The Sim

Step 1: Get Started

Your starting cash buys your first Mining Rigs. Mining Rig is the only investment unlocked at the start. Buy several and watch your earnings per block climb.

Step 2: Unlock More Investments

As Mining Rig prices climb, unlock Validator Nodes, then Oracles, and later the tier 2 and tier 3 investments. Each type has a one-time unlock cost, then its own price curve. Spreading across types is usually cheaper than piling into one.

Step 3: Start Staking

Once you have cash you are not about to spend, stake it. Compound interest rewards time, so do not wait for a "big enough" amount. Remember that every stake or unstake starts a lockout (500 blocks, about 2 hours) before you can stake or unstake again.

Step 4: Your First Fork

Your first fork adds your whole net worth as a permanent earnings bonus: a net worth of m0.5 gives +50% earnings, m2 gives +200%. So grow your net worth first, then fork. On that first fork you also choose your path and draft your first bonus.

Step 5: Pick Your Path

For a new player, Production is the simplest (pure earnings bonuses plus a pick that makes all unlocks free). Staking shines when the round's staking rate is high. Dark Web is built around PvP powers; pick it if you want to fight other players.

Step 6: Settle In

Keep investing and staking. Fork again when your net worth has grown a lot since your last fork. You can fork up to 7 times per round, with at least 1,000 blocks (about 4 hours) between forks. Every fork lets you draft another bonus.

The Sim is a completely separate idle economy game running alongside the main strategy game: its own cash, its own rules, its own leaderboard. You build an investment portfolio, compound returns through staking, prestige (fork) for multipliers, and compete each round. It is free to play.

Core Loop

1. 1.Invest: buy units of 7 investment types that earn cash every 15-second block
2. 2.Stake: put cash in the staking pool for compound interest (the rate varies per round)
3. 3.Fork: reset your progress for a permanent earnings multiplier. The first fork is worth the most
4. 4.Compete: climb the net worth leaderboard before the round ends

Rounds

A round runs 120,000 blocks (about 500 hours) or until the contribution goal is reached. When a round ends:

• ›The final leaderboard is locked and rewards are paid automatically
• ›A 50-hour break begins
• ›The next round starts with a random investment preset (one of 5) and a random staking rate

Around 25 newsfeed events are scheduled across each round, so the economy shifts as the round goes on.

Where To Find Things

• ›The Sim: the main game screen (invest, stake, fork, powers, contribute)
• ›Explorer: leaderboard analytics and player stats
• ›Tournaments: separate bracket rounds (see "Tournaments")
• ›Championship: the all-time points table across rounds
• ›AI Companions: optional automation helpers (see "AI Companions")

Investments are your income. Each type earns a fixed amount of cash per block per unit owned. The more you own, the more you earn, but each unit costs more than the one before.

The 7 Investment Types

Mining Rig is always unlocked. Every other type has a one-time unlock cost, and the unlock costs depend on the round's preset. Forking locks everything except Mining Rig again.

Cost Scaling

The price of the next unit is its base price multiplied by a growth factor for every unit you already own. Each round uses one of 5 presets with different base prices, growth factors and earnings, so some rounds let you mass-buy cheaply and others punish bulk buying.

Cost Modifiers

• ›Cards: owning a card for an investment type discounts that type's unlock cost (35% for Founder's Edition cards, 25% for other cards). Some cards also reduce unit prices or boost earnings for their type
• ›Fast Expansion (Production path): makes all unlocks free for the rest of the round
• ›Events: newsfeed events can temporarily raise or lower prices of a type

How Your Earnings Are Calculated

Each investment's income is multiplied by your fork bonus and your card boosts, then by your path's earnings bonus, and flat dApp card income is added on top. Cards count one per boost category: if you own several cards for the same category, only the strongest one applies.

Net Worth

Net worth only grows from earnings: investment income, staking interest and cash events. Spending cash on investments or unlocks does not lower your net worth.

Staking is how you multiply cash through compound interest.

How It Works

1. 1.Stake any amount of your cash
2. 2.Each deposit compounds every block from the block you staked it
3. 3.Each round gets a random staking rate of roughly 0.02% to 0.028% per block. That sounds tiny, but compounded across 120,000 blocks it becomes an enormous multiplier
4. 4.Unstaking withdraws proportionally from all your deposits

Your staking rate can be raised by Yield Farm cards and by Staking path bonuses (up to +35%).

Lockout

Every stake and every unstake starts a 500-block lockout (about 2 hours) before your next stake or unstake. Staking path bonuses can cut this to a minimum of 100 blocks, and the Unlimited Staking power skips it for 10 blocks.

