The worlds

Every world in Boz Universe is a universe of its own, grown from a seed. Universe Zero was the first; the rest are its echoes.

Seeds

A seed is a word or a number. It decides the shape of the ground, where the lakes and woods lie and which creatures roam, and the same seed always makes the same world. "Valhalla" is always the same place, so friends can share one.

Each seeded world brings two peoples' lands together, meeting across it in broad bands. Each land has its own grass, trees, creatures, fish and weather. A world is about two kilometres across, walled in by a rim of mountains, and keeps everything built in it.

On the Play screen, after choosing a character, you can pick a world or make one: give it a name, a seed and two lands. Your character carries their skills, people, element and looks from world to world. What they own stays in the world where they left it.

Typing a world's name with a controller needs an on-screen keyboard. Until then, leave the seed box empty and one is chosen for you. Coming

Hamlets and the Ashen

Out in a seeded world you come across hamlets of the land's peoples: a few huts round a fire, built in their people's style, with a name in their way of naming places. Each has an elder, a stallkeeper and workers. Norse hamlets have the jarl's steward, a skald and a runecarver; Turkic ones the aksakal, a horse-master, a kam and an ozan. Ask them to teach you: the elder teaches the clan's skills and the workers their trades, up to the first steps of each, for a little gold a point. Past that you learn by doing. The stallkeeper trades cheaply, and the elder sells the people's blueprints.

Some nights the Ashen, grey-skinned and fireless, raid a hamlet you are near. Drive them off and the elder pays you. Every hamlet also has a guard by its fire, who fights the Ashen with you.

The Codex

Your Codex (F2) keeps everyone and everything you have met, by people, the camp and the creatures; what you haven’t met yet shows as a question mark. A page opens when you talk to someone, see a hamlet’s guard, or see a creature close up, and a creature’s page shows its side, health, damage and what it carries. Meet all of a people’s folk and you become a Friend of their land, with a banner of your own. The Codex goes with your character to every world.

Universe Zero and the Proving Grounds

Universe Zero is the original world and holds the Proving Grounds: a camp with a market, a banker, a healer, stables and a breeder, a fighting ring, an ore yard and crafting stations, all in one place. It is where you try things out, buy your first donkey and sell what you have made.

Day, night and weather

The sun and moon cross the sky, the stars come out, and some creatures only walk at night. There are six kinds of weather, with lightning in storms. Weather changes your element's strength (see Elements). A map you carry charts the land as you walk; press M or L1 + d-pad down to see it.

Caves and crypts

Out in the wild you can find a cave mouth, a rock arch, or a crypt door. Press G at it and you go down into rooms joined by tunnels, lit by torches. The same mouth always leads to the same place. Caves hold spiders, wolves and shadow creatures, ore in the rock and locked chests. Crypts hold draugr and gloom, and no ore. Each level down is tougher and richer; the farthest room holds the way further down.

Lakes, fishing and boats

Every seeded world has lakes in its hollows. You can swim in deep water and dive under it (hold C or ○). Fish from the bank or from a boat with a fishing pole. Each land has its own fish, and something large lives in the deep: the lake wyrm.

Build a boat with Carpentry, carry it to a lake's edge and use it from your backpack. Steer with the movement keys or the left stick; your Sailing skill decides how fast and nimble it is. A raft or rowboat comes ashore with you, folded into your backpack. A longship is too big: it stays moored where you leave it, and its sail catches the wind. Fishing from the deck reaches deep water.

The open sea, sea serpents and treasure maps. Coming

Other skills out in the world

• Camping, Tracking and Spirit Speak: a campfire to rest by, tracks that point the way to creatures, and voices from the dead.
• Music: with an instrument and Musicianship, calm a creature, set two against each other, or weaken one.
• Thieving and stealth: hide and move unseen, snoop and steal, pick the locks of chests in the wild, find and disarm their traps, and poison a blade.

The arena

In the Proving Grounds, Hadrik, the master of the ring, runs two kinds of fight in a round sand ring. In the gauntlet, waves of creatures come at you for as long as you last. In a duel you face one of five champions, and beating one opens the next. Nobody dies in the ring: whoever drops to the last point of health yields. Win and the crowd throws you gold, items and titles. You are healed after every fight.

Spending the shards the arena gives you. Coming