Dimraeth Faustas's Stronghold

Faustas’s stronghold is the home node of Dimraeth, not a menu that pretends to be a house. Between expeditions you return here to craft equipment, brew potions, cook meals that increase vitality, and build farms, quarries, and other structures that generate crops and raw materials. Deeper NPC relationships unlock conversations, personal quests, and romances. Investing materials in an ally’s facilities expands shop inventories, adds crafting services, and opens more farming plots. Every trip out is supposed to leave the hero stronger and the home more complete.

Steam Early Access is dated 15 September 2026. The starter region that feeds this loop is Lost Caverns → Earlwood Village → Wildwood Forest. This page assumes you have read Getting Started and Co-op Play, because the most expensive stronghold mistake is building in the wrong world.

World-tied on purpose

Split persistence is not a bug in the housing system. Buildings stay in that world. Recruited allies stay in that world. If you plant farms in a pickup host’s save, you are landscaping their Mirkea. Host your own world if the stronghold is the reason you bought the game. Visit friends for combat and bosses; come home to craft.

That rule also protects you. Eight people cannot flatten your plots because they dropped into a public shard — there is no public shard. There is a peer-to-peer host and a save that belongs to someone.

What you actually do here

Crafting. Equipment has rarity tiers and upgrades. The stronghold is where loot becomes a kit that matches your archetype. Spellbooks are craftable and attribute-gated; a book you cannot equip is a project for later XP, not a reason to panic-spend off-stats. Store materials instead of vendoring everything after Lost Caverns.

Potions. Brew before Bounties. A repeatable boss is a test of meters; showing up with empty bags is how you learn that the hard way.

Cooking. Meals are described as boosting vitality. Treat food as part of combat, not as a role-play garnish. A Souls-lite fight with a better health baseline is a different fight.

Farms and resource buildings. These exist so gathering is a loop, not a one-time vacuum of Wildwood. Plant, return from a Deed, collect. Quarries and similar structures are named alongside farms in official copy — build the ones that feed the recipes you actually use.

NPC facilities. Spend materials on allies’ stations to expand shops and services. This is how a blacksmith stops being a static vendor and becomes a reason to keep that world.

Who you are building with

These NPCs are documented. They are not a complete 1.0 census.

• Alaric Audet — folk hero, about 6.4 feet, honor-first, the person the land already tells stories about.
• Befr — traveling merchant parked in Earlwood, loud laugh, better connected to old forces than a normal trader should be.
• Manga — exiled Minotaur blacksmith, horns cut, philosophy of Praesidiism (strength as protection). Guild Hall fixture.
• Eldorian — young Elf, spear and spell, first greeting at the Hall.
• Tamsin — enchanter from Aldoria, banners, Academy of Arcana background, delicate health, high energy.
• Myrll — exiled, dryad-like, doe legs and fox tail, grief at the forest edge. Demo notes tie a dryad quest to building — do not skip her if you care about the stronghold as story.

Romance is real content, not a checkbox in a patch trailer. It is also world-tied. Do not start a bond in a world you will never host again unless you are fine with that being a one-save story.

Deeds versus Bounties as fuel

Deeds are short quests. They introduce people and systems. Bounties are repeatable bosses. Deeds feed the stronghold’s social graph. Bounties feed materials and combat practice. If you only run Bounties, you will have mats and no one to spend them on. If you only talk, you will have friends and no farms. Alternate. See Boss Fights for the two demo names we will actually use.

Input and comfort

You will spend a lot of time in menus and placement. Controls and Input matters here as much as in a dodge: mouse precision helps placement on keyboard; a gamepad should still let you rotate and confirm without fighting the cursor. Steam Deck is supported — test building on the device you will actually play.

A home-world checklist

1. Decide whose save is home before the first farm.
2. Meet Befr and Manga before you vanish into Wildwood for two hours.
3. Craft a spellbook only if you can meet the attribute gate.
4. Cook before a named fight.
5. Spend on an NPC facility once, then go collect the new inventory instead of assuming the tooltip was the whole reward.
6. If friends drop in, tell them what they may harvest.
7. File broken placement or lost chests in Discord #bug-reports, not in looking-for-group.

The stronghold is how Dimraeth stays an ARPG-plus-home instead of a dungeon staircase. Raise it in the world you intend to keep. Then leave, fight Sylbos’s corruption in the forest, and come back with more than a screenshot. Faustas recruited you for a war; he also handed you a place that makes the war feel like it has a door you can close. Building is one loop; the Guides Hub still holds combat and co-op if you forget why you left the gate.