Anvil Empires Leveling Guide

Read This First

This is a launch-watch leveling guide for a game with no level. Anvil Empires has no release date, no published level cap, no XP table and no class list — because it has none of those things yet. What it has is a pre-alpha test running November 11–15, 2026, and a progression system built from avatars, six attributes scored one to ten, and a faction war that runs until somebody wins it. This guide maps the progression that actually exists, from the community wiki (TheGamesWiki) that documents the tests, and it attributes every faction name, every getting-started step and every number to that wiki — because the developer has not published them in official material we could check. Where the wiki and the developer disagree, the live build wins. If you want the economy side — resources, ingots, workshops, caravans and the Marketplace — that is our Anvil Empires Farming Guide.

Anvil Empires is a persistent-world medieval sandbox MMO from Siege Camp, the studio behind Foxhole. Thousands of players share a single map — a continent called Calligo — gather resources, build settlements and fortifications, run supply lines, and wage faction war through massed melee battles, cavalry charges and full-scale sieges, with a single battlefield supporting up to a thousand combatants at once. It is presented from a top-down isometric perspective, and crafting, base building and economic management are core systems alongside combat. The leveling game inside that war is unlike a normal MMO: there is no character level to grind, no class to pick, and no quest hub handing out XP. Instead you pilot avatars, and the avatar you invest in gets better at the things it does — fighting, smithing, logging, mining, hunting — while the avatar you throw away costs you nothing but the time you spent in it. The war is the endgame, the settlement is the long game, and the attribute is the level. This guide explains all three, in the order you will meet them.

Where the Game Is

Anvil Empires has been running scheduled pre-alpha tests since April 2023, and the current test is the latest in that series — not a launch, not an early access, and not a beta with a date attached. Forty-six numbered pre-alpha tests had been completed by mid-August 2026, and a forty-seventh was scheduled for August 17, 2026 on the MS 68 build, hosting War 19. A further test concluded around October 7, 2026 — announced in a short studio clip titled "Calligo has expanded! Cargo Boats, Water Infrastructure and more" — but its number, dates, build tag and war result are not recorded on the community wiki. The test running now began on Wednesday, November 11, 2026, and is expected to run through Sunday, November 15, giving testers a little longer than usual to check out the new additions — that is the wording of MMORPG.com's Indie MMO Spotlight from November 8, 2026, which is the best-dated source for the window. The test number and the war number for this test are not published anywhere checked, so this guide does not invent them. Tests typically run five to seven days, the world runs continuously for the duration, and the world state is preserved within the test and reset between tests — that last point is the community wiki's description, and it matters for everything in this guide, because it means your progression is scoped to a war, not to an account.

The scale of the game right now is small and honest. SteamCharts recorded 351 players in game on November 11, 2026, with a 402-player 24-hour peak and a 1,211-player all-time peak. MassivelyOP's Betawatch lists the game as "intermittent alpha", which is the accurate label: the game exists in windows, and between windows it does not exist at all. The Steam page lists the release date as "To be announced" and lets players request access to the Anvil Playtest. There is no early access date, no launch window, and no price — because there is nothing to buy yet. Pre-alpha access is free. That smallness is also the opportunity: a five-day test with a few hundred players is a game where one organised group can matter to a war, one good smith can arm a town, and one new player who learns the loop on day one can be useful by day three. This guide is written for that player.

Getting Into the Test

Access is free and granted by the studio rather than purchased, and there is no NDA — results, screenshots and feedback may be shared publicly, which is why the community wiki can document the game in the detail it does. The official path is to wishlist Anvil Empires on Steam and join the studio's community channels for test schedules and pre-alpha keys. Spots can be limited at first, but the stated goal is to onboard as many participants as possible, with no payment required and no pre-order. Once granted access, you install through Steam and connect on the test windows the studio announces. The current test runs November 11–15, 2026 — if you are reading this during that window, request access now, because the test is already running and the war is already being fought. If you are reading this after November 15, the next window has not been announced, and the community wiki's pre-alpha-tests page is the place to watch for it.

