Contents

Comprehensive Rules

200 The Round

The ten-round loop, and where combat sits inside it.

200.1Round structure

  1. 200.1aEvery round runs a boss fight and a nemesis fight, separated by two shop phases.
  2. 200.1bShop 1, the General Store: spend gold, buy units and runes, place, manage the rune boards, level up, ready up.
  3. 200.1cBoss draft: solo offers 3 options; multiplayer offers active players plus 1, capped at 5. Each player claims one distinct boss option and may cancel the claim before combat starts.
  4. 200.1dBoss combat: each player fights the boss and minion they drafted, in a parallel simulation.
  5. 200.1eBoss reward: gold and XP are always offered. After a team win each player also receives their drafted boss's signature reward.
  6. 200.1fShop 2: after the boss, each player picks a shop destination from a weighted set of choices, then spends, places, and readies up. Buyback can page through items sold by any player.
  7. 200.1gNemesis draft: solo offers up to two distinct real boards; multiplayer requires one distinct source per active player. Each player claims one board, and their own board remains editable until committing freezes it and durably records the round contribution.
  8. 200.1hNemesis combat: a fight against the claimed ghost board, using the same combat pipeline as the boss fight. A confirmed empty or unrecoverable pool produces a visible bye, never fake combat.
  9. 200.1iNemesis reward: non-terminal fights award team-shared win or loss gold and XP, then the next round begins. Round 10 ends the match instead of opening rewards.

200.2Rescue fights

  1. 200.2aWhen the natural boss batch produces mixed outcomes, the server assigns eligible rescue pairs in player-ring order. Players do not claim, pass, or choose among rescue options.
  2. 200.2bPairing is one-to-one first, walking backwards around the seat ring, so while survivors outnumber the fallen each survivor receives at most one defeated teammate. Any surplus fallen teammates are chained onto a survivor as an ordered list, in forward ring distance.
  3. 200.2cA rescuer runs one real follow-up combat per teammate in their chain. Each fight opens from the rescuer's current state (vitality, statuses, charges, and ledger carry over with no heal) against the enemy exactly as it stood when that teammate was wiped. The chain stops at the first fight the rescuer does not win.
  4. 200.2dAfter that single rescue batch, clearing every required boss fight records a win for every player; leaving any required fight unresolved records a loss for every player. There is no second rescue wave.

200.3What persists

  1. 200.3aForge Cores, the equipped resonance, Dividend, Profit, and Quest progress persist for the rest of the match.
  2. 200.3bA card's named counter — the printed X on the Tally Savant and Master Appraiser Pennies — persists with that unit for the rest of the match and keeps accumulating each battle.
  3. 200.3cStock, Burn, Venom, Maim, Dread, Shield, and every combat-scoped buff reset between battles.
  4. 200.3dA player's ordered Forge Core list travels with their board into nemesis fights.

200.4Party membership changes

  1. 200.4aIn a match that began with multiple players, the current party leader may remove another active member, including a disconnected member.
  2. 200.4bThe remaining party continues the same match. The removed player returns to the lobby and receives a solo fork of the run rather than a loss.
  3. 200.4cThe server makes the solo fork and the smaller-party checkpoint durable before excluding the player. If either write fails, the removal rolls back and the player remains active in the original match.