pRO is a progressive Pre-Renewal server. Rather than opening with every map, job and item available, it starts at Episode 1 and unlocks content in the order Ragnarok Online originally released it.

That means the early game is genuinely the early game. Towns you cannot reach yet, jobs that do not exist yet, and items nobody has. Not because they are rare, but because their episode has not happened.

The baseline is 1x and stays 1x. It will never be permanently raised. The closed beta is the one exception: it runs at 75x EXP and drops, with the EXP events on top, and everything is reset before the 1x launch.

Temporary boosts do exist, and they are opt-in. Field Manuals and Battle Manuals raise your own experience for a few minutes, Bubble Gum does the same for drops, and VIP adds 20% experience and 15% to your drop rate while it is active. Every evening brings a bonus EXP event (Happy Hour on weekdays, Weekend Surge on weekends), and Twin Days double it all day. The times are on the Events page.

Rates move down as well. While Assist Mode is hunting for you, your experience and drops are reduced to between 20% and 50% depending on your tier, so that unattended play does not out-earn playing.

What will not happen is the baseline creeping up. Come back after a month away and the game you left is the game you return to.

Jobs

Thirteen classes are open: Novice, the six first jobs, and one second-job path from each of them. Swordman into Knight, Mage into Wizard, Archer into Hunter, Acolyte into Priest, Merchant into Blacksmith, and Thief into Assassin.

The second branch is not open yet. Crusader, Sage, Bard and Dancer, Monk, Alchemist and Rogue all arrive with the episodes that introduced them, as do the Transcendent classes and everything after them. Their job changers are switched off, so you cannot take those paths today no matter what level you reach.

Where you can go

Seven towns and thirteen dungeons, with sixteen MVPs in rotation. Maps beyond Episode 1 exist in the client but are sealed; walking into a warp that has not opened yet will not take you anywhere.

Episodes

Each release un-gates its content across the whole server at once: the maps, the monsters, the jobs, the items and the NPC shops that sell them. Release dates are announced on the News page.

Assist Mode is our automation feature. Every character has it for free, and paid tiers add more. We would rather explain it plainly than have you discover it and wonder what kind of server this is.

It lets your character fight, loot, use potions and sit to recover on its own, within limits you configure. When it has to leave the field it uses a Butterfly Wing if it carries one, or walks back.

It exists because on a 1x server some players will automate, and we would rather that happened somewhere we can see it. Third-party bots and modified clients are blocked at the client level and are grounds for removal, which the Rules & Policies page sets out. Assist Mode is the sanctioned alternative: visible to us, limited, taxed, and it earns less than playing by hand.

What it does not do

• It does not make your character stronger, and it earns less than you do by hand. While it is hunting you keep 20% of normal experience and drops on the free tier, rising to 30%, 40% and 50% on the paid tiers. Playing manually is always 100%.
• It does not bypass costs. It pays Kafra storage fees and boat fares like anyone else.
• It does not talk to NPCs, take quests, craft, refine, buy, sell, vend or trade, and it will not run on a PvP, War of Emperium or battleground map, or inside an instance.

Tiers

The free tier already fights, loots, uses healing potions and sits to recover, with 2 combat and 3 support skill slots. Paid tiers add skill slots, SP and buff potions, the monster filter, auto teleport, arrow and gear swapping, a death cap you set yourself, storage trips (Monthly), and a better rate while botting. The Assist Mode article lists the tier for each. Tier limits are enforced by the server, not the client.

Assist Mode is per character, not per account, and a pass bought on one character does not unlock the bot on your others.

Offline Hunting

By default the bot stops when you log out. Offline Hunting is a separate paid option that keeps one character hunting after you disconnect, for up to 8 hours per account per day. It needs an Assist Mode Monthly pass and an active VIP 30 Days pass at the same time.

Full details, with every figure read from the live server: Assist Mode in the wiki.

Fair play

Anti-cheat is active on every connection. Assist Mode is the sanctioned way to automate; anything else is not, and is grounds for a ban. See Rules & Policies.

High-value items route through a controlled Marketplace channel rather than direct player-to-player trade, and each sale carries a flat zeny tax. The point is to keep a visible, taxable market instead of pushing trades into deals nobody can see.

That includes real money. Selling for real money is not driven underground here, it is brought in-house: the RMT Marketplace escrows the sale and records it, so there is a channel we can police instead of a rule nobody could enforce. Real-money deals arranged anywhere else are not permitted and are grounds for removal, and we cannot recover what you lose in a deal we never saw.

Dropping, trading, mailing and guild-storage deposits all need an active Trade Pass. It is a timed pass, and there are two ways to get one: buy it in the Cash Shop, or buy it with Rachel's Favor, which is earned in game. Running a vending shop needs no pass at all. Both VIP passes also include 3 days of Trade Pass.

Zeny that changes hands is taxed 30%. The buyer or sender pays the full amount and the receiver gets 70%; the rest is removed from the game. It applies to vending sales, trades, mailed Zeny and what an NPC pays you for loot. It is how the server keeps Zeny scarce.

The Marketplace restriction sits on top of that, and applies to a defined list of high-value equipment and cards. Full details: Trading and The Marketplace in the wiki.

• Level caps of the time: base 99; job 50 for first and second classes, 10 for Novice.
• No player chat commands at all. No warp, no heal, no go.
• No free convenience NPCs. The eleven that ship with the server software are switched off: free warper, healer, job changer, free stylist, card remover, free reset. The few services we do run all cost something: dungeon warps are free only up to level 40 (VIP and 10,000 zeny per trip after that), hairstyles and outfit dyes need coupons, and a stat reset needs a Reset Stone.
• No free break protection on refines, and no free stat reset. Refine Insurance saves an item once, and it is bought, not given.
• No party bonus, and one character per account in a party.
• No permanent rate increases. The 1x baseline never moves. Boosts are temporary and opt-in: cash shop manuals for experience, Bubble Gum for drops, a VIP drop bonus, and the scheduled EXP events. Assist Mode reduces your rates while it hunts for you.

War of Emperium is not running yet, and no castle can be claimed. Guilds themselves work today: you can form one with an Emperium, tax members' experience to level it, spend guild skill points and ally with other guilds. Only the sieges are waiting.

It arrives with the episode that introduced it. The times below are the schedule we intend to run then, not a timetable you can turn up for now. They are listed here so guilds can plan, and they may still change before the first siege.

This page is the orientation. The wiki is the detail, and every figure on it is read from the running server rather than written down, so it does not drift out of date.