Loading...
Loading...
Rebuilding Emberville
September 11, 2026 at 10:01 PM
Created the town-rebuilding page: rescue loop, town layout and buildings, implemented systems and Early Access scope
The dungeon is only half of Emberville. The other half is a town, and unlike the Vitromotus below it, the town keeps what the player does to it. Buildings repaired stay repaired, rescued villagers stay rescued, and the studio's own framing of the loop is to venture out, return stronger, and slowly breathe life back into a world on the brink.
The denizens of Emberville were imprisoned along with everyone else. Finding them in the depths and freeing them is what moves the town forward: they show their gratitude with rewards and teachings, they lend their skills, and each one unlocks mechanics that were not available before. The player learns their trades, their secrets and their dreams while helping with their quests. The studio's July 2026 description of progression is direct about the link: every expedition into the Vitromotus contributes toward rebuilding the town above, unlocking new characters, crafting opportunities, classes and storylines. See Non-Player Characters.
The more the town is rebuilt, the more systems open up, and the more it opens up the more of its own story it tells. As Emberville restores itself it becomes, in the store's wording, a living hub shaped by the player's deeds.
Emberville was wrecked by a ritual that shattered both the world and the people in it. Its founding runs further back: the diviner Orallis came upon the fire-ruined bones of a once great Duthatch city, settled nearby, laid its lingering souls to rest, and the town that rose from those ashes took the name Emberville. The team built a destroyed version of the town specifically for the game's opening, then a rebuilt one alongside it. See Story and Setting.
Emberville has been built in engine across three sectors, referred to by the team as NE, SE and SW. Several buildings have been named.
Place | What is known |
|---|---|
The carpenter's shop | One of the key town buildings designed in May 2025. Carpentry supplies the furniture and advanced materials used to build the town. |
The seer's house | Also among the key buildings designed in May 2025. The Seer role has no named character attached to it yet. |
The fountain | Designed alongside the two buildings above, and tied into a new deity figure in the studio's internal lore roadmap for the first four biomes. Nothing about that figure has been published. |
NPC house interiors | Finished interiors have been shown for Morcha, Orallis and Tolcan, plus the first one shown publicly, Alora's. |
The streets | Ordinary villagers wander the renovated town. A destroyed tavern appeared in a 2025 showcase build. |
The systems below were shown working in engine during 2025. They are the machinery the rebuilding layer runs on rather than features described from marketing copy.
System | Detail |
|---|---|
Building repair | Implemented, with a deliberately cartoonish repair visual the team iterated on twice. |
Building and destruction | Placing and destroying structures, called a major step for the player's own buildable space. |
Day and night cycle | Implemented, and used to give the town atmosphere rather than only lighting. |
Branching dialogue | A dialogue system handling branching interactions, variable text, emotion triggers and fallback logic, with UI integration and dynamic triggers added later. |
Localization tooling | In place since May 2025, groundwork for the 30 languages the store now lists. |
Town music and ambience | A dedicated theme written for the town, plus job-specific ambient sounds for the Chef, Jeweler, Carpenter and Archeologist. |
Rebuilding is not purely a quest reward. The villagers teach a large variety of gathering and crafting professions, and Carpentry in particular produces both furniture and the advanced materials used to build the town. See Life Skills.
The town is the shared hub. The player's own customizable plot is a separate space with its own rules, covered on The Estate. Base building appears on the Early Access launch content list, while the studio lists a more advanced implementation of the personal creative space among its goals for version 1.0. See Early Access.
