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Ranks & Monetization

Canon

The five live rank tiers survive the wipe and enter canon as-is: Knight → Arcanist → Sovereign → Draconis → Draconis+. Knight and Arcanist are additionally purchasable with MobCoins (a second sanctioned MobCoin sink — D-CURRENCY-06's sole-sink clause superseded by D-CURRENCY-09); the higher three are money-only bundles.

The perk audit — every rank perk falls into an audited class:

  • Cosmetics — chat tags, the rank armor/robe sets (Ancient Steel, Cloth Robes, Ornate Bronze, Cindercloth, Emerald Knight — all cosmetic looks on the sanctioned wardrobe path, never stat gear), particles, and showcase eligibility on the hub surfaces (this resolves D-HUBS-03's deferred contents: rank cosmetics may display).
  • Keys — crate keys per tier and Draconis+'s monthly key grants: money buying keys is literally the crate model (D-CRATES-01). Draconis+'s purchase splash — everyone on the server receives keys, the buyer gets the town-crier credit — is adopted as the community-shaped flagship perk.
  • Kits — item bundles; every kit content must be play-obtainable (the standing audit).
  • QoL scaling — extra home slots and repair-timer trims. The base capability belongs to everyone (a base /repair timer and base home count for unranked players, values in data); ranks buy more of the same, never the capability itself.
  • Commands — /island fly, /nickname, /hp: each is also purchasable standalone with MobCoins at a steep owner-tuned price. Ranks bundle them cheap and early — speed; the play route keeps the wall intact.

/sell and /sell all are retired — relics of the pre-wipe economy, contradicting the new faucet design (creatures pay MobCoins; Coins enter via merchant buy-floors and quests). Draconis+ loses the line; a replacement perk is the owner's call.

A dated vision amendment rides this page's ratification, re-ruling the 2026-07-16 ranks boundary: the grind path is Knight/Arcanist via MobCoins plus the standalone command unlocks — higher tiers are prestige bundles whose non-cosmetic contents all have play routes.

Decisions

D-RANKS-01 — the live ladder is canon; MobCoins reach Knight and Arcanist (proposed)

Owner ruling. Five tiers as deployed; the first two purchasable with MobCoins (prices in data); Sovereign and above money-only. This supersedes the literal "grind ranks in game and reach the same benefits" wording of the 2026-07-16 rank ruling — the amendment records the new edge: benefits stay reachable (unlocks, keys, base capabilities), the upper tiers themselves do not.

Rejected: a fully grindable ladder (owner ruled the upper tiers money-only); Coin-purchasable ranks (owner chose MobCoins — combat play is the grind route).

D-RANKS-02 — every perk sits in an audited class; rank sets are cosmetic looks (proposed)

Cosmetics / keys / kits / QoL-scaling / commands — each with its audit rule (above). The armor sets are wardrobe looks, never stat gear.

Rejected: stat-gear rank sets (would demand a documented play route per set for no design gain); unaudited perk grab-bags (the ruling's "no HUGE advantage" needs a taxonomy to be checkable).

D-RANKS-03 — the exclusive commands get steep MobCoin standalone unlocks (proposed)

Owner ruling: /island fly, /nickname, /hp are each MobCoin- purchasable outside any rank. The P2A wall holds — money buys the bundle early, play reaches everything. Prices steep, owner-tuned.

Rejected: carving a rank-command exemption into the frozen P2A promise (the wall's first hole; every future perk argues from it); extra combat restrictions on /hp (owner declined — tuning stays a data knob if it ever misbehaves).

D-RANKS-04 — /sell is retired with the old economy (proposed)

Owner ruling: pre-wipe relic. Instant-sell contradicts the ratified faucet architecture (merchant buy-floors are the controllable spigot; the bazaar is the market). Draconis+'s replacement perk is an owner content decision.

Rejected: porting /sell into the new economy (an uncapped personal faucet beside the deliberately capped one).

D-RANKS-05 — the corpus fate table (proposed)

Item Fate
Rank Showcase System (V1 doc) Adopted — surfaces built by hubs canon (D-HUBS-03); contents unblocked by this page
Monthly Draconis+ grants Adopted — keys on a cadence; the crate model already covers it
"All kits from previous ranks" stacking Adopted — bundles stack; kit contents audit applies per kit
Plushie / Trails / Builder / QoL / Weapon / Cosmetic crates Recorded — live crate catalog beyond the three staff tables; each table enters data/crates.json under the D-CRATES-04 audit at the content pass
Seasonal rank cosmetics, featured-player rotations Deferred → content passes on hub showcase surfaces
Pirate reputation / rank reputation ideas Dead — reputation is killed (D-COLLECTIONS-02)

Rejected: designing deferred items now.

Tuning

  • data/ranks.json — the five tiers with their perk lists as deployed, MobCoin prices for Knight/Arcanist, the standalone command unlock prices, base repair timer and base home count for unranked players, kit contents. Owner-edited; the live perk lists are transcribed, prices null until set.

Implementation

No owning mod yet (hfranks-shaped; likely integrates the existing permissions plugin the live server uses). Rank state is platform permission data, not a progression component — ranks never touch progression writes. MobCoin purchases route through the currency authority; look-sets through the wardrobe path; key grants are item gives; the Draconis+ splash broadcasts via hfrecords.

Open questions

  • MobCoin prices (Knight, Arcanist, command unlocks) and base repair/home values — owner tuning.
  • Extra home slots above Arcanist's count — more-of-same scaling on money tiers; decide whether home slots also join the MobCoin unlock table for full symmetry — owner call.
  • Draconis+'s replacement perk for /sell — owner content.
  • The six live crate tables (Plushie, Trails, Builder, QoL, Weapon, Cosmetic) — transcription + D-CRATES-04 audit at the crates content pass.
  • Whether /hp needs combat-context tuning once real fights exist — data knob, revisit on evidence.