Shakes & Fidget opens the Blood Weaver beta: the class that fights by spending its own blood

Shakes & Fidget has opened the public beta for its upcoming class, the Blood Weaver, and this time it isn't a concept teaser: the design is essentially locked, and what's on the table is the version meant to ship. The team had already sketched the idea on its dev blog; now there are hard numbers, a separate server and a one-week testing window that closes on August 12 at 12:00 CEST.

On paper it's a classic melee class: Strength as the main attribute and heavy armor. The twist is that it carries no shield — instead of blocking, it leans entirely on two unique abilities that make it play very differently from a Warrior.

The first is the Blood Pact: with a 30% chance, the Blood Weaver sacrifices 10% of its current hit points to chain an extra attack. It's damage bought with your own health, and since the cost scales off current HP, the toll gets cheaper the more the fight wears you down.

The second is the Death Seal, and it's the one that dictates the rhythm of a fight. The first time the Blood Weaver takes a fatal blow, the seal triggers and revives it at 50% health. From then on, every attack has a 20% chance to apply damage over time for up to 2 rounds at a 15% damage factor — it won't stack if the effect is already ticking on the target — and the class gains 25% dodge for the rest of the battle. The price is steep: once revived, the Blood Pact stops working.

Neither ability fires against Mages, following the same logic that keeps a Warrior from blocking magic attacks with a shield. In group battles the seal's revival does not reset between fights, and the damage-over-time effect vanishes when either the opponent or the Blood Weaver dies. Those are the two brakes keeping the class from simply outclassing everyone else — and probably the part that will generate the loudest feedback.

The beta is browser-only, running at beta.sfgame.net, and you need a Shakes & Fidget account. When creating a character you can pick presets at level 300, 400, 500 and 600 — or start from scratch — and you can run several at once. The presets come fully unlocked: Witch enchantments, dungeon keys (nothing cleared, so the deeper dungeons still have to be earned), the Arena Manager, the Fortress, the Underworld, pets maxed at level 200 with every habitat completed, and a full Scrapbook. The Hall of Fame is stocked with dummy characters of every class between 300 and 600 so there's someone to measure yourself against.

Toward the end of the beta there will be an in-game survey, with the questions shared ahead of time on the beta Discord. All in-game text — the survey included — is fully translated, though conversation on that Discord is English-only.

For a browser game with more than fifteen years behind it and a community that hasn't budged, a new class is no small thing: it touches the PvP, dungeon and Fortress metagame all at once. And the fact that the beta arrives with such explicit numbers suggests the team wants to tune percentages rather than relitigate the concept. If you care about the Blood Weaver landing well balanced, this is the week to get your hands on it.