NOPOTIONS Beginner's Guide (2026): Your First Character and Your First Hours in Valdaria
NOPOTIONS is a single-player text RPG in one hand-made dark-fantasy world, Valdaria, where an AI narrator tells the story and a separate game engine rolls the dice. You type what your character does, in plain words. The narrator describes what happens. When the outcome is uncertain, the engine rolls a d20 against a difficulty class in front of you, and the story follows the die.
It is fourth on our benchmark at 3.8 out of 5, and it is the only platform we have ever given Player Agency — 5: it never plays your character for you. This guide is for your first evening with it — where to play, how to build a character, how to choose between the two classes, how a turn works, and the handful of systems (travel, rest, death) that are easy to misread in the first hours. For whether it is safe to pay for, see is NOPOTIONS legit.
Access disclosure: NOPOTIONS gave us a comped Max account to play the game for our review. Arcanum is independent and unpaid; no commercial relationship exists between NOPOTIONS and Arcanum, and no conditions were attached to this coverage.
What NOPOTIONS Is, in One Minute
Most AI RPGs let the language model decide everything, including whether your sword hit. NOPOTIONS splits the job, and it says so in its own words: “the Narrator handles description and NPC behaviour, and the game engine handles the d20, the difficulty class, and the state change.”
Three things follow from that split, and they shape your whole first session:
- The world is real, not improvised. The studio hand-builds Valdaria’s six regions, its gods, monsters and history. Villages, roads and dungeons sit at real coordinates on a map. You travel between them; the narrator does not invent them as you go.
- Numbers are numbers. Loot has damage dice, weight, value and stats. Your inventory and skills live in the engine, not in the story text, so they do not drift.
- You are in charge of your character. The narrator describes and waits. It does not type your dialogue or finish your action for you. That is the part we scored 5, and the part most of the category gets wrong — see what player agency means in an AI RPG.
It is still in development. The website calls it Early Access; the studio’s own patch notes number every build as an alpha, and the newest as of 13 September 2026 is Alpha 0.0.30a, released 1 September. Both words describe the same game: publicly playable, no invite, still growing.
Where to Play: Browser, Phone, and the “App”
There is no NOPOTIONS app in the App Store or on Google Play — we checked both on 13 September 2026. You play at nopotions.com, in a browser, on a computer, tablet or phone. The studio’s About page puts it plainly: iPhone, iPad, Android, PC and Mac.
On a phone you can still get something that behaves like an app. The site ships a web app manifest, so your browser’s Add to Home Screen option installs it with its own icon. Opened that way, it skips the marketing pages and goes straight into your campaign, full-screen. We explain how these installable sites work, and which other AI RPGs support it, in AI RPG apps for iPhone and Android.
To start, you sign in with a Google, Apple or Meta (Facebook) account — there is no separate password. The terms of service require you to be 18 or older.
Is It Free?
Yes. Every account gets daily credits: up to 10 a day, capped at 100 a month. One credit pays for one turn, not one action — the rolls and confirmations inside a turn are included. On the free tier you currently get both of the studio’s narration models, Flask and Elixir; the Elixir access for free players was extended to 31 December 2026 in the 21 August patch.
That is enough to create a character and play through your first hours. Paid plans start at $19.99 a month. The full breakdown — what a turn costs, how refunds work, and whether the subscription is worth it — is in is NOPOTIONS legit, so it does not need repeating here.
Making Your First Character
Creation takes a few minutes, and none of it is decoration: the narrator reads the whole sheet and uses it. Here is what you choose.
| Choice | What it does |
|---|---|
| Lineage | Five peoples — Human, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Half-Elf — set by your mother’s and father’s races. Each gives a small attribute bonus and changes how people receive you. |
| Class | Warrior or Rogue today. Sorcerer, Cleric, Druid and Bard are shown as coming soon. |
| Culture | One of the six regions of Valdaria you come from. It pre-selects that region’s patron god. |
| Faith | One of seven gods, or none. Any culture may keep any faith. |
| Recent past | What you were doing before the story began. It decides your starting armour, some useful items and your starting gold. |
| Attributes | Six scores bought from a point pool. They feed every roll you make. |
| Bond and purpose | Someone you care about, and what drives you. The narrator carries both into scenes. |
| Portrait | Chosen from a gallery for your lineage. |
If you want to start now, use a preset. Since the 1 September patch, character creation offers Quick Start presets that choose your class, subclass and starting gear for you. Custom creation is still there. For a first character, a preset is a sensible way to learn the game before you spend twenty minutes on a build.
