Madlands Leveling Guide

Read This First

Madlands has no XP bar, no level number, and no published leveling route. This guide is honest about that from the first line, because a guide that invents an XP table for a game that does not have one would be worse than no guide at all. What the game does have — documented in its own press kit and terms — is a round island that gets harder as you climb it, sixteen classes, forty-two dungeons, permadeath, and progress that survives death in the form of your vault, your fame, and your account. Leveling here means two things at once: making each individual hero survive longer and climb higher, and making your account permanently stronger so the next hero starts ahead. Everything in this guide comes from the official press kit, the terms, the homepage, or the game’s own class and dungeon showcases, and wherever the official record goes quiet — class unlock requirements, loot tables, drop rates — this guide says so instead of filling the gap with a guess.

If you come from a game like Realm of the Mad God, the shape of this will feel familiar and the differences will matter. Madlands is not affiliated with DECA Games or Realm of the Mad God — its own terms say so — but it is the same genre: a shared realm, a bullet hell, permadeath, and a vault full of things you would rather not lose. The differences are the ones that decide how you play. The server decides every hit, so cheating cannot buy invincibility. If your connection drops, the server freezes your hero and makes them untouchable until you are back — there are no disconnect deaths. And the economy is fenced in by the terms in a way RotMG veterans will notice: items, Curios and banked fame can be traded between players in the game and only there, and buying or selling any of them — or an account — for real money breaks the rules and can cost what was traded and the accounts involved. There is no verified seller market for Madlands, and this guide never pretends there is one. What follows is the leveling game as it actually exists in November 2026: the climb, the classes, the vault, the dungeons, and the habits that keep a hero alive long enough to matter.

How Leveling Works Here

Start by throwing out the mental model most MMOs teach you. There is no number over your hero’s head ticking upward, no “ding” that makes you stronger, no level requirement gating the next zone. The press kit describes the game in one line — a free online bullet hell MMO with a shared realm, dungeons with screen-filling boss patterns, and permadeath — and the progression it describes is positional and permanent at the same time. Positional, because your hero climbs a round island from the beach to its summit, and the higher you climb the harder the monsters and the better the loot. Permanent, because what you bank in your vault, your fame, and your account stay when a hero dies, so every new hero starts a little stronger than the last one did.

That split is the whole leveling game, and it changes every decision you make. In a game with levels, the correct play is usually to grind the hardest thing you can survive, because XP is XP and death costs you a few minutes. In Madlands, death costs you the hero and everything they carried, so the correct play is to grind the hardest thing you can survive and then come home. A hero who climbs two rings, banks everything, and climbs again is leveling. A hero who climbs four rings on a hot streak and dies with a full inventory has leveled nothing. The Legends board is where fallen heroes go up, and it is a nice memorial, but it does not make your next hero stronger. The vault does.

Think of it the way a veteran of the genre would: your account is the character, and each hero is a run. The account grows through fame, unlocks, pets, cosmetics, and whatever is sitting safely in the vault. The hero grows within a single life through positioning, pattern knowledge, and loot picked up along the way — and all of that growth is rented, not owned, because one bad dodge ends it. The players who progress fastest in Madlands are not the ones with the flashiest aim. They are the ones who treat every trip out as a run with a return point, who bank before they push, and who spend their fame on unlocks that make the next hero better instead of hoarding it. This guide is built around that loop, and every section below comes back to it.

The two tracks, side by side

The table looks simple and it is, but most new players play as if only the first row exists. They push for the summit on their first hero, die with a full inventory, and conclude the game is brutally hard. The game is hard — it is a bullet hell with permadeath, and it does not apologize for that — but the difficulty is manageable once you play both tracks. Your hero’s job is to survive and bring things home. Your account’s job is to remember.

