The setting is a medieval fantasy world. There are historic elements, such as medieval architecture and weaponry, along with fictional elements such as other humanoid races and magic. It is made of up two main continents on the world of Draia: Seridia and Irilion. Seridia is the first continent, and the place in which new players spawn. It consists of 14 main maps, seven storages, two main PK maps, and the only spot to find the Wraith, who can provide various benefits to players in exchange for "pickpoints".
Character building
Players begin play by selecting the race, name and appearance of their character. Skills, abilities and alignments are automatically given initial values. There are six races available: Humans, elves, dwarves, Humans bleus, and elves black. The last three races are pay-to-play races; a player must pay money to play a character of one of these races. Eternal Lands does not have fixed character classes, and it is possible for any player to improve any of the 12 skills in the game.
In-game activities include exploring the 39 different outside maps, questing, socializing with other players, player killing, and improving skills by fighting, gathering resources and creating items. All skills increase the "overall" experience, rewarding players with "pickpoints", with which they can further build their characters.
Productive skills
The productive skills are called alchemy, crafting, magic, manufacturing, potion making, and tailoring. The items can be created by inserting certain materials into the manufacturing window and attempting to mix them. If mixing fails, the materials may be lost. Success chance is defined by skill level and the item's level. If the player succeeds, the item appears in their inventory and they will receive experience.
Harvesting
Harvesting involves the gathering of resources, such as flowers, minerals and ores. These items can be used for creating items or be sold to NPCs or other players. Harvesting some materials requires different tools.
Combat
Fighting is broken into attack and defense skills, which the player can improve by fighting monsters or players. For every successful hit landed on the opponent, attack experience is gained, and dodging a hit gives defense experience. The amount of experience is determined by the level differences between the fighting players. It is also possible to fight with the magic, ranging and summoning skills. Ranging experience is obtained by hitting opponent with an arrow or bolt shot with one of the five different bows or crossbows. Summoning experience is obtained by successfully summoning a creature and magic experience by casting spells. Both summons and spells require certain materials that will disappear upon succeeding.
Player killing
On the main Eternal Lands server, there are only a few select areas where players can attack one another, so that players don't have to engage in player versus player combat if they don't want to. However, there is also a pay-to-play PK server which allows for players to fight each other nearly anywhere. It has been out for quite some time now but is still not very populated.
Development
The game client is open-source under a modified Q Public License and may be developed by anyone. However, the license does require modified clients to be approved by administrators before it is possible to connect with the main servers. For testing purposes, there is a test server. The content is released under a proprietary license which allows redistribution and commercialization only in context of Eternal Lands.
