How it works

How it works

Deep Vein Idle is one shared world on a tile grid. You send your character to a rock, a lake, a furnace or a monster, and it works there -- while you watch, and while you are away. Everything the character does follows the same rules on the server and in your browser, so what you see is what happened.

Ticks. The world moves in ticks of 600 ms. Every job, swing and step is counted in them; the tables below show times in seconds.

The loop. Gather (mining, fishing, woodcutting, farming), refine (smithing, cooking, fletching), fight for coins and rare materials, sell or trade at the market, and buy better tools and gear. Each skill has a ladder of jobs that opens with level; the Skills panel says what unlocks next. There is no level cap: past 99 each level costs a slice of the whole journey, growing about 14% a level, and every level keeps making you faster at everything below it.

Away. Close the tab and the character keeps working for up to 24 hours (more from the shop, up to 168). When you return, "While you were away" lists the night task by task. The first time you come back from 4 hours or more away, once the guide is behind you, there is a gift waiting: 2,500 coins and the title "the Night Shift".

The plan. A running task and a queue of what comes next. The queue holds 1 task to begin with and up to 10 with the shop's slots. When a task ends -- its number made, materials gone, or you died -- the next one starts. The plan shows top-left; ✕ skips to the next, arrows reorder, and quests can be queued too. Under the running task the plan names the next goal -- what the skill you are training opens next, and how long it is at this pace; the same words sit under the skill's name in the chooser. Set aside (‖ on the running line, or the same choice when you click somewhere else mid-task) parks the task at the front of the plan with what it still owes -- 250 logs left stays 250 -- and Start picks it up again, or it carries on by itself after whatever you did instead. The queue folds away behind "queue" when you would rather not look at it, and stays folded until you open it. With nothing running, the plan offers every skill as a button and Fight under them: one press opens that skill's list.

Storage has slots. A slot is one kind of thing, however many of it. Without a Vein Blessing you have 75, and can buy more in the storage window one at a time: the first for 1,000 coins and each after that half again as much, with no end to it. With a blessing, as many as you like. A slot you already have always takes more of its kind, so a lapsed blessing loses you nothing: take out what you will, but no new kind goes in until you are under the line.

A good catch is worth eating. Everything gathered rolls a rarity, fish and crops alike, and an uncommon or better one does more than heal — it heals more to begin with, and eating it leaves you hitting a quarter harder. Every rarity hits the same; what changes is how long it lasts, and it follows how rare the thing is: uncommon 2 min, rare 10 min, epic 3 h, legendary 24 h. An uncommon turns up every few minutes of fishing and is the steady one; a legendary is one catch in a hundred and fifty thousand, and worth a day of it.

It adds up as you eat, with no ceiling. A character sits down to eat every twenty seconds or so, so in a fight the clock barely notices what it is fed — but it means a hoard is worth exactly what it took to catch — ten legendary fish are ten days of it, and nothing is ever wasted for arriving on a full clock. Stand at a counter before something hard and eat a pile. Tap food in your bag for the choice: one mouthful, or the whole pile with the count and the clock said before you press it.

Your character will not help itself to the good ones. Food picks itself by how much it heals, and rarity heals up to three times as much — so without a word from you the one legendary shark you fished all evening for would be first in the queue at the next scratch. Under Food it eats uncommon and no better until you say otherwise; anything above that waits. Choosing a food by name is a choice, whatever its rarity, and is always honoured.

Full storage no longer ends your night. When your character banks a load by itself and storage will not take something, it goes on an overflow tray instead and the work carries on — up to 10 kinds of thing. The tray puts itself back into storage the moment there is room, so freeing a single slot is the whole of the fix. It is a night's grace and not a second storeroom: fill the tray as well and the route stops, as it always did. Depositing by hand at the counter still refuses out loud — if you are standing there, you should be told rather than quietly worked around.

The depot. Storage, the vendor and the market all live at a depot counter. A route that fills the inventory walks there and back on its own ("Walks to the depot when full"), or drops what it gathers if you ask it to. It heads for the depot that is the shortest walk, not the one nearest as the crow flies, so a wall or a lake never sends you the long way round. If you would rather always bank in one place, stand at that depot and press Set as home in the storage window; press it again to go back to the nearest.

