Glossary — canonical game terms
One term, one meaning, corpus-wide. Every page uses these words exactly; a new player-facing term gets its entry in the session that coins it. Terminology drift across pages is a lint-invisible bug — this table is the anchor.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Forger | A player character — one who mends the fractured world |
| Skill | One of the 20 use-trained tracks, level 1–100 |
| Hard Skill | Hunting, Forging, Enchanting — double XP cost; their capes mean the most |
| Skill Tree | A skill's node tree — one per skill; roots, exclusive branches, one Eternal Node (replaced the milestone-perk/spec arc, vision amendment 2026-07-16) |
| Tree points | Per-skill bound points minted by that skill's levels; spent on its tree's nodes — never traded, never sold |
| Branch | A mutually exclusive path inside a skill tree — the identity choice (weapon types in combat trees) |
| Eternal Node | The infinitely repurchasable node at a tree's bottom — compounding cost, plateauing power, fueled by Life Essence |
| Life Essence | The tradeable carried item fueling Eternal Nodes — the game's sole death-drop |
| Specialization | Historical term — the old level-60 permanent fork, dissolved into skill-tree branches (see Branch) |
| Skill Cape | The earned symbol of a skill at 100 |
| Prestige | Post-100 badge and earned-only currency; never power |
| Profession | The chosen trade, Mastery 1–10 — economic identity |
| Combat class | One of the 6 roles, Class Mastery 1–10 |
| Ascension | The permanent Light/Dark path choice at Class Mastery 10 |
| Almanac | The earned-only book of deeds: relics, bestiary, titles, wardrobe |
| Great Work | A guild-scale collaborative goal |
| Ironman | Self-sufficiency mode — the economic gate, badge of the self-made |
| P2A wall | The Pay-to-Advance monetization boundary (vision amendment 2026-07-16): money buys cosmetics or speed, never exclusivity — every non-cosmetic bonus/item is obtainable without paying |
| Hub | The central safe island: spawn, markets, quest NPCs, portal rings; combat disabled; always accessible |
| Adventure island | A shared, portal-gated progression island — resource, profession, or combat content |
| Island tier | A legibility grouping of adventure islands by progression stage; never a chain — no island requires another island |
| Portal ring | The hub structure holding one island tier's portals |
| Coins | The general currency — an account balance, never an item; bazaar, NPC merchants, fees |
| MobCoins | The combat-earned currency — bound balance, withdrawable into Bounty Notes for trade |
| Bounty Note | The tradeable item form of withdrawn MobCoins — fixed denominations, free withdrawal; any holder may redeposit |
| Market tent | A rented player vending stand for unique goods (rolled/upgraded items) — sells offline at fixed prices, proceeds credit the owner's Coins |
| Featured slot | Paid Coin-only advertising rotation for a market tent — limited, cooldown-bound |
| Town merchant | An NPC vendor — buys player goods at the floor price (the Coin faucet) and sells its catalog; region merchants island-gated, hub ring rotating |
| Ore band | A depth layer of a mining island holding one canon ore tier — breakable only at that tier's Mining level |
| Ore generator | The personal-island ore source — outputs only ore the owner can currently mine, at floor rates |
| Region crop | A biome-locked crop or tree that grows only on its adventure island — never at home |
| Eternal Seed / Sapling | A rare tradeable item that upgrades a crop/tree into a permanently regrowing, higher-yield version — earned only in play |
| Mini boss | A rare elite encounter inside a zone — lair, kill-count, timer, or bait spawned; region-scaled |
| Zone boss | A combat island's named arena fight — optional side arena, never a chokepoint; designed solo or group |
| World boss | A server-moment encounter — schedule/goal/summon/threshold/admin spawned; contribution-scored personal loot |
| Island-locked fish | A fish that appears in exactly one fishing island's table — the biome-lock pattern on water |
| Guild island | The guild's shared ungated home island — build/storage rights by guild rank |
| Guild bank | The shared guild treasury (Coin balance + resource vault) in guilds.db — withdrawal by rank |
| Guild Capital | The five-stage guild progression ladder: Camp → Village → Town → City → Kingdom |
| Territory War | Guild-vs-guild contest over neutral events-world islands — baseline damage, no progression; holding pays guild bonuses |
| Events world | The separate world for PvP and hosted events — baseline combat, no progression stakes, entered after onboarding |
| Baseline combat | Events-world rule: own gear, all progression combat bonuses off, class abilities normalized — levelling confers no advantage |
| Event currency | The bound events-world balance — earned by participating, spent only at the event shop |
| Eternal Crystal | The enchanting fuel — a tradeable material burned by every enchant; lore: crystallized corruption residue |
| Dungeon key | An earned, usually tradeable item opening a keyed dungeon entrance — vocabulary shared with crates |
| Crate | A play-earned loot container — opens only at the Crate Opening Arena, with its matching key; contents pass the crate audit (currency, cosmetics, play-obtainables) |
| Crate key | The opener — earned in play (rarer than crates) and the one thing money buys in the crate system |
| Pirate Arena | The Hub's loud district — crate opening stage, rank showcase surfaces, Veylor's home |
| Records Plaza | The Hub district where hfrecords lives in-world — leaderboards, town crier stage, server-goal monument |
| Collection | An Almanac chapter tracking a system's completable set — earned-only; completion pays titles, badges, and rate-hook bonuses |
| Rank | A purchased support tier (Knight → Draconis+) — audited bundles of cosmetics, keys, and QoL scaling; Knight/Arcanist also MobCoin-purchasable |
| Island upgrade | A built personal-island structure with real costs — bonuses via rate hooks, infrastructure via island features |
| Island Chronicle | The personal island's auto-written milestone log — presentation over Almanac/records truth, readable by visitors |
| Questline | An anchor NPC's sequential authored quest chain — dialogue tree + objectives + reward table |
| Quest flag | A permanent per-player completion marker — monotonic, the quest-side gate type portals and bands read |
| Daily board | The daily-reset repeatable quest board — offers rotate back; a missed day forfeits nothing owned |
| XP Scroll | A consumable, tradeable item granting skill XP — always routed through the owner-edited XP-source config |