Game rules

Every card is a place with a danger rating. You either explore it, which is safe and free, or take the risk, which costs one energy and can pay far better or hurt.

• Explore gives a little gold or XP, and now and then something you can carry.
• Risk can go great, go well, go wrong or go badly. The worst case is written on the card before you choose.
• Sometimes a monster blocks the road. Then the choice is to fight it or to sneak past. Fighting costs no energy; it costs health.
• Everyone finds the same things. Which traveller you picked changes nothing about your odds.

Energy is what limits how fast you can gamble. You start with a maximum of 5.

• The clock gives you one point every quarter of an hour, up to your maximum. Your health and your sprints come back on that same quarter.
• Eating fills it faster. Food gives you at most 30 energy a day; after that it only heals.
• Exploring is always free. A gamble costs one, and so does a special attack in a fight.
• The Diamond Shop raises your maximum, up to 10, and the clock then fills further too.

Your health is 20 plus 5 per level, and it comes back on its own: 30% of your maximum every quarter of an hour, on the same clock as your energy and your sprints. A failed gamble costs health, and so does a monster that spots you sneaking off.

• At zero you are knocked out: you lose some of the gold you carry and cannot explore until the healer patches you up. Food won't do it.
• The healer in the village patches you up completely, for gold, or for free if you cannot pay.
• Fleeing a fight costs no gold, but what the monster already took stays gone.

Your pack starts with 30 slots, one per kind of item, and diamonds buy more. A stack of twenty carrots is one slot, and seeds go in a pouch that takes none.

• When the pack is full, anything new stays behind and the screen tells you what you left.
• A stack you already own keeps growing, full pack or not.
• The trash bin in your inventory throws things away for good, and always asks first.
• Quest items cannot be sold. They stay with you until their story is finished; after that, the bin takes them.

Gold you carry is at risk; gold in the bank is not. A failed gamble or a knockout only ever takes from what you carry.

• The bank is in the village. Deposits and withdrawals are free, and only happen there.
• The Travelling Merchant turns up on the road, never in the village. He buys almost anything for 15% of its value, and calls that generous. Each day he is short of one kind of thing and pays 50% more for it. His day starts at midnight UTC, the same moment for everyone.
• Market Square in the village is always open. Bruna pays best for weapons, Halvard for gear, Wisp for consumables and Tilda for resources: 20% of value. Garrick, the beast tanner, pays more than the merchant for monster parts.
• The Auction House opens at level 5, and deals only between players: you list your finds, other travellers buy them, and the other way round. The seller pays a 6% market fee, and paying or being paid through the bank costs 2.5% on top. Fees round up to whole gold.
• What you buy there waits in the Post box at home, however full your pack is. The box holds 5 deliveries to begin with, and a full one takes no more.
• From the bank you can send gold to another player, up to 100,000 a day. Gold sent to the wrong person stays with the wrong person.

From level 5 you can build a farm at your home, using wood, stone and gold you gather along the road or buy from the Travelling Merchant.

• Each field grows one crop. Sow a seed, wait for the clock, and harvest.
• A harvest gives crops and usually a seed back: sometimes two, sometimes none. Keep a few spare.
• Tools make harvests bigger on average. The best tool in your pack counts.
• Most of what you grow is food, which is where most of your energy comes from. Wheat is the exception: it goes to the Crafting Table.

You share the road with other people. Waving at someone gives you nothing until they wave back; then you both get a little XP. You can wave 6 times a day, and at most 2 times at the same person.

You can play without an account, up to level 10. Your progress then stays in this browser. Create an account and it moves into your account, where it is saved for every device you log in on, and the road goes past level 10.

During the beta we ask three things of you.

• One account per person.
• Play by hand. No scripts, bots or automation.
• Found a way to break the economy? Report it instead of farming it. That is what the beta is for, and we would rather thank you than ban you.

Greenvale is unfinished. Balance changes, and progress may be reset while we build towards a stable version. If a reset is coming, we will say so on the updates page first.