Your First Hour

Madlands asks for nothing to start: no download, no sign-up, no launcher. You open playmadlands.com in a browser — on a computer, a phone, or a tablet — and you are in. There is a desktop app for Windows, Mac and Linux if you want one, and the game plays with mouse and keyboard, touch, or a controller. That zero-friction start is part of the design, and it is also the first trap in the game, because of how guest accounts work. A guest account lives in your browser: if you clear it without signing in, the account cannot be recovered. The terms are blunt about it, and they are equally blunt that lost items are not restored. So the single most important thing you do in your first hour is not a gameplay decision at all — it is signing in, so the account your vault and fame live on is not one browser cleanup away from vanishing. Do that before you care about anything else.

Once you are in, make a hero and pick a class. The press kit names three classes as the shape of the roster — a Warrior who grows huge and soaks bullets for the party, a Sentinel who raises a wall of light, and a Gunslinger who fans the hammer — and the class showcases add a Wizard who fires staff bolts from long range and drops a spell bomb where you aim, and an Archer whose arrows pierce every enemy in a line before a huge arrow bounces from monster to monster. The full class section below covers all eleven classes the official channels have shown, including the unlockable ones, but for your first hero the honest advice is simple: pick the one whose playstyle you understand immediately. The Warrior is forgiving because it is built to be shot at. The Archer is forgiving because it kills things before they reach you. The Wizard hits hard from far away and the showcase itself warns to keep your distance — it is the highest-damage starter and the least forgiving of a mistake. There is no published ranking of the classes, and this guide will not invent one. The best first class is the one you will actually learn to dodge with.

Learn the controls before you learn the island. On keyboard and mouse: WASD moves, the mouse aims and shoots, I toggles auto-fire, Q and E rotate the view, Z resets it, Space or right-click uses your ability, R sends you to the Nexus, F interacts, 1 through 8 use items, Enter opens chat, M mutes, and the scroll wheel or the plus and minus keys zoom. On a phone, your left thumb moves and your right thumb aims and fires, the ability button uses your ability, you tap items to use them, and you hold the rotate arrows to turn the view — double-tap one for north up. Two of those keys deserve your attention on day one. I, auto-fire, is the difference between aiming and surviving: with it on, you steer and dodge while your hero keeps shooting. R, the Nexus, is your eject button — it gets you out of the realm and back to safety. Practice both on the beach before you need them under fire.

Your first hour should be spent on the beach ring and nowhere else. The island rises in rings from the beach to the summit, and the beach is where the monsters are weakest and the patterns are slowest. That is not a punishment for being new — it is the tutorial the game does not label as one. Learn to dodge in the open realm, where there is room to move and the bullets are sparse, before you push into a harder ring where the same mistakes cost a hero. Kill things, pick up what they drop, and go back and bank it. Your first vault deposit should happen before your first death, not after. Get used to the rhythm now: out, fight, back, bank. It will still be the rhythm a hundred hours from now.

The Island: Beach to Summit

The realm is a round island that rises in rings from the beach to its summit at its peak, and that geography is the leveling curve. The press kit states the rule plainly: the higher you climb, the harder the monsters and the better the loot. There is no quest chain that walks you up the island and no level gate that tells you when you are ready for the next ring. You decide, and the island judges. That is both the freedom and the danger of the game, and it is why the ring you are farming matters more than any number on your hero.

Dungeons open across the island, and each one ends on a boss with its own patterns to learn — from the Crab King’s waterspouts in the Sunken Grotto to a Lich who keeps rebuilding the phylactery that keeps him alive. The dungeons are not separate from the climb; they are the punctuation marks on it. A dungeon whose boss you have learned is a farm. A dungeon whose boss you have not learned is a donation to the Legends board. The dungeon section below lists every dungeon the official channels have shown, with the one idea each boss is built around, so you can pick your fights instead of stumbling into them.

Two things about the island are worth knowing before you trust it. First, the game is fair in a specific, technical sense: the server decides every hit, so cheating cannot buy invincibility, and if your connection drops the server freezes your hero and makes them untouchable until you are back. There are no disconnect deaths. That means when you die, it was the game, not your internet — which is frustrating and also honest, because it means every death is a lesson you can actually learn from. Second, the island is still being built. The terms say so outright: items, classes, balance and the world will change, and the servers can go down. Dungeons arrive weekly — the Marble Colosseum landed on October 22, 2026, and The Broken Hourglass on November 11 — so the island you climb in December will have rooms that do not exist in November. Treat each week’s new dungeon as a learning run first, not a farm, and you will never be caught by a boss you have not met.

