Character Creation
Creating Your Character
Haven and Hearth's character creation is more interactive than your regular MMO, and it might be easy to miss some important steps.
The Pool
When creating a character you will begin as a small shining ball with no form and no name, in your own separate mini-world that folds in on itself. You have free reign here without consequences: familiarize yourself with the controls and user interface, make some discoveries, try stuff out. Nothing gets saved either, your character won't even exist until you've completed character creation. Learn what you can, for you will soon be thrown to the wolves... (but don't linger too long, the wolves are much more fun).
Exit the pool to the north east (north on your minimap) and you will be greeted with a welcome message.
The River
When you follow the path you will receive another message, telling you to choose between left and right. This will let you pick your gender. Cross the river over the left path to incarnate as a female, and over the right as a male.
If you get stuck with a message saying "You need the swimming skill to cross deep water", it's because you're walking into the edges of the deep water (you can see them as blue squiggles if you zoom in), you can only walk over shallow water, but it's a bit hard to see where your feet are going, y'know being a floating orb and all... Go backwards a bit and try to position yourself in the middle of the path, then click across the river and it should let you through. Behold your newborn naked body!
Follow the path again to continue. You will find a small pool of water. Right click on it to choose your hairstyle. Keep going on until you come to a clearing with a campfire, a wizard, and a small fenced-in area.
The Wizard
The wizard lets you pick your name, right click him to type one. You can do this as many times as you want while you're here. You can always change your display name later though, so it's not a big deal if you mess up. You can pick any name for your character, even if someone else has the same, but you can't name two of your own characters the same.
The Fire
When you're done playing around in your little bubble and you've taken a name, right click the fire to be spawned into the wilderness, or on an ancestor's Hearth Fire if you've inherited one.
This can play a little hard to get. Your character has to walk onto the fire, but sometimes it won't let you because you're hitting it at an odd angle. Walk backward a bit and right click it again. You may have to do this a few times for it to work.
The Graveyard
The fenced-in area is your graveyard.
If you have previous characters that died, they have a gravestone here which you can inherit from. Right click a stone to examine it, and click the Inherit button to pass on their Hearth Fire and property to you. Once again, you can change this as many times as you want while you're here, it will only take effect when you leave.
The text on the center stone, "Deyr fé, deyja frændr, deyr sjálfr et sama", is from an old viking poem, meaning: "Cattle die, kinsmen die, you yourself die". The poem goes on to say: "I know one thing, which never dies: the judgement of a dead man's life." This is permadeath game, and death shall find you too. What matters is how you lived!
Valhalla
Valhalla is a mini-world with the sole purpose of doing battle, where you can increase your combat stats up to 300 by feasting on a giant roast boar, and a host of weapons and armour lie scattered all around for you to use.
You can enter Valhalla by right-clicking the rainbow on the west side of the starting pool, then select the character you wish to go as and click "Ride the Rainbow!"
Characters in Valhalla are saved after logging out, and you can revisit whenever you want.
Notes
- You can get a head start by discovering a couple things during character creation: Branch, Bark, Spruce Bough, Spruce Cone, Pine Cone, Willow Catkin, Bittersweet Nightshade Berries, Caprifole Berries, Dirt, Acre Clay from the clearing (will give both the specific acre clay and the generic Clay discovery), and Clay from the river. It is possible to create clay items during creation, but they will not travel with you into the world.
- If you get lucky and get an Experience Event during character creation, you can craft a Cone Cow and study it. When you spawn in the world you retain whatever you put in your Study Report. Anything in your inventory is lost.