Which race should I pick, and what does each one actually give me?

Steps

1. Read all five entries before choosing. Both recordings scroll the whole list, and the modifiers are printed on the screen rather than hidden behind a class name.
2. Decide what you are willing to be bad at. Three of the five carry an explicit penalty — health, archery or swimming — and that is the part still sore an hour later.
3. Note which races hand you a spell. Two of the five start you with one, which matters because spells otherwise have to be bought from a trainer in town.
4. Do not agonise over it. On Update 7 or later the southern-shore mirror changes your race at any time, so this screen is a starting point rather than a commitment.
5. Ignore the artwork. One player picks on looks alone, then spends an hour wondering why his archery reads a negative number.
6. Remember that skills grow through use. A race sets where you start; nothing in these recordings shows it capping anything.

The five on the launch screen, in order

First, the queen’s realm. Born into a constellation of cities and baronies bound by the worship of a queen whose word is law, taught obedience, faith, and the ability to defend it and enact her divine will. One reading gives the modifiers as plus five one-handed and plus two to two-handed and channeling; the other says only that the race is good for one-handed, two-handed and channeling.

Second, the merchant metropolis. A vast city that creates men who seek valour through cunning trade or priestly miracles; those who fail remain nameless dregs, and those who succeed obtain the treasure contained within the name. Both readings agree on better trade prices, lockpicking, and a health penalty of twenty. One of them puts the trade bonus at fifteen per cent.

Third, the Rugite. A god looms above whose holy presence shields you from the sun and turns your skin pale white; centuries of proximity granted powerful magical prowess at the cost of your mortal flesh. Both readings agree: heavy magic, low stamina, weakness to fire, and a spell known from the start. One puts the magic figure at a hundred.

Fourth, the Thra. Scattered survivors of an ancient civilisation now calling the rivers home, keeping their own counsel and their own kind, because warmth is rationed and rarely offered to them. Higher carry weight, better swimming, and an archery penalty that one reading puts at minus ten.

Fifth, the wood-magic people. The ground calls to you as it does to many, whispering the ancient wood magics, and the races of man believe your people to be foul omens — perhaps they were right. Plus fifteen psionics, good armour, a swimming penalty, and a night-eye spell already known.

The sixth race, and the mirror that undoes the choice

Both readings above are from 17 August 2026, the day the game shipped, and they are a record of the launch screen rather than the current one. Update 7 changed it. NerveLabs’ own changelog opens with the Uruhan — described there as a new playable race, the northern bearmen — and no recording cited on this page contains them, so this page has no numbers for the Uruhan and does not invent any.

The same changelog does something more consequential to this page than adding a row. It puts a mirror on the southern shore and says, plainly, that activating it changes your race at any time. It adds one wrinkle for multiplayer: a player who is not the host changes race in their own single-player game, and that change carries to their multiplayer character. Anyone still treating character creation as an irreversible decision is reading a launch-week guide.

One more line in that changelog is worth repeating exactly because it settles a question the recordings could not. NerveLabs writes that additional lines reacting to race were added. That confirms race is visible to the world and is spoken to, though the changelog does not say which lines, which races, or which characters say them, and no recording here contains one that is provably race-gated.

What a negative starting skill actually looks like

A third player picks the Thra without reading the entry and finds out the hard way. An hour in he opens his skill list, asks whether he is really level minus eight in archery, and hopes aloud that he is not. He blames his shield; his chat tells him his race carries an archery penalty, and he accepts it at once — he saw a lizard person, got excited, and clicked.

Two details there are worth more than the joke. The first is that a negative skill is a real state the interface will show you rather than a display fault, and his conclusion is the right one: you have to do more work to be good at it. The second is arithmetic. The creation screen states minus ten for archery; his screen an hour later reads minus eight. No recording explains the gap, but use-based skill growth would, and a character who has loosed a few arrows climbing from minus ten to minus eight is exactly what that system predicts. That is this page’s inference and not a source’s.

He also reads minus four acrobatics and attributes it to his shield’s weight. Neither reading of the creation screen mentions acrobatics, so unlike the archery figure that one has no racial explanation and may well be the equipment he says it is.

Requirements / limits

• The five entries are two players reading a screen, not documentation. NerveLabs has published no per-race modifier table in any changelog or store text cited here.
• The descriptions have two readings; most of the numbers have one. Both players give the same five races in the same order with the same prose, but the fifteen per cent trade bonus, the hundred magic, the minus ten archery and the plus five one-handed each rest on a single reading.
• Three of the six race names are not printed here. The caption tracks render the queen’s realm and the merchant city completely differently from each other, and neither names the fifth intelligibly. Rugite, Thra and Uruhan are printed because they survive multiple independent transcriptions or come from NerveLabs directly.
• Whether the merchant race’s health penalty is twenty points or twenty per cent is unresolved. One reading says one and the other says the other, in the same position on the same screen.
• There are no Uruhan numbers on this page at all. They arrived in Update 7, after every recording cited here, and the changelog announces the race without listing what it grants.
• Nothing here maps a race onto a later outcome. That the peoples exist in the world is clear — a Thra in town discusses being the only one of his kind in Magdal’s Rest — but no source cited here shows a quest, price or ending that turns on the player’s own race.

Common mistakes

• Treating the choice as permanent. It was, at launch; Update 7’s southern-shore mirror changes race at any time, and that is NerveLabs’ own wording.
• Treating a race as a class. Skills rise through use afterwards, and nothing in these recordings locks a skill or a school of magic behind a race.
• Choosing on the artwork. The player who did that spent an hour wondering why his archery was negative.
• Reading a negative number as damage or a debuff. It is a skill level below zero, and the same rule applies to it — use raises it.
• Assuming a starting spell makes you a caster. Two races hand you one, but the schools of magic are ordinary skills and further spells come from tomes bought in town.
• Expecting the co-op rule to work like everything else. The changelog is explicit that a non-host changes race in their own single-player game, not in the shared session.

Still unverified

• What do the Uruhan actually grant?Not verifiedUpdate 7 announces the race and nothing else about it. Every recording cited here predates the update.
• What are the other three races called?Not verifiedThe two caption tracks render the queen’s realm and the merchant city completely differently, and neither renders the fifth intelligibly. Only Rugite and Thra survive independent transcription.
• Is the merchant race’s health penalty twenty points or twenty per cent?Not verifiedOne reading says minus twenty health, the other minus twenty per cent health, in the same sentence position on the same screen.
• Which lines react to race?Developer changelogUpdate 7 states that additional lines reacting to race were added. It does not say which lines or which races, and no recording cited here contains one that is provably race-gated.
• Why does a Thra character read minus eight archery when the screen says minus ten?Not verifiedUse-based growth would explain a two-point climb, and this page says so as an inference. No recording addresses it.