Wardens of Ilvaran: game guide

Everything the game holds today: exploring, towns, quests, duels, cards and decks.

1. Introduction
2. Getting started
3. Exploring the world
4. Towns and villages
5. Quests, character progress and the Travelling Merchant
6. Duels
7. Cards, colours and keywords
8. Deck and collection
9. The Journal
10. Settings, controls and saving

Introduction

Wardens of Ilvaran is a free card-dueling adventure in your browser: you walk a three-dimensional world, and every clash with a monster is played as a card duel for a stake (the ante). The game runs at ilvaran.online, with nothing to install, on a computer, tablet or phone.

The story. Morrak, the Hollow King, has raised a tower at the very heart of Ilvaran, in the land called the Hollow. Around it lie five lands, each of a different colour of magic. You play a warden who must cross every land, win their safe-conduct passes and face Morrak in a duel.

The goal. Build a deck strong enough to defeat the Hollow King: 40 life, the hardest opponent in the game. After the victory the world stays open: you can keep wandering, collecting cards and earning achievements.

The game loop in short:

1. Explore the world and gather resources, treasure and items.
2. Duel monsters and win their cards.
3. In towns, buy and sell cards, take quests and build your deck.
4. Earn experience, levels and the passes of the five capitals.
5. Enter the Hollow and defeat Morrak.

Getting started

The game needs an account but no password: you log in with a one-time link sent to your email address.

Account. On the landing page you only enter a nickname (3–24 characters) and an email address. The activation link is valid for 48 hours, a login link for 20 minutes. The forms are protected by invisible reCAPTCHA v3. A browser that has logged in once skips the landing page on later visits and opens the main menu straight away.

The main menu of a logged-in player has three buttons:

• Continue your journey: loads the character you played last.
• Start a new journey: creates a new warden in a free slot.
• Manage wardens: the list of slots (up to 12 characters per account) with level, colour and date of last play, and Play and Delete buttons.

Creating a warden takes two steps:

1. Choose a land. The colour decides your starting deck, home village and the colours of your character.
2. Face and name. Six portraits per land: Sage, Knight, Shieldmaiden, Ranger, Adventurer and Warrior. Each portrait has its own 3D model on the map, tinted in the land's colours. Type a name or roll one with the ↻ button.

Land	Region	Capital	Card style
Dawn	Dawnfields	Aurel	disciplined soldiers, healing and judgment
Tide	Tidemarsh	Saltreach	flyers, walls of water and tricks of the current
Dusk	Duskfen	Gloamwick	deathly creatures and life-draining curses
Ember	Emberwaste	Cindermoor	fast, reckless creatures and burning spells
Grove	Wildgrove	Brannick	big beasts and the raw strength of the wild

The start. Your warden appears in the home village of their colour at 8:00 on day one, with a 30-card starting deck (15 basic lands and 15 cards of your colour). Starting gold is 500 minus the shop value of the starting deck. Short tutorials, each spotlighting a part of the screen, guide your first steps; you can replay them from How to play.

Exploring the world

The world is one large 3D map: five lands arranged around the Hollow, with more than 250 towns and villages joined by a network of roads.

Movement and camera

• Walking: WASD or the arrow keys (directions follow the screen), or click or tap the ground. Rings spread out where you click, like drops on water.
• Clicking an object (monster, town, cave, chest, resource, pouch) walks you to it. A clicked monster is pursued until the duel starts.
• Zoom: mouse wheel or pinch, from 0.5× to 2×.
• Highlight: hovering over an object gives it a golden glow and a label (for example a monster's name and life).
• Shortcuts: M map, Q quests and pack, J Journal, E to enter a town or use the object you are standing at.

Camera. The world is seen from above at an angle, in a near-isometric view: the narrow field of view keeps buildings and trees from distorting at the edges of the screen. The camera always follows your character; drag with the right mouse button to turn it around you, while the tilt stays fixed.

Roads and safety

Roads are safe and fast; the wilds are slower and dangerous.

• On a road you walk faster, and monsters leave you alone as long as you keep moving. After 20 game minutes standing still you get a warning; after 30 the road stops protecting you until you move on.
• Towns are always safe: villages and cities up to their outermost buildings, capitals for 14 paces around the castle. Dashed circles mark this on the minimap.
• Step off the road and nearby monsters give chase. In the wilds you are only a little faster than they are, so head for a road or a town. Touching a monster starts a duel.
• Difficulty grows with distance: the lands next to your own colour are somewhat harder, the two far lands harder still, and the strongest monsters live near the Hollow.