Recent past matters more than it looks. It is the one choice that changes your equipment. Martial Discipline starts you in scale mail with iron gauntlets. Wilderness Survival gives hide armour, bandages and food. Diplomatic Intrigue gives the least armour but 100 gold, the most of any option. Alchemical Research gives a healing potion and alchemist’s supplies but only 10 gold. Your weapon always comes from your class.
Warrior or Rogue?
This is the choice new players ask about most, and it is simpler than it looks, because class is a starting point, not a cage. The studio’s own line is that class “sets your starting kit and favored skills, but never locks a door.” All 21 skills train from use, whatever your class. A Warrior who talks their way past guards will level Persuasion.
What class does decide is your starting numbers, your weapons, and the feats you unlock as you level. Here are the two side by side, from the game’s own class data as of Alpha 0.0.30a.
| Warrior | Rogue | |
|---|---|---|
| Plays as | Tank, melee, heavy armour | Stealth, ambush, weakening enemies |
| Favoured skills | Athletics, Endurance | Stealth, Thieving |
| Starting weapons | Shortsword and buckler | Two daggers |
| Starting attributes | STR 14 · DEX 11 · CON 13 · INT 8 · WIS 10 · CHA 10 | STR 8 · DEX 15 · CON 10 · INT 11 · WIS 10 · CHA 11 |
| Level 1 feat | Master of Arms — dual-wield any one-handed weapon, shield bash | Sneak Attack — extra damage from stealth with a finesse or ranged weapon |
| Subclasses | Knight (the armoured protector) or Barbarian (the berserker) | Thief (the infiltrator) or Assassin (the killer) |
| Safety net at level 7 | Knight: Second Wind heals you when you drop to 0. Barbarian: Unbroken Rage leaves you at 1 health instead. | Future Sight dodges one blow that would drop you below 0, once per long rest |
Pick Warrior if you want to learn the game without dying to your first bad fight. More Constitution and Strength, a shield from the start, and — as a Knight — a standing armour bonus from level 2 and, while you hold a shield, an armour bonus for your whole party from level 5. It is the more forgiving start on paper.
Pick Rogue if you want the choice of how a fight begins. Rogue damage comes from striking before the enemy knows you are there, and its evasion comes from Dexterity. The cost is a thinner body: Constitution 10 and Strength 8. A Rogue who walks into a fight in the open is playing the class badly.
Two rules worth knowing before you choose a subclass:
- Heavy armour and stealth do not mix. Heavy armour removes the evasion your Dexterity gives you, and since the 21 August patch it also makes stealth checks roll at disadvantage. That matters to a Rogue who picks up good plate, and to a Warrior who wants to sneak.
- Subclass choices and feat choices are permanent. The game’s own progression rules say so for both, so treat each one as final when you confirm it. Every subclass gets a choice of three Expert feats at level 9, and the level cap is 20.
If you still cannot decide: the wiki’s full class pages list every feat for each subclass, generated from game data. That is the right place for the complete lists — this guide will not copy them.
How a Turn Works
You type what you want to do. Or you pick one of the suggested actions the game offers. Then one of three things happens:
- It just happens. Trivial acts — walking into a tavern, putting out the lamps — need no roll.
- The engine rolls. If the outcome is uncertain, you get a roll card before you throw. It names the skill, the difficulty class, every modifier on your side, and what each result means. You roll a d20, add your modifier, and succeed if you meet or beat the DC.
- It is refused. If the action is impossible, the game now offers alternatives instead of a flat no (since 1 September), and the Narrator’s Notes name the exact reason.
The turn ends when the chat shows the YOUR TURN marker again. That is also your billing unit: everything between your message and that marker costs one credit.