You cannot stake or unstake while blacked out.

Auto-Staking (Titanbot)

If you own a Titanbot card you can switch on auto-staking. An automated job runs every 5 minutes and stakes all your available cash, but only once your lockout has passed (plus a small 10% buffer) and only if you own at least one Mining Rig, Validator Node or Oracle.

Auto-staking is switched off every time you fork, so turn it back on afterwards. A rival's Short Circuit power also switches it off. It pauses while you are blacked out.

Strategy

• ›Stake early: compounding rewards early deposits the most
• ›Fork, then rebuild and stake: after a fork your cash resets, so get investments running and cash staked again quickly
• ›Watch the rate: high-rate rounds favour staking-heavy play

Forking is the Sim's prestige system. You give up what you built to earn a permanent earnings multiplier for the rest of the round.

How It Works

1. 1.You need a positive net worth and must not be blacked out
2. 2.The fork adds a bonus of net worth divided by 5 to the power of your previous forks: fork 1 adds 100% of your net worth, fork 2 adds 1/5, fork 3 adds 1/25, fork 4 adds 1/125
3. 3.Bonuses add up. Your investment earnings are multiplied by (1 + total bonus), so a total bonus of 1.5 means +150%
4. 4.You earn 1 encryption key per fork (plus any Key Collector bonus)
5. 5.Cooldown: at least 1,000 blocks (about 4 hours 10 minutes) must pass between forks. The fork button shows COOLDOWN with the blocks remaining

Maximum 7 Forks Per Round

You can fork at most 7 times per round. With the cooldown, 7 forks need at least about 25 hours of round time.

Path and Bonus Draft

On your first fork you choose your path (Production, Staking or Dark Web) and it stays locked for the round. On every fork, including the first, you draft one bonus from all the options your path currently allows. The option list is fixed, so re-opening the fork dialog does not reroll it.

What Resets

• ›All investments (back to 0, only Mining Rig unlocked)
• ›Your staking deposits
• ›Cash (back to the round's starting cash, plus any starting-cash card bonus)
• ›Blackout and Short Circuit status
• ›Auto-staking (switched off)

What Persists

• ›Fork count and total fork bonus
• ›Your path and every drafted bonus
• ›Encryption keys
• ›Active immunity

Strategy

• ›Fork 1 is critical: grow your net worth as far as you reasonably can first
• ›Later forks still help: each one adds a smaller bonus, but also another bonus draft for your path
• ›Mind the cooldown: plan your later forks so the 1,000-block gaps still fit before the round ends

On your first fork you choose one of 3 paths for the rest of the round. Each fork then lets you draft one bonus from every option your path allows at that point. "From fork 3" below means the bonus appears once you have already forked twice.

The Three Paths

Production (green)

Earnings stacking plus an unlock rush:

All Production earnings bonuses together are capped at +50%. Best for: players who want a simple, strong earnings multiplier, and players who want to rush through the unlock chain with Fast Expansion.

Staking (gold)

Compound interest and faster staking:

Staking rate bonuses cap at +35% (you need High Yield to get past +25%). Lockout reductions cap at -400, so the lockout never drops below 100 blocks. Best for: players who stake early and let it compound.

Dark Web (red)

PvP powers, keys and a small earnings axis:

Best for: players who use Blackouts and Short Circuits against rivals. Black Market Trade lets a Dark Web build still grow, but its +15% is well below Production's +50%.

Deep Dive

With only 7 forks per round you get at most 7 drafts, so every pick counts. Production can reach its +50% earnings cap in exactly 7 picks (Lean Operations five times plus Optimized Operations and Industrial Scale). Taking Fast Expansion costs one of those picks, which is often worth it early in a round when unlock costs still matter.

The Dark Web is the Sim's PvP system. Powers cost encryption keys, and most get more expensive each time you use them in the same round.

Powers

What Each Power Does

• ›Blackout: for its duration the target cannot buy, unlock, stake, unstake, fork or contribute, and their auto-staking pauses. Their existing investments and stake keep earning
• ›Immunity: protects you from Blackout and Short Circuit. Using it again replaces the timer rather than extending it
• ›Short Circuit: switches off the target's auto-staking. The target must have auto-staking on, and they can switch it back on
• ›Cash Boost: adds 10% of your net worth as cash (and to your net worth)
• ›Unlimited Staking: ignore the staking lockout while it lasts

Rules

• ›Blackout and Short Circuit cannot be used before block 500 of the round
• ›You cannot target yourself, an immune player, or a player who is already blacked out
• ›Shadow Discount lowers every power's cost, but never below 1 key
• ›Prolonged Effect lengthens Blackout, Immunity and Unlimited Staking

Getting Keys

• ›1 key per fork, plus Key Collector and Crypto Mining bonuses on the Dark Web path
• ›Rank rewards at the end of each round (see "Round Rewards & Championship")
• ›Optionally, buy keys with gems from the powers panel (3 gems per key, in bundles)

Keys stay in your balance between rounds.