Water is not safe either. You can wade into lakes and marshes, but you last only 16 seconds in deep water. The game counts down with warnings, and when time runs out the current carries you away: fishermen pull you out and bring you to the nearest open town, where you wake two hours later. Water does not protect you from monsters either: most stop at the shore, but the creatures of the Tide follow you into the water.

Map, minimap and fog of war

• The minimap in the top-right corner turns with your view. Click it to open the full map.
• The full map shows only what you have explored. Squares are cities (capitals framed), dots are villages, triangles are caves and ruins, gold rings are quest targets. The header shows how much of the world you have explored.

Day and night

One real second is a minute in Ilvaran, so a full day lasts 24 minutes. The light and the colour of the sky change, and at night house windows glow warmly. A rooster crows in the morning, an owl calls at night, and the town bustle gives way to night sounds.

What you find in the wilds

Object	What it gives	Comes back
Treasure chest	gold and/or cards; double loot when two guards watch over it	at random, 30 to 84 game hours after opening
Glowing gathering spot	1 resource of the land (3 kinds per land, 15 in all)	after a short while
Money pouch	5–50 gold	appears at random beside roads, up to 5 per land
Potion of Speed	double walking speed for 24 game hours	at random beside roads, up to 5 per land
Wild monster	a duel: gold, experience, its ante card	24 game hours after its defeat

Pouches and potions are picked up just by walking over them. During the day hens wander the villages; they run from you and from monsters, but never stray far from their village.

Passes and Morrak's tower

Every land has a safe-conduct pass that opens all its towns and villages. You receive it when you open the land's capital: by paying at the gate or by beating the gate warden in a duel. Five pips in the top bar show the passes you hold. A magic ward surrounds the Hollow: only with all five passes can you reach the Hollow King's tower at the centre of the map.

The top bar

On the left: the land and the kind of place (town, road, wilds), day and time, gold, level with an experience bar, the number of cards in your deck and the five passes. On the right: the Travelling Merchant button (when one is waiting), Quests, Map, Journal, How to play, Settings and mute. Notes about discoveries and achievements appear below the bar.

Towns and villages

Towns are your safe base: here you trade, take quests, build your deck and travel by coach.

Kinds of towns

Every land has a capital (a walled castle), 10 cities and 50 villages. Towns on the border of two lands trade in cards of both colours.

Town	Entry fee	Shop restocks	Cards in the shop
Village	50 gold	every 5 days	cheaper
City	500 gold	every 2 days	mid-range
Capital	5000 gold	every day	the priciest and rare ones

The gate

Your home village is open from the start. Every other town is entered through its gate, where you have two options:

• pay the fee from the table above,
• beat the gate warden in a duel.

Once opened, a town stays open for good. Opening a capital also gives you the pass of its whole land, which opens all of its towns. Parcels from delivery quests can be handed over at a closed gate, without paying.

Entering a town

Inside a town's limits, press E or click its centre (the well in a village, the square in a city). Clicking the centre from outside only walks you there. The town screen shows a painted view of the town, a fact about it and four tiles:

1. Merchant: the card shop. The tile shows how many cards are for sale, and the shopkeeper greets you as you walk in.
2. Manage deck: build your deck from the cards in your binder (see Deck and collection).
3. Quest board: quests to take and to hand in. When a quest can be handed in here, a small will-o'-the-wisp glows in the corner of the tile.
4. Quick travel: a coach to other towns you have visited.

The shop: buying and selling

• Buy: cards priced in gold, and the five basic lands for 1 gold each. Bought cards go to your binder. Clicking a card shows it large, with a Buy button.
• Sell: the shop buys cards from your binder for half the shop price; cards in your deck must be taken out first. The card list is on the left, and pointing at a row shows the card on the right. Every purchase and sale rings with coins.

Quick travel

A map and list of every visited town you may enter. Travel time: 1 hour within a land, 6 hours to a neighbouring land, 12 to a far one. The game clock moves on by that time, and on arrival the destination's town screen opens at once.

Quests, character progress and the Travelling Merchant

Quests give gold, experience and often a card; levels bring more life in duels and a visit from the Travelling Merchant.

The quest board

Every town has its own board: 2–3 quests in a village, 4–5 in a city, 5–6 in a capital. The board changes on the town's restock day. You can hold up to 8 quests at once and abandon any of them at any time in the Quests window (Q key).

