Duelbound
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In development · launching in the city of Emberhold · three classes playable

Every fight is a duel.
Not a dice roll.

Duelbound is a persistent top-down MMO that borrows the free movement and no-target-lock dodging of Realm of the Mad God, the slow-burn persistent world of Tibia, and directional, read-based melee — windups, feints, drags, parries — from Mordhau. Its own idea: one hit number per weapon tier, every defence a fixed share of it, and levels that hand you a mechanic, not a stat.

Join the Discord See Emberhold

Free-to-play + cosmetics. No pay-to-win in PvP — ever.

60 Hzserver ticks
33one hit per weapon tier
0stats you can buy
∞level cap

No target lock

Every fight is real-time and positional. Aim and footwork decide hits — never a click on a nameplate.

A duel of reads

A swing is a physical arc you can watch, bait, and step around. Every attack is a question the other player has to answer correctly.

A world that persists

A shared, living world you hunt, level, and trade in — for years, not one session.

Skill wins

Nothing you can buy makes you hit harder or parry easier. In PvP, the better duelist wins. Full stop.

The launch city

Emberhold

Duelbound launches in one city: soot, ember light and pale stone, with the colosseum at its heart, a temple quarter, the docks and the sewers underneath. The lands around it open up as the world fills.

Emberhold's colosseum by day, pale stone arches over a busy square
The colosseum, by day. Where the ranked duels are fought.
Emberhold's colosseum at night, torches and braziers lighting the stone
The colosseum, by night. Torchlight on stone.
The temple quarter of Emberhold by day, a limestone temple with dark banners
The temple quarter. Where you heal, bind your vow and buy your grace.
The temple quarter at night, flame-gold banners and lit braziers
The temple quarter, by night.

Concept art. The city is being built to match it now.

Two knights fighting beside a stone pillar in a torchlit courtyard, blood on the flagstones Live build — a networked fight, seen from a client at 17 ms ping

The core loop

The counter-loop is the whole game

Every weapon runs the same windup → active → recovery arc, and every option beats exactly one other option:

  1. Parry beats a committed attack
  2. Feint beats a parry
  3. Chamber beats a feint
  4. Morph beats a chamber
  5. A late, reactive parry beats a morph — and closes the loop
ATTACK PARRY FEINT CHAMBER MORPH every option beats exactly one

No stat wins this rock-paper-scissors — only reading your opponent correctly and executing under a real turn cap. Drag your swing to land it late, accelerate it to land it early, or flick a feint you can back out of for the cost of a little stamina. Everything is a visible, physical action, not a hidden roll.

The whole economy

One number. Four fractions.

Every weapon of a tier hits for the same number, and every defence is a share of the hit it answers. Learn it once with a rusty sword at level 1 and it is still true against a legendary blade at level 300.

33the hit — sword, arrow or fireball, best-in-slot at level 10the anchor
4 · 5 · 6hits to kill a mage, a ranger, a knightequal level, equal gear
1⁄4of the hit to block it — or to feint oneparry · feint
1⁄3of the hit to chamber it: the hardest read costs the mostchamber
1⁄5of the hit to morph mid-windupmorph
2.5 sout of combat before stamina comes back — any action resets itthe clock

Landing a hit, spells included, gives you back what blocking it would have cost: a quarter of the hit, as stamina. It rewards the player who lands the attack. A guard break leaves you exactly one block's worth. Magic ignores armour.

Common gear — what monsters carry and what you pick up — hits for half of best-in-slot, and every tier from rusty to legendary shares one reach and one set of timings: only the number changes. Nothing you find beats the number you were balanced against, so gear can make a fight longer, never shorter.

Choose how you fight

Three classes, one read game

Every class plays by the same rules: visible windups, turn caps, stamina, and a read the other side can answer. What differs is how you defend — a knight parries in a cone, a mage shields all round, a ranger isn't there — and every one of them starts level 1 with the same arming sword.

A steel knight in a blue cape with a greatsword held upright in guard

Knight

Playable

Directional melee

Windups, drags and accels, feints, chambers, morphs and ripostes. The duel the whole game is built around. Plate takes 19 of a 33 hit — six to kill.

Defence
Parry, 60° cone
Cooldown
Shield wall
Ultimate
Berserk
A hooded mage in a dark blue robe holding a staff with a glowing crystal, casting with an outstretched hand

Mage

Playable

Spells you aim and time

Fire, frost and lightning fly at a stab's pace, can be feinted, and can be dragged on the tether to land late. Cloth takes the full 33 — four to kill. Magic ignores armour.

