How to play

• You start with Mk 1,000 and three refilling bars: Energy, Nerve and Spirit.
• Spend energy at the gym or on extra shifts, nerve on crimes. Bars refill on their own, even while you're away.
• Take a job for a safe daily wage. Take risks for bigger money. Sell what you find.
• The server decides every outcome. There is no way to buy a better result.
• Play a few minutes, a few times a day. That's the whole design.

New here? The Getting started checklist on your home screen pays a small one-time bonus for each of five first steps: Mk 40, 30, 40, 30, 40, and Mk 60 for finishing all five (Mk 240 in total). After that, a short list of Goals points the way, worth Mk 360 more.

Almost every action spends a bar. Bars refill in steps, all the time, even when the game is closed. A full bar doesn't store extra time, so don't let them sit full for long.

Nerve grows. Every crime you commit earns crime experience. Each crime level adds one point to your nerve maximum, up to 60.

Spirit is your mood. Training works best when it's high. Eating food from the stalls refills it at once.

Each crime costs nerve and either pays Marks (and sometimes an item) or goes wrong. The server rolls the dice; your odds are always shown before you try.

Your odds start at 30%, climb toward 90% as your skill in that kind of crime grows against the crime's difficulty, and drop 8 points per level of heat. They never go below 5% or above 95%: nothing is certain, and nothing is hopeless.

Skill comes in three kinds (Pilfering, Cons, Smuggling). A success gives +1 skill; even a failure teaches you +0.25.

Heat

Heat is how closely the watch is following you. It runs from 0 to 3 and is named so you can tell at a glance: All clear (none), Noticed (up to 1), Hot (up to 2), Wanted (up to 3). Every attempt adds the heat shown in the table below, win or lose. It cools smoothly, one full level every 10 minutes, so a few minutes of patience is worth points of odds. The Crimes page shows the label, a cooldown timer, and, next to each crime, exactly how many points heat is costing you.

New players get a break. For your first 10 crimes, heat can cost you at most 8 points of odds, so a few quick attempts never leave you hopeless. After that, heat bites at the full 8 points a level.

Odds shown with no heat. Higher skill also raises the payout a little.

When it goes wrong

On a failure, you slip away about 60% of the time and only lose the nerve. Otherwise you're caught and sent to the Lockup. While you're inside you can't train, work shifts, take jobs or sell and trade. The food stalls still serve you, and you can still eat.

Bail lets you out early. The first 5 minutes of a sentence cost Mk 4 each (rounded up), so busting on a small crime (about Mk 16) costs less than that crime pays on average (about Mk 65). Every minute after that costs Mk 25, which is what makes a long sentence expensive. Or just wait: the timer runs in the real world, and you're free when it ends. The Clinic Aide and City Works jobs make bail cheaper.

A job is the steady side of the city. Pick one of four, and you're paid every day at 00:00 UTC whether or not you play. If you've been away, the pay is waiting when you return (up to 3 days).

Work is a stat that grows by 5 with every payday, and by 2 with every extra shift (costs 10 energy). It can nearly double your pay over time.

Promotion needs enough job points (one per payday) and a high enough stat in your job's skill. You can't be promoted by waiting alone. Each job also has a perk:

• Docks Hand (needs Strength): smuggling pays 10% more.
• Clinic Aide (needs Wits): lockup time cut by 20%.
• Salvage Crew (needs Agility): item drops are 15% more likely.
• City Works (needs Grit): bail costs 15% less.

Training turns energy into stats: Strength, Agility, Grit and Wits. Each click costs 5 energy, and you can do up to 5 at a time. A little spirit is used up too, and the higher your spirit when you start, the bigger the gain.

Diminishing returns: the higher a stat already is, the less each click adds. Early training is the most rewarding. Here's one click at Furnace Hall with full spirit:

Crimes sometimes drop items. Food refills spirit when eaten; junk and curios are for selling. Stalls in the Pumice Market sell food at fixed prices and buy anything from you at 25% of its value, so other players are usually a better buyer.

Set your own price and list items for other players to buy. It's the main way the economy moves.

• Listing fee: 3% of the total price, paid up front, not refunded if you cancel.
• Sale tax: 5%, taken from the seller when it sells.
• Example: list items for Mk 1,000. You pay Mk 30 to list, and when they sell you receive Mk 950 (Mk 50 tax). You end up with Mk 920.
• Up to 10 listings at a time. New accounts can list after their first 6 hours.
• Buying is instant, and the first buyer wins. You can't trade with accounts that look linked to yours.

The city has six districts. Four are good places to start (each gives a small head start in one stat); the other two open up as you grow.

• Cinder Docks: Cranes, crates, and quiet deals. Where the ships still come in. Salvage crews and smugglers share the same piers and the same coffee.
• Pumice Market: Everything has a price. Mostly twice. A covered bazaar built inside a half-collapsed arcade. Shops, pawn stalls and the player market.
• Glasswork Row: Furnaces that never fully went out. Old glass furnaces turned gyms and workshops. The air is dry and the floors are warm.
• Old Basalt: City hall, clinic, lockup, job board. The civic heart of the city. The roofs are patched, the forms are in triplicate, and the lockup is on the corner.
• Ember Heights(later): Lamps on, curtains drawn. Hillside terraces for those who dug out first and stayed ahead. Harder cons, richer rewards.
• The Grey Fringe(later): Buried streets. Nobody's turf. Yet. Ruins still under the ash. Scavengers go in. Most of them come out.

Two short lists on your home screen point you forward. Each item pays once, ever, and every payout shows in your Marks ledger on the Me page. The server checks each one itself, so there is nothing to claim by hand and nothing to exploit.

When the checklist is finished, Goals take over: bigger targets for the next stretch of play.

• One account per person. Don't make extra accounts, share yours or use someone else's. Shared households are fine; just tell us.
• A human at the keyboard. No bots, scripts, macros or auto-clickers. Actions are rate-limited to a few a second, which is faster than any hand needs.
• Keep it fair. Report bugs instead of using them. No harassment or hate, and no impersonating staff.
• No real money. You can't buy or sell Marks, items or accounts for money, and the game will never sell you an advantage. There is no gambling.
• Ashfall City is for players aged 16 and over.

The full text is on the Rules page, with the Terms and Privacy pages.