Kind	What to do	Where to hand in
Clear a cave or ruin	enter the place and beat its guardian in a duel	in the town that gave the quest
Gather	bring 2–4 of one or two resources, sometimes from two lands	in the town that gave the quest
Delivery	carry a sealed parcel to another town	in the destination town, even at a closed gate

Difficulty is shown in stars (1–4 for gathering and delivery, more for the dangerous caves). More stars mean more gold and experience (35 XP per star plus 15) and a better card as a reward. Quests of 2 stars or more always give a card.

Caves and ruins are sealed: you can enter only with a quest for them. A sealed site's label tells you which town's board offers the quest that opens it.

Tracking quests. A will-o'-the-wisp floats over the towns and sites your quests lead to; at night it casts a soft circle of light on the ground and the house walls. Caves and ruins from quests are also shown on the minimap. Gathering quests have no wisp, because resources are found all over a land.

Experience and levels

• Experience comes from won duels (about 3.5 XP per point of the opponent's life, more for harder ones) and from completed quests.
• 100 XP takes you to level 2, and each level after needs 20% more.
• Every 5 levels the player starts duels with 1 more life: 15 at first, 16 at level 5, 17 at level 10 and so on.

The Travelling Merchant

Every new level brings a Travelling Merchant. The merchant:

• sells one card of your choice that you have not discovered yet and can afford, with colour filters and a search box,
• buys cards from your binder for half price (the same layout as in the shop: list and preview),
• can wait (the Later button) as long as you have bought nothing; after a purchase only Farewell remains,
• queues up: several pending visits wait one after another, and the Merchant button in the top bar shows how many.

Duel rewards

Beating a monster gives 10 gold per point of its starting life, experience and its ante card. Some achievements (10 pouches, 10 potions) add 100 gold each.

Duels

A duel is a classic one-on-one card game: whoever brings the opponent's life to zero wins; a player who runs out of cards to draw also loses.

Before the duel

• Ante: before the start, one card (not a land) is drawn at random from each deck. It is the duel's stake.
• Who goes first is random. Both players draw 7 cards.
• Life: the player starts with 15 life plus 1 for every 5 levels. Monsters have 8 to 21 life, Morrak 40.
• Mulligan: before the first turn you can keep your hand or shuffle it away and draw 7 new cards. For every mulligan one card from the new hand goes to the bottom of your library, so the first mulligan leaves you 6 cards, the second 5, and so on.

The turn

Each turn has these steps: upkeep, draw, first main phase, combat, second main phase and end of turn. Combat is split into steps: beginning of combat, declare attackers, declare blockers, first-strike damage (only when a creature has first strike) and regular damage. The step bar above the table highlights the current step and shows the combat steps in a separate row, in fire colours.

• Each turn you draw a card and may play one land in a main phase.
• Creatures, artifacts, enchantments and sorceries are played in your own main phase with an empty stack.
• Instants and activated abilities work whenever you have priority, including in response to the opponent.

Mana

Lands, creatures and artifacts that make mana sit on the table as cards. Click one to tap it and add mana to your pool (shown under your life), which empties at the end of every step. Click it again to untap it if its mana is still unspent. When you play a card, the game spends the mana in your pool first and taps more sources for you if needed. Coloured symbols need that colour, grey numbers take any mana, ◇ is colourless mana.

The stack and priority

Every spell and activated ability goes on the stack first, and resolves only when both players pass in a row. The Stack window shows what is waiting, top item first. Whoever holds priority (gold tag) may cast an instant, activate an ability or pass. When both pass with an empty stack, the game moves to the next step.

• Auto-pass skips moments where you have nothing to cast. Full control stops at every priority pass.
• End turn passes through all remaining steps without attacking and stops only if the opponent casts something.
• Space presses the main action button.
• Clicking a card with a green outline opens a choice of its abilities in the inspector; nothing happens until you choose.

Attacking and blocking

• Attack: select your attackers and confirm with "Attack with N" or "Don't attack". The Attack with all button selects every creature able to attack, then turns into Retreat all. Creatures with banding can be grouped with Form band.
• Block: click one of your untapped creatures, then the attacker it should block. Several creatures can block one attacker.
• Dividing damage: when several creatures block your attacker, you divide its damage among them yourself.
• Creatures that arrived this turn (marked "new") cannot attack or use tap abilities unless they have haste. Damage wears off at the end of the turn.

What you see on the table

• Artifacts and enchantments sit in a dashed box at the start of each row, lands in the row next to each player, and auras as tags under the card they enchant.
• Coloured lines join each blocker to its attacker, and red dashed arrows show the targets of spells on the stack.
• Creatures show icons for abilities that matter in combat (flying, first strike, trample, protection from a colour and more), stacked in columns from the top-right corner of the art.
• A gold shield in a card's top-right corner marks protection: a number is damage that will be prevented, R is a regeneration shield. The same shield on a player's panel shows that player's protection, for example damage prevention or Sanctuary Isle.
• The inspector on the left shows the card you last pointed at, with its current state (damage, counters, gained abilities, auras). Right-click or long-press keeps a card shown.
• The Graveyard and Exile buttons under each life total open those piles, Log shows the whole game log, and Concede ends the duel as a loss.
• At low life you hear a heartbeat and the life total pulses red.