Two practical notes before you install. First, the game is PC only, built on Unreal Engine 5 with the studio's in-house r2 networking technology, according to the community wiki — and it is a game about a thousand players in one battle, so expect a machine that can handle a crowd, not just a landscape. Second, bring patience for the first hour: the game drops you into a shared world where almost everything is built and destroyed by other players, and the first hour is about learning to gather, craft and claim before you try to fight. The getting-started section below walks that hour in order.

Choosing a Faction

Your first decision after installing is which of the three factions to join — and the honest advice is to pick by your friends and your spawn preference, not by power, because in pre-alpha the factions are nearly identical where it counts. The community wiki names them as follows: the Ancients (the Mirrish people, indigenous to Calligo, zealous defenders of ancestral land, blue heraldry, venerating gods including Sigor and Scade); the Remnants (the Novan people, survivors of a collapsed empire seeking restoration, red and crimson heraldry); and the Pagans (the Aranic people, seafaring invaders who sailed north from the southern Aranic isles, gold and orange heraldry, who joined the war loop in March 2025). All three names, peoples and heraldries come from the community wiki, not the developer — the studio has not published a faction guide in official material checked, and the wiki is explicit that its faction articles describe the most recent observed test. The studio has begun moving the in-game wording from "alliance" to "empire" — the MS 67 build renamed the alliance chat channel to Empire Chat — but the three names are unchanged.

As of the most recent pre-alpha test, the factions differ mainly in heraldry, spawn location, and a small number of faction-specific superior shields and clothing pieces; most weapons and structures are currently shared. The studio plans to deepen faction-unique gameplay before early access, and the September 2026 development update adds empire-specific default clothing that every player wears on deployment — purely visual, no gameplay benefit. The war record, tracked by the community wiki across the eighteen concluded wars, stands at Ancients 11, Remnants 5, Pagans 2 — but that counts victory conditions triggered, not wars won, and the Pagans have only been selectable in a handful of tests, so do not read it as a tier list. War 18, which ran July 21–28, 2026, was ended by the Ancients on the religious path, although a developer notice during the test acknowledged the religious condition was not working as intended for that war. Pick the faction your friends picked. If you have no friends in the game yet, pick the Ancients — they have the longest record and the most Town Centers to spawn at — and then find a homestead that will have you.

Your First Hour

Once you pick a faction, your avatar spawns at one of that faction's preplaced Town Centers — the safest starting point, with basic crafting facilities, a stockpile of starter supplies, and a population of other faction players to coordinate with. The first-hour loop, as the community wiki's getting-started guide lays it out, covers the same systems every test, and it is worth doing in order rather than improvising. First, gather basic resources: pick up branches from the ground, knap flint into improvised tool heads, and forage berries and water. Crude stone tools come from crafting knowledge built into the starter UI — you do not need to find a recipe, you need to open the menu and make them. Second, craft crude gear: a Crude Helmet, Crude Chest Armour and Crude Leg Armour, plus a Crude Short Sword or Flint Spear, are enough to survive in the wilderness while a faction settlement takes shape, with crude clothing underneath for the body and leg slots. Third, hunt and forage: bring down small game and chickens for pelts and meat, and cook food at a Firepit or Hearth to push back hunger, because hunger and thirst tick down constantly and raw meat eaten in the field is much less filling than cooked food.

Fourth — and this is the step that decides whether your first hour becomes a first day — claim or join a homestead. A Homestead Keystone marks a player-owned plot where higher-tier crafting buildings can sit. New players who do not want to manage their own plot can join an existing homestead led by a faction member; established homesteads usually have spare beds, tools and chores to share, and a bed is a respawn point, which is the single most valuable thing a new player can have. Fifth, find a job. Faction Discord channels list daily roles: smithing crews, miners, hunters, builders, caravan drivers, frontline soldiers. Filling one of these roles is the fastest way to learn the systems and matter to the war — and it is also the fastest way to level, because attributes improve with use, and a job is use with a purpose. The controls you will need in that first hour are simple: WASD to move, Shift to sprint, E to interact, Tab for inventory, B for the build menu, M for the world map. Learn those six before you learn anything else.

