How to Play Wizardly Way

The short version

Wizardly Way turns the area around you into a magical valley. You tap to move your wizard through it, so you never have to walk. Fight the monsters gathered around rifts, Capture bosses to learn spell words, combine those words into your own spells, and work with other wizards in your area to wake landmarks and push back the corruption called the Wane. A good session takes just a few minutes.

1. Create your wizard

• Choose your starting element: Fire, Water, Wind, Earth or Lightning. You begin with a Bolt spell of that element, plus the Capture spell.
• Allow location access so the game can build your valley from the real map around you. It's only used while you play.

2. Explore your valley

Your real location anchors a valley of terrain shaped from the surrounding map. Tap anywhere to move there. You can play from the couch, a park bench or a lunch break. Visiting a new place in real life opens a new valley to explore.

Your valley is split into named neighborhoods, marked by glowing rune lines on the ground. Every new neighborhood you discover goes into your Wizard's Atlas. See Places of Power for everything you'll find on the map.

3. Fight with spells

• Tap a spell on your action bar to auto-aim at your target, or the nearest enemy.
• Hold and drag a spell to aim it yourself, with a preview of where it will land.
• Swipe to dodge out of the way for a moment of invulnerability.
• Your weapon attacks on its own between spells. Spells are where the real power is, and they cost mana, which refills over time.

You carry up to five spells at once. Match your element to the enemy's weakness for 50% more damage: Water beats Fire, Fire beats Wind, Wind beats Earth, Earth beats Lightning, and Lightning beats Water.

4. Capture bosses, learn spell words and cast spells

New spells don't drop from ordinary monsters. You build them from spell words, and you learn words by capturing them:

1. Find a boss in a boss rift, or a champion at a special location.
2. Cast Capture on it to focus, and understand the words the boss is using. The focus lasts a short time.
3. Defeat it before your focus fades, and you learn one of the five words from the spell it casts.
4. Craft a spell anywhere by picking one word from each of the five categories: Element, Form, Magnitude, Range and Duration.

Words are yours forever, and crafting never uses them up. Capture the same word again at a higher rarity to make your spells stronger. The full list of words is on the Magic and Spell Words page.

5. Help your neighborhood

You won't see other players on the map, but you share the same world, and what you do helps everyone nearby.

• Tap an Arcane Beacon to collect Mana Petals.
• Pour petals into landmarks to level them up together. A fully raised landmark wakes and blesses the whole area.
• Seal rifts by clearing them. The first wizard to clear one closes it for everyone and gets their name on it.
• Fight the Wane. Rifts left open corrupt the land. Defeat Waning monsters and Purify the land to clear it.
• Raise public builds. Pool your resources with other wizards nearby to put up shared buildings in your neighborhood, places that stand for everyone and help any wizard who passes through.
• Found a Moot Stone. From level 5, propose a real public spot as a gathering stone for your neighborhood. See the Moot Stone guidelines.

A typical two-minute session

1. Open the game. Your valley loads with landmarks, rifts and the state of your neighborhood.
2. Tap a landmark for petals or a boost.
3. Head to the nearest rift and clear the monsters guarding it.
4. Catch a Fae Glimmer or open a chest if one turns up.
5. Leave your mark: pour petals into a landmark, Purify the Wane, or dive into a rift to seal it.

6. Grow your wizard

There are no classes. Your build comes from the spells you craft and where you spend your trait points, earned every level.

Monsters also drop randomly generated gear (staves, wands, swords, axes, bows, daggers and armor), each with its own rarity and magic properties, plus materials such as ores, woods, cloth, stone and herbs.

7. Follow the story

The main quest pits you against Ruairí Icebane, a warlord whose troops are raiding the towns of Talamh. Along the way, Inns hand out bounties (and the occasional odd job, like finding a missing sock). Read the backstory in the Lore section.

8. Climb the leaderboards

Compete on leaderboards for monsters extinguished, quests completed, dungeons cleared, daily login streaks, gold, and neighborhoods explored. There's even a board for how often you get snuffed out, for those who like to live dangerously.

Coming later Planned

• Team boss battles: join a lobby and take on a boss together with other wizards in your area.
• Town building: build a home base, hire townsfolk and defend it from raids.
• Seasonal festivals based on the Irish calendar, starting with Samhain.
• More elements: Arcane, Shadow and Light.
• iPhone version, after the Android launch.

Play safely

Because you tap to move, you never need to walk while looking at your phone. If you do play while out and about, stay aware of your surroundings, never play while driving, and don't go anywhere you're not allowed. Read the full safety rules.