The opponent

Every monster has its own deck in its colour. The AI plans attacks by trying every combination of attackers against your most likely blocks. It takes first strike, protective shields and regeneration into account, and checks whether it keeps enough defenders for your counter-attack. Late in the game it becomes more aggressive. It also responds with instants and abilities during your turn.

End of the duel

• Victory: gold (10 per point of the opponent's starting life), experience and the ante card in your binder. A defeated wild monster disappears for a day, a cave guardian clears its site, and a gate warden opens the town (and in a capital grants the pass).
• Defeat: the ante card. The opponent takes the card you staked. On the defeat screen you choose: buy it back for its shop price (if you have enough gold) or give it up. When your deck is already at the 20-card minimum, the card stays in your deck and you pay up to 10 gold instead.
• Defeat: being moved. After a loss you do not stay where you fought: you wake in the nearest town open to you, the nearest discovered town or village you may enter. The defeat screen names the town where you will wake.
• Every finished duel of a logged-in player is saved on the server with its full log.

Cards, colours and keywords

The game has 359 cards: about 57 in each of the five colours, 68 artifacts and 7 lands. Each card has its own illustration, mana cost, type, rules text and rarity (common or rare).

Card types: creatures, instants, sorceries, enchantments (including auras attached to cards), artifacts (including artifact creatures) and lands. The five basic lands are Field (Dawn), Lake (Tide), Bog (Dusk), Hill (Ember) and Grove (Grove), plus rare special lands.

Card view. Clicking any card in a menu (shop, rewards, binder, Chronicle, duel results) shows it large; the arrows on screen or on the keyboard step through the other cards of the same window.

Keywords are learned step by step: the first card with a keyword adds it to the Journal and shows a short explanation.

Keyword	Effect
Flying	can be blocked only by creatures with flying or reach
Reach	can block creatures with flying
Defender	can't attack
First strike	deals combat damage before creatures without first strike
Double strike	deals damage in both the first-strike and the regular step
Trample	damage beyond what kills its blockers carries on to the player
Vigilance	attacking doesn't tap it
Haste	can attack and tap the turn it arrives
Fear	can be blocked only by artifact creatures and Dusk creatures
Banding	attacks or blocks in a band; the band's controller divides the damage dealt to it
Unblockable	can't be blocked
Landwalk (Lakewalk, Bogwalk, Hillwalk, Grovewalk, Fieldwalk)	can't be blocked while the defender controls a land of that type
Protection from (colour)	can't be blocked, targeted or damaged by sources of that colour

Beyond keywords, cards use many mechanics from classic card games: regeneration, damage prevention and redirection, +1/+1 counters, gaining control, returning creatures from the graveyard, countering spells and effects that sweep the whole table.

Deck and collection

Every card you obtain goes to your binder, and you build your deck from it in any town through the Manage deck tile.

Where cards come from: the starting deck, shops, the Travelling Merchant, quest rewards, treasure chests and cards won by ante.

Deck rules

• A deck has at least 20 cards. The Remove button stops working at 20 cards.
• Copies of one card can make up at most 10% of the deck (rounded down) and never more than 4. Basic lands are exempt.

Deck size	Max copies of one card
20–29 cards	2
30–39 cards	3
40 or more	4

The limit counts the deck size after the card is added, so at 29 cards you can already add a third copy, because the deck grows to 30. When the deck shrinks and a card goes over the limit, the deck builder moves the extra copies to the binder the next time it opens (one at a time, recounting the deck after each) and tells you what it moved. If the deck then drops below 20 cards, basic lands of your warden's colour top it up, taken from the binder first.

The deck builder

• Two columns: Deck with Remove buttons and Binder with Add buttons ("At limit" when the limit is reached).
• The header shows the number of cards and lands, the minimum and the current copy limit, with a "?" icon explaining the rule.
• Colour filters (all, Dawn, Tide, Dusk, Ember, Grove, multicolour, colourless) and a name search work on both columns at once.
• Pointing at a card in the deck shows it large over the binder, and the other way round, so you don't need to click it. Clicking the name opens the full view.
• Each column scrolls on its own; cards are sorted by colour, cost and name, with the number of copies beside each.

