1The world in brief
When the last Sovereign died without an heir, the great houses tore the realm apart rather than let a rival take the throne. To end the Sundering, the dying king's Ledgerkeepers bound the realm's champions into soulstone and wrote every binding into the Great Ledger: a book no lord can burn and no scribe can forge. Above it sits the Blind Weaver, the fate that decides which champion answers a summoning. She cannot be bribed, for she has no hands; she cannot be read, for she has no eyes.
In plain terms: Emberfall is a trading card game that runs entirely on the Hathor blockchain. Every champion is a real token in your own wallet. Every summon, fight, fusion, and sale is a transaction executed by open, immutable contract code, with randomness drawn from the chain itself. Nothing in this guide is a promise from the game's keepers; all of it is enforced by rules that the keepers themselves cannot bend, and anyone can verify.
The game is played in six halls, reached by the tabs at the top of the game:
- The Summoning: spend coin at the brazier; the Weaver binds a champion for you.
- Your Host: the champions you hold, sorted by power.
- The Mines: stake champions to earn gems over time, and temper them there.
- The Pit: wager gems on trial by combat, best of three rounds.
- The Bazaar: sell champions for coin or swap them with other players.
- The Codex: your deeds, your standing, the lore, and this guide.
2Getting started
Emberfall currently lives on Hathor's test network: the coin is free, the champions are real, and every mechanic is live. You need two things to play: a wallet and a little testnet coin.
Choosing a wallet
Click Connect wallet in the game's header and pick one:
- Hathor mobile wallet (Android / iOS) via WalletConnect. On a phone, the game offers a one-tap open button and a tappable pairing code; on desktop, scan the QR with the wallet app. Set the wallet's network to testnet in its settings.
- MetaMask with the Hathor Snap on desktop. The game will prompt MetaMask to install the Snap on first connect.
Don't have either? The connect panel links you to the right download for your device. Your wallet is yours: the game never sees your keys, and every deed is signed by you.
Getting coin
Summons cost testnet HTR. The testnet faucet pays enough for a small army. Copy your address from the wallet chip in the game's header and paste it there. Coin arrives in seconds.
The tutorial
The first time you connect, a guided tour walks you through every hall, one tip at a time. You can step back and forth, close it whenever you like, and restart it any time from the ? button in the header. There are also toggles for sound effects and music next to it.
After connecting, press ⚡ Promptless Play. It funds a small session purse (10 HTR) once, and from then on every action happens instantly, with no wallet approval per move. See Promptless play for how it works and why it's safe.
3The three currencies
Coin (HTR) is the realm's money. It buys summons, funds promptless sessions, and is what sellers earn in the Bazaar. On the test realm it is free from the faucet.
Gems (GEMS) are the realm's working currency: earned, never bought. Gems enter the world through exactly one gate: champions toiling in the Mines (plus a few one-time deed bounties). Gems pay for fusion and tempering, and are what you wager in the Pit. Because the only gem faucet is rate-limited by real champions staked over real time, gems cannot be farmed by bots or printed into worthlessness.
Champions are the cards themselves: each one a unique token in your wallet, with its name, station, power, aspects, and victory count written on the Ledger at birth and updated only by the game's own rites. There are 180 champions in the catalog across four stations; every summon binds a fresh, individually rolled copy.
4Summoning
Approach the brazier, pay the summon price (1 HTR on the test realm), and the Weaver rolls three things: the champion's station, its identity (one of the catalog's champions of that station), and its power, split at birth into three aspects. All three rolls happen inside the contract, from chain randomness; the game's keepers can neither see nor steer them.
Stations and odds
| Station | Odds per summon | Power at birth | Mine rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Footman | 60% | 10 – 19 | 0.01 GEMS/min |
| Knight | 30% | 25 – 49 | 0.03 GEMS/min |
| Highlord | 9% | 60 – 119 | 0.10 GEMS/min |
| Sovereign | 1% | 150 – 299 | 0.40 GEMS/min |
Every summon also earns 10 renown, feeds the Weaver's favor pool, and has a 1-in-25 chance of the Weaver returning your coin; see The Weaver's favor.
