Gronthar — Scars of Honor race

The Gronthar are described as one of the later races to appear in the world, and as a people with little attachment to civilisation, refinement or orderly culture. They are noisy, ferocious and chaotic, which is given as the reason they align naturally with Domination rather than as a moral judgement about them.

Their homeland and architecture draw from harsh, desert-like environments where little nature survives — either destroyed, consumed, or simply left untended. That environmental framing is presented as reinforcing their destructive and untamed identity rather than as scenery: the place explains the people.

The one race relationship the sources give them is a rivalry with the Bearan, the Sacred Order's other late-arriving large race. The two were brought into the game together in early 2026 and revealed together in March, and they are positioned opposite one another.

A question that came up repeatedly and was answered in the negative is whether an undead Gronthar could exist as a separate option. The developers explained that a purely visual undead treatment based only on textures would be the easy part, but a more complete undead presentation would require anatomical changes such as visible bones, and the Gronthar body shape itself would need to change to support it — which separates the idea from anything a skin or body-type toggle could deliver.

One naming note for research elsewhere: the auto-captioned sources render the race as Gronthar, Grunthar, Grontar and Grantha at different points, and the community also used "grunt" for the older pre-rework models. These are transcription variants of one race, not several.

The Gronthar have no published racial bonus, and neither does any other race — the racial-traits system has not been decided.

In December 2025 the developers described racial traits as still under internal discussion rather than removed, and explained their absence from the redesigned website as a consequence of that unresolved debate. The technical objection given was the interaction with a talent tree of roughly 300 nodes, where flat percentage racial bonuses risk compounding into something disproportionately strong. The argument in favour was that race choice ought to mean something in play, not only in the character creator. Designers were described as divided; no decision was presented.

A community Q&A in April 2026 returned the same position: traits are under internal design debate, the dominant concern is that over-tuning them pushes players toward meta picks — choosing a race for its stats instead of its identity — and if traits ship, they are unlikely to be game-breaking or highly impactful. No final decision was locked.

The Gronthar attracted one specific request during the alpha build-up: a satisfying racial knockback, fitting a race built around mass and aggression. That is a player wish recorded in a community digest, not a planned feature, and it should not be repeated as one. No Gronthar racial has been announced.

The list below is the Domination class pool from the game client data behind this site's gear planner — Necromancer, Mystic and Pirate where the Sacred Order has Druid, Priest and Paladin. All four Domination races carry it identically.

The Gronthar's arrival changed the shape of that pool for their whole faction. When they and the Bearan were added for the April 2026 playtest, the stated effect was that both factions gained access to all available classes — before the two races joined, coverage on each side had gaps. The test build itself ran six races against four classes.

Druid is the fit most often attached to this race, oddly for a people defined by a scoured homeland. A November 2025 discussion treated the Gronthar as the most suitable available druid option for their faction, and players independently reached the same conclusion, seeing them as close to nature. That discussion also noted that Gronthar and Bearan would need druid forms suited to their own silhouettes and lore, including the possibility of alternative presentations such as caster or tank-oriented forms.

The healer question was the sore point. Players complained that having only Orcs and Gronthar cover certain healing fantasies would leave the healer pool too small, and separately mourned the apparent absence of a proper Gronthar mage. Both are reactions to a chart the developers withdrew in March 2026 as not reflecting the latest setup; in late April they said combinations were still being adjusted in response to feedback, and the April matrix presented as the plan for early access was itself described as provisional and subject to change.

The Gronthar concept is a bulky, powerful race with customisation focused on hair, tusks and ears. Some details are treated as optional or uncertain — back fur in particular, because armour compatibility remains a concern. Their legs are unusual enough to have been cited alongside satyrs as a case where non-standard leg shapes are technically difficult, and armour has to be built in race-fitted versions so that a glove, for example, properly matches a Gronthar arm rather than an undead one.

The rework is the centrepiece. In March 2026 the developers showed older Gronthar models in a before-and-after comparison against a substantial redesign, presenting both female and male versions — the female shown first. The new models were described as much stronger in silhouette and overall quality, and the redesign was treated as a major improvement over the earlier version, with the caveat that it was not yet fully integrated with final animation. The stream that carried the reveal also introduced a new duel system, and it contrasted the older "grunt" character models against the new presentation.

The community response was immediate and specific, and it did not go the way the reveal intended. Players expected a boar-like race to carry more body mass than the new art direction gave it: the asks were for beer bellies, rotund sliders, "chonkers" and tavern-filling silhouettes, with the recurring complaint that the model looked slimmer and more toned than the concept art and read less like a heavy boarfolk race. One frequently repeated line described it as reading like a gym-goer with a pig head. Requests for a bulkier, more strongman-like body type continued through late March, and tusk decorations were suggested as cultural flavour.

The back-fur debate ran alongside it and was the more revealing one: some players said the back fur was a major part of what sold the race, while others repeated what had been said on stream — that such fur creates armour compatibility problems and may not survive every implementation challenge. That is the same constraint the developers stated independently, which makes it one of the few community complaints with a documented engineering cause rather than a taste disagreement.

The race also sits inside a broader pattern the developers identified themselves: several non-human races are trending toward large, massive silhouettes — orcs, Gronthar and Bearans among them.