Selling. Shops and the Travelling Merchant buy only cards from your binder, for half the shop price. To sell a card from your deck, take it out first.

The Journal

The Journal (J key) is an encyclopedia of everything you have discovered; its progress is shared by all the wardens on your account.

Tab	What it holds
Chronicle	every card of Ilvaran, in colour those you have owned or seen an opponent play, the rest in black and white; a discovered counter, colour filters, search, a "discovered only" switch; chapters I–XXV, of which Chapter I, The Five Lands, is open
Keywords	the keywords you have met, with explanations
Bestiary	each land's monsters with life and victories, an animated 3D model and the cards it plays; unmet ones shown as "???"
Collectables	the 15 resources: how many you have gathered and are carrying, with a 3D model; undiscovered ones wait to be found
Caves and Ruins	discovered sites with their place on the map and their state: sealed, with a quest or cleared
Achievements	achievements earned and still to earn, with progress bars
Credits	the authors of the 3D models, with links to the sources

Monsters. Each land has five kinds of monsters of growing strength. In Wildgrove, for example, they are the Briar Troll (10 life), Thornwood Stalker (12), Elder Treant (14), Thornback Ancient (17) and Primordial Behemoth (21). Then there are the gate wardens, the guardians of caves and ruins, and Morrak, the Hollow King, with 40 life.

Achievements come in categories:

• Travel: visiting a second town, the capital of each land, every town of a land and all of Ilvaran.
• Monsters: the first win and 10, 50, 100 and 250 victories, defeating every kind of creature of a land, a complete bestiary and defeating Morrak.
• Collectables: the first resource, 10, 50 and 100 gathered, all three resources of a land, every resource in the world, 10 pouches and 10 potions (100 gold each).
• Chronicle: 50, 100, 150, 200 and 250 cards discovered, each colour complete and all of Chapter I.

Discoveries and achievements are announced with a note and a sound, but only once you are back on the map, so they never interrupt a duel or a town visit.

Settings, controls and saving

Progress saves itself: first in the browser, a few seconds later on the server, and at once when you close the page.

Controls

Action	Keyboard and mouse	Touch screen
Walk	WASD, arrow keys or click the ground	tap the ground
Go to an object	click the object	tap the object
Turn the camera	drag with the right button	—
Zoom	mouse wheel	pinch
Enter a town, interact	E	the action button on screen
Map / Quests / Journal	M / Q / J	buttons in the bar
Main button in a duel	Space	tap the button
Keep a card in the inspector	right-click	long-press
Step through enlarged cards	arrow keys	on-screen arrows

Settings

• Sound: four separate volume sliders (Music, Ambient, Enemy, Effects) and mute all; the speaker icon in the bar does the same. Music and ambient start at 30%. When the browser tab with the game goes to the background, the sound fades out smoothly and comes back when you return.
• Display: brightness and graphics quality (high or low; changing it reloads the game after saving).
• Scaling: the duel table fits itself to smaller screens and system zoom (for example 1920×1080 at 125%).

Sound in the game

Music and ambient sound change with place and time of day: different in towns, at night, in the wilds near the Hollow and at the Travelling Merchant. The gate, walking into a shop, the quest board, the merchant's farewell, purchases, chests, potions and monsters giving chase all have their own sounds, as does almost every moment of a duel: shuffling, playing a land or a creature, a counter, a creature dying, victory, defeat, the ante.

Monster battle cries. Every kind of monster has its own voice: when a duel begins, the opponent lets out its own battle cry, and gate wardens and Morrak himself have theirs too. A monster that spots you and gives chase also makes itself heard.

Footsteps by ground. Footsteps change with the surface: a packed road, the cobbles of squares and towns, earth and grass in the wilds and wading through water all sound different. After a Potion of Speed your steps quicken.

Music of the lands. Each of the five lands has its own musical theme, and the Hollow around the tower has a separate, darker piece. When you create a character, your new hero greets you with a short line.

Account and saving

• Up to 12 wardens per account; each has its own save, while the Chronicle, Bestiary, Keywords, Collectables and Achievements are shared by the whole account.
• You can continue on another device. If the same character was saved in another window, the game notices and does not overwrite the newer state.
• The Main Menu button in the bar saves the game and returns to your list of wardens.
• When a new version of the game is out, "New version available" flashes in the bottom-right corner; clicking it saves the game and reloads it.
• The game guards against hand-edited gold and experience: detected cheating sends the warden back to their home town and takes half their gold and experience.
• The Privacy Policy and Terms of Service are linked at the bottom of every account screen.