty scaling by area and a more dangerous open world. At some point, you must end runs and invest into the Skill Tree to keep progressing otherwise the difficulty catches up.

Soul Ashes

Soul Ashes are your meta-progression currency. You earn them through normal gameplay: killing mobs, completing quests, and exploring.

Soul Ashes are calculated from the XP you earn, even at max level.

Soul Ashes Gain Formula

Soul Ashes = (XP gained, ignoring XP rates/multipliers) ÷ 20

At level 80, XP is computed as if you were level 79 (so you still earn Soul Ashes at max level). Killing grey-level mobs doesn't grant any Soul Ashes.

This means: leveling, questing, and exploration all feed long-term progression, not just your current run.

Game Loop

A simple way to think about it:

1. Start a run (level 1)
2. Choose Echoes as you level and shape your build
3. Earn Soul Ashes from XP activities (kills, quests, exploration)
4. Push difficulty until you die
5. Decide: revive (limited) or end the run
6. Spend Soul Ashes in the Skill Tree
7. Start again, permanently stronger
8. Push as far as you can through the game's content

Hardcore Mode

As you progress in your skill tree, your character becomes stronger and the game starts to feel easier. If you are looking for an extra challenge (with extra rewards such as more soul ashes, more gold, better gear, etc.), you can choose among 3 difficulty levels in Hardcore Mode.

In all hardcore difficulties, once you die, you have only one choice: accept death and get your character reset to level 1 (you start a new run).

The difficulty you choose (normal, hardcore I, II or III) applies to the entire game: in the open world, in dungeons and in raids.

You can change the difficulty any time while you are in an inn or in a city.

Difficulty & Intensity

We made the world more dangerous on purpose, so the run and meta progression loop actually matters. This includes a major increase in open-world pressure: 35,000+ additional creatures placed across the world.

Intensity System

As you earn Soul Ashes quickly, your Intensity rises. Higher Intensity can trigger:

• More threats (extra spawns, more enemies visible, debuffs, explosions, etc.)
• And eventually The Reaper: a world threat designed to require ~40 players to take down

If you push through intensity levels, you take additional risks, but you also get additional rewards: a temporary soul ashes multiplier for each intensity level.

Intensity decreases if you get out of combat or stop accumulating soul ashes over a certain time window.

Boosted Gear Quests and Crafts

The Skill Tree and Echoes are the core source of your character's power.

To make questing and crafting more relevant to your experience, all the gear items you can craft or obtain as quest rewards have been boosted.

As you keep your gear when you accept death and get your character reset, it becomes relevant to acquire gear for different leveling ranges.

Gear Affixes

Gear has a chance to drop with affixes: additional effects selected at random in a pool of relevant effects for each piece of gear.

You have two options with a gear item with an affix: use the item, or extract the affix from the item. With the second option, you can then apply the affix on other items. Once unlocked for your character, you can apply the affix on as many pieces as you want. Gold must be paid to extract and apply affixes.

In Hardcore mode, you get a chance to obtain stronger affixes.

Progressive Content Release

We're not dumping everything on day one. At the opening, we started at the Naxxramas era. Currently, we are at the Ulduar era and working on the preparation of the next patch.

Over a fixed time schedule, we will release subsequent patches, unlocking additional raids and dungeons.

With each patch will also come:

• Additional Skill Tree Nodes (and an increased Soul Ashes cap).
• New Echoes.
• New Achievements to unlock permanent soul ashes multipliers.

After the first patch, a catch-up mechanic is implemented for players that would join the game late, so they can unlock previously released content faster. This takes the shape of a temporary soul ashes multiplier that lasts until you acquired all the Skill Tree nodes of the previous patch.

Solo vs. Group Experience

During your leveling runs in the open world, you can choose to play solo or in a group. Progressing solo will be more challenging, especially if you don't have any meta-progression. It's still completely possible to reach level 80 solo, and as you acquire meta-progression, Echoes and gear, it becomes easier. Whether you want a solo leveling experience that feels challenging, or prefer to group up with friends to share the experience, both options are viable.

When it comes to dungeons and raids, you will most likely not be able to clear them in solo. The more powerful you get (through Skill Tree, Echoes and gear), the smaller the group size needs to be, and some dungeons or raids might be possible to clear solo. Clearing raids with smaller group sizes (e.g. clearing Naxxramas 10 with 8 players) will unlock achievements that provide permanent Soul Ashes multipliers.

Overall, throughout your journey, you will most likely need to group up for specific activites. While some players might be able to solo dungeons or raids, we do not provide any guarantee that any dungeon or raid will be soloable. That being said, if you are able to do it, congratulations. We will not implement measures aiming to prevent it.

End Goal

Your goal is to build the most powerful character possible to be able to defeat the Lich King with the least possible amount of players. To get up to the challenge, you have 3 main avenues:

• Completing your Skill Tree.
• Find the best possible Echoes build.
• Obtain the best possible Gear.