Closed Beta History

Drakantos has run two closed beta tests ahead of its full release. The first concentrated on cooperative play and early progression, while the second introduced competitive play through the PvP Modes and a reworked movement and combat system. Both tests are detailed below. For platform, pricing, and language information, see Release and Platforms.

Beta Comparison

Closed Beta 1

The first closed beta ran from July 25 to 27, 2025, starting at 9 AM ET on the Friday. It focused on the cooperative side of the game and on early progression, letting players explore the first region up to Kasteron, the human capital. Players could reach Guild Rank 5 of the Adventurer's Guild during the test, which gave access to a range of enemies, mini-bosses, and missions. Fifteen heroes were available from the start: Liam, Marly, Zeugladius, Reya, Yura, Ojore, Thomas, Byron, Iris, Ozul, Faendar, Arryn, Orbryn, Yuki, and Korz. Only English and Portuguese were supported, and four server regions were available (NA, SA, EU, AS).

Access was granted to selected players, who could each invite friends who had been on their Steam friends list for at least 30 days. The structure of this test is covered further on the Open World and Adventurer's Guild page.

Turnout and Reach

The first test was deliberately small and organic, run without a paid marketing campaign. In an August 2025 interview shortly afterwards, the game director put applications at roughly 300,000 by the time the weekend closed, and said peak concurrency was held at around 10,000 players at once rather than opened up further, so the servers could be watched under a load the team had chosen.

He also estimated, while stressing the figure was hard to judge, that testers had seen only about 15 percent of the finished game. The parts that were out of reach line up with what the test opened: endgame missions, most of the monster variety, 15 of the 16 major Bosses and Enemies, the Hellgates, and most of the artifact tree described on Orbs, Artifacts, and Trophies.

Two things stood out in the regional numbers. European turnout was strong, and Japan produced a surprisingly high average playtime per player despite a 1 a.m. local start and a small allocation of keys. Per-region hero-pick statistics put Yuki and Yura at the top of the Japanese roster, which the director attributed to the kitsune and samurai themes those two heroes are built on.

The way access was handed out also drew comment. The studio can only release a set number of keys rather than choose who receives them, so long-standing community members could not be prioritised over anyone else, and the developers explained the constraint publicly rather than leaving it as a grievance.

Closed Beta 2

The second closed beta ran from May 22 to 24, 2026, starting at 9 AM ET on the Friday. It was the first test of the game's PvP, featuring 13 maps across three modes. It also introduced major changes to the core Gameplay: the move from tile-based movement to fully free movement, reworked mouse controls, and the shift to full action combat in place of the earlier hybrid system. The PvE content was the same as in the first test, since the goal of this weekend was to validate the new core mechanics rather than expand the cooperative content. The same 15 heroes were available from the start.

Because long-term gear normally takes much longer to gather, this test handed out special Beta Boxes so players could try different builds in PvP. There were three box types, Orb Box, Artifact Box, and Trophy Box, each granting endgame items used to shape a build. These boxes were exclusive to the beta and were stated not to exist in the full game. The test also featured Twitch Drops, so players could earn temporary rewards by watching channels streaming the game. Four server regions were available again, and seven languages were supported for this test.

The boxes had their own rules. Each of the three types could appear at different rarities, and opening one presented three items and let the player keep one of them. Orb Boxes carried an extra wrinkle: because orbs belong to a specific hero, one of the three options was guaranteed to suit whichever hero the player currently had selected, so the studio told testers to switch to the hero they wanted before opening. Boxes were earned through both PvP and PvE activity during the weekend, which was the point: the team wanted feedback on how PvP Modes felt with build pieces already in play rather than with empty loadouts.

Access worked differently the second time around. Players who had received access during the first beta kept it and did not need to request it again, while new invitations went out gradually over the course of the test. Anyone with access could invite up to three friends, subject to the same 30-day Steam friendship requirement. Because the reworked movement and combat placed a much heavier load on the servers, a queue system was used while capacity was scaled up. The studio also framed this test as deliberately smaller than the first and chose not to advertise it broadly, since the point was focused feedback on the new core mechanics rather than a large turnout.

Testers could report problems without leaving the game: pressing Ctrl and R together opened an in-game bug report, and the studio asked for descriptions to be as specific as possible.

Progress Wipes and Transfers

All beta progress is wiped before the full release, so nothing earned during either test carries over to launch. Once players choose a server region during a test they cannot change it for that test, but server transfers are stated to be possible when the game officially launches. The Beta Boxes and the Twitch Drop items from the second test were temporary and were reset after that test ended.

Wishlist Milestones

Alongside the beta tests, the game passed two notable wishlist milestones on Steam.