The 16 Classes

Madlands launched with sixteen classes, and the official record names eleven of them. The other five have not been shown in any press-kit page, trailer, or showcase the research for this guide could find — no wiki page lists them, no video names them, and this guide will not guess at them. What follows is every class the game itself has presented, with the ability the showcase actually demonstrated and the role the showcase actually showed. If a class is not on this list, it is not because it is weak. It is because the game has not introduced it yet.

Three things to take from that table. First, the starters cover the basic jobs: the Warrior tanks, the Sentinel protects, the Gunslinger and Archer clear, the Wizard deletes things from range. If you are new, that is a complete party already, and you do not need an unlockable class to play the game properly. Second, the unlockable classes are not straight upgrades — they are different jobs. The Shaman is the only class shown so far that heals a party. The Knight is the only one that marks a target so the whole party hits harder. The Necromancer is the only one that sustains itself off its own damage. An unlockable class is worth chasing because it lets you fill a role your party is missing, not because it is stronger in a vacuum. Third, and most important for this guide: no published requirement for any class unlock could be found. The press kit lists unlocks among the progress that lasts after death, and the terms confirm banked fame can be traded in game — but no source states what any unlock costs, or whether the cost is fame, a quest, a boss kill, or something else entirely. Do not trust a number for an unlock requirement from any unofficial source. Check the unlock screen in game.

That gap matters for how you plan. In most MMOs, the leveling guide can tell you exactly what to do at each stage: reach this level, do this quest, unlock this class. In Madlands, the honest version of that advice is: play the starters, bank fame, and check the unlock screen regularly, because the unlocks are the long-term account goal and the game has not published the price list. What you can do is choose your first unlock by role. If you usually play alone, the Necromancer’s self-sustain or the Shaman’s totem — which both damages and heals — will keep you alive longer than a pure damage class. If you usually play in a party, the Knight’s expose or the Shaman’s healing will make you the person everyone wants in their group. And if you love control, the Huntress’s stun traps turn a chaotic bullet hell into a series of fights you chose to take.

How to pick a first hero without a tier list

There is no published class ranking for Madlands, and a ranking written six weeks into Early Access would be worthless anyway — the terms warn that classes and balance will change. Pick by answering three questions honestly. Do you like being shot at, or do you like not being shot at? The Warrior and Sentinel are the first answer; the Wizard and Archer are the second. Do you play alone or with friends? Solo players want self-sustain; party players want a job nobody else is doing. And how good are you at dodging, really? Be honest. The Wizard is the highest-damage starter and the least forgiving of a mistake, and the showcase says so itself. A fragile class played up close is not a build — it is a funeral.

Fame and Unlocks

Fame is the game’s permanent score, and it is the closest thing Madlands has to a level. The press kit lists it among the progress that lasts after death — vault, fame, unlocks, pets and cosmetics — and the terms add the one concrete mechanic that is published: banked fame may be traded between players in the game. That single sentence tells you three things. Fame can be banked, which means it is a resource you manage rather than a number that simply accumulates. Fame can be traded, which means it has value to other players, and it is traded in game and only there — the same rule that bans real-money trading of items and Curios applies to fame. And fame is connected to unlocks, which is why the class section above matters: the unlockable classes are the most visible thing fame is for.

What is not published is almost everything else about fame. No source states how much fame a kill, a dungeon clear, or a boss kill earns. No source states what an unlock costs. No source lists any other fame sink, or whether fame decays, or whether it is spent or simply accumulated as a threshold. That is not a small gap — it is the central number of the account track, and it is unpublished. So this guide treats fame the way a careful player should: as a resource to accumulate and protect, not as a system to optimize. Bank it. Do not trade it away early, because you do not know what it will buy yet and the unlock screen is the only honest price list. And when you do trade it, trade it in game, with the knowledge that trades are logged and the developer can check them.

