Skeldwinter

A Norse survival RPG on a changing northern coast.

Arrive at Skeldheim Harbour and make a new life among Viking settlements, forests and mountain ruins. Hunt, craft, trade and build your own camp, alone or with trusted friends.

Windows 64-bit • Early development playtest • Latest tester download: 0.99

0.99 is now available through the main itch Windows update channel. Close the game and launcher before updating, and check the installed version before playing together.

Important for players upgrading from 0.91 or earlier: characters and worlds start fresh once. Previous saves are set aside in a local backup; existing logins are kept. New heroes start with 50 gold. Keep your own save backup before updating.

Explore

• Discover Skeldheim, Nordvik, Kaldvik and Emberstead, with traders, quest-givers and roads connecting the coast to the Frostline Highlands.
• Follow 102 one-time main-story and side quests, plus repeatable faction work.
• Reveal the map as you travel, unlock waystones by visiting them, and discover Kaldvik to unlock the Nordvik longboat taxi.
• Explore the Frozen Barrow and the four-hero Cinder Vault, with puzzles and a level-50 boss encounter.
• Travel through changing seasons, weather and day/night lighting.

Build your hero

• Choose Ranger, Warrior, Priest, Mage or Rogue, with three Solo and three Multiplayer character slots and progression to level 50.
• Train nine weapon masteries, choose skill-tree paths and equip skills for your weapon. Classes choose your starting kit; attribute requirements determine what you can wield.
• Fight with melee weapons, bows and elemental or healing staves. Guard, charge attacks and place area spells on the ground.
• Find gear from common to legendary, with rolled bonuses, defence and elemental resistance.

Make your living

• Gather wood, stone, fibre and hides; make tools, weapons, armour and potions while developing your crafting professions.
• Trade with NPCs and build camps, storage and workstations.
• Buy a house with a bed and chest for 1,000 gold; a second chest costs 1,000. Rent is 100 gold per game week (14 real hours). The calendar continues while you are offline.

Update 0.99

Skills change how creatures fight, with clearer status feedback and a new belongings chest.

• Control the fight: heavy blows stagger creatures and wide swings knock them back. Great-axe ground waves stagger; Earthsplitter stuns.
• Weapon effects: storm stuns, frost slows or freezes, area fire frightens creatures, bow volleys pin them, and daggers and life-staff attacks weaken their blows.
• Bosses and Champions resist control. Bosses cannot be knocked back, frozen or frightened and recover from stuns faster. Creatures gain two seconds of control immunity after an effect ends.
• Clear status icons: painted effect icons under creature health bars show stacks and remaining time. Your own ailments use icons above the action bar.
• Recover your belongings: an iron-banded Viking chest with a warm light replaces the plain death box. Its gold Norse marker shows the chest, distance and time remaining.

No new save wipe in 0.99. Existing characters, inventory, buildings and local logins are kept.

Earlier updates: 0.97 and 0.98

Champions, new weapons and shields, and the story continues.

• Champions: about one hostile creature in twenty is a Champion - bigger, four times the health and harder hitting. Its body always holds enhanced gear: rare as standard, epic one time in four, and legendary one time in a hundred.
• New weapons: realistic sword, healing, fire, frost and storm staffs, ash spear, bearded axe, and a two-handed great axe (double great axe for rare drops). All drop as loot.
• New Nordvik round and tower shields.
• Great axe skills: the axe throws are now ground blows - Rending wave, Crippling wave and Earthsplitter - and every axe skill has a new painted icon.
• Creatures that stray into town walk back home instead of vanishing; small creatures now live just outside Skeldheim for the first fights.
• Story films parts 3 to 7 play as you move through the main story.
• The launcher checks for updates each time you press Play.

No save wipe in 0.97 or 0.98. Existing characters, inventory, buildings and local logins are kept.

Play with friends

Host and friends must use the same version. The host opens a realm and shares its realm code and .skeldkey invite. In the in-game Multiplayer screen, friends use Use Friend's Invite, enter the realm code or address and choose Join Friend. The host must remain in-game.

Epic Online Services provides a relay without requiring an Epic account. Direct-address fallback may require UDP port 7777 forwarding. Internet play between separate homes still needs tester verification.

Before you play

This is a limited development playtest, not a finished MMO. Expect bugs and possible future progression resets. Animation, combat balance, performance, sound mix and multiplayer reliability are still being improved; an intermittent development-renderer crash remains under investigation.

Accounts and progress are stored locally or on the host, not in an online account or cloud-save service. Report bugs in the comments with your version, location and steps to reproduce them.

Full version history is included in patchnotes.txt in the download. Read the Frostline Highlands expansion news.

Gameplay screenshots

Unedited captures from the 0.89 mountain expansion. Some development-review captures show QA HUD values.

Emberstead, the six-home mountain village.

Patchy snow above the summer snowline.

The Cinder Vault entrance, captured in the packaged game.

Four puzzle seals protect the boss gate.

Surtval the Cinder Lord in his fire-lit arena.