# Your first night: a Keeper's guide to the free demo

> New to Keeper of the Seven Keys? Ten things worth knowing before the bells ring: picking a race, reading a fight, the Journal, Names, and finding your way home through the ruined Hinge.

Keepers · The Keeper team · 2026-10-25 · https://sevenkeys.fun/blog/your-first-night-a-keepers-guide

The bells are about to ring, the lanterns are lit and the Hinge is full of people who have no idea what tonight will cost them. You have about two hours of story ahead of you. Here is what we wish every Keeper knew on their first night.

## Before you start: pick any race

There is no wrong choice. The **Elven Keeper** fights from range with a staff and fills Focus quickly; the **Delver** stands behind a blade and shield; the **Human Wayfarer** keeps its distance with a bow; the **Chainbound** sweeps whole crowds aside with two hooked blades on chains. Every race carries the same Keyring, shares the Dash and the Heal, and can finish the demo. Your account can hold six Keepers, so you can always try another.

![A new Keeper chooses a race on the dais](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1FJmRQNNiVRPmoyp4ilC5xKVZof4FxqIP=w1400)

## The controls in one minute

On keyboard and mouse, two schemes are available in the settings: **Classic** (click to move, click a foe to attack) and **Direct** (WASD to move, the cursor aims).

- **Attack**: left mouse button. **Heavy**: right mouse button, held to charge.
- **Dash**: Space. **Heal**: Q. **Your race's three specials**: 1, 2 and 3.
- **Interact and gather**: E. **Journal**: J. **Inventory**: I. **Map of a territory**: M. **Recall home**: H.

A gamepad and touch play the whole game too; the controls card (press / to show or hide it) shows what each button does on the device you are holding.

## Ten things worth knowing

**1. Every Key is also a verb.** During the Rite, the Keys teach you what they do to the world: Edge cuts a rope, Ruin breaks a gate, Bloom grows a hedge, Embers lights braziers and burns brambles, Tides freezes a channel, Echoes rewinds a broken arch and Passage parts a veil. When something blocks the way, ask which Key it is waiting for.

![The Lantern Market: a cracked wall waits for Ruin](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1YW5dQAsStsvNEUwFMlkxnyfrQyJD8d-N=w1400)

**2. Read the ground.** Every dangerous blow is telegraphed: a shape fills on the ground before it lands, along with a wind-up and a sound. Normal attacks take at least 0.4 seconds to land, big ones a full second. If you can see it, you can avoid it.

**3. Dash early, not late.** Your Dash protects you from its very first moment. Dashing through a blow just as it lands is a perfect dash, and attacking out of a dash gives you your weapon's dash strike.

**4. Hold the Heavy.** The Heavy braces, draws or gathers while you hold it. Let go at the peak, when the charge ring closes and the chime sounds, for a perfect release. A Heavy on a staggered foe **Shatters** it for double damage.

![Study the Unwritten: the Journal fills as you watch them](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1Nx9E7srNyjADcGzA15lcwidem_B9Guop=w1400)

**5. Study before you strike.** The Journal (J) fills as you watch and fight. Each stage reveals more about a foe: its weakness, its poise, its perfect-dash windows. Knowing a fight is worth more than any number on your gear.

**6. A Husk is still someone.** The Unwritten do not kill; they erase. Name-stones in the streets teach you the names of the erased. Still a Husk, speak its Name, and a citizen of the Hinge comes back. They will remember it.

**7. Stand in the light.** When Vael, the Archivist, raises her pools of erasure, the braziers are your friends: their light makes her Unwrite harmless. She will try to put them out.

![Vael, the Archivist, and the light of a ward-brazier](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1lNSC0-gBur2C8wSvHE3bVyJOsx-W3A1S=w1400)

**8. You get a Last Breath.** The first blow that would fell you in a fight leaves you standing on a single point of health, with a moment to dash clear. Use it well.

**9. Follow the tracker.** The quest tracker on the right says what to do, where, and with which key; a waypoint and a needle point the way. Once you rebuild, a list of **materials to gather** shows what your goals still need, and the nodes that hold them glow.

**10. Bank your Mythril, and Recall home.** Mythril you pick up on an expedition is unbanked until you reach a Waystone or come home; if you fall, 30% of it stays in a **Drift Echo** you can walk back to. Once Bell Square's Waystone is lit, H recalls you home from anywhere out of a fight, and Interact at the Waystone takes you back where you left.

## What it looks like in motion

![video: The Night of Seven Bells, a Keeper's first fight](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BR12fdB8TRfsCvX74le6OMZCmHsqG0c2/preview)

## After the prologue

You wake in the ruins holding an empty Keyring. From there the demo opens up: rebuild the Hinge with the people you bring home, take contracts at the West Gate, still the Verge, hold the Mines and open the first Door. Take your time. The world turns every thirty minutes and after every contract, and it remembers what you did.

[Play the free demo](https://sevenkeys.fun/)

If you get stuck, or find something that feels unfair, tell us. That is exactly what this first stretch of the road is for.