If you are looking for a sliders screen, there is not one. Guns of Eschaton gives you the Gunslinger with No Name — a fixed protagonist with a fixed history and a revolver that belonged to a dead friend. Appearance customisation has not been announced in any form.
What the game does offer under the heading of character creation is a choice of archetype, and an economy that lets you rebuild inside it. That distinction matters, because the archetype is not a class you are locked into. It is a starting kit with a signature weapon and an ability, and everything else is bought.
The two archetypes in the demo
| Archetype | Who they are | What defines the kit |
|---|---|---|
| The Sheriff | The lawman who sends you down the Hound's Path | Active ability Quick and the Dead; his new passive enhances it |
| The Deadeye | Once a star of Buffalo Bill's show, now the Hounds gang's shooting instructor | Signature weapon, an active ability, a passive, and a second passive that changes how the active works |
The Deadeye is the more interesting design. Her identity is trick shooting — bouncing bullets off coins and bells — which in a game built on Sequence Points means a kit that reaches weak points other guns cannot. She arrived in the demo during Steam Next Fest, alongside new passives for every archetype.
Both kits are playable in the free demo, which makes this the one decision you can test before December rather than after.
What you actually build
Four layers stack on top of the archetype:
Passives. Bought at Hounds' Camp. The ones worth taking change how an ability behaves rather than adding a flat number. The Deadeye's second passive is the clearest example: it does not improve her active, it changes what the active does.
Gloves. A cheap layer available for every archetype in the camp shop. Small, additive, and the last thing to spend on.
Talismans. Gear with drawbacks. The Eagle Bone Whistle warns when an enemy is aiming at you — in a game with snipers who punish standing still, that is a defensive item disguised as a utility one. The Rooster Feathers talisman carries a buff that used to vanish incorrectly after resting at a campfire, until a hotfix corrected it.
Sacramental paths. Three of them, and the largest single commitment. The paths gate the occult abilities layer, and the studio describes builds that lean on dynamite economy, on the three schools of magic, on shotgun-and-whip melee, or on a glass-cannon Fanaticism setup.
Attribute points and the campfire
Attribute points are spent at a campfire rather than in a menu mid-fight. A demo hotfix addressed a display bug where the counter of unspent points could show the wrong number, which tells you the campfire is the intended place to make build decisions.
The practical rhythm: fight, return to camp, spend, test. The game is built to make the return trip cheap.
Which archetype to start with
Take the Sheriff if this is your first soulslike shooter. Quick and the Dead gives you an answer to a closing enemy, and the passives attached to it are the most forgiving of the two kits.
Take the Deadeye if you have played a soulslike before and want the kit that rewards study. Trick shooting wants you to know where the points are before the fight starts, which is the whole design philosophy in one archetype.
In co-op, take different ones. Two players sharing the same kit duplicate each other's weaknesses. A Sheriff holding the front and a Deadeye working the sequence from range is a better division of labour than two of either.
How much of a build you can change later
The archetype is the only choice that behaves like a permanent one, and even that is softer than a class in a conventional RPG: the camp shop sells weapons, abilities, passives and gloves for every archetype available to you, so a player who picked the Sheriff is not locked out of the Deadeye's tricks if the shop stocks them.
What does not change is the character. The Gunslinger is a fixed protagonist with a fixed history — the revolver belonged to a dead friend, and that is not a customisable detail. Appearance customisation has not been announced in any form.
Choosing between the two kits
Sheriff rewards a player who wants an answer to pressure. Quick and the Dead is a response ability, and the passives attached to it soften the moments where an enemy closes while you are reloading. It is the more forgiving kit, and forgiving matters in a game where reloading is when you die.
Deadeye rewards a player who wants the sequence to be the fight. Trick shooting puts bullets where the points are, which is a kit that assumes you already know where they are. It is the more expressive of the two and the less forgiving.
Neither is stronger. The difference is which part of the loop the kit removes — pressure, or positioning.
The build you should not attempt first
The glass-cannon route the studio describes is tempting and is the worst possible first build. It works by killing the enemy before the survive-the-reload phase, which means it depends on already knowing the sequence, the windows and the ammunition types. It is a build for a second run.
Start with something that survives a mistake. Add the aggressive route once you can name an enemy's points from memory.
Fixed face, flexible build
Do not expect to change how the Gunslinger looks. Expect to change how the Gunslinger fights — that is where the customisation budget went, and the camp shop is where you spend it.