World and story

It all starts with a letter from someone you've never heard of. It promises a good reward and invites your party to a remote place called Underkeep. A great old tower stands over the village, but you don't start at its door. You begin in Fangroot Forest, with woods and underground tunnels still between you and the people who could tell you who sent the invitation.

Underkeep is the name of the whole area: the village, the countryside around it, the routes under the forest and the places the village sends you to next.

Right from Fangroot Forest, the way forward keeps switching between the surface and the underground. A path that ends above ground can carry on through the Hollowgrave Tunnels. There are caves below the tunnels, and other passages lead to the Rat Nest and the orcs. All this early exploring eventually brings you to the village, where these routes meet.

In a cottage along the way you'll find a letter you can bring up once you reach the village. Don't mix it up with the invitation. The invitation is why your party came to Underkeep; the cottage letter starts a smaller, local story.

This is where you stock up for the road: Ronan runs the smithy, Khelebar sells potions and Barlo has a shop. There's also a tavern, the Crooked Wing. The mayor and other locals keep sending you back outside with their problems, so you keep going back and forth between conversations in the village and the areas around it.

According to the developers, the villagers move around the streets. Guards, merchants and passers-by don't just stand in one spot like scenery.

A lot of what you find early on only makes sense after a later conversation. A strange object from the Rat Nest belongs to someone in the village. The letter from the cottage sends you looking for someone on the cemetery side of Underkeep. And another request is about workers who went into a mine and never came back.

Quests are built to handle whatever order you find things in. You can easily be carrying the item someone needs before anyone has asked you for it. So treat letters, books and named items as part of the local stories – not everything important starts with a quest marker.

The cemetery lies south of the village. Up top there are graves and ritual objects, entrances lead down into the mausoleum, and there are more chambers below that. To the north is Caerlin Woods, with more than one way underground.

Beyond the opening areas, the developers have mentioned Duskhollow Woods, the tower, a swamp, dungeon ruins and forgotten gardens. That list doesn't tell you what order you'll reach them in.

Underkeep isn't only about fights: you also make choices in conversations and encounters. According to the developers, the decisions you make along the way tie into which ending you get, and there are several. They also warned that a special dialogue option isn't always the safest or most useful answer. Some encounter options depend on your heroes' race or class.