The reveal
Each summon plays a reveal, grander for rarer champions, up to a full ceremony for a Sovereign. Click anywhere to skip it. If you summon several times in a row, the reveals queue politely and play one at a time. When a champion joins Your Host it crash-lands, and higher stations land harder.
5Champions and their aspects
Every champion's power is split across three aspects, and power is always the exact sum of the three:
| Aspect | Symbol | Meaning | Combat role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valor | ⚔ | ferocity, the charge | the offense round |
| Bulwark | 🛡 | endurance, the shield-wall | the defense round |
| Guile | 🗡 | cunning, the knife in the dark | the trickery round |
The split is random at birth (every aspect gets at least 1), and it is what gives champions personality. A 19-power Footman might be a balanced 7/6/6, or a 14/2/3 berserker who crushes the Valor round and prays through the other two. Neither is strictly better; see the Pit for why.
A champion grows in exactly three ways, each costing something different:
- The Rite of Union: costs champions and gems. Two become one of the next station.
- The Rite of Tempering: costs gems and time in the Mines. Raises one chosen aspect.
- Battle-hardening: costs risk. Won wagers against worthy foes leave a mark.
Champions also carry their record: every settled victory in the Pit is written on the card itself as a ★ count. A ten-victory veteran is provably a ten-victory veteran to any buyer in the Bazaar, forever.
6Your Host
Your Host is your army: every champion currently in your wallet, sorted by power, highest first. Each card shows its station frame, aspects, tempering marks, and ★ victories, with buttons for everything the champion can do from home: send it to the Mines, challenge or answer trials in the Pit, offer it in the Bazaar, or give it to the Rite of Union.
Champions returning from elsewhere (a freshly summoned recruit, a fighter back from the Pit, a miner recalled from the deep) are held briefly by the contract until claimed. In a promptless session the game claims them for you automatically; connected by wallet alone, you'll see a claim button per returning champion (one signature each).
7The Mines
Stake a champion into the deep Mines and it sweats gems by the minute, faster for higher stations; the rates are in the station table above. Gems accrue continuously; collect them whenever you like with Claim gems, and the claim is written to your ledger inside the contract. Withdraw them to your wallet at any time, or spend them straight from the ledger on fusion, tempering, and wagers.
A staked champion is safe. It cannot be fought or sold while it toils, and you can recall it whenever you wish; the moment it returns it brings its unclaimed gems along.
Gems per hour of staking, by station. A Sovereign out-mines forty Footmen.
8The Rite of Tempering
While a champion toils in the Mines, and only there, you may pay gems to raise one chosen aspect by 1–3. The forge needs the mine's heat: that is why tempering is offered on staked champions only, and it also means a tempering champion keeps earning gems while it deepens.
Each tempering of the same champion costs roughly half again as much as the last, and every station has a hard cap on how many times it can be tempered:
| Station | First tempering | Cap | Max total gain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Footman | 0.10 GEMS | 3 temperings | about +9 |
| Knight | 0.20 GEMS | 5 | about +15 |
| Highlord | 0.80 GEMS | 8 | about +24 |
| Sovereign | 1.50 GEMS | 12 | about +36 |
The caps are chosen so tempering deepens a champion without breaking the ladder: a fully tempered Footman (~29 power) still loses to an average Knight (~37). Half of every tempering fee is destroyed forever (making everyone's remaining gems a little scarcer) and half goes to the Crown. Each tempering also earns 5 renown.
9The Rite of Union
Give two champions of the same station to the forge, pay the gems fee, and they are burned forever, reborn as one champion of the next station. The child rolls a fresh identity, fresh power, and fresh aspects for its new station, plus a bonus of 10% of the parents' combined power. Tempering and hardening do not carry through the forge: fuse for the power, not to smuggle bonuses upward.
| Fusing a pair of | Gems fee | Yields | Renown |
|---|---|---|---|
| Footmen | 0.05 GEMS | a Knight | 20 |
| Knights | 0.10 GEMS | a Highlord | 40 |
| Highlords | 0.50 GEMS | a Sovereign | 80 |
Every fusion permanently shrinks the supply of lesser champions: two cards become one, forever. Rarity comes from the summoning odds; scarcity comes from the forge.
