---
title: "How Builds Work in Crimson Moon"
description: "No classes, no skill trees. Nine gear slots, four archetypes. Here is the build system ProbablyMonsters actually shipped."
publishedAt: 2026-07-25
updatedAt: 2026-07-25
date: 2026-07-25
category: gameplay-explainer
---

How Builds Work in Crimson Moon

Originally posted 25 July 2026. Source: Steam News

ProbablyMonsters is doing the thing every modern action-RPG designer swears they will not do, then does anyway: there are no classes. Your Nephilim is what you wear.

The slot layout

"Every Nephilim can equip nine pieces of gear: four pieces of armour, two trinkets, a one-handed weapon and shield and a two-handed weapon."

That is the entire build system from the player's side. Nine slots. No skill tree. No class. No level-locked abilities that gate your choices. The gear you pick is the build you run.

This has implications:

You can respec at any time by changing gear, with no penalty the post mentions.

Builds emerge from combinations, not from picking a class at character creation.

Two players in co-op can be running the same archetype but with wildly different feels, because their gear loadouts diverge.

The four axes of power

The post lists four levers you actually tune:

Gear — the nine slots. Determines stats and what Weapon Arts you can use.

Weapon Arts — moves tied to weapon type. Sword, axe, spear, dual wield all have their own movesets.

Boons — temporary buffs found during a hunt. The post describes them as "every time you venture into Gildenarch," implying they reset between runs.

Angels — Nephilim-specific supernatural powers. Light/holy-themed, fits the human-angel hybrid pitch.

This is a four-axis model, not a vertical progression. Optimization is combinatorial, not sequential.

Three builds the post hints at

The post itself doesn't name specific builds, but the examples it picks suggest three obvious archetypes:

Damage-first — high-tier two-handed weapon, offensive Boons, weapon Arts that punish boss recovery windows.

Defensive — full armor set, shield-focused, Boons that trigger on block. Probably the easiest first-time clear.

Stance — picks that reward staying on the offensive, probably some kind of momentum or combo system layered over the base damage.

All three are reachable from the same starting gear pool. None of them is "the right one." The dev team is signaling that they want the first 20 hours of Crimson Moon to feel like a build-discovery game, not a class-locked game.

Why this matters

The risk of classless systems is that everything blurs together by mid-game. Crimson Moon's escape valve is the Weapon Arts — those are tied to weapon type, not stat budget, which gives each gear swap a meaningful mechanical identity. Two swords do not feel like two stat sticks; they feel like two different games.

If you were waiting for a reason to try Crimson Moon over the forty other action-RPGs launching this year, the build system is the strongest pitch the dev team has made.

Related

[How Runs Work](/updates/02-how-runs-work/) — where your builds actually get tested

[Welcome to Sanctus Clypeus](/updates/04-sanctus-clypeus/) — what you can change between hunts

[Loot & Progression](/updates/05-loot-progression/) — how gear upgrades

Source on Steam