Avatars: The Two Kinds of Character

The Avatar System is the layer that controls who you actually pilot in the world, and it is the single most important system in this guide, because everything else — attributes, veterancy, death, deployment — hangs off it. Every active character in a pre-alpha test is an Avatar of one of two kinds: an Auxiliary spawned freshly from a Town Center, or a Named Avatar recruited and developed by a player over the course of a war. Named Avatars hold persistent inventory, accumulate veterancy, and can be deployed to the frontline via Caravan; Auxiliaries are the workhorse default for everyday play. The two kinds are not two classes. They are two relationships to the same war: one disposable, one invested. Learning when to be each is the core skill of Anvil Empires progression.

An Auxiliary is the basic character pulled when you spawn at a Town Center or homestead bed. Auxiliaries appear with default visuals, low-effectiveness armour, and no carried inventory beyond what the spawn point provides. They have no veterancy and no attribute progression — they are intended for the everyday cycle of dying, respawning and continuing the war effort, and most combat, logistics and crafting work in any given test runs through Auxiliary characters. The MS 67 build moved auxiliaries onto an explicit economy: they are recruited at the Avatar Recruitment Table using Public Silver, at a rate of ten Silver for five auxiliaries under the tenfold currency inflation that arrived with MS 68, and recruits are stationed at the local keep. Their attributes are capped, which limits them to light armour and bronze weapons. Their equipment comes from player-crafted kits rather than appearing automatically, and recruitment tables show up to eight candidates at a time, with combat-focused avatars turning up more often. Stored auxiliaries can starve, so they have to be fed with Auxiliary Rations — produced at the Town Workshop, unpacking to a thousand rations — and only Lords and Thanes can withdraw rations from public storage. The Auxiliary is free in spirit and cheap in Silver, and it is how you learn the game without risking anything that matters.

A Named Avatar is the opposite: recruited from the Avatar Recruitment table inside a Town Keep, at a cost in Silver that reserves an avatar slot for you. Recruitment rolls are priced at 1, 40, 90 or 140 Silver in the current build, with more expensive rolls granting a Named Avatar with more starting levels; the candidate's icon shows its highest attribute, so you can pay more Silver for a candidate that begins closer to combat or trade readiness instead of levelling one from scratch. Named Avatars are the persistent identity for committed players: they retain inventory between sessions, gain attribute progression with use, and can be customised in appearance. Since MS 68, recruiting offers two options: Station, which parks the new avatar at the Town Keep for later use, and Control, which swaps you into the recruit immediately — stationing your current avatar, or, if you were controlling an Auxiliary, disbanding it and transferring its items to the new recruit. You can hold several recruited Avatars across different homesteads and switch to whichever fits the current task, leaving the rest in their homes between sessions. Auxiliaries remain available as the default when you want to throw a fresh body at the front without spending a Named Avatar slot.

The Six Attributes

Named Avatars develop six gameplay attributes, each scored from one to ten, and each improved by doing the thing it describes. There is no XP bar, no level number and no class — the attribute is the level, and the work is the XP. The community wiki's avatar-system page lists them plainly, and the table below follows it exactly, because the attributes are the progression system and there is no other one to describe.

Three facts about the attributes change how you should play them. First, total combat attributes — Melee plus Ranged plus Fitness — determine the visible power rank shown to other players, so your rank is a summary of your combat investment, not a level. Second, combat attributes no longer increase the damage an avatar deals to other players in PvP. That changed in the recent builds: they now gate which tier of weapon the avatar is allowed to equip, while still scaling damage against animals and AI. Superior weapons have explicit attribute prerequisites — the Superior Short Sword requires Melee Combat rank six, the Masterwork Short Sword rank seven — so the attribute grind is a key grind: rank six opens a door, rank seven opens the next one, and no amount of skill substitutes for the rank. Third, Fitness was reworked in MS 67: it no longer reduces stamina consumption while sprinting, and instead slows the rate at which maximum stamina drains, by up to seventy-five percent, while the base drain rate rose by twenty-five percent in the same build. Fitness is now endurance across a long session rather than a sprint discount. MS 68 retuned attribute progression to accelerate at lower levels and slow at higher levels, granted triple progression toward the relevant attributes for attacking players, and reduced the base rate at which maximum stamina depletes by a further twenty percent. The practical read is that early ranks come fast and late ranks come slow — so the first week of a test is the time to push a new avatar's attributes, not the last day.