10The Pit: trial by combat
Post a champion with a gems wager as an open challenge, or answer someone else's by matching it. When a challenge is answered, the trial settles instantly on the Ledger. Champions are never at risk: win or lose, both fighters return home; only the wagered gems change hands. The winner takes the pot minus the Crown's 5% tithe.
Best of three
A trial is three rounds, one per aspect: Valor against Valor, Bulwark against Bulwark, Guile against Guile. Each round is a weighted draw: your chance to take it equals your aspect over the sum of both. Twelve Valor against six wins that round two times in three. Take two rounds and the pot is yours.
- Total power still rules on average. A 40-power champion beats a 20-power champion most of the time, whatever their shapes.
- But shape decides close fights. A specialist (14/2/3) against a balanced peer (6/7/6) is heavily favored in one round and an underdog in two; it must convert its strong round and steal a coin flip. Balanced builds are steadier; specialists are streakier.
- Everything is public. Your opponent's aspects are on their card before you accept. Reading a matchup ("my Guile edges theirs, their Valor round is lost anyway, so contest Bulwark") is the actual skill of the Pit. Temper accordingly.
Battle-hardened
A champion that wins a trial gains +1 to a random aspect, but only if the fight was worth something and the foe was worthy. Both must hold:
- the wager was at least your station's fusion fee in gems, and
- the defeated champion's power was equal to or greater than yours.
Beating weaklings, or fighting for free, teaches nothing, so hardening cannot be farmed. It caps at about half of tempering's ceiling per station (2 / 3 / 4 / 6). Separately from hardening, every settled victory adds a ★ to the card, without limit. Fighting a settled trial earns 5 renown for each side, and the winner earns 10 more. Cancelling an unanswered challenge costs nothing and earns nothing, by design.
11The Bazaar
The realm has always run on gold. In the Bazaar you can:
- Sell: list a champion at your price in HTR. When it sells, the coin (minus the Crown's 2% tithe) waits in your Bazaar purse; withdraw it whenever you like. Cancel an unsold listing any time and the champion comes home.
- Buy: pay a listing's price and the champion is yours.
- Swap: offer one of your champions in trade for a specific champion another player holds. If they accept, the two cards cross without any coin at all.
Champions bought, swapped, or returned from cancelled offers wait under Held by the guild until claimed (automatic in a promptless session). A champion's full pedigree (aspects, temperings, and ★ victories) travels with it to its new owner; provenance is real here, and it cannot be forged.
12Renown and the Vigil
Renown is the realm's measure of what you have actually done, earned on the Ledger itself, only through real deeds:
| Deed | Renown |
|---|---|
| A summoning | 10 |
| A fusion | 20 / 40 / 80, by the station fused |
| A tempering | 5 |
| Fighting a settled trial | 5, each side |
| Winning that trial | +10 more |
The Vigil multiplies it: play on consecutive days and your renown earnings climb steadily, up to double at a seven-day vigil. Miss a day and the vigil resets to one. Because every point of renown costs something real to earn, there is no profitable way to bot it; the cheapest path to renown is simply playing.
Renown feeds two things: the Weaver's weekly drawing (every point earned that week is one ticket) and your bragging rights, since it is public and unfakeable.
13Deeds of Renown and your standing
Your standing is the long game: seven levels, earned by completing the eighteen Deeds of Renown recorded in the Codex, from First Muster (one champion sworn) up to commanding forty champions at once and winning fifteen trials.
| Level | Title | Deeds required |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wanderer | 0 |
| 2 | Footman | 2 |
| 3 | Man-at-Arms | 4 |
| 4 | Knight | 7 |
| 5 | Banneret | 10 |
| 6 | Highlord | 14 |
| 7 | Sovereign's Hand | all 18 |
The gaps widen on purpose. The first levels come in an evening; the last demand a real host, hours of mining, a Sovereign in your ranks, and a fighting record. Standing is prestige, not power: it grants no combat advantage and cannot be bought, only assembled.
