Hello to all of you Dragon Hunters, and welcome to another dev update!
As you know, our team has been hard at work on multiplayer and we’re now at the point where we are finally able to tell you more about it! That’s why today, we will break down how multiplayer will work and answer some common questions we’ve been seeing since the beginning of Early Access.
Expect to walk away from this DevBlog with a better understanding of what it will be like when players will get their hands on the multiplayer update.
Our Approach
The online multiplayer of Dragonkin will consist of partying with up to 4 players to progress through the story together or to take on high-end content such as the Hunting Board or Chaos Hunts!
Players will also contribute to the evolution of the City of Montescail that can host up to 50 players. Some people like diving straight into battle and completing story/endgame hunts as much as possible, some prefer endgame activities! From quest completions to gathering relics or crafting, in this way, everyone can feel like they’re contributing in their own right as everything gives XP to the City.
Because our philosophy is focused on creating a friend-oriented experience, items you’ve gathered can be shared by putting them in the City’s shared chest or dropped on the ground for your friends to pick up.
We’ve chosen this approach instead of a global trade system or player-driven economy as it aligns with our intention of not having Dragonkin be a live-service game, also meaning that it remains fully playable offline.
As such, there’s no major gameplay advantage to playing online. In fact, Multiplayer is simply another way to experience the game, mainly for those who want to play alongside friends or develop their city together.
If you don’t want the details, here a sum up:
TL;DR:
City Hub: Up to 50 players, with 32 online simultaneously
Quests: Up to 4 players can team up for Story or Endgame content
Shared Progression: Level up the City together
Level Catcher: Lower-level players level up faster if a high-level player is present
Friend-Oriented: Share items freely without global economy
Transfer characters: Move your characters across online and offline Cities anytime
Teleport: Instantly teleport to other players in the party, even mid-quest
Revive: Bring fallen allies back into the fight or after combat
Loots: Drops are for you only (but you can give them to anyone)
Dragonkin can still be played fully offline!
City Ownership & City Progression
Online Cities are the main structure that brings players together.
Each city can host up to 50 players, with 32 able to be online simultaneously. You can create a city or join an existing one only through invitations from friends.
You can have multiple characters in the same online City or across different ones.
Each City includes a group system.
Cities are organized into groups of 4 players, who can play Story or Endgame content together.
Of course, players can move freely between groups as long as there's space.
In story group, the progression is shared by any character that joins this group, so you can join at any stage with any character and continue the adventure without losing progress.
Note: A group is considered locked while it’s being used by a character for the prologue and tutorial, meaning it cannot be joined nor deleted.
What Happens If the City Owner Leaves or Destroys the City?
Because character progression is saved locally, nothing is lost if an Online City is destroyed or if the owner leaves.
Your characters remain intact, but they will be in a “non-city” state. The next time you log in with that character, you’ll simply need to either join another city or create a new one. This to ensure that character progress is preserved.
It's also worth mentioning that city ownership can be transferred to another player, so it's not necessary for a city to be deleted.
Managing the City
City Management is accessed via Options > Player Management. From here, you can:
Check who’s online or offline
See each player’s current location
Teleport to friends instantly
Each player has a rank with permissions managed by the owner.
Transfer your characters anytime across Cities
You’ll be able to transfer your characters between cities from online to offline and vice versa.
This can be done anytime from the main menu and without restrictions.
What do I keep (or not)?
You get to keep all your inventory items, resources, and gold.
However, you will lose the bonuses you had from your previous City if the new City offers fewer or different bonuses.While you will lose access to your old chests, you’ll gain access to the stashes of the new City you join.
Hunt together
Up to 4 players can play together and either progress in the story or tackle endgame hunts.
For the Story Quest, it depends on the current stage of the story, which is determined by the progress of the city group.
For the Hunting Board, the quest is validated at the end for everyone who participated in the hunt.
Difficulty & Level Catcher
The player who starts the quest sets the difficulty, while enemies scale to the highest-level party member currently in the map, even if they join mid-hunt. As you can expect, the enemy's health scales with the number of players in the quest, as well as XP gain.
One thing we’ve been very actively considering during development are:
“How can we create a pleasant and seamless experience for players who want to play with their friends?”
We know that friends don’t always start the game at the same time or progress at the same pace. It’s important for players to be able to play at the same kind of level, as such, we are introducing a Level Catcher system that benefits all lower-level party members.
This system helps players quickly catch up to the power level of their highest-level friend.
Teleport (almost) anytime, anywhere to your friends!
From the Player Management tab, you can teleport to your friend at their exact location at any time. This also allows you to teleport directly from anywhere to the map where they’re currently on a quest or in the City.
The only exception being during a Dragon Lord fight.
Revive allies
As many of you already know, dying during a quest displays a Death Recap along with a button to revive yourself up to 5 times.
That said, any player can also revive another player!
We’re still working on the details of the death penalty, but we felt it was essential to add this feature to enhance friends' interactions.
Loots & Resources
Each player receives their own loot, adapted to their class, so you won’t have to rush to grab shiny items.
Meanwhile, all players can interact with resource nodes and gather their own resources.
Offline inventory & Online chests
Your character and inventory are both stored locally, meaning your personal inventory is saved directly on your PC.
In addition to this, when online, the City has shared chests, which are stored on our servers.
Items placed in your private chest can only be accessed by you, while items placed in the shared chest are accessible to everyone in the online City, allowing you to freely share equipment and fragments with your friends.
When should you expect the Multiplayer?
Early 2026 is the target, but we won't rush the game.
If you’ve been following our recent announcements, you know we delayed the Multiplayer Update to early 2026 and we know you’re clamoring for the patch date.
We still can’t give you a specific date yet, that said here’s where we are at. All the team members are playing multiplayer daily to QA test our most recent build. So far, gameplay is feeling smooth and mostly lag-free with up to 4 players on a hunt.
While things are progressing well, there are still plenty of bugs to squash and some remaining stability issues related to multiplayer that we need to iron out.
We cannot overstate how important it is to us that multiplayer launches well.
A bad initial multiplayer experience would negatively impact everyone’s enjoyment of Dragonkin. We want multiplayer to be fun and stable from day one, even in early access, without players facing random disconnections or game-breaking bugs.
Of course, some issues may still arise, but we’ll do our best to address them as quickly as possible.
We’re all really looking forward to it and can’t wait to bring you more news about the release date!
Have a wonderful Holiday Season!
We hope you’ve enjoyed this deeper dive into the multiplayer and maybe you’ve got a little bit better idea of how the game will feel to play with your friends.
Truthfully, we still have a few things to share that we're super excited about, but you'll have to wait until the time is right. For now, though,but for now, it is time for the team to rest.
Stay happy, stay healthy and have a happy holiday season & a happy New Year!
See you in 2026!
Got questions for us? Drop us a line here, or feel free to join us Discord.