The world. One land, for now, so everyone is close to everyone else. The first depot sits on a cobbled square with the well, the stalls, the fire, the furnace and the anvil around it; worn paths lead from it to the quarry, the forest, the shore, the second depot and the nearest hunting grounds, and people going the same way go the same way. The farm is its own fenced plot south-east of the square, its mill turning between the two rows of fields, with a haystack, a scarecrow and a barn. Signposts, a ruin, a stone circle and other landmarks stand about: click one and it says something; none of them can be worked. The place is alive around you -- stallkeepers call their wares, smoke rises from the furnace and the fire, fish jump, birds cross, rabbits sit in the grass -- and none of that can be worked either. Everyone in sight is drawn with the gear they wear and the tool in their hand, swinging at whatever they are working, and what anyone says in chat shows over their head for a moment. The world map (the map icon, or M) shows all of it; click anywhere on it to walk there.

The world boss. Three take turns: the Vein Colossus fears the blade, the Frost Leviathan the bow, the Ember Wyrm the staff. A blow in the style it fears lands 30% harder, the other two 15% softer, so every raid has a reason to be three kinds of people. It rises somewhere in the heartland every two hours, on the hour -- the call in chat says which and where -- and stands an hour. The pill at the top says when; one press on it walks you there and joins. It is everyone's fight: a blow takes off what it would take off any monster -- level, gear and brews all count, and the meter under its bar shows who has done most -- the boss hits hard, up to a third of your health in a blow, so bring food and let the Eats-at line do its work -- a blow never takes more than a third, so a fed raider who keeps eating is never felled in one, but run out of food and it wears you down: felled, you wake at the nearest depot with your pack kept -- food and loot both -- so top up and run back in. Your part on the meter stands while you are gone. The run to the boss fetches food first only when you hold less than half of what Carry asks for; with most of it in the bag you go straight in. Close the game mid-raid and you stay in it: your character keeps swinging and eating until the boss falls, then goes back to whatever it set aside, and your share is on the shelf when you return. Its health grows with the number of players online, with no upper limit, and the fight settles toward five to ten minutes however many turn up; the line under its bar shows your pace, the pace of the raid, and how long it has left at that pace. A gatherer or crafter can fight it without a weapon: what a trade makes -- ore, logs, fish, crops, herbs, bars, meals, brews -- can be delivered at its feet from the pack and counts against it like blows; gear does not. When it falls, everyone who struck or delivered shares the coins and shards by their part -- pools of 5,000 gold and 40 shards a raider, so a full room is a full purse -- and each boss leaves its own lands' parts, one roll a line for everyone who struck and two for the three who struck hardest: the Colossus its chip, drake hide and ember scale; the Leviathan the ice wight's shard, troll hide and rimewolf fur; the Wyrm horror ichor, drake hide and voidweave. One thing only that boss has, one raider in 500 a kill and twice the odds in the top ten: the Colossus core, which pays an enhance step from +5; the Leviathan scale, the heart of the amulet past meteoric; the Wyrm ember, the heart of the ring past it.

Titles. A word after your name -- the Prospector for 25,000 coins up to the Luminary for 0 -- bought with coins in the shop's Titles page and worn over your head for everyone to see. They do nothing else; that is the point of them.

Achievements. 1082 things to have done -- rungs in every skill, milestones of total level, kills, things made, coins earned, quests, days in a row, and a few oddities -- each paying coins once, the moment it becomes true, awake or away. The counted ones are ladders with no top -- 10 kills, 100, 500, up to a million and one more rung whenever anyone gets there. The Stats page in the same window is the character's own record: every kill by monster, everything made by item, meals eaten and burnt, all told. The collection log ticks off every one of the 299 things there are the first time it is in your hands. The cup in the dock, or More on the phone.

Your account. A character needs only a name and a password -- or not even that: "Play as a guest" on the door makes one with a name of the world's choosing, kept by this browser's cookie alone. Under Account a guest can claim the character with a name and a password of their own, and from then on it is a character like any other, with everything it has. Add an email under Account (the key in the dock, or More on the phone) and a lost password can be sent back as a link that lives an hour; without one, a lost password is a lost character. The password can be changed there too, with the old one as proof.

