Your first run

1. Title → Play → Campaign. With no characters yet, the game opens character creation. With saved characters, the selection screen appears (up to 4): Continue highlights the last one played; there are also New and Delete (with confirmation).

2. Create your warrior. Choose a class (in the beta, only the Warrior is available), type a name of 2 to 16 letters — or use Randomize for names like Ragnar, Sigrid, Eirik or Astrid — and review the four powers and the starting gear.

   

   Character creation. The Warrior starts with a Woodcutter’s Axe and leather armor.

3. Enter Valhalla. Click the ground to walk and click a character to go to them. The E key talks to the nearest one, and the sidebar takes you straight to each of them. In the hall the hero is at peace (except in the Valkyrie’s training grounds).

4. Speak with Heimdall and choose the region (Fjords of Hrafnvik) and the difficulty (Normal the first time). Click Depart: the Gjallarhorn sounds and the Bifröst carries the hero to Midgard.

   

5. Let the hero fight. He advances zone by zone, faces the waves and opens the chests. Keep an eye on life, mana and powers in the bottom bar. Use 1–4 if you want to force a power.

6. Equip what drops. Auto-equip already swaps in better pieces (by comparing Item Power). Open the inventory with I or Tab to read the item tooltips and decide the rest.

7. Defeat Hrafnkell in the Jarl’s Fortress. On victory, the main button is Return to Valhalla, which shows the gold earned on the expedition.

8. Spend your loot. Back in the hall: sell to the Merchant, salvage with Brokkr, store in the Vault, spend points with the Valkyrie and set out again — now with Heroic unlocked.

If you fall

When the hero falls, he returns just before the zone and the fight starts over. You don’t lose any items. Falling many times in the same zone is a sign it’s worth heading back to Valhalla to improve your gear.

Saving

The game saves on its own: when you arrive in Valhalla, after every transaction with a character in the hall, after each cleared zone, on victory and when you quit. You can’t resume in the middle of a zone — if you quit during an expedition, the hero returns to the hall.

From the pause menu (Esc) during an expedition you can Return to Valhalla (the expedition counts as abandoned, but you keep everything you picked up) or Return to title.