Six deeds are milestones the contract itself rewards with one-time gem bounties, paid straight to your ledger:
| Milestone | Bounty |
|---|---|
| Your first summoning | 0.10 GEMS |
| Your first Rite of Union | 0.20 GEMS |
| Forging a Highlord | 0.50 GEMS |
| Forging a Sovereign | 2.00 GEMS |
| Your first trial won | 0.25 GEMS |
| Ten trials won | 1.00 GEMS |
14The Weaver's favor
The Weaver keeps a shared pot, filled by 10% of every summon in the realm. Two blessings flow from it:
The instant favor. Every summoning has a 1-in-25 chance that the Weaver smiles and returns up to the summon's full price. When she does, a claim button appears in the game. The refund comes from the pool, and the pool never pays out more than it holds. A busy realm means a generous Weaver.
The weekly drawing. Every point of renown you earn during the week is one ticket in the Weaver's weekly raffle; the pot is 5% of the week's summon proceeds. The draw runs on a published, deterministic algorithm over public Ledger data; anyone can re-run it and check the winner. The Codex shows the current week's pot and your tickets.
15Promptless play
Signing every move in your wallet is safe but slow. ⚡ Promptless Play forges a session key that lives only in your browser, funds it once from your wallet (10 HTR), and then plays every action through it instantly: no approval popups, no app-switching, just play.
- Your wallet stays in charge. The session purse holds only what you gave it. Your main wallet's keys are never shared, and nothing else in it can be touched.
- Everything comes home. Press End session and the game sweeps every champion, gem, and leftover coin back to your main wallet in one motion. It will warn you first if anything is still out (champions in the Mines, open challenges, unsold listings) so nothing is left behind.
- Top up any time. If the purse runs low mid-session, one tap refills it.
- Reloads are harmless. The session key is saved in your browser before any coin moves. If the page reloads while your transfer is on its way (switching apps on a phone often does this), the game simply picks the wait back up, or finishes the setup the moment you return. In-session, champions returning from anywhere are claimed for you automatically.
The session key never leaves your browser, so a promptless session belongs to that browser on that device. End the session before switching devices and start a fresh one there.
16The economy underneath
One iron rule governs every reward in Emberfall:
Every reward traces back to coin that a player actually spent. Rewards are funded from real proceeds, never conjured from nothing.
Games that print their rewards die the same death: rewards outrun the things that absorb them, the currency collapses, and with it every reason to play. So Emberfall's flows are built to breathe with the realm instead of bleeding it:
Where coin goes. Each summon splits three ways: a slice becomes the collateral that backs every gem ever minted; 10% feeds the Weaver's favor pool; the rest is the realm's keep: the operator's revenue, for a game must feed its keepers. The Crown also takes 5% of every Pit pot and 2% of every Bazaar sale.
Where gems go. One faucet: the Mines (plus capped one-time bounties). Several drains: fusion fees, tempering fees (half of which are burned outright), trial tithes, and wagers lost to better fighters. The faucet is rate-limited by real champions staked over real time; gem value is anchored to the one thing nobody can fake.
Where champions go. Summons mint them; the forge burns them, two for one, forever. The climb to Sovereign permanently shrinks the supply below it.
Prices on the test realm are tuned for testing, not balance: coin is free and summons are cheap so you can try every mechanic without grinding. Before any real-money launch, every number in this guide gets a dedicated balancing pass. What will not change is the architecture: the iron rule, the collateral backing, and the open Ledger.