Veterancy and Progression

Veterancy is what a Named Avatar accumulates over a war, and it is the closest thing Anvil Empires has to a level — but the game has never published a veterancy table, an XP curve or a cap, and this guide will not invent one. What the community wiki documents is the shape of it: Named Avatars gain attribute progression with use, Auxiliaries do not, and the progression is per-avatar, per-war, because the world resets between tests. A Named Avatar you recruit on day one and use every day will be meaningfully better by day five than one you recruit on day four — not because of a number, but because attributes are scored one to ten and every rank gates something: a weapon tier, a stamina cost, a forge speed, a stealth threshold. The fastest progression in the game is therefore the most focused: pick one avatar, pick one job, and do that job every session. A smith who works the anvil every day will forge faster by the end of the test than a smith who splits time between the anvil, the mine and the frontline — because Blacksmithing improves by working at an anvil, and nothing else improves it.

That focus has a cost, and the Avatar System is built to price it: you can hold several recruited Avatars across different homesteads and switch to whichever fits the current task. The smart play is not one avatar that does everything — it is a stable of avatars that each do one thing. A combat avatar with Melee and Fitness ranks for the frontline. A smith avatar with Blacksmithing ranks for the forge. A gatherer with Logging and Mining ranks for the nodes. Switching between them is free in the sense that matters — the avatars wait in their homes between sessions — but each one costs Silver to recruit, and each one needs to be fed, housed and equipped. The MS 68 triple-progression bonus for attacking players is the one accelerator the wiki documents, and it rewards the obvious play: the avatar that fights, progresses fastest at fighting. There is no rested bonus, no catch-up mechanic and no published curve. The progression is the work, and the work is the progression.

Wounded, Incapacitated and Death

Death in Anvil Empires is meaningful but not punishing, in the community wiki's phrase — and the MS 68 wounded system is what makes that true for Named Avatars. When a Named Avatar's health reaches zero, it first enters a wounded state: it can crawl to a safer position and be treated with Bandages by a friendly player, and only after being wounded three times does it become incapacitated. Auxiliary avatars are exempt from the wounded state, and players no longer drop their inventory when wounded. A downed Named Avatar does not die outright from a single combat encounter. Instead it becomes incapacitated: the avatar remains in the world as a carriable body that another player can pick up and transport to friendly storage, where it recovers health over time and rejoins the recruitment pool. The incapacitated state preserves veterancy and inventory across a normally fatal fight, which makes Named Avatars more durable in practice than the Auxiliary spawn loop they replace. Stored avatars display extra status information — wound severity, starvation timers, projected health recovery — and they automatically draw food from any accessible storage rather than starving silently.

Auxiliaries die the old way: they respawn at a friendly Town Center or homestead bed, and carried inventory drops at the death site and can be recovered if the corpse survives. That is the Auxiliary bargain in one sentence — cheap to spawn, cheap to lose, and the loss is bounded by what you were carrying. Named Avatars, by contrast, must be transported: they do not respawn freely at any Town Center, and they travel to the frontline aboard a Caravan, the player-driven vehicle in the logistics chain. Spawning onto a Caravan that is holding a Named Avatar produces the avatar with only fifty percent of its maximum health, which is a deliberate cost for skipping the long overland travel. The progression lesson is that your Named Avatar's life is worth more than your Auxiliary's, not because the game says so, but because the Named Avatar carries your attributes, your inventory and your veterancy, and the Auxiliary carries none of those. Fight like an Auxiliary when the job is cheap. Fight like a Named Avatar only when the job is worth the caravan ride back.

