Retiring and the Heirloom
Your Quest awaits you, Adventurer.
“Tales tell of a Great Monster whose name is spoken in whispers... For centuries it has waited somewhere around the 50th level of the dungeon, its evil seeping up toward the town... You must destroy it, once and for all, and rid the world of its evil influence. It is your Fate, adventurer! Will you meet it?”
~ Bremen of Grove
Retiring Explained
After you finish the main quest, around level 45 to 50, you go back to Bremen, the blue robed guy standing at the dungeon gate, and he will reward you. He will then tell you to come back when you are ready to retire. Some people like to play into the deeper levels, others like to retire and begin a new character. There are advantages to both ways of playing. Main Quests, or Main Gamers, play for the prize of killing the big guy, retiring, and passing an heirloom down to a new generation. Deep Delvers, the guys that continue on into the deep deep levels, play for the glory of hitting the bottom level of the dungeon, 2,147,483,647. Yes, you read that correctly. 2 billion. (Warning: read up on this before trying it. Fate was not designed for deep delving, and there are several things you need to know).
Creating a Descendant Character and Heirloom
Anyway, when you decided to retire, to go back to Bremen. He'll ask if you are ready, and he'll ask if you wish to create a descendant. If you do, you get to heirloom an item from your inventory. This is the fun part. You pick an item, place it in the heirloom slot on your screen, and click yes, or ready, or whatever (I'll edit that next time I retire.) The next thing you see is the creation page for a new character.
Create your next player any way you like. When he appears in town and you open your stats screen you will see two things. You have advanced in Fame, and your character's name has a I next to it. That's because he/she is your 1st descendant (or 2nd generation). Now open your inventory and you will see the item you passed down. If you look at the stats, you will see a 25 percent increase in each one. This will happen every time you pass the item down, called heir looming. You may create as many generations as you like.
Creating a Clone
If you want to continue playing your first character but still create an heirloom and a descendant, or create two descendants, you do this by cloning yourself. Clones are a simple right click copy/paste. Just rename the copy so you can tell the difference. I usually just add an R for the one I'm going to retire. You can type in anything you want as long as it still has the dot ffd at the end. (I usually rename my numbered file with my character's name as soon as I create her. Thus 0.ffd becomes Whatshername.ffd. The 0 is the first character to appear on your choose game screen. 1 is second, 2 is third, and so on. If you rename them, they show up in alphabetical order).