Defence
Mana shield, 360°
Cooldown
Ice block
Ultimate
Thunder · Firewave · Blizzard
An archer in dark leather with a green hood drawing a longbow, quiver on the back

Ranger

Playable

A longbow and footwork

The bow blocks nothing: the dodge is his parry — a hop out of the arc for ten stamina, then an arrow into the recovery. Skilled rangers keep the bow drawn even up close, hopping the swing with the arrow still nocked; the side sword is for when the stamina runs dry. Leather takes 24 of a 33 hit — five to kill.

Defence
Dodge · side sword
Cooldown
Vanish
Ultimate
Magic arrow

In-engine renders of the models you play with. Every ultimate is the same attack at 1.5× damage for 20 of the bar — with a big animation.

Every fight is a duel

Steel on steel. Bolt against arrow.

Two knights locked in a duel in the torchlit courtyard, a hit landing with a burst of blood and a damage number
Knight against knight. A real fight from the live build: a scripted knight against the sparring AI, the hit landing for 36 — a stab on the older damage table; today a greatsword hits for 33.
A mage releasing a glowing fire bolt toward an archer, whose arrow flies back toward the mage
Mage against ranger. The fire bolt and the arrow crossing mid-flight — both fly at 2,308 px a second, 130 ms across the duel, so either can be read and stepped out of.
Dragon against knight. The fire breath: a 0.9 s inhale you can see coming, then a cone of flame for a second and a half. A parry held into it blocks it. From the live build.
A hundred and fifty knights fighting across the torchlit arena, seen from above Live build — 150 knights in one arena, every one a posed 3D model drawn from the combat simulation each frame

Under the hood

Parries judged the way you saw them

A read-based duel falls apart if the network lies to you, so the netcode was built before the world. The server decides every hit at 60 ticks a second; your own knight answers your inputs instantly, and everyone else is drawn a steady two ticks behind.

When your parry or chamber was on time on your screen but reached the server a moment late, lag compensation rewinds to what you saw and turns the hit back into a parry — killing blows included. Close calls wait for that verdict, so a saved hit never flashes blood before the clang.

Measured, not promised

Build of 15 September 2026, on a mid-range laptop with built-in graphics.

Server simulation
60 ticks / second
Other knights drawn behind the server
33 ms 2 ticks
Lag-compensation reach
up to 250 ms capped by your ping
Bandwidth with 150 knights on screen
130–180 KB/s was 840
600 knights on a 6,000 px map
you receive the ~190 near you
Server tick with 300 knights fighting
12.4 ms of a 16.7 ms budget
Frame rate with 150 knights on screen
33 fps was 7.7

Player count

Hundreds on one screen. Thousands in one battle.

Being top-down is the trick. Seen from above, a fight is a flat plane of circles: a hit is a line crossing a circle, and everything the server needs to know about a fighter fits in about 20 bytes. A 3D melee game has to test limbs against limbs, which is why the Mordhau-style games top out around 64 to 128 players on a server. Duelbound keeps the same read-based sword fight but can put far more people in it, and the heavy lifting is moving into native C++ on the server, which is about five times faster than the script it replaces.

On your screen

How many fighters you can see, and fight, at once.

Measured: other players on screen at 1080p
150 at 52 fps 280 at 28 fps
Since then
knight posing moved to C++ it was a third of the frame
Goal: a duel-zoom brawl
120–150 fighting 280 packed tight
Goal: a siege, camera pulled out
500–600 fighting 1,000 packed
Goal: drawn at 60 fps
1,000+ far ones as sprites

On the server

How many can fight in one place, and in one world.

Measured: 300 fighters in one battle
12.4 ms of a 16.7 ms tick
Built: area of interest
of 600 on a map, you get the ~190 near you
Goal: one battle, one server process (native C++)
~2,000 fighting ~400 in script today
Goal: one zone
1,000–2,000 players and monsters
Goal: one world, zone by zone
tens of thousands

Measured rows are real runs of the current build. Goal rows are the targets the engine is being built towards, step by step: the area of interest is done, native posing is done, and native combat on the server, shared packets for crowds, and zones come next. Bandwidth is never the limit: about 150 KB/s even with 1,000 fighters in view.

Free analog movement

No grid, no tab-target. You move and aim independently, RotMG-style — but weighted toward Mordhau commitment, not twitch-dodging.

Speed rewards engaging

The whole forward cone is full sprint. Sidestepping is a walk. Backpedalling is the slow way out. Circling into a fight is always the fastest thing you can do.