Combat Progression

Combat in Anvil Empires is a weapon-gating game, not a damage-number game, and the progression is in the gates. The weapon families are melee, hybrid, ranged, throwable and siege, and each has damage types and attribute prerequisites that decide who can use what. Combat attributes gate weapon tiers — Superior Short Sword at Melee Combat six, Masterwork Short Sword at seven — and they no longer raise damage against other players, so a high-rank fighter does not hit harder than a low-rank fighter with the same weapon; they hit with a better weapon. Armour works the same way: tiers with a multiplicative mitigation formula, and a hard restriction — Heavy and Reinforced armour lock out bows and spears, so a player who plans to skirmish should stay in Crude or Light. Faction-specific clothing provides warmth during winter and snow conditions on Calligo, which makes the clothing layer a practical climate buffer rather than a cosmetic option, and every player gets default clothing on deployment in the September 2026 update — purely visual, no gameplay benefit, following each empire's own design.

The combat itself was overhauled in MS 67: secondary and tertiary attacks, a Combat Stamina bar in place of the Guard meter, and manually raised guard, with a charging mechanic when guard is held above sixty percent stability carried over from MS 64. The practical progression advice is to pick a weapon family early and stay with it, because the attribute that gates it improves only by using it — Melee Combat by engaging in melee, Ranged Combat by using bows, crossbows and javelins — and a player who splits time between a sword and a bow will be rank three in both when the player who committed is rank six in one and holding a Superior weapon. The siege side of combat is a progression track of its own: siege camps, battering rams, catapults, siege ladders and burning oil defences, with Mantlets and the Makeshift Battering Ram added as early-age siege equipment in MS 68. Siege work is a group job, not a solo one, and it is the job that wins wars — which is the next section.

Crafting as Progression

Crafting is progression in Anvil Empires in a way it is not in most MMOs, because almost everything in the game is made by a player — weapons, armour, food, structures and siege engines all start as raw materials gathered from the world, processed through workshops, and assembled into finished items. The Blacksmithing attribute improves by working at an anvil and reduces the strikes needed to forge each item, which means the smith who forges every day is not just making gear — they are levelling, and the gear they make gets faster to make. The same is true of Logging and Mining, which reduces the stamina cost per swing on resource nodes: the gatherer who harvests every day is levelling, and the harvesting gets cheaper. The workshops are the Forge, the Furnace, the Grain Mill, the Tilled Field, the Hearth, Oven and Pantry, and the Repair Bench — and the MS 68 Town Workshop rework made the Town Workshop the central hub for basic blades, weapons, armour and tools, with higher-tier equipment moved toward Homestead progression. The farming guide covers the resource chains in full; this guide's point is narrower: pick a crafting job, do it every session, and watch the attribute climb, because the attribute is the level and the work is the XP.

The jobs the faction Discord channels list every test — smithing crews, miners, hunters, builders, caravan drivers, frontline soldiers — are also the leveling paths, and each one trains a different attribute. Smithing trains Blacksmithing. Mining trains Logging and Mining. Hunting trains Hunting, which also unlocks superior bow access and makes stealth around hostile fauna easier. Building trains nothing directly, but it is the job that turns every other job's output into a town. Caravan driving trains nothing directly either, but it is the job that moves every other job's output to the front — and the front is where the war is won. The fastest way to level in Anvil Empires is therefore to take a job on day one and keep it for the whole test. The slowest way is to sample everything and master nothing, because the attributes reward depth and the test is only five to seven days long.

The War Is the Endgame

Everything in Anvil Empires points at the war, and the war is the endgame — not a raid, not a dungeon, not a boss, but a competitive frame that runs for the whole test and ends when one faction wins it or the window closes. A war is the competitive frame inside a pre-alpha test: each war has a number, a start and end date, the test version it was played on, and a recorded outcome by faction. The war system was introduced alongside victory conditions in early 2025, and since then eighteen wars have been played to a conclusion, with a nineteenth scheduled to open with Pre-Alpha Test 47 on August 17, 2026. Wars are the primary unit by which the studio compares balance changes between tests, which means the war you fight in November is also the data the studio uses to tune the war you will fight next time. There are three named paths to victory, each rooted in a different style of play, and the path your faction takes decides what your progression is for.