Strategy

• ›Immunity before a big fork: a Blackout blocks forking, so protect yourself first
• ›Cash Boost for burst buying: 10% of your net worth as cash lets you buy a batch of investments at once
• ›Blackout late: a rival who cannot buy, stake or fork near the end of a round loses ground

Round Contributions

Players contribute cash toward a shared goal. When the total reaches the round's contribution goal (350 million by default), the round ends immediately and rewards are paid.

• ›You can contribute once per block, and not while blacked out
• ›Contributions are scaled down for big contributors: your first 10 million counts in full, and each further 10 million of credit costs 10 times more cash than the previous 10 million. One rich player cannot end a round alone
• ›Contributing spends cash but does not lower your net worth

Newsfeed Events

About 25 events are scheduled across each round, each lasting 250 to 750 blocks. They can:

• ›Change investment prices of one type or all types
• ›Change investment earnings of one type or all types
• ›Grant a one-time staking bonus
• ›Grant or take a one-time cash amount

Some events hit everyone; others only the top 25% of the leaderboard or the bottom 25%.

Leaderboard

Players are ranked by net worth. The live leaderboard refreshes every 10 minutes, and the final ranking is recalculated at the round's last block, so a stale snapshot can never cost you a place.

Rank Rewards (by default)

Open card packs under Cards > Packs. Players whose net worth never rose above zero are not ranked.

Top-Half Milestones

Finishing in the top 50% of a round counts toward milestones, each paying a random card once:

Championship

Ranks 1 to 10 score points on the Formula 1 scale (25, 18, 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 1). Regular Sim rounds count double; tournament finishes count at the normal scale. The Championship page shows the all-time table.

Tournaments use the same Sim rules but live in their own tables: your regular round is not affected. Browse them under Tournaments in the Sim menu.

Entry Modes

Joining

• ›Register before the round starts (or during the round if the creator allowed late join)
• ›Some tournaments charge an entry fee in gems, which goes into the prize pool
• ›Tournaments can have a participant cap
• ›If the minimum number of players is not reached by the start time, the tournament is cancelled and all fees are refunded

Prizes

The prize pool starts with the creator's fee and grows with entry fees. A creator can also add Gold. After a 10% platform fee, the pool is paid automatically when the round ends using the creator's split:

Tournaments do not pay keys, card packs or milestones, but ranks 1 to 10 score Championship points. Keys you earn or buy inside a tournament stay in that tournament; whatever is left moves to your regular key balance when it ends.

Creating a Tournament

• ›Creation fee: at least 250 gems, which seeds the prize pool
• ›You need at least 3 finished regular Sim rounds
• ›One pending or active tournament per creator, and at most 3 per 7 days
• ›Length presets: Sprint (30,000 blocks, ~5 days), Standard (60,000, ~10 days) or Marathon (120,000, ~21 days)
• ›Optional switches: disable card boosts, Dark Web powers or forking
• ›Minimum 15 participants

AI Companions are a limited collection bought with gems. Each player can own one.

How They Work

• ›You write if-then rules, for example "if cash is at least X, buy Validator Nodes up to 50 units, at most Y per unit"
• ›Conditions can check your cash, how many units of a type you own, the current block and your fork count (up to 4 conditions per rule)
• ›Actions are Buy (a fixed amount or as many as affordable, up to 100) or Unlock
• ›Rules are checked top to bottom on each automated tick, and at most one action fires per tick
• ›A buy in Max mode must have a maximum unit price, so a rule cannot run away up the price curve

Rule Snapshot

Your companion runs a snapshot of your rules taken when you join a round and again at each fork. Edits you make in between take effect at your next fork or the next round.

Rule Slots

Rarity decides how many rules a companion can hold: Common 6, Uncommon 8, Rare 10, Epic 12, Legendary 15. Extra slots up to 15 can be bought with gems (350 to 1,400 gems per slot).

Companions only work in the regular Sim round, not in tournaments.

What You Get ($12.99/month)

• ›A personal API key for your bot
• ›Perception endpoint: one call returns the full game state (round, player, investments, events, fork options)
• ›Event stream for reacting in real time
• ›Entry to bot-only tournaments
• ›Full documentation at /sim/docs

You never need the Bot API to play or win the Sim.

