The Founder's Co-op Playtest has arrived.
For years, every adventure in Lost Relics has been a solo journey. Today, that changes.
Founder Token holders can now create groups, invite friends, and venture into the world together as we begin the first public phase of co-op testing.
This playtest marks an important milestone for Lost Relics and gives us our first opportunity to observe how cooperative gameplay performs with real players across the world. Throughout the test we'll be gathering feedback, monitoring performance, evaluating balance, and identifying opportunities to improve the experience before expanding support further.
Whether you're exploring a standard adventure, pushing deeper into Descending Nightmare, or braving the dangers of Descending Hellfire, you'll now be able to share those experiences with another adventurer.
Before you gather your party, here's everything you need to know.
Our current multiplayer infrastructure operates across Europe, US East, US West, and Singapore.
Players automatically connect to the most suitable region available, helping ensure the best possible experience based on location.
Players from different regions can still play together. When a group is created, all group members connect to the region selected by the person who created the group (There's no forced concept of 'group leader'). In most cases, playing with nearby friends will provide the best experience, although adventurers from opposite sides of the world can still group together if they choose.
During development we've regularly tested gameplay at latencies exceeding 120ms. Thanks to extensive network prediction systems, combat remained smooth and responsive throughout testing.
We're also continuing to investigate additional infrastructure providers that would allow us to expand to more regions in the future, further reducing latency for players around the world.
One of the biggest discoveries from our multiplayer testing was that large town populations provide very little gameplay value while significantly increasing synchronization costs.
As a result, we've moved away from the original concept of large shared town instances.
Ungrouped players will generally encounter up to six other adventurers around town, keeping towns feeling alive while maintaining excellent performance.
When you create or join a group, you'll be placed into a private town instance shared only with your group members.
The Founder's Co-op Playtest currently supports groups of up to two players.
Starting with smaller groups allows us to carefully evaluate balance, monster behaviour, progression speed, performance, and overall gameplay dynamics before expanding further.
Once we've gathered sufficient data, we may temporarily open testing to groups of up to four players to see just how much chaos adventurers can unleash together.
While we'll continue evaluating the results, our current expectation is that two players may ultimately provide the best overall experience.
For the Founder's Co-op Playtest, only Founder Token holders can create groups and access matchmaking.
Founders can invite both members and free players into their groups, allowing everyone to participate in adventures together.
In the future, group creation and matchmaking will become a membership benefit. Members will be able to create groups, while free players will still be able to join groups through invitations.
Groups must always contain at least one eligible player. If no eligible player remains in the group, the group will automatically disband.
All co-op functionality is available through the Social window, but the following chat commands are also available:
/findgroup
/invitetogroup PlayerName
/cancelgroupfind
/leavegroup
When you're part of a group, a new Group chat tab will appear automatically, allowing you to communicate privately with your fellow adventurers.
The Founder's Co-op Playtest currently supports:
Additional game modes will remain solo experiences while we continue evaluating co-op compatibility.
Group adventures begin at the campfire.
All group members must interact with the campfire and confirm participation before the adventure can begin. Players who have already confirmed will wait for those who haven't.
All players must also satisfy the requirements for the selected adventure.
For example:
If the requirements are not met, the adventure cannot begin.
Players who wish to adventure alone can still do so while remaining in a group by selecting the solo adventure option.
If your group begins a group adventure while you're already participating in a solo adventure, you'll automatically decline the request and continue your adventure uninterrupted.
Free players consume free adventures at double the normal rate while participating in group adventures. This helps balance the increased efficiency of adventuring together while continuing to reward membership with unlimited adventures.
This also applies to Descending Nightmare and Descending Hellfire. Since each new floor already consumes an additional free adventure, progressing to the next floor in a group will consume two free adventures instead of one.
To successfully complete a group adventure, every player must reach the exit.
Players who arrive first will wait at the exit until the remaining group members arrive.
Descending Nightmare and Descending Hellfire introduce additional group decisions.
If a player chooses to continue to the next level:
If a player chooses to return to town:
This ensures the group makes progression decisions together.
If a player dies during an adventure, there's currently no respawns, instead they'll spectate a remaining player.
Loot remains completely private.
Other players cannot see what you've found unless you choose to tell them.
Adventure completion screens display player statistics for all group members, but loot remains hidden, allowing players to reveal their discoveries only if they wish.
Custodians are generated individually for each player, not shared across the group. Each one is tied to a specific player's Breach progress and contains that player's loot and experience rewards. You may sometimes help defeat a Custodian without receiving rewards, as it was intended for another member of your group.
Several artifacts can now provide benefits to other players in your group.
These include:
Some artifacts remain personal.
For example, the Worn Treasure Map only reveals the map for the player who has it equipped. Map discovery is not shared between players, and each adventurer must uncover the world themselves.
You can inspect nearby players by standing near them for approximately four to five seconds.
This allows adventurers to view each other's equipment and builds without introducing interactions that could block movement, combat, or other gameplay actions.
While the Founder's Token is required to create groups during this playtest, its long term future is changing.
Rather than keeping all Founder benefits tied to a single item, those benefits will eventually be separated into individual tradeable collectibles.
This gives holders significantly more flexibility, allowing individual benefits to be kept, traded, or sold independently.
When this transition occurs:
This change allows the value previously locked inside a single item to be separated into multiple tradeable assets.
More information can be found on the Founder's Token page under the Future Plans section.
Alongside the Founder's Co-op Playtest we've also made adjustments to:
The Founder's Co-op Playtest is only the beginning.
Over the coming weeks we'll be closely monitoring feedback, performance, balance, and player behaviour as we continue shaping the future of cooperative gameplay in Lost Relics.
Gather your party, light the campfire, and begin your adventure together.