Ashaveth

What Ashaveth is

Ashaveth is an original single-player grimdark RPG that runs entirely in a web browser. Made by Design Delight Studio and released at version 1.0.0, it is free, requires no download and no account, and is rated for adults 18 and over. A campaign spans 50 levels across five distinct biomes.

You start in the last town, Sallowmere, and climb from level 1 to the level 50 cap. Progress is saved in your browser, so a campaign can be played across many sessions. There is one player character and one enemy at a time — the game is turn-based and text-forward, carried by 103 hand-generated art assets rather than a 3D engine.

Everything in Ashaveth is original to Design Delight Studio: the setting, the five bosses, the three named residents of Sallowmere, and the forge-only sword called Godsbane. It is not based on or affiliated with any other franchise.

The world and the Red

The world of Ashaveth is a palimpsest — a page that was written on before. Something is scraping it clean, and it has reached the last town, Sallowmere. The Red is the first fire, the force unwriting everything. You are Sallowmere's final line against it.

The premise drives every system in the game. As the Red advances, it does not merely destroy — it erases, removing things as though they were never written. Sallowmere is where the last people, and the last record of them, still hold. The tavern-keeper Wren is building that record even as the Red unwrites it.

The five biomes

Ashaveth has five biomes tied to fixed level bands: The Whispering Woods (levels 1–9), The Drowned Host (10–19), The Obsidian Peaks (20–29), The Void Edge (30–39), and The Dragon's Domain (40–50). Each band raises enemy difficulty as you climb from level 1 to the cap at 50.

The biomes are documented in the Sallowmere Almanac, an in-game atlas that maps the regions you have reached. Each biome's level band is fixed, so the route from the woods to the Dragon's Domain is the same 50-level arc for every player.

The five bosses

Five bosses gate the campaign, one every ten levels: Arachne the Broodmother (level 10, 1,200 HP), Golgoth the Rot Giant (level 20, 4,000 HP), High Cultist Malakor (level 30, 9,000 HP), Xel'Nath the Void Walker (level 40, 20,000 HP), and Ashaveth the Red (level 50, 25,000 HP).

The final fight is deliberately plain in structure. Ashaveth the Red has one stat block that does not change mid-fight — there is no surprise second form to survive.

Ashaveth the Red — Level 50, 25,000 HP, one unbroken stat block, no phase two. Final boss stat block

The forge: Godsbane

Godsbane is the only blade that bites the Red, and it cannot be bought at any price. Vosk forges it in four stages — The Shard, The Heat, The Edge, and The Quench — each gated on a dead boss, a level, and Vosk's trust. The Quench permanently costs 10% of your maximum HP.

The forge is the central progression goal of the game. No shop sells a weapon that harms the Red; the only path is to earn each component from a fallen boss and bring it to Vosk, whose trust must be high enough at each stage. When finished, Godsbane deals 3× damage to Ashaveth the Red.

1. The Shard

   Marsh-iron taken off Golgoth the Rot Giant — the raw metal of the blade.

2. The Heat

   An ember of the first fire taken off High Cultist Malakor — the flame that can work the iron.

3. The Edge

   Unwritten ore from past the margin, taken off Xel'Nath the Void Walker — the edge that can cut the Red.

4. The Quench

   The final tempering. It permanently costs 10% of your maximum HP — the blade is paid for in your own life.

The three of Sallowmere

Three named NPCs live in Sallowmere: Osric, an old soldier who commanded the host that drowned in the marsh; Wren, a tavern-keeper who remembers everything and records what the Red is unwriting; and Vosk, a dwarf smith with one milk-blind eye. Each tracks how you treat them and writes about it.

All three track five relationship values toward you — trust, respect, fear, attraction, and manipulation — and, separately, write real journal entries about you. Those entries persist across the campaign and are quoted back to you later, including at the ending.

Combat and progression

Combat uses weakness (1.5× damage) and resistance (0.5×), a 15% critical-hit chance at double damage, and status effects: Burn (5% per turn), Poison (6%), Void Rot (8%), and Weaken (−30%). Lifesteal unlocks at level 30 (15%) and double strike at level 45 (20%). You get 3 stat points per level.

Each real-world day you get 15 fights, which reset at 12:01 AM local time along with 3 tavern drinks. Money left in the bank earns 5% interest per day, so banking between sessions compounds. Every level grants 3 stat points to spend as you choose across the 50-level climb.

Beyond ordinary loot, the Relics of the Erased Draft can drop from any source at a 0.05% rate — mathematically about one in every 2,000 drops — making them the rarest items in the game.

The ending

Killing the Red is not the end of Ashaveth — it is the last decision. There are three endings, with no right answer and no score. The finale reads your actual save file and quotes back the real journal entries the NPCs wrote about your specific playthrough.

Because the ending reads your save directly, it reflects the campaign you actually played: how you treated Osric, Wren, and Vosk, and what they wrote about you along the way. The three endings are not ranked and there is no points total — the game does not tell you which choice was correct, because none is. The three endings are left for you to reach unspoiled.

Art and engineering

Ashaveth ships with 103 hand-generated art assets and is verified by 154 passing unit tests, 0 TypeScript errors, and a roughly 320 kB entry bundle. Its AI features run through a Cloudflare Worker that holds the API key server-side under a hard daily spend ceiling, so the browser never sees the key.

The NPC dialogue is generated at runtime, but the key that powers it is never shipped to the client. A Cloudflare Worker holds the key server-side and enforces a hard daily spending ceiling, which bounds cost and abuse. On the client, the entry bundle is about 320 kB, and the codebase compiles with 0 TypeScript errors and passes 154 unit tests.

Frequently asked questions

This section answers common questions about Ashaveth: what it is, that it is free with no download or account, who made it, the age guidance (18+), how combat and the daily reset work, what Godsbane is, and how the three endings read your save. Each answer below stands on its own.