17Verify it yourself
Nothing here asks for trust. The game runs on two open contracts on Hathor's testnet, and every claim in this guide can be checked against them:
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| The Arena contract | 00599b4b…c8b3c9258: summons, Mines, Pit, fusion, tempering, renown, favor |
| The Bazaar contract | 0033955d…055bf5c48b: listings, sales, swaps |
| The source code | github.com/trondbjoroy/gachagame: contracts, game, and this guide |
Your champions are ordinary Hathor tokens: look any of them up in the explorer, or in your wallet, and the Ledger shows its full history: birth, fights, and every owner it has ever had.
18Field advice
- Stake early, stake always. Idle champions earn nothing; the Mines are the only gem faucet, and everything interesting costs gems. Even Footmen add up.
- Keep the Vigil. A single action a day keeps your streak alive; at seven days every point of renown you earn is doubled, which also doubles your weekly raffle tickets.
- Read the matchup before you fight. Aspects are public. Pick fights where two of your three rounds are favored, not where your total power merely looks bigger.
- Temper with a plan. Raising your best aspect makes a specialist; shoring up your worst makes a generalist. Decide which fights you want to win first.
- Wager enough to harden. Wins only leave a mark at a wager of your fusion fee or more, against an equal-or-stronger foe. Cheap wins build ★ count but not strength.
- Fuse the fodder, keep the veterans. Fusion re-rolls aspects and erases temperings and hardening; feed the forge your plain champions and keep the shaped ones.
- Chase deeds deliberately. The Codex shows exactly what each deed needs; six of them pay gem bounties, and your first fusion nearly pays for itself.
- Check the Weaver. If she owed you a favor, the claim button is waiting in the Summoning hall. Coin left unclaimed helps no one.
19Questions, answered
Can I lose my champion in a fight?
Never. Both fighters always return to their owners; only the wagered gems change hands (minus the 5% tithe).
What are the odds of a Sovereign?
1 in 100 per summon. Or forge one: two Highlords and 0.50 GEMS.
Do tempering and hardening survive fusion?
No. The child rolls fresh aspects for its new station (plus 10% of the parents' combined power). ★ victory counts belong to the burned parents and do not transfer.
Why can I only temper champions in the Mines?
The forge needs the mine's heat. Mechanically, it keeps tempering tied to champions that are committed and earning, not idling in a binder. The champion keeps mining while it tempers.
Is any of this pay-to-win?
Coin buys summons; it cannot buy gems, renown, standing, or victories. Gems are earned by staking time, renown by playing, standing by deeds, and fights are decided by aspects that everyone can read before wagering.
What happens if my page reloads mid-action?
Nothing is lost. Every state that matters lives on the Ledger or is saved in your browser before coin moves. Reload, reconnect, and the game picks up where it left off, including a half-finished session funding.
Something looks exploitable. Should I report it?
Please. If you find a way to climb any ladder without paying its intended cost, that is a bug, and hearing about it is exactly what the test realm is for.
20Glossary
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| The Great Ledger | the Hathor blockchain, where every deed is recorded, forever |
| The Blind Weaver | the contract's randomness: unbribable, unreadable |
| Soulstone | a champion card; a unique token in your wallet |
| Station | a champion's rank: Footman, Knight, Highlord, Sovereign |
| Aspects | Valor ⚔, Bulwark 🛡, Guile 🗡, the three parts of a champion's power |
| The Crown | the realm's treasury; it collects tithes and half of tempering fees |
| Tithe | the Crown's cut: 5% of Pit pots, 2% of Bazaar sales |
| Renown | points earned on the Ledger for real deeds; weekly raffle tickets |
| The Vigil | your consecutive-day streak; doubles renown at seven days |
| Standing | your level and title, 1 Wanderer to 7 Sovereign's Hand, earned by deeds |
| The Weaver's favor | the 1-in-25 summon refund, and the weekly renown raffle |
| Battle-hardened | aspect growth from wagered wins against equal-or-stronger foes |
| Session key | a browser-held key that plays a funded session without wallet prompts |
| The sweep | ending a session: everything returns to your main wallet in one motion |
The throne of Emberfall stays empty. But a host must still be raised, and every deed you do is witnessed forever.