KIL
Combat
Defeating Enemies
Killing an enemy grants the enemy card's experience value. Enchanted enemies can yield larger rewards because their experience value is increased when the encounter is made more dangerous.
Experience is the character's general growth currency. It is earned from completed dangers and useful work. When the stored total crosses the current threshold, the character advances a level and receives a pending level-up choice.
Killing an enemy grants the enemy card's experience value. Enchanted enemies can yield larger rewards because their experience value is increased when the encounter is made more dangerous.
Successful crafting grants the recipe's experience value. Tinkerer-style bonuses can add extra XP on top of the recipe reward.
Some card and location actions grant the source card's experience reward when completed. Mining, harvesting, and other practical work can therefore advance the character as well as the relevant proficiency.
Every character begins with a required experience value of 100. When that threshold is crossed, the threshold is paid from the current XP pool, then the next requirement doubles. Extra experience carries forward rather than being discarded.
The first level threshold is 100 XP. A new character stores earned XP until the total meets or exceeds that number.
After each level gained, the next required amount is doubled. The early curve is 100, 200, 400, 800, and so on.
Leveling subtracts the current requirement from the stored XP. Any remainder stays available for future thresholds or perk spending.
Human characters receive 10 percent more XP from every award before it is added to their stored experience.
Crossing the XP threshold does not immediately choose a build path. The character card shows the level-up emblem in place of its progress, and clicking it opens the level-up window with the class paths that match the character's current class and level.
When matching class records exist, the player is offered up to three paths. Each path can rename the character class, grant +1 to a listed attribute, increase maximum health or mana, improve melee, ranged, dodge, or carrying weight, grant a specific skill, and sometimes grant random spells. Each path also brings one personality trait, shown in green for a like and red for a dislike, and names the paths it leads to at the next level.
If no class choice exists for the current class and level, the game applies a generic level-up instead. Maximum health, maximum mana, ranged, melee, and carrying capacity each rise by roughly 10 percent straight away, and no window opens.
Levelling raises the maximum a character carries on their own. Worn equipment and active afflictions then adjust it up or down, and that adjusted figure is the real ceiling. Resting, salvage, potions, and event rewards all fill towards it, so a ring that grants mana is worth its bonus at every one of them, and an affliction that lowers a maximum lowers what any of them can restore.
The window sets each path against the character as they stand: Health, Mana, Melee, Ranged, Dodge, carry weight, the attribute the path raises, and Action Points, using the character's own values before equipment and afflictions. Pick a path with a click or with 1, 2, or 3, then confirm it with the plaque or Enter. Decide Later, Escape, or a click outside the window closes it without spending the level, and the same paths and traits are waiting when it is opened again.
A Heffith also grows one random mutation with every level taken, whichever path is chosen. A Heffith can spend experience to suppress a mutation, and experience spent that way is not spent reaching the next level. See Mutations.
Level and class are separate from proficiency. Leveling changes the character's broader body of stats and class identity. Proficiency changes how well the character performs a specific practiced action.
Proficiencies are trained by doing the thing they describe. They have their own progress value, level, and threshold. A missing proficiency is created the first time it is advanced, unless the action has no valid proficiency type.
A new proficiency begins at level 0 with 0 progress and a threshold of 100 practice points.
When progress reaches the current threshold, the proficiency gains one level, progress resets to 0, and the next threshold doubles.
Weapon attacks, spell use, trap work, location actions, stealing, crafting, runework, and similar actions advance the matching proficiency when they are performed.
A proficiency level is not just a number in the character sheet. Different systems read it in different ways, depending on what kind of action is being resolved.
Equipped melee and ranged weapons add the matching proficiency level to the relevant attack value. Practiced weapon use also advances the weapon's proficiency type when attacks are made.
Successful spell use advances the spell's school. The school level can add to spell duration, dodge, melee, ranged, elemental damage, and elemental defence values when the spell carries those fields.
Location and advanced actions add the relevant proficiency level to their success chance when the player already has that proficiency, then advance that proficiency through use.
Craftsmanship advances through successful craft work. Its level can improve crafted item quality and helps reduce the chance of damaging items during repair or similar inventory work.
Lockpicking can apply a larger bonus based on proficiency level, while trap interactions advance the traps proficiency when a character searches, disarms, or suffers through the mechanism.
Stealing advances in uneven bursts rather than a fixed single point, reflecting the higher-risk, higher-variance nature of theft.
Some cards demand practice before they work properly. The card lists what it asks for, and the info screen marks in red anything the character falls short of. Every listed proficiency must be met.
Weapons, armour, shields and every other worn piece still equip and still fight, but give half of everything: attack, defence, elemental damage and defence, and the proficiency bonus they would have paid. A piece held in the off hand halves again, leaving a quarter.
Scrolls, tools and other used cards refuse outright. Nothing is spent on the attempt. A carried trinket gives none of its bonuses until the requirement is met.
A requirement naming a level is met at that level or above. A requirement naming only a proficiency is met by anyone who has trained it at all, including at level 0. Practice with the piece still counts, so a halved weapon trains its proficiency toward the level it asks for.
Experience is also the resource used by the perk tree. That creates a deliberate tension: XP can push the character toward the next level threshold, but it can also be spent immediately on targeted capabilities.
When a perk is unlocked, its cost is paid directly from the character's current stored experience. Each existing perk increases the cost pressure on future purchases, so a broad perk build becomes more expensive over time.
A character close to a level threshold may delay buying a perk to secure a class branch first. A character blocked by events, recipes, or survival problems may spend XP early because a specific perk is worth more than waiting for the next level.