The military path is the most visible: a faction wins militarily by capturing and holding a set number of territory zones. The map is divided into named zones whose borders follow rivers, coastline and the natural lie of the land; each zone is Claimed, Contested or Neutral, and the zone state controls which side can place key structures such as Homesteads, Beacon Towers and Keeps. War 19 requires capturing and holding fifteen zones, and the current map is divided into twenty-seven claimable zones — fifteen start the war Claimed around a town site, five per empire, and the remaining twelve start Neutral. The cultural path rewards a faction that can dedicate resources and territory to Temples and the surrounding cultural structures: Temples are expensive in raw resources, require a guarded location, and need a faction to invest in homestead defences and logistics rather than throwing every player at the front. The religious path tracks influence through worship and faction-cultural play, overlapping with cultural play but tracking a separate metric — and in the MS 66 rework it runs through front-line Relic Sites mined for turn-in Relics. If no faction reaches any victory condition before the test window expires, the war ends in a stalemate, recorded on the war ledger alongside victories and defeats. The leveling implication is direct: your attribute progression is only as useful as the war path it serves, and a smith who forges for a cultural push is levelling toward a different victory than a soldier who fights for a military one. Pick the path with your faction, then pick the job that serves it.

Settlements and the Long Game

Settlements are the foundation of long-term play in Anvil Empires, and they are also the long game that outlasts any single avatar. A settlement might begin as a single homestead built by one or two players, grow into a hamlet with workshops and a marketplace, and end the war as a fortified town with multi-level keeps and dozens of residents. Almost every productive activity in the game ties back to a settlement somewhere. Each faction's spawn locations are anchored on permanent Town Centers placed across the map: a Town Center provides spawn points, vendor access and the structural anchor for surrounding workshops and walls, and capturing or defending Town Centers is one of the war's victory conditions. A homestead is a player or small-group claim placed in the world, bounded by a square area defined by the Homestead Keystone, and homesteads built inside a Town snap to the town's building grid. Modular building — foundations, walls, floors, roofs, corridors and bridges — connects into larger structures, and dedicated furnishings (Hearth, Oven, Pantry) turn a basic shelter into a living and working space.

The settlement game has its own progression, and it is measured in buildings, not attributes. Homesteads split into two specialised branches depending on whether the keystone is placed inside a Town's footprint or out in the open wilderness. Towns concentrate the production buildings that make a faction self-sufficient — the Furnace, the Grain Mill, the Forge, the Marketplace — and a town that cannot defend itself will not survive a serious war, so walls, towers and supply lines are part of the build, not decoration. The MS 67 build gave homestead ownership several controls: owners set their own rent through a dedicated button rather than accepting a fixed price, homesteads claimed by a house display a unique icon on the world map, and keystones now count toward the foundation limit that caps how far a single plot can sprawl. Silver pays upkeep on owned structures, so a settlement that cannot pay its upkeep is a settlement that decays — carry enough Silver to pay homestead and structure upkeep before logging off, as the getting-started guide warns. The settlement you build in a test is the settlement the next test resets, which is why the community wiki describes persistence as per-test — but the knowledge of how to build one is the part that carries over, and it is the most durable progression in the game.

Picking a Role for the Test

The test is five to seven days long, and the role you pick on day one is the role you will level for the whole test — so pick it deliberately, not by accident. The faction Discord channels list the daily roles every test, and the table below maps each one to what it trains and what it is for. There is no wrong role, but there is a wrong way to pick one: by what sounds exciting rather than by what you will actually do every session, because the attributes reward depth and the test is short.

