Dragonwilds Character Creation: The Decisions That Are Actually Permanent
The most consequential decision at Dragonwilds character creation is not on the character creation screen. It is the world type — because progress does not transfer between Standard and Custom World characters, and that is decided when the character is made, not later. Meanwhile the wiki documents no in-game way to change your appearance afterwards, so the cosmetic choices are permanent too. Here is everything the creator offers, what you start with, and the two decisions worth thinking about before you click through.
On sourcing. The details below come from the community RuneScape: Dragonwilds wiki, and can change with any patch.
Everything the Creator Offers
| Setting | Options |
|---|---|
| Name | Up to 16 characters, no spaces, and case-sensitive |
| Body type | Two — type A (masculine) or type B (feminine) |
| Skin tone | Eight; the top-right option is selected by default |
| Face | Four — varying cheek and nose width, lip fullness |
| Eyes and brows | Four, per body type |
| Eyebrow colour | Eight; bottom-right by default |
| Eye colour | Eight; a green shade by default |
| Hairstyle | Eleven, per body type — bald by default |
| Facial hair | Five, shared across both body types — none by default |
| Hair colour | Eight; bottom-right by default |
Two details in that table trip people up.
Names are case-sensitive and cannot contain spaces. So WiseOldMan and wiseoldman are different names, and a two-word name has to be run together or punctuated.
The default hairstyle is bald. If you clicked straight through the creator wondering later why your character has no hair, that is why — the first option in the list is the empty one.
The hairstyle list is identical across both body types — the same eleven cuts, from the bun and dreads bun through the mohawk, French bun, high bun, pig tail, textured crop, bowl cut, braided top knot and shoulder-length cut. Facial hair is also shared, offering a handlebar, a moustache-and-beard, a ducktail and a goatee alongside none.
And appearance appears to be permanent. The wiki documents no barber, mirror or makeover anywhere in Ashenfall — so treat the creator as a one-time decision rather than a preview.
The Choice That Is Not on the Screen
Dragonwilds has two world types, and a character belongs to one of them:
| Standard world | Custom World | |
|---|---|---|
| Settings | Fixed | Over 40, including XP rates, damage and resource multipliers |
| Character | A Standard character | Requires a Custom World character |
| Progress transfer | — | Does not transfer between world types |
That non-transfer rule is the trap. A character built over fifty hours on a Standard world cannot be moved into a Custom World, and vice versa. The decision is made at creation and cannot be revisited.
There is a server-specific wrinkle on top. A dedicated server only ever creates a default Standard world — so a group who want custom rules must make the Custom World in the client and move it across, rather than configuring it server-side.
So the order of operations for a group matters:
- Decide as a group whether you want a Standard or a Custom World.
- If Custom, one person creates the world in the client with the settings you agreed.
- Move that world onto the server.
- Then everyone creates their characters — of the matching type.
Getting this out of order means somebody starts again.
What You Actually Start With
You leave character creation with three items:
| Item | Stats |
|---|---|
| Adventurer's tunic | 8 melee / 8 ranged / 8 magic defence |
| Adventurer's leggings | 8 / 8 / 8 |
| Torch — the starting shield | Block 5 |
The starting armour is deliberately class-neutral. Equal defence against all three damage types and no set bonus, because it belongs to no armour class. Everything you craft afterwards belongs to melee, ranged or magic, and gains its real value from wearing three pieces of the same class.
The torch is worth replacing immediately. Block 5 against a wooden shield's 26 is a fivefold difference, and a wooden shield costs 10 ash logs. It is the cheapest meaningful upgrade in the game.
Both starting armour pieces are also craftable, from coarse animal fur at a crafting table — 9 for the tunic, 6 for the leggings — so losing them is not permanent.
And the first real gear decision follows immediately from the armour classes. At power level 2 the three lines are Reinforced (melee, from animal bone and leather), Leather (ranged, from leather and coarse thread) and Apprentice (magic, from coarse thread and rune essence) — all three craftable at the crafting table rather than needing a bench.
What Carries and What Does Not
A great deal of Dragonwilds' state lives on the character rather than the world, which is what makes creating a second character feel like starting over even on a fully explored map.
| Lives with your character | Lives with the world |
|---|---|
| Skill levels and perks | Structures and chests |
| Revealed landmarks | Time of day and weather |
| All manually placed map pins | Boss and quest world-state |
| Journal contents | Region unlocks |
| Vault discovery | Terrain and resources |
| Quest progress |
So a new character joining a world your group finished starts with an empty map and an empty Journal. Every player must discover the vaults themselves for them to appear on their own map, and telling someone "it is marked" does not help — pins are not shared.
One more thing that does not carry backwards: achievements. They do not apply retroactively to characters created before the update that added them, so an old character has to redo things it has already done — while a brand new character earns them in the natural course of play.
The practical advice for a group is therefore to have everyone create characters at roughly the same time and of the same world type, and to give directions by landmark rather than by pin for anyone who joins later.
Practical tips
- Names are up to 16 characters, no spaces, and case-sensitive.
- The default hairstyle is bald — the first option is the empty one.
- The wiki documents no way to change appearance later. Treat it as permanent.
- World type is chosen at character creation and progress does not transfer.
- A dedicated server only creates Standard worlds — build a Custom World in the client and move it.
- You start with the Adventurer's tunic and leggings (8/8/8) and a Torch (block 5).
- Replace the torch with a wooden shield — 10 ash logs for block 26.
- Map pins, revealed landmarks, Journal and vault discovery are per-character.
- Achievements are not retroactive to characters made before they were added.
Running your own RuneScape: Dragonwilds server
The world type decision is the one worth getting right before anybody invests fifty hours, and it is easier to get right when the world lives somewhere permanent rather than on whoever happened to host first. A gamever Dragonwilds server keeps Ashenfall available around the clock for up to six players, updates automatically so client and server versions never drift, and takes one-click backups before disruptive changes.
Conclusion
Dragonwilds' character creator offers a 16-character, space-free, case-sensitive name, two body types, eight skin tones, four faces, four eye-and-brow sets, eleven hairstyles, five facial hair options and eight colours each for hair, eyebrows and eyes — and the wiki documents no way to change any of it afterwards. The choice that actually shapes the next fifty hours is not in that list at all: a character belongs to either a Standard world or a Custom World, and progress does not transfer between them, so a group wanting the 40-plus Custom World settings has to decide before anyone starts, create the world in the client, and move it to the server — since a dedicated server only ever generates a Standard world. You leave the creator with an Adventurer's tunic and leggings at 8/8/8 and a Torch that blocks 5, and the single cheapest upgrade available is a wooden shield at block 26 for ten ash logs. Beyond that, remember how much state is per-character rather than per-world: map pins, revealed landmarks, Journal entries and vault discovery all start empty on a new character, however well explored the world already is.
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