The practical advice is boring and it is correct. Play, survive, bank. Check the unlock screen every few sessions to see what has become available. If a class you want is listed, you will see its requirement there — and only there. Do not pay a third party for fame, and do not pay a third party to unlock a class for you: selling fame or an account for real money breaks the terms and can cost what was traded and the accounts involved, and there is no verified seller for this game in any case. The unlocks are the long game. They are supposed to take time, and the account that earns them honestly is the account that keeps them.

The Vault: Progress That Survives

The vault is the single most important system in Madlands, and it is also the simplest. What you have stored in your vault survives when a hero dies. What a hero is carrying does not. Everything else in this guide is commentary on that sentence. Bank gear and valuables before pushing into a harder ring or a dungeon whose boss patterns you have not learned yet, and treat every trip out as a run with a return point. A hero who banks twice an hour is leveling twice as fast as a hero who banks never, because the second hero’s progress is imaginary until it is stored.

Vault space is the one purchase in the game that is unambiguously worth real money, and the game itself agrees with you: gems buy cosmetics, character slots and vault chests, and never power. If you farm a lot, vault chests are the sensible gem spend, because a full vault is not a storage problem — it is a death sentence. A full vault means you are carrying loot into danger instead of banking it, and the island will sort that out for you sooner or later. Extra character slots are the other sensible spend, because they let you keep a leveled-up hero in reserve while you experiment with a new class, instead of risking your main on a class you have not learned yet. Cosmetics — skins, dyes, name colors, auras — are the fun spend. They are also the only thing gems are for besides storage, and they never give an advantage in combat, so buy them because you like them, not because they will help you climb.

There is one more vault-adjacent warning, and it is the least fun paragraph in this guide. A guest account lives in your browser, and if you clear it without signing in, the account cannot be recovered — vault, fame, unlocks, everything. The terms say it plainly, and they also say lost items are not restored. Sign in. Do it now, before your next session, and treat it as part of the game rather than admin. The vault protects your loot from death. Signing in protects your vault from your own browser.

Dungeons and Boss Patterns

Dungeons are where Madlands stops being a game about dodging in the open realm and starts being a game about learning. Each of the forty-two dungeons ends on a boss with its own patterns to learn, and the press kit describes the design philosophy in five words: dodge, read, then strike. Every boss is built around one idea. Learn the idea and the boss is a farm. Ignore the idea and the boss is a wall. The table below lists every dungeon the official channels have shown, with the one idea each boss is built around and when it arrived. It is not the full list of forty-two — the rest have not been published — but it is every dungeon you can actually plan around in November 2026.

The press-kit screenshots add four more bosses whose dungeons have not been dated: the Rime Wyrm, an ice dragon fought on a frozen lake under a storm of icicles; the Lich, fought in a crypt as spirits swirl around its rune circle; the twin jesters, fought beside a ring of cards at a carnival; and the Jade Idol, fought across an overgrown hall of spike traps and beams. That is fifteen dungeons accounted for out of forty-two, and the gap is worth stating plainly: most of the dungeon list is unpublished, there is no official difficulty ranking, and there are no published loot tables or drop rates for any dungeon. Do not trust a “best dungeon for loot” list from an unofficial source. The dungeons you can plan around are the ones above, and the order to learn them is the order of their ideas: the easy dungeons first, where the idea is one mechanic you can see coming; then the mid dungeons, where the idea is a pattern you have to read; then the endgame, where the idea is a fight that punishes you for standing in the wrong place.

Learn one boss at a time. That sounds slow, and it is — but it is also the fastest way to level, because a learned boss is a farm and an unlearned boss is a death. Go into a new dungeon expecting to study, not to win: bank anything valuable before you enter, watch the boss through one full pattern cycle before you commit to damage, and leave alive with the knowledge. The second run is when you start to fight. The fifth run is when you start to farm. And when a new dungeon arrives each week, treat it as a learning run first, on a hero you can afford to lose, with an empty inventory. The Snowglobe opens on December 1, 2026 and runs to January 6, 2027, and it will be the same story: a new boss, a new idea, and a first week where the players who study it will be farming it while the players who rush it are on the Legends board.

