A run builds the hero from cards. Each level-up offers a choice of three, and chests add more. Your hand is limited by slots, and three kinds of tokens let you steer what comes up.
Cards
- **A new skill or passive**, if you have a free slot for it.
- **A rank** in a skill or passive you hold, up to its max level.
- **An attribute**: five points of Strength, Dexterity, Vitality or Energy. See Attributes & life.
- **+1 to a skill tree**, from chests once your build is full.
The first card of a run offers a first skill from each of your class's trees. The Barbarian always starts with 
Double Swing and the Paladin with 
Blessed Hammer.
Slots
| Difficulty | Skill slots | Passive slots |
|---|---|---|
| Normal | 6 | 6 |
| Nightmare | 8 | 8 |
| Hell | 10 | 10 |
Once your skill slots are full, cards offer later skills in place of your lowest early skill, such as the Amazon's 
Valkyrie.
Rerolls, skips and banishes
| Token | What it does | Each run | More from Charsi |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reroll | Draws three new cards | 2 | 3 |
| Skip | Passes this level-up's cards | 2 | 3 |
| Banish | Removes a card for the rest of the difficulty | 2 | 3 |
- A banish lasts for the difficulty. Banished cards open again when the hero goes on into Nightmare or Hell; the banishes you have left stay.
- Banish skills you will never evolve, so the ones you need come up more often.
- A run as your kept hero on Nightmare, Hell or a Terror tier starts with all its tokens, Charsi's ranks included.
Chests
- Champions, uniques and act bosses leave chests. Walking onto one opens it; so does passing over it in a blink (Teleport, Dragon Flight).
- Through Act II a chest gives level-ups. After that it gives stat points or +1 to a skill tree.
- Once your build is full, chests give +1 to a skill tree while one is open, else an item and gold.
- A chest also evolves any skill that is ready. See Evolutions.
- Chests left unopened when Baal falls open into his haul.
Evolving and learning again
- A skill evolves at its max level, with its passive held, at the evolved skill's hero level, when you next open a chest.
- Once a skill has evolved, its base can be learned again as a new skill in a slot of its own: Twister beside Tornado.
- A skill learned again after its evolution evolves too, into the step you don't hold: Fire Bolt beside Meteor becomes Fire Ball.
- A passive you keep passing over doesn't hold your last passive slot: skip it for a few levels and every passive is offered again.
Gear's +skills
+Skills on gear raise a skill's damage above its card maximum, but not how often it fires or how many projectiles it sends. An item's bonus to another class's skill gives at most +3.