Production Path: Unlock Rush and Earnings Stack

• ›Fork #1: pick Production and draft Fast Expansion so every unlock is free
• ›Next forks: stack Lean Operations (+6% each) and Efficient Mining (+5% each)
• ›Fork 3 and 4: take Optimized Operations and Industrial Scale when they appear
• ›Remember the +50% cap on Production earnings bonuses

Staking Path: Compound Empire

• ›Fork #1: Staking, draft Compound Interest
• ›Take High Yield when it appears (it is the only way past +25% staking rate)
• ›Quick Access and Instant Access shorten your lockout so you can stake fresh earnings more often
• ›A Titanbot card for auto-staking fits this build well; switch it back on after every fork

Dark Web Path: Leaderboard Pressure

• ›Fork #1: Dark Web, draft Key Collector or Shadow Discount
• ›Stack Shadow Discount to make escalating power costs bearable
• ›Fork 4: Crypto Mining for passive keys
• ›Late round: Blackout the rivals directly above you, keep Immunity for yourself

Reading the Round

Check the staking rate and how steep investment prices climb early on. A high staking rate favours Staking. A gentle price curve favours Production. Watch the newsfeed: lean into events that boost your main investment type, and fork before events that hurt it.

Round-End Tactics

• ›A Blackout near the end stops a rival from buying, staking or forking in the final hours
• ›Cash Boost converts 10% of your net worth into cash for a final push
• ›If you are leading and the contribution goal is close, contributing can lock in the round before a late surge

Is the Sim free?

Yes. The Sim is free to play. Cards, AI Companions, keys bought with gems and the Bot API are all optional.

Why am I not earning much?

A single Mining Rig earns very little per block. Buy several, unlock more investment types, and let blocks tick (one every 15 seconds).

Should I fork now or wait?

Your first fork adds your whole net worth as a bonus (m1 net worth = +100% earnings), later forks only a fifth, a twenty-fifth and so on. Grow your net worth before fork 1. Forks also need 1,000 blocks between them, and you get at most 7.

Which path should I pick first?

Production is the simplest: pure earnings bonuses and free unlocks. Staking is strong when the round rate is high. Dark Web is for players who want PvP.

What does "blacked out" mean?

A rival used Blackout on you. For about 3 hours you cannot buy, unlock, stake, unstake, fork or contribute, but your investments and stake keep earning. Immunity prevents it.

Why can't I stake right now?

Every stake and unstake starts a 500-block lockout (about 2 hours). Staking path bonuses shorten it to as little as 100 blocks, and Unlimited Staking skips it for 10 blocks.

What's an encryption key?

The Sim's PvP currency. You earn keys from forks and from finishing in the top 10, and can optionally buy them with gems. They pay for Dark Web powers and stay in your balance between rounds.

Do I need the Bot API?

No. It is an optional subscription for developers who want to code bots. You can win rounds without it.

What happens when the round ends?

The leaderboard locks, rewards are paid automatically, and the next round starts after a 50-hour break. Your round progress resets, but keys, cards and milestone progress stay.

Can I play the Sim without the main game?

Yes. Same account, fully separate games.

Should I get a Titanbot card?

If you play seriously, it helps: it stakes your available cash automatically whenever your lockout allows. Remember to switch auto-staking back on after each fork.

What investments should I unlock first?

Validator Nodes and Oracles are the natural next steps after Mining Rigs. Compare the price and earnings shown on each card, since every round's preset is different.

Can I attack myself?

No. You also cannot target a player who is immune or already blacked out.

What is "Short Circuit"?

A Dark Web power that switches off a rival's auto-staking. It only works on players who have auto-staking on, and they can switch it back on.

When should I use Cash Boost?

When your net worth is high: it adds 10% of your net worth as cash. Its key cost rises to 12 and then 50, and you can use it 3 times per round.

What are round events?

Newsfeed events that temporarily change investment prices or earnings, or grant one-time staking or cash changes. Some only hit the top or bottom of the leaderboard.

What does "contributing" do?

You donate cash toward the round's contribution goal. When the goal is reached, the round ends immediately.

Do Sim results count for the League?

No. The weekly League ladder is fed by AP from empire and colony actions. Sim finishes count for the Sim Championship instead.

Is there an optimal strategy?

Not really. Each round's preset, staking rate, events and rivals change what works. Adapt.

Can I skip the Sim entirely?

Yes. It is optional and separate from your empire.