Parties, Guilds and the Shared Realm

Madlands is a shared realm, and the press kit lists what that means: events, parties, guilds, trading and letters between friends. The leveling advice that follows from that list is straightforward. You do not have to play alone, and past the lower rings you probably should not. A party turns a dungeon from a solo test of dodging into a division of labor: the Warrior grows huge and soaks bullets, the Sentinel raises a wall of light the party can fight behind, the Shaman drops a Spirit Totem that damages everything in its ring and heals everyone standing there, and the Knight marks a target so the whole party hits it harder. The boss patterns do not get easier in a party — the bullets are still there — but the consequences of a mistake get spread across more heroes, and the patterns get easier to read when you are not the only target.

Guilds are the long version of the same idea. The press kit names them as a feature and nothing more has been published about how they work, so this guide will not describe guild mechanics it cannot verify. What can be said is what guilds are for in a game like this: a standing group of people who know your playstyle, who will run a new weekly dungeon with you on day one, and who will trade with you in game when you need a Curio or a piece of gear. Find one once you are past the beach. The letters between friends are a small detail in the press kit and a telling one — this is a game built by someone who expects players to talk to each other, and the fastest way to learn a boss is usually to ask someone who has already died to it.

One practical note about parties and permadeath: a party does not save your hero. If you die in a dungeon, your hero is gone and your party finishes without you. That is the deal, and it is why the bank-first rule applies in a party exactly as it does solo. Bank before the dungeon, not after it. Your party will wait. The Legends board will not.

Death, the Legends Board and Disconnects

Death is permanent. A hero who falls is gone, with everything they carried, and goes up on the Legends board. The press kit says it in two sentences and the terms repeat the practical consequence: lost items are not restored. There is no appeal, no restore, no insurance. That is the game, and it is the reason every other section in this guide exists. But there are three things about death in Madlands that make it more forgiving than it sounds, and they are worth knowing before your first one.

First, death is not the end of your progress. What you banked in your vault, your fame and your account stay, so every new hero starts a little stronger. The account is the character; the hero is a run. A death that costs you a hero and a carried inventory is a bad day. A death that costs you a hero, a carried inventory, and an unbanked haul you had been carrying for three hours is a bad week. The difference is the bank run, and it is entirely in your control.

Second, disconnects do not kill you. The server decides every hit, and if your connection drops, the server freezes your hero and makes them untouchable until you are back. No disconnect deaths. That is a genuine design choice and a rare one in this genre, and it means you can play on a phone on a train without the game punishing you for your signal. When you die, it was a pattern you did not read, a ring you pushed too early, or a boss you had not learned — and all three of those are fixable.

Third, death can be public. When a boss fight you are in takes the number-one spot of all time on one of the hardest dungeons’ speed boards, the game may post a video of it on its channels — YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, r/Madlands and the Discord — showing the fight as one of its heroes saw it, with the names of the heroes in it but no chat. A letter in the game tells you when it is going up. If you would rather your runs stayed private, the opt-out is in Settings, under Social, “Post record runs” set to Never: no run you are in is posted after that, and any already up come down.

Gems: What to Spend, What to Skip

Gems are the real-money currency, bought through Stripe, and the terms describe exactly what they buy: cosmetics — skins, dyes, name colors and auras — character slots, and vault chests. They never give an advantage in combat. They have no cash value, cannot be traded, sold or transferred, and cannot be exchanged back for money. Purchases are final once the gems are in your account, except where the law where you live gives you a right to a refund, and if a payment went wrong — charged twice, gems never arrived — you email the developer within thirty days and they will put it right. Gems bought in the phone app are paid to Apple or Google, and refunds of those are theirs to give under their own rules. If a payment is refunded or disputed, its gems are taken back, and spending them first can leave your balance below zero. Deleting your account, or a ban for breaking the terms, ends your gems and cosmetics without a refund.