Difficulty runs on a fixed ladder. Trivial is DC 1–4, Easy 5–9, Medium 10–14, Hard 15–19, Severe 20–25 and Extreme 26–30. Most checks are Medium. A natural 20 is a critical success whatever your modifier; a natural 1 is a critical failure, and the narrator makes it cost you something.
You cannot talk your way into advantage. Advantage — roll two dice, keep the higher — has to come from the story: an active buff, a companion helping, or the right workspace for a craft. The 21 August patch notes say it directly: saying “for advantage” no longer changes your dice.
A failed roll moves the story, it does not stop it. A failed climb leaves you short of where you were going. A botched lock leaves scratches somebody may notice tomorrow. Every check pays skill experience, even the ones you fail, and harder checks pay more.
Changing your mind: cancel and undo
- Cancel. For about two seconds after you send a message, a Stop button appears. Press it and your message comes back to the input box to edit. It costs nothing, and it does not always work — if the game has already started acting, it goes through.
- Undo. Rewinds your most recent turn only. Items, movement and damage from that turn are put back. Free players get one free undo a day; Premium gets three and Max five, with extra undos at 2 credits each on paid plans. The credit you spent on the original turn is not refunded. You cannot undo a turn where your character died, a scripted scene, or a tempering roll.
Fighting
Combat does not use the d20. Swinging a weapon is not a skill check. Attacks go through three steps, and the outcome card shows what each one removed: the defender’s evasion may dodge the blow completely; armour reduces physical damage; resistance reduces what is left by damage type. Elemental damage — fire, frost, storm and the rest — ignores armour and meets resistance instead. A critical hit rolls the damage dice again and adds them.
Three things new players learn the hard way:
- Level matters a lot. An enemy above your level shrugs off part of your damage. The game’s own documentation calls a fight far above your level “close to unwinnable”. If a fight is going nowhere, leave, level up, or find another way through.
- Combat waits for you. Nothing happens until you act, so read the card.
- Distance is real. Every attack has a reach. A distant enemy closes the gap over several turns, which gives you turns to answer.
Your party helps more than you expect. You can hold two companions at level 1, three at level 2, and a full roster from level 3. Party members earn a full share of experience, and you still get full experience when one of them lands the killing blow. Gear you hand a companion is really worn and really used.
Travelling the Map
Short moves inside a scene just happen. A long journey opens a travel request that shows the distance, the time, and your chance of meeting something on the road. You pick a route:
- Direct — fastest, most likely to meet trouble.
- Cautious — longer, avoids most of it.
You can travel to places you have found, places an NPC has named to you, or places the story has put on your map. Places the alpha has not released yet are marked as beyond reach. An encounter on the road is offered, not forced — you can usually skip it, though some skips need a roll. Travel costs game time and builds fatigue.
One warning from our own play, because it will surprise you. The map moves you between real coordinates, and it does not always know what the story just told you. In our review, NPCs told us our starting island could not be left; the map walked us to the mainland anyway. That is the freedom that earned the agency score, and the leak that cost half a point on fairness. If you want the story to hold, respect what the world says even when the map would let you ignore it.
Resting, Dying, and Coming Back
Rest is a system, not a button. A short rest of one to a few hours gives partial recovery and removes some fatigue. A long rest of about eight hours heals the party fully and clears fatigue, with about eight hours between long rests. You cannot rest with a hostile creature too close — the game tells you which one, and how far away it is. Where you camp and what you eat give the party buffs or penalties, and Resting is itself one of the 21 skills, with its own feats. Wounds close when you rest, not when you drink a potion.
Dropping to zero health is not death yet. You fall into a dying state and slip toward death a quarter of the way with each exchange. Allies have a few turns to stabilise you. Do not sleep through the night with a dying character who has not been treated — that ends them.
Death is not the end of the campaign. The game shows a recap, then your revive options. According to NOPOTIONS’s wiki and patch notes, Revival has been open to every player, free and paid, since June 2026: a revived character comes back after a long wait in game time, so death takes you out of the fight, not out of the story. The enemy that killed you becomes your permanent nemesis. NPCs, by contrast, stay dead.