Bring a friend. Under Account there is a link with your name on it. A friend who makes a character through it is yours on the books, and when their character reaches 50 total level you get 100 gems and they get 50 -- once per friend, and never for a guest, a banned account, or a friend playing from your own address.

Chat. Rooms along the top: All, Trade, Guild ads, Guild, Raid (only the raid at the boss hears it), Beginners (a room for newcomers to ask, open to everyone including guests), 中文 (the Chinese room), Ironman (a room for ironmen) and DM. Press a name in chat and choose Message to talk to one person: the DM tab keeps a conversation per person, the open one marked, and /w Name hello works from any tab. Type @name in any room to ping someone -- it stands out in the line and lights their chat tab. Trade on the same card asks them to trade, when you are near a depot. An item named in square brackets, [Rare shark], becomes a chip with its picture that opens the item card, but only for things you actually have, in the bag, in storage or on; Link in chat on any of them writes it for you. A bracketed name of something you do not have is just words. A DM is kept on the server and shown to nobody but the two of you, so the conversation is there on your phone and your PC alike: the last 50 lines with each person, for 14 days. Report on the same card flags a line for a moderator.

Guilds. Found one for 5,000 coins (the banner in the dock, or More on the phone): a name, a tag that shows beside every member's name, a channel of your own ("/g hello" in chat, or the window), a message of the day, and up to 30 members in three ranks (more room is bought by donating raw materials -- ore, logs, fish, crops, cloth, monster drops, rough gems, voidshards -- or anything made from them from storage, 1 point per raw material and three times more per rarity step; a made thing counts as what went into it, and what the vendor sells counts nothing. The first extra place costs 200,000 points and each after it 1.5× the one before, up to 50 members) -- the leader runs it, officers invite and remove members, members belong. The guild's xp is everything its members have earned since they joined, and its level pays every member 0.5% more xp from everything per level, with no top -- past 20 each level costs 20% more xp than the one before. A guild bank holds up to 50 kinds of thing that members put in from storage; anyone in the guild may take, into their own storage, and a ledger shows who moved what. The biggest guilds are listed in the window. An ironman cannot join a guild.

Every day. The first visit of each day pays coins, more for each day in a row (100 on the first, 50 more per day, up to 1000); a missed day starts the count over. Gems are never a reward: they come from bringing a friend in, or the shop. The world boss rises every two hours, on the hour (the pill in the top bar counts down to it).

The hot skill. Every half hour one trade is hot: it pays +20% xp, or for a gathering trade sometimes +25% rarer finds instead. The pill in the top bar says which and for how long; press it for the next four turns, each with the time it starts in your own clock, and press a turn to go to that skill. It turns on the world's clock, the same for everyone, and never the same trade twice in a row -- the point is that the whole town is at the same rock face at once.

Weekly goals. Two counts the whole world adds to just by playing: things gathered, and monsters felled. Nothing is handed in and nobody outgives anyone. Reach a week's target -- 6,000,000 gathered, 300,000 felled -- before the week is out and everyone's xp is up 10% until the week resets. Miss it and it is gone; the counts start again from zero each week, so the buff is earned rather than always on. The board on the square (or the board icon in the dock) shows the counts; what is running on everyone sits with your own buffs by the vitals, and says where it came from. The pier, the lighthouse and the mine lift the town built before the goals stand on the map for good.

The dock. The strip down the right edge, in four groups: you (inventory, worn, skills); trade (storage, market, shop, enhance); progress (quests, achievements, ranks, guild); and the world map, this codex and your account. When the team puts a question to the world a poll icon joins the strip, with a dot until you have answered and a check after -- answer with a choice or in your own words, or just peek at how it is going. The less-used doors sit under a More button, on the phone and on a crowded desktop dock alike.

The guide. The first half hour is walked through step by step; the ? in the top bar brings it back any time.

Discord. The players' room, the bug reports and every changelog: discord.gg/65sMAYQSSs.