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An Archetype is a race paired with a class. It is the headline system in Dimraeth and the most consequential thing a player picks, because each Archetype carries its own skill tree, its own attribute XP costs and its own passive, and none of the three is shared with any other pairing.

The system was set out in a design post by the game director on 16 November 2025, which remains the deepest published account of how character building works.

How an Archetype Is Formed

The combination of race and class defines the Archetype, and every Archetype gets a unique skill tree built as a blend of race, class and that Archetype's identity. Those trees are where you find spells and passives no other Archetype can use, which makes them the anchor of a build: the core set of tools, synergies and power spikes everything else is arranged around. The stated intent is to give strong anchor points that encourage theorycrafting while still leaving room to branch into hundreds of builds.

Race supplies the physical half. It sets the weapon, the stance, the combo chain and the race-specific guard used in combat, and it does so regardless of the class chosen on top of it. Class supplies the second half, with its own spells and its own branches of the tree. See races and classes for each side of the pairing, and character creation for the screen where both are chosen.

Named Archetypes

Three Archetype names have been published. Every other pairing of the named races and classes is unnamed as of 12 September 2026.

The Intended Roster

The much-quoted 48 figure comes from one sentence: "With our intended 1.0 roster of 8+ races and 6 classes, that already gives us at least 48 archetypes, each with its own unique tree and passive." That is an intention stated for the 1.0 release. It is not a count of built content, and it is not what the Early Access build contains.

Storefront copy presents the eight by six grid in the present tense, as 48 distinct Archetypes available to combine. The design post that produced the number describes it as the target roster. Where the two disagree, the design post is the more precise statement, and the arithmetic below is the honest position.

The named races and classes yield twelve possible pairings, of which three have published names. Nothing first-party names a fifth race or a fourth class, and the official race and class showcases contain empty slots rather than a finished roster. The Elf and the Shadow are both arriving with the Early Access build rather than being present in the demo or the playtests.

Attribute Costs

Attributes are raised with XP, and the cost of each attribute is primarily determined by the race and class combination. The published comparison is direct: "it is significantly more expensive for a Fairy Magician to raise Strength than it is for a Minotaur Brawler". Spending heavily on an off stat is not merely inefficient, it is permanently lossy, because it leaves you with fewer total attribute points by the time you reach the level cap.

The design goal behind that is stated as twofold: give every race and class combination clear strengths and weaknesses so different Archetypes lean into different build paths, and force thoughtful distribution by making players manage breakpoints and plan around specific spells or items. Off-pattern builds are allowed rather than blocked. You can put a physical spell on a Fairy Magician or a key magical spell on a Minotaur Brawler, but you pay the XP cost of reaching the minimum requirement instead of investing it in your primary attributes. Because spells carry attribute requirements, this is where the Archetype quietly decides which parts of spells and magic are cheap for you and which are expensive. See progression and leveling for how XP is earned and spent.

The practical reading: an Archetype is a budget, not a label.

The Archetype Passive

The third element tied to the race and class pairing is a passive that adds an extra benefit to one attribute. The published example is the Vanguard: "the Minotaur Brawler (a Vanguard archetype) gains bonus stamina whenever they level Strength, whereas other archetypes do not". The effect is that each Archetype has a primary attribute returning the most value per point, which pushes a build in a direction without closing off experiments.

As of 12 September 2026 the Vanguard passive is the only Archetype passive described anywhere, and no passive has been published with numbers.

Skill Trees

Each Archetype tree is unique and contains spells and passives exclusive to that pairing. A skill tree overhaul is listed among the changes arriving with the Early Access build.

The tree has been rebuilt repeatedly through development: a skill tree design in December 2023, character skill line trees added in December 2024, an implementation pass in February 2025, and the Early Access overhaul. That history is on development history, and it is a reason to treat any tree layout described from an older build as historical rather than current.

Archetypes in Co-op

The clearest statement of what the system is for concerns parties rather than individuals. In co-op, the Archetype trees and attribute scaling are where party identities come from.

The worked example runs like this. One player builds a Minotaur Magician, the Earthshaker, around spreading fire and triggering passives while enemies are Burning. Another builds a Human Magician, the Elemental Ranger, which turns fire already on the field into high-impact single-target damage. What the party has is not two mages but a coordinated Burning engine, a build that exists only because those Archetypes, passives and attributes stack across two players rather than one. The developers state the ambition directly: "We want parties to feel like carefully tuned machines built by their players, where the most satisfying moments come from combos you planned ten levels ago finally snapping into place."

Two cautions on that example. It is design intent published in November 2025, not a documented mechanic, and none of the passives involved has been named or quantified. As of 12 September 2026 no first-party source publishes a single Archetype tree, so the Burning engine is best read as a statement of what the system is meant to enable. See co-op multiplayer for how parties are formed and what travels between worlds.

Not Yet Documented

Verified as unpublished on 12 September 2026.

• Any complete Archetype skill tree, for any pairing.

• The attribute list itself. Strength is the only attribute named in any first-party source.

• The XP cost of any attribute, for any Archetype.

• Archetype names for the other nine pairings of the named races and classes.

• Whether an Archetype can be changed after character creation.