Getting started and controls

What this is, and what you need

Sherwood Den is a browser game. You open a web address and you are in it. There is nothing to download, install, or sign up for. It runs on a desktop browser and on a phone browser, and it draws a 3D town, so a machine from the last few years and a current browser is the honest requirement.

You need a crypto wallet to play rather than watch. On a desktop that is usually a browser extension; on a phone it is usually the wallet app's own built-in browser. If you have never had one, that is the one piece of homework this game asks for, and it is worth knowing before you start that connecting a wallet costs nothing: it is not a payment and not a transaction.

You do not need to buy anything to start. The house gives you a purse of $GOLD for free, and every prediction booth in every hall is played with it. The only door that asks for money is the tavern.

Your first ten minutes

The game walks you through this itself. The orientation is a list of steps in the corner, and pressing a step walks your character to where it happens and lights up the control it is about. This is the same run, so you know what is coming.

Getting in

1. Open the game. The first screen offers Connect a wallet to enter and Watch the den. Watching needs no wallet and lets you look around, but nothing can be pressed.
2. Press connect and pick your wallet from the Choose a wallet list. Approve the connection. Nothing is spent.
3. Press Enter the den and pick a hearth from Choose a hearth: the rooms other players are in, with how many are inside each. Any of them is fine; you can talk to the whole den from any of them.
4. Watch the short arrival, then take or skip the two welcome cards.

The orientation, act by act

That is the whole loop: claim, back a side, get paid, climb the board. Nothing in it needs $DEN, and nothing in it costs you anything.

If you close the orientation or finish it, you can restart it from the top bar, and each step keeps a Go control that walks you there. Hide collapses the tracker if it is in your way.

The top bar

The top bar carries your $GOLD purse and the button that claims it the first time, your worth in $DEN, your wallet, and the way back into the orientation. On a narrow screen the labels shorten but the order is the same.

Entering

Across the top of the first screen sits How to play, and beside it, where the operator has configured them, Docs and links to the den's community. Where a link has not been set it simply does not appear. On a phone the text links move down to the footer and the icons stay. Once a wallet is attached, Disconnect appears in the top-right corner beside Enter. That is the one to reach for if you connected the wrong wallet, and the screen says so itself.

Lower down there is a CA chip. Press it and the token's launchpad page opens in a new tab: the contract address, the price chart, the curve it trades on, and a buy button, all in one place. Check the address on that page against what the operator published before you buy anything. CA soon means this build has no token yet.

The first screen offers two ways in:

1. Connect a wallet to enter: the primary button until a wallet is attached. Every booth is played in $GOLD held against your wallet, so there is nothing to press without one. After connecting, the button becomes Enter the den and asks which hearth to sit at (see multiplayer).
2. Watch the den: a view of the map with no character in it at all, and the way in without a wallet. Drag to look, WASD to pan, scroll to zoom. You are not in the room, nobody can see you, and there is nothing to press.

On your first visit the orientation runs itself, and Your first ten minutes above is the same walk in writing. Pressing a step walks your character to where it happens, and the control that step is about glows until it is done.

The run stops at the tavern door rather than going in, because the pass costs 2,000 $GOLD and the opening purse is a taste of the booths, not a night at the tavern. Inside has its own short walk-through that starts the first time you are actually in there (see duels), and the season rules it explains at the bounty board are set out in the portfolio.

Which on-chain features you can actually use depends on the environment; see what the status labels mean.

The plaza

You arrive in the plaza. The Herald's Board across the top turns continuously with the standings: the den's top ten by return, in order. Each place reads as movement, rank, name, return, and when a settlement reorders the ranking while you are standing there, the names that moved carry a ▲ or ▼ for a minute or so. Press the strip for the full board behind it, where the settled duels are kept. The slate on the square is where anyone can chalk a short line (32 characters); the panel repeats the last four so you do not have to find the board to know they landed. Chalk is sold at the till above the slate, five sticks to a pack for $GOLD, and each line spends one, so the wall is written by people who paid to be on it.