Two roles deserve a note because beginners undervalue them. The caravan driver trains no attribute directly, but the caravan is the only way a Named Avatar reaches the frontline, and the supply it carries is the difference between a siege that holds and a siege that starves. The farmer and cook train no attribute directly either, but stored avatars starve, homesteads need food, and a faction that cannot feed its people cannot fight its war. The roles that train attributes are the visible leveling paths; the roles that do not are the invisible ones the war depends on. Pick one of each across your avatars if you can — a combat avatar and a logistics avatar — and you will be useful in a way a single-track player is not.

A Test-Week Leveling Plan

Here is the plan for the November 11–15 test, day by day. Day one (November 11): get in, pick your faction, spawn at a Town Center, and do the first-hour loop — gather branches and flint, craft crude tools and crude gear, hunt and cook, and claim or join a homestead with a bed. Find a job on the faction Discord before you log off, and spend your first Silver on bounties and the Marketplace rather than on a Named Avatar you do not yet need. Day two: start the job, and start it every session from now on — the attributes reward depth, and day two is when the early ranks come fast. If you are a smith, work the anvil. If you are a miner, work the nodes. If you are a soldier, fight where the faction is fighting. Recruit your first Named Avatar when you can afford the roll and you know which job it is for, not before. Day three: your avatar should be showing ranks now, and the war should be showing a shape — which zones are contested, which path your faction is pushing. Align your job to the path. Day four: the mid-test push. This is the day for the dungeon-equivalent work in Anvil Empires — the siege, the Temple build, the Relic run — because your attributes are at their best and the war is still winnable. Day five (November 15): the last day. Wars end in victory or stalemate when the window closes, so spend it where the war is decided, not on a side project. Extract what you have learned, screenshot what you built, and write down what you would do differently — because the world resets, and the knowledge is the only progression that carries into the next test.

Mistakes New Testers Make

The mistakes new testers make in Anvil Empires are all versions of the same error: treating a five-day pre-alpha test like a persistent MMO launch. Spending your first Silver on a Named Avatar before you have a job for it is the first — the avatar is an investment, and an investment without a job is a parked character eating rations. Fighting in Heavy armour with a bow is the second — Heavy and Reinforced armour lock out bows and spears, and the skirmisher who learns that mid-fight has already lost the fight. Forgetting upkeep is the third — Silver pays for homestead and structure upkeep, and a settlement that cannot pay decays, so carry enough Silver before logging off. Dragging a hand cart across the map instead of requesting a caravan is the fourth — carts are slow, caravans are fast, and the time you save is time you spend levelling. Building an indoor workshop without a chimney is the fifth — combustion gives off smoke, smoke builds up in enclosed spaces and injures the people inside, and a sealed smithy is now actively harmful rather than merely tidy. And the last is the most expensive: treating the test as permanent. The world resets between tests, the avatars do not carry over, and the progression that matters is the knowledge — the map, the chains, the roles, the war paths — that you take into the next window.

Patch State (as of November 12, 2026)

Written November 12, 2026, on the second day of the pre-alpha test that runs November 11–15, from the community wiki (TheGamesWiki) as updated October 19, 2026, plus MMORPG.com's November 8 spotlight and SteamCharts data from November 11. The facts most likely to change first are the ones the studio changes every test: the victory thresholds (War 19's fifteen zones are the wiki's Test 47 summary, and the current test may differ), the attribute tuning (MS 68 accelerated low-level progression and tripled attacker progression), the economy numbers (the tenfold Silver inflation arrived with MS 68), and the systems still in preview — the September 2026 development update's naval content, Cargo Boats, Shipyards, Ship Docks, the Farming and water pass, and the crossbow, which had still not appeared in a live test as of MS 68. After November 15, check the community wiki's pre-alpha-tests page for the test's outcome and the next window, and treat anything this guide says that the live build contradicts as the build's word winning. The wiki is explicit about its own caveat, and this guide repeats it: wiki articles describe the most recent observed state and should be cross-checked against the current test before treating them as final.

Frequently Asked Questions

When can I play Anvil Empires?