For leveling, that description gives you a short shopping list and a long skip list. Buy vault chests, because vault space is the bottleneck on the bank-first loop and a full vault is a death sentence. Buy character slots if you want to keep a hero in reserve while you learn a new class, because experimenting on a spare is cheaper than losing your main. Buy cosmetics if you like them — they are the fun of the shop, and the game is honest that they are only fun. Skip everything that promises power, because nothing in the shop gives any. And never buy gems, items, Curios, fame or accounts from a third party: the terms ban it, it can cost what was traded and the accounts involved, and MMODude found no verified Madlands seller in its November 2026 review. The only safe place to spend real money on this game is the game itself.

Common Mistakes

• Pushing into a higher ring before you can dodge cleanly in the one below — a death costs everything the hero is carrying.
• Carrying your best loot into a dungeon whose boss patterns you have not learned yet instead of banking it first.
• Treating fame and unlocks as throwaway when they are the progress that survives death.
• Standing still to trade shots in a bullet hell — bosses are built around dodge, read, then strike.
• Playing a fragile class like the Wizard up close — its own showcase warns to keep your distance.
• Playing on a guest account and never signing in — one browser cleanup can take the vault, the fame, and every unlock with it.
• Treating a new weekly dungeon as a farm on day one, before you have learned its boss patterns.
• Trusting an unlock requirement, a loot table, or a drop rate from an unofficial source — none of them are published.

The Bank-First Session Loop

A good Madlands session has a shape, and it is the same shape whether you have twenty minutes or three hours. Sign in, so the account you are about to improve is not a guest account. Check the unlock screen, in case a class you have been working toward has become available. Pick the hero for the session — your main for a push, a spare for learning a new boss or a new class. Go out to a ring you can survive comfortably, fight until your inventory is worth banking, and come home. Bank everything. Then, and only then, push: one ring higher, or a dungeon whose boss you have studied, with an inventory you can afford to lose. If the push goes well, bank again. If it goes badly, you have lost a hero and a small inventory, not a session’s work.

Once a week, do the new dungeon as a learning run: go in light, watch the boss through a full pattern cycle, and leave alive with the knowledge. Once you have a party or a guild, fold them into the same loop — the group that banks together climbs together, because nobody in it is ever carrying three hours of loot into a boss they have not met. And when the session ends, bank before you log out. The vault is the only place progress is real, and the island collects its debts from heroes who forget that.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

Every fact in this guide carries its source. Game systems come from the official press kit and terms; class and dungeon details come from the game’s own showcase videos; the market state comes from MMODude’s November 2026 review. Where no source exists — class unlock requirements, loot tables, drop rates — this guide says so rather than inventing one. Last checked November 11, 2026.

• Madlands press kit (16 classes, 42 dungeons, island rings, permadeath, vault and fame)
• Madlands terms, last updated November 7, 2026 (trading rules, RMT ban, gems, guest accounts)
• Madlands homepage (controls for keyboard and phone)
• Madlands trailer, IndieDB (Early Access October 1, 2026; 37 dungeons at November 6, 2026)
• Madlands official Facebook: Shaman class showcase (Spirit Totem, October 25, 2026)
• Madlands official Facebook: Huntress class showcase (Stun Traps, November 2, 2026)
• Madlands official Facebook: Necromancer class showcase (Thralls, November 1, 2026)
• Madlands official Instagram: Chromancer class showcase (Living Muse, October 30, 2026)
• Madlands official Instagram: Archer class showcase (Bouncing Arrow, October 26, 2026)
• Madlands official Facebook: Knight class showcase (shield bash, October 31, 2026)
• Madlands official Facebook: The Broken Hourglass dungeon (The Chronarch, November 11, 2026)
• Madlands official Facebook: The Crimson Playhouse dungeon (five bosses, November 11, 2026)
• Madlands official Facebook: The Shifting Sands dungeon (The Old Hunger, November 3, 2026)
• Madlands official Instagram: The Snowglobe dungeon (opens December 1, 2026)
• MMODude: Madlands game page (Early Access October 1, 2026; weekly dungeons; no verified market)