You can change class, and it is not a menu option
Changing class happens in camp, at Dew — the same NPC many players already know from handing in ciphers. It is not buried in a settings screen, and it does not require deleting anything. What it does require, according to consistent player reports, is that you arrive with an empty inventory and nothing equipped, which in practice means clearing your character down to nothing before the conversation is even available.
That requirement is the actual friction, and it is worth understanding why it exists. Equipment carries a class requirement, so a character who changes class is standing in gear they can no longer use. Making you unload first is the game refusing to leave you holding a set that has become dead weight. Plan an evening around it rather than treating it as a quick experiment.
The cost of a class change has not been published, and the numbers circulating in community threads do not agree with each other. Check the price in front of Dew before you strip your character, not after. The same caution applies to anything you read about unlocking classes — no reliable rule for that has been confirmed, so treat confident claims with suspicion.
Try the cheap switches first
A lot of people reach for a class change when what they actually want is a different weapon, and that is free. Talents and skills can be reassigned between runs at no cost, which means the build you are unhappy with is not a commitment at all — you can rebuild it entirely tonight. The only reported restriction is that you cannot make those changes from inside the training ground, which is a frequent complaint but not a real obstacle.
Weapon paths inside a class cover more ground than most people realise. A Seer switches between the Reverent and Blasphemer oaths from the Skills panel, and that single control changes the class from a Catalyst support with 13 skills into a Mace brawler with 9 and a larger dodge pool. A Mercenary already carries both Sword and Shield and the Hammer. A Withered Knight chooses between Greatsword and Polearm and Shield, and a Sorcerer between Stardust and Elemental magic. If the thing bothering you is the range you fight at or the rhythm of your attacks, one of those switches probably solves it — how weapons decide your skills covers what each swap actually hands you.
Change class when the class itself is wrong: when you want to heal and cannot, when you want to fight at range and your class has no ranged list, when the fundamental loop does not appeal. Do not change class because you lost three fights, because the loudest opinion on the forums this week says your class is weak, or because a level 10 skill has not arrived yet.
What a second character starts with
The camp is where progress accumulates, and the camp is not rebuilt per character. Its eleven buildings sit across 75 levels between them, and the Gyldenblod Pool explicitly raises the number of characters you can have — a building that would make no sense if each character had its own camp. So a second character walks into a Warehouse you already expanded, a Workshop already able to forge what it can forge, and whatever Scavenger Squad zones you have unlocked.
What does not carry is everything attached to the character: level, talent points, skill unlocks and the gear they can legally wear. You start again at level 1 and climb back to the level cap of 12, collecting eight talent points along the way at levels 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11 and 12. Nothing about that ladder is shortened by having done it before.
The full inheritance list has never been published, and there are edges nobody has documented — how mission progress, seasonal tasks and unlocks behave across characters is genuinely unclear at the moment. Treat anything specific you read about it as unverified until you have seen it on your own account. The part that is not in doubt is the split itself: buildings are camp-side, levels and talents are character-side.
The Gyldenblod Pool is the building that governs alts
Of the eleven camp buildings, the Gyldenblod Pool is the one that matters most to anyone thinking about a second character. Across its nine levels it raises your Gyldjar capacity — the ceiling on how much Gyldenblod you can carry out of a single run — and it raises the character limit. Its last level reduces the Gyldenblod cost of Spirit Infusion.
It is also load-bearing for other buildings. Goddess Statue 3 requires character level 5 and Gyldenblod Pool 2; Goddess Statue 5 requires level 9 and Gyldenblod Pool 5; Scavenger Squad 4 requires Gyldenblod Pool 4. If you were planning to leave it at level 2 while you chased storage, those prerequisites are a good argument against.
Players describe a way to bring an under-levelled character up without grinding it manually, and the Gyldenblod Pool is where that conversation always lands. What is confirmed is the Spirit Infusion cost reduction at the top level; what that mechanic does in full, and what it costs, has not been published, so do not budget around a number you saw in a thread. A sensible upgrade sequence for the whole camp is laid out in the camp upgrade guide.
Why a fresh alt feels worse than your first character did
Your first character levelled alongside other new accounts. A second one does not, and the reason players give is that matchmaking appears to key off the account rather than the character — so a level 1 alt on a mature account meets opponents your main would consider a fair fight. That is a community observation rather than a documented rule, and the developers have separately said that equipment rarity restrictions in matchmaking were strengthened, so the picture is not settled. What is not in dispute is that a great many players describe the experience the same way.
Plan for it instead of being surprised. Level an alt on runs where the objective is small and the exit is close, carry a cheap kit you are happy to lose, and take the fights you choose rather than the fights that find you. Path of Glory only unlocks at character level 6 and is opt-in per match, so there is no ranked pressure at all during the worst stretch.
A useful trick: the only requirement a piece of equipment carries is class, and 36 entities — the necklaces and rings — have no class requirement whatsoever. Some armor is shared between a pair of classes. That means a portion of your existing stash is legal on a brand-new character of a different class, and jewellery in particular transfers freely. Check what you already own in the equipment database before you assume a new class means a new set from scratch.
Gear is where the real cost lands
There is no upgrade system for weapons and armor. Rarity comes from the piece, affixes come mostly from gems socketed into it, and neither is transferable by levelling something up. So the expense of switching class is not the switch — it is rebuilding a working set for a class you do not yet own a single legal piece for.
Before you commit, do the inventory honestly. Look at what your current class's set is worth, at how much of it is jewellery that travels, and at whether the gems in it come out cleanly — they socket and unsocket at the blacksmith and from the warehouse, and gems should always come out before anything is sold or listed. A class change that leaves you with nothing to wear turns into a week of rebuilding, which is fine if you expected it and demoralising if you did not.
The talent side is cheaper than it looks. Every current talent is a single rank, so there is no long grind of stacking points into one node, and the trees for your new class are simply a different set of 241 total nodes to choose eight from. Open the talent planner and build the new class's tree before you switch — if the plan does not excite you on paper, it will not in the raid either.
Reroll, alt, or stay
Stay with your main if your complaint is about power rather than about play. Balance opinion right now is one week old, only one balance patch has shipped, and it touched a single weapon on a single class. A class you enjoy and understand at the level cap is worth more than a class someone ranked highly on 2026-08-05.
Change class outright if your main's core loop is not what you want to be doing, and you have no interest in coming back to it. It is the cleanest option: one character, one camp, all your attention on it. Take the unload requirement as an opportunity to sell what you will not use rather than as an annoyance.
Run an alt when you want both — most often a solo-capable class alongside a squad class, since a Seer changes what a trio can attempt while a Shadowstrix suits running alone. Just accept that the alt is a second project competing for the same Gyldenblod, the same storage and the same evenings, and that its early levels will be rougher than your first character's were.
Before you strip your character
Do three things in this order. Build the new class's tree in the talent planner to confirm you actually want it. Compare its weapons and skill unlocks against your current one in the class database, because the weapon is what you will be holding for the next fifty hours. Then check the Gyldenblod Pool level you are sitting on, since the character limit is the gate on keeping both options open rather than replacing one with the other.
If you are still undecided after that, which class you should play first goes through all six with their published stat baselines and unlock ladders. It is written for new players, but it is the same comparison a reroll needs — and it costs nothing to read twice.