Crates & Keys
Canon
Crates drop in play; keys open them; money buys keys. Crates arrive as rewards — questlines (Elias's tables already seed them), bosses, fishing treasure, milestones. Every crate needs its matching key. Keys are also earned in play (rarer than their crates, so a backlog builds) and are the one thing real money buys here. The P2A story is clean by construction: paying accelerates a backlog of things you already earned, and everything inside a crate is obtainable by playing — the 2026-07-16 boundary ruling, mechanized. The key vocabulary is shared with dungeon entrance keys (dungeons-enchanting canon); keys are tradeable by default.
Opening happens at the Crate Opening Arena — only there (owner ruling). Opening a crate is a social event, not a menu click: the pirate-themed arena (Captain Veylor's home, designed in the social-hubs session) is where every crate in the game opens, with animations, spectators, and featured moments. Rare pulls broadcast server-wide through the town crier. The round-trip is the point — a crate is an occasion.
The content audit extends the one shop rule to loot tables: a crate may contain currency (MobCoins — yields balanced against in-game earning, per the ruling), cosmetics, and play-obtainable items (Eternal Seeds, food, materials, XP Scrolls). Never an exclusive non-cosmetic, never a progression write. Limited-time crates obey the no-FOMO edge: one-off exclusives cosmetic only, everything else returns.
Three launch crates come straight from the staff's authored tables (full drop tables in data):
| Crate | Identity |
|---|---|
| High Roller | The casino crate: MobCoin jackpots, chat colors, and the casino name-tag ladder — Broke (common) to Billionaire (mythic). Table balanced to exactly 1.0 by staff. |
| Farmers Dream | Eternal Seeds, common to mythic-rare — the farming economy's crate route (D-FARMING-FORESTRY-04). |
| The Kitchen | Cooking ingredients and dishes — the Cooking skill's pantry. |
The casino name tags are kept as-is: self-aware loot-box humor with a genuinely well-built rarity ladder, finished content from the staff pass.
Decisions
D-CRATES-01 — crates drop in play; money buys keys (proposed)
Crates are rewards; keys gate the opening; keys earn in play (rarer) and sell for money. Money is speed through an earned backlog — never content, never exclusivity. One money lever, one audit.
Rejected: selling crates directly (loses the backlog tension and splits the key vocabulary dungeons share); selling both crates and keys (two levers, muddier audit, no design gain).
D-CRATES-02 — every crate opens at the Crate Opening Arena (proposed)
Owner ruling: arena-only, V1's wish taken literally. Opening is spectacle — the arena supplies crowd, animation, and featured moments; the town crier carries rare pulls server-wide. Consequence accepted: the arena is launch-critical and its venue design moves up the social-hubs session's agenda.
Rejected: open-anywhere with the arena as optional stage (the recommended low-friction shape — owner chose the occasion over the convenience); rares-only-at-arena (two rules for one moment).
D-CRATES-03 — the three staff crates launch as authored; casino tags kept (proposed)
High Roller, Farmers Dream, and The Kitchen ship from the staff's own drop tables — real balancing work (High Roller sums to exactly 1.0). The casino name-tag ladder stays untouched: the joke is the set's spine. Farmers Dream and The Kitchen tables need normalization (their chances over-total) — flagged in data for the owner pass, values otherwise preserved.
Rejected: softening the casino theme (loses the cohering joke); cutting the tag set (discards finished authored content); redesigning the staff tables (they are owner tuning — data, not canon).
D-CRATES-04 — the crate content audit (proposed)
Crate tables may contain: currency (MobCoin yields balanced vs play), cosmetics, and play-obtainable items. Never exclusive non-cosmetics, never progression writes — the D-CURRENCY-04 shop audit and the P2A wall applied to loot tables. Limited-time crates ride the no-FOMO edge.
Rejected: exempting crates from the shop audit (a loot table is a shop with dice).
D-CRATES-05 — the V1 corpus fate table (proposed)
| V1 idea | Fate |
|---|---|
| Crate Opening Arena venue (pirate theme, stage, crowd areas) | Deferred → social-hubs session — now launch-critical (D-CRATES-02) |
| Opening streak rewards | Parked — streaks are the FOMO shape the daily-board ruling explicitly excluded; needs its own promise check |
| Limited-time / seasonal crates | Deferred → events session, inside the no-FOMO edge |
| Global opening events, featured openings | Deferred → social-hubs/events content |
| Crate leaderboards | Parked — hfrecords boards if ever wanted |
Rejected: designing deferred items now.
Tuning
data/crates.json— the three authored drop tables transcribed in full fromCrates.xlsx(owner data; Farmers Dream and Kitchen flagged for normalization), key drop rates and prices, crate drop sources. Owner-edited.
Implementation
No owning mod yet (hfcrates-shaped). Crates and keys are plain items;
tables are owner-edited config; opening fires at the arena (venue from
the social session), MobCoin payouts route through the currency
authority, cosmetic unlocks route through the sanctioned wardrobe-look
path (ALMANAC.md §5), broadcasts ride hfrecords. Nothing here touches
a progression component.
Open questions
- Key drop rates and money prices — owner tuning.
- Crate drop-source weights (which activities drop which crates) — content pass; Elias's tables seed quest-crate mapping.
- Chat colors and name tags as an unlock category — wardrobe-adjacent; confirm they ride the Almanac wardrobe path or a chat-meta store — implementation spec.
- Arena venue design — social-hubs session (launch-critical).
- Farmers Dream / Kitchen table normalization — owner pass.