Fair, readable AI

Monsters run the exact same rules a player does — same turn caps, same windups, no stat-inflated gotchas. Harder monsters just read you better: nine in ten know only three things — accelerate, drag, parry — and the rest climb the same ladder you do, feint to chamber. Difficulty is two dials, blade and brain, never a hidden multiplier.

What waits in the dark

Bestiary

The red dragon winding up a bite at two knights in the courtyard, the bite's reach drawn on the stones
The dragon in the live build, winding up a bite at two knights (the pale wedge is its reach). Monsters will fight on exactly the same rules as players: a common blade at half your number, and the brain a player of that level could have. Only named bosses carry best-in-slot.
A skeleton warrior with a notched sword, a rusted helmet and a cracked round shield

Skeleton warrior

Common

Shield up, sword ready, and they come in packs. They know the basics: accelerate a swing, drag it late, parry. Alone they're a lesson; four at once is a test.

A hulking green orc in spiked iron pauldrons raising a heavy cleaver

Orc

Brute

A cleaver that hits like a falling door and a body that shrugs off chip damage. Slow to wind up, brutal if you misread it; bait the swing and punish the recovery.

The red dragon from above, wings flared, horns swept back, fire at its jaw

Dragon

Boss

A raid, not a duel. It stalks the ground with its wings folded and flares them wide to strike: claws that sweep a side, a bite that reaches twice a greatsword, a fireball, and a breath you see it draw in before the flames come. Every one of them can be parried, chambered or dodged on the same rules as a player.

Length
~6 knights
Fight
Group raid
A torchlit stone corridor with a hanging banner, barrels, and a distant knight Live build — the dueling arena, mid-construction

The long game

A grind with real teeth

Character level follows a Tibia-style parabolic curve — the climb from 1 to 50 takes an afternoon; 150 to 300 takes weeks. There's no level cap, and levels buy prestige and a bigger bar to spend, never a hard wall between players. Skill decides how well you spend it.

Death costs real progress — a full level, whether a monster or another player took it. Grace, bought with gold, keeps 80% of it, and being good pays: a full angel keeps 90%, a full devil 40%. It's meant to sting. That's what makes surviving mean something.

A level hands you a mechanic, not a stat. Everyone starts at 1 with an arming sword, one swing and a parry; the second side, the stab, then drags and accels follow; the staff and the bow arrive at 10; and feint, morph, the chamber — last of the reads — your cooldown and your ultimate come one at a time after that. The read game grows with you instead of landing on you all at once.

Skill sets your real rate of progress: a mechanically strong player earns several times the XP of an average one at the same level, and can safely hunt grounds a tier above their "safe" level. Mastery pays off everywhere, not just in duels.

Where you'll play

One world, every screen

🖥

PC

Mouse-driven aim and swing direction, full precision on the read game.

📱

Mobile

Thumb-stick movement, swipe-to-swing aim, on-screen parry and feint. Phones are built for hunting and the world first, and can still step into a duel.

🔀

Crossplay

One persistent world. Play on whichever screen you have with you.

Free-to-play. Never pay-to-win.

Cosmetics, character slots, storage, and a battle pass fund the game. Nothing purchasable ever affects combat power in PvP — that line doesn't move.

Built in the open

Roadmap

  1. Done

    The duel

    The full melee ladder — attack, parry, feint, chamber, morph, drags and accels — with free movement, live 3D knights, and a sparring AI that plays the read game.

  2. Done

    Networking

    An authoritative 60 Hz server with prediction, interpolation, reconnects, an area of interest, and lag compensation for parries, chambers and killing blows. It came before content, because the duel only works if it feels right online.

  3. Done

    Three classes, balanced at level 300

    Knight, mage and ranger on one read game and one stamina bar, ultimates, heals and the magic shield, a playable dragon, and a balance runner that fights thousands of AI duels to check every matchup.

  4. Now — autumn 2026

    Emberhold

    The launch city, built to match its concept art: the colosseum, the temple quarter, the Knights’ Hall, Mage Tower and Ranger Lodge, the docks and the sewers, with the first monsters beneath the streets.

  5. Next

    A public playtest

    A server in Sydney, the Discord’s first open duels, and levels, gear and accounts that save.

  6. Launch

    Emberhold opens

    One city, full of players: ranked duels in the colosseum, hunting below the streets, and death that actually costs something.

  7. After launch

    The lands around it

    New regions open as the world fills, each its own zone, with native server code holding thousands of fighters per battle.