One small inconsistency to know about: the FAQ on the studio’s How it works page still describes death as “a hard stop for that character”. On 13 September 2026 its wiki and patch notes describe the Revival system above. Trust what the game shows you when it happens.
Five Things That Help in the First Hours
- Say it the way your character would do it. “I tell the guard the blade is a funeral gift I am sworn to deliver” gives the narrator more to work with than “persuade guard”. The engine still decides whether it worked.
- Check the roll card before you throw. It shows the DC and every modifier. If the odds are bad, you can choose another approach before you commit.
- Keep track of the story yourself. The world state is solid, but the memory of the story is the weakest part of the game — we scored it Memory & Continuity — 3. Your journal records what happened. If the narrator loses the thread of what you were doing, say it again.
- Try the voice, then decide. NOPOTIONS has a text-to-speech narrator that reads scenes aloud. In our play it ran slower than the scene needed and voiced every character in the same voice. It can be switched off.
- Use the wiki for lists, not for your story. The official NOPOTIONS wiki documents classes, skills, feats, items and patch notes, and much of it is generated from game data. It is the place for the full tables. What happens to your character is yours to find out.
Where the Community Is
The studio talks to players on its official Discord, which had just over 2,000 members on 13 September 2026, and posts patch notes there and on the wiki. There is also a subreddit, r/nopotions, and a YouTube channel with gameplay videos. For support, the studio’s published address is [email protected].
Is NOPOTIONS the Right Game to Start With?
Yes, if you want one well-made fantasy world with real rules underneath, and you want to be the only one deciding what your character does. The free tier is enough to find out.
Not yet, if you want to play a spellcaster — player spellcasting has not shipped. Or if you want to bring your own setting: Valdaria is the game, and Craft is where you build your own. Or if you want to play with friends — NOPOTIONS is built for one player, and AI RPGs you can play with friends covers the ones that are not.
For how it scores against everything else, see the NOPOTIONS directory entry and the full review.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is NOPOTIONS free to play? Yes. Every account gets daily credits — up to 10 a day, capped at 100 a month — and one credit pays for one turn, not one action. Free players currently get both narration models, Flask and Elixir, with Elixir access extended to 31 December 2026. Paid plans start at $19.99 a month and add more turns.
Is there a NOPOTIONS app? Not in the App Store or on Google Play, as of 13 September 2026. You play in a browser at nopotions.com, on a computer, tablet or phone. The site is installable: use your browser’s Add to Home Screen option and it opens full-screen with its own icon, straight into your campaign.
Should I pick Warrior or Rogue in NOPOTIONS? Warrior is the more forgiving start: more Strength and Constitution, a shield from the beginning, and defensive feats as you level. Rogue does its damage from stealth and relies on Dexterity for evasion, so it rewards choosing how a fight begins and punishes fighting in the open. Class sets your starting kit and favoured skills but locks nothing — every skill trains from use.
What classes are there in NOPOTIONS? Warrior and Rogue are playable as of Alpha 0.0.30a. Warrior branches into Knight or Barbarian and Rogue into Thief or Assassin. Sorcerer, Cleric, Druid and Bard are shown as coming soon, and player spellcasting has not shipped yet.
What happens when you die in NOPOTIONS? At zero health you fall into a dying state first, and allies have a few turns to stabilise you. If you die, NOPOTIONS’s wiki and patch notes describe a Revival system open to all players since June 2026: your character returns after a long wait in game time, and the enemy that killed you becomes your nemesis.
Can you undo a turn in NOPOTIONS? Yes, but only your most recent one. Free players get one free undo a day, Premium three and Max five, and paid plans can buy more at 2 credits each. The credit for the original turn is not refunded, and a turn where your character died cannot be undone.
Can you play NOPOTIONS with friends? No. NOPOTIONS is built for one player. You can recruit AI companions into your party — two at level 1, three at level 2 and a full roster from level 3 — but there is no way for two people to share a campaign.
Features, class data and patch details verified against nopotions.com, the official NOPOTIONS wiki and its patch notes (latest: Alpha 0.0.30a, 1 September 2026) on 13 September 2026. The game is in active development and changes with every patch.
Product names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Arcanum is not affiliated with NOPOTIONS.