Press the standings board in the plaza to open the leaderboard. It shows the top ten, their return and profit or loss, and your own row even when you fall outside that page.

Finding your way

The square is the whole map. The six halls stand around it in a regular grid, and every door faces inward, so you can see all of them from the middle and walk to any one in a few seconds. Dead centre is the stage, carrying the bounty board and the standings. The square itself is deliberately bare (no fountain, no stalls, no clutter) so if you are looking for something and the middle of the square seems empty, you have not missed it.

Townsfolk each do one job and stand in one place. Walk up and press the interact key, or just click them:

Inside The Bone & Barrel are the ones a newcomer cannot find by wandering:

The first time you stand inside, Nori names Cuthbert and Osric for you, so you know which way to turn.

The bench

The Master is the den's operator, and the one plate on the square that reads Admin rather than NPC. He does two things the rest of the den does not.

Dev log is what the house has changed. Every fix and every update is posted there with its date, newest first; press one to read it in full. It is public. No wallet needed.

Bug reports is the other half. Write what went wrong and report it; the bench asks your wallet to sign, which is how it knows the report is yours and not somebody else's filed in your name. What you write is visible to you and to the house, and to nobody else, not to other players, not on the board. When somebody answers, the answer appears under your report the next time you open the bench, and the tab carries a mark until you have looked.

The Master does not promise a fix. Nothing filed there is thrown away, and that is the whole of what he undertakes. There is a limit of eight reports a day per wallet, so a very bad day goes in one filing rather than eight.

Desktop

The mouse does more than look. Dragging turns the camera and the wheel zooms, but a left click is the game's main "use" input: click the ground to walk there, click a door to go in, click a person to talk to them or open their card. If you only ever press E, half the world feels unresponsive for no reason.

A desktop build also has an on-screen Controls panel, though it is shorter than the table above and leaves out some of what is listed here. It does not open on a phone.

Mobile and touch

• Move with the left joystick and use the Run and Jump buttons.
• A Talk button appears when you are near a person you can speak to.
• Back leaves the current hall, room, or arena. For ordinary panels, use the on-screen Close or Back control.
• Tap the ground to walk there, drag to look, and pinch to zoom. Pinching is the only zoom a phone has, and the camera opens at its furthest setting, so if the world looks distant and small when you arrive, pinch in. Nothing is wrong.

⚠️ At a hall door on a phone, use the tap, not the Talk button. Standing at a doorway raises a prompt like "Tap · Enter The Arrow & Ale" and the Talk button lights up, but Talk does not handle doorways and pressing it does nothing. Tap the door itself, or the prompt. This one catches people badly, because the game looks like it has frozen when it has not.

The Controls panel is a desktop thing and does not open here. The touch interface works but has not been tested across a wide range of real devices. If buttons overlap or the keyboard covers the screen, try rotating the device, resetting browser zoom, or hiding the interface with the Hide All control.

On a weaker phone the game lowers its own resolution and paces its frames rather than stuttering, and it shows fewer floating name plates at once. That is the game protecting the frame rate, not a fault.

The halls

The Halls list sits open at the top right, under the Controls tab (on a phone it is at the bottom right, above the deck), and shows everywhere you can go. Each hall covers one subject and holds the market rooms for it. While the Controls manual is open the list steps aside; close the manual and it is back.

The first time you walk into a hall, a short card names the actual buttons in that room (Buy, See the board, Post your own). It is remembered per building, because learning the booths teaches you nothing about the ring. After you dismiss it, a smaller control brings the same card back.

You can also walk to a hall through the plaza instead of using the menu, watch for the interaction prompt near its door.

Five of the six halls open when you reach them. The Bone & Barrel has a warden on the door, and his is a real lock: the day pass costs 2,000 $GOLD, good until midnight UTC, and he turns away anyone who has not paid it. That hall is the only one that charges for anything (see duels).