A new pre-alpha test began Wednesday, November 11, 2026 and runs through Sunday, November 15. Access is free — wishlist the game on Steam and join the studio's community channels for test schedules and keys. There is no release date; the Steam page lists it as to be announced.

Is there a level cap in Anvil Empires?

No level cap has been published, and there is no XP table. Progression in Anvil Empires is not a character level: it is the avatar system — Named Avatars develop six attributes scored from one to ten, and Auxiliary avatars have no progression at all.

How do I level up in Anvil Empires?

By using skills. Each of the six attributes improves with use — Melee Combat by fighting in melee, Blacksmithing by working at an anvil, Logging and Mining by harvesting wood and ore, and so on. There is no XP bar to fill; the attribute is the level.

What happens to my progress when the test ends?

The community wiki describes persistence as per-test: settlements, homesteads, avatars and inventory are scoped to the active war world, and the world is reset for the next test. The developer has not confirmed this in an official announcement we could verify, and account-level systems are still being designed.

Which faction should I pick in Anvil Empires?

Pick by your friends and your spawn preference, not by power. The three factions — Ancients, Remnants and Pagans — differ mainly in heraldry, spawn location and a small number of faction-specific shields and clothing in pre-alpha; most weapons and structures are shared. Deeper faction-unique gameplay is planned for early access.

What is the difference between Auxiliary and Named Avatars?

An Auxiliary is the disposable default: spawned fresh from a Town Center, no veterancy, no attribute progression, capped at light armour and bronze weapons. A Named Avatar is recruited at a Town Keep for Silver, keeps inventory between sessions, gains attribute progression with use, and can be deployed to the frontline by Caravan.

How does a war end in Anvil Empires?

When one faction satisfies a victory condition: military (capture and hold the required territory zones), cultural (build and hold Temples), or religious (reach the influence threshold). If no faction reaches a condition before the test window expires, the war ends in a stalemate.

Do I need to pay to play Anvil Empires?

No. Pre-alpha access is free and granted by the studio rather than purchased — wishlist on Steam, join the community channels, and request access ahead of the next test window. There is no NDA, and no payment or pre-order is required.

Sources

Every fact in this guide carries its source. Faction names, the getting-started path, the avatar system, attributes, victory conditions and economy figures come from the community wiki (TheGamesWiki), not the developer, and are attributed as such throughout. Test dates come from MMORPG.com; player counts from SteamCharts. Last checked November 12, 2026.

• TheGamesWiki (community wiki): Getting Started — Anvil Empires (first-hour loop, factions, controls, currency, survival notes)
• TheGamesWiki (community wiki): Avatar System (Auxiliary vs Named Avatars, six attributes, recruitment costs, Caravan deployment, wounded state)
• TheGamesWiki (community wiki): Pre-Alpha Tests (test cadence since April 2023, wars, victory conditions, per-test persistence)
• TheGamesWiki (community wiki): Victory Conditions (military, cultural and religious paths; 27 zones, 15 to win in War 19)
• TheGamesWiki (community wiki): Factions (Ancients, Remnants, Pagans; heraldry; war record 11–5–2)
• TheGamesWiki (community wiki): Crafting and Resources (nine resource categories, ingot tiers, workshops, recent economy changes)
• TheGamesWiki (community wiki): Settlements (homestead to town, Keystone, rent, Town vs Wild specialisation)
• TheGamesWiki (community wiki): Overview (pre-alpha state, Calligo, core pillars, current test)
• MMORPG.com: Indie MMO Spotlight, November 8, 2026 (new pre-alpha test began Wednesday, runs through Sunday, November 15)
• Gamerficial: Anvil Empires Wants to Put 1,000 Players Into the Same Massive Medieval Battle (Foxhole lineage, 1,000-player battles, release date TBA)
• SteamCharts: Anvil Empires Pre-Alpha (351 playing, 402 24-hour peak, 1,211 all-time peak, November 11, 2026)
• MassivelyOP Betawatch, November 6, 2026 (Anvil Empires: intermittent alpha)
• MMODude: Anvil Empires game page