Getting started
You arrive with empty hands and an island to your name. The loop is simple to learn and deep to master: gather raw materials from the world, learn blueprints to unlock recipes, craft those materials into goods and machines, then build with them or sell them to other players.
Nothing here is on rails. What your island becomes (a lumber yard, a workshop, a trading post) is up to what you choose to make and the fees you choose to charge. Connect a Solana wallet to claim ownership of what you earn; everything you craft and trade is yours.
New players never need to spend real money. You can gather, craft, level every skill, and trade your way up entirely from scratch.
Your islander
Before you set foot on the dock, you shape your islander in the character creator: body, skin and hair, and a full set of clothes, all on a layout that reflows to whatever screen you're playing on. Give them a name and they're yours.
Returning from an earlier build? You'll be asked to remake your look and name once on the new creator. Your materials, skills, items, and balances all carry over untouched.
How you earn
Real, withdrawable value in Tidehold is called Convertible. The game never hands it out for grinding, you earn it by making things other players want and providing services they'll pay for. There are three honest ways to build a balance:
1 · Sell on the Quay
Anything you craft (planks, gears, finished buildings like a Lumber Mill) and any spare blueprints you find can be listed on the market. When a buyer takes your offer, you're paid in Convertible, minus a small 2% market tax. Rare and hard-to-make goods command the best prices.
2 · Charge for your stations
Buildings you place can carry a usage fee. When another player crafts at your Lumber Mill or workshop, they pay that fee to you in Convertible. Build the machines people need, set a fair price, and your island earns while you're busy elsewhere.
3 · Deposit and withdraw
You can bring real $SHELLS into the game to get Convertible at a fixed rate, and withdraw Convertible back to $SHELLS at any time. Deposits aren't "earning" (they're moving your own value in and out), but they're how proceeds become real tokens in your wallet.
Because the economy is zero-sum (see below), every Convertible you earn came from another player who chose to spend it. That's what keeps prices and payouts real.
Currencies & economy
Tidehold uses two currencies on purpose, so casual play and real value never blur together.
| Currency | What it is | How you get it | Cash out? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bound | Soft, in-game money | Earned freely from play and milestones | No, stays in the world |
| Convertible | Hard value, deposit-backed | Only from other players, via trade and fees | Yes, withdraw to $SHELLS |
Backed by a real reserve
Every unit of Convertible is backed by deposited tokens held in the Bank of Tidehold's reserve, at a fixed rate of 1 Convertible = 1,000,000 $SHELLS. Because the reserve only grows when someone deposits and only shrinks when someone withdraws, balances always add up to real tokens that exist.
The one rule that keeps it honest
Gameplay cannot mint Convertible. Selling, buying, and station fees only move it between players: what one account gains, another spent. The single deduction anywhere is the 2% market tax, which returns to the reserve as a sink. No faucet, no inflation, no surprise dilution.
Bound currency is the opposite by design: it has small faucets (daily tasks) and plenty of sinks, so it stays useful without ever becoming "real money." Keeping the two separate is what lets the world be generous with fun while staying disciplined with value.
Withdrawals are subject to a rolling daily cap. It's a safety valve, not a tax, your balance is always yours.
Resources
Materials fall into a chain: you gather raw stock, refine it into components, then combine components into buildings. Two special drops (blueprints and lamps) turn up while you gather.
| Resource | Source | What it's for |
|---|---|---|
| Wood | Woodcutting | Raw stock. Refined into Planks. |
| Metal | Mining | Raw stock. Refined into Gears. |
| Fish | Fishing | Provisions and a steady trade good. |
| Forage | Foraging | Herbs and plants, trade goods and ingredients. |
| Planks | Crafted from Wood | A core building component. Needs the Plank blueprint. |
| Gears | Crafted from Metal | A core building component. Needs the Gear blueprint. |
| Buildings | Crafted from components | Placed on your island or sold. E.g. the Lumber Mill. |
| Blueprints | Found while gathering | Learn one to unlock its recipe, or sell it. Tradeable. |
| Skill lamps | Found while gathering | Use for instant skill XP. Bound to you, not tradeable. |
Blueprints
Blueprints are the keys to crafting. They drop occasionally as you gather, in three tiers: Common, Uncommon, and Rare. Learning a blueprint permanently unlocks its recipe for your account. You can hold up to three copies of any one blueprint, and the more copies of a given blueprint you're already carrying, the less likely another of the same is to drop, so duplicates spread around rather than piling up. A spare blueprint is a valuable thing to sell.
Skill lamps
Lamps are a shortcut for leveling. Each grants a chunk of XP, some to a specific skill, some to a random one. They're bound to your account and can't be traded, so they reward your own time in the world.
Skills & leveling
Every skill levels the same way: do the activity and earn XP. Higher levels open better nodes, more recipes, and sturdier builds. Skill lamps can give a level a push, but the world is the main teacher.
| Skill | What it does | How to level it |
|---|---|---|
| Woodcutting | Fells trees for Wood | Chop trees. Better groves open with level. |
| Mining | Breaks rock for Metal | Mine ore nodes. Richer veins open with level. |
| Fishing | Catches Fish | Fish the shallows and deeps. |
| Foraging | Collects herbs & plants | Forage across the islands. |
| Crafting | Turns materials into goods | Craft at your bench and stations. |
| Building | Places structures | Build crafted items onto islands. |
| Sailing | Pilots your boat | Sail between islands and across open water. |
| Attack | Your accuracy in melee | Fight hand to hand. Higher Attack lands more of your hits. |
| Strength | How hard you hit | Fight hand to hand. Raises your maximum hit. |
| Defence | How often you're struck | Take hits in melee. Higher Defence is hit less. |
| Hitpoints | Your health pool | Earned alongside every fight. Starts at level 10. |
Skills are account-wide and permanent. There's no respec to worry about, every level you earn stays earned, and every level-up calls itself out by name in your message log so progress never slips by unnoticed.
Gathering
Gathering is where everything begins. Resource nodes (trees, rock, fishing spots, forage patches) are scattered across the islands. Work them with the matching skill to collect raw materials, earn XP, and occasionally turn up a blueprint or skill lamp. Some nodes sit on islands owned by other players, who may charge a small fee to harvest there.
There's no energy meter or daily limit on gathering, the constraint is your time and which nodes your skill levels can reach.
Most nodes also need the right tool in hand, an axe for trees, a pickaxe for rock, and it counts whether you're carrying it in your pack or have it equipped. Your islander draws it and works with it on screen while you gather.
Crafting & blueprints
Crafting turns raw stock into things worth having. Each recipe needs its blueprint learned first, and some recipes need a station (a placed building) to work at. The chain looks like this:
- Gather Wood and Metal.
- Find and learn the Plank and Gear blueprints, then craft Planks and Gears.
- Find and learn the Lumber Mill blueprint.
- Craft the Lumber Mill from Planks and Gears, now you hold the building as an item.
- Build it on your island, or sell it on the market.
Crafting is where materials get spent, so the value of a finished good reflects everything that went into it. That's deliberate: it's what gives the things you sell a real floor price.
Some recipes take a moment to finish rather than completing instantly, you're told how long it'll take and notified the moment it's done, so you can set a batch going and see it through.
Building & islands
Your island is your claim. You decide what gets placed on it, who's allowed to build, and what your stations cost to use.
Build from what you craft
Buildings aren't paid for in raw resources, you craft the building as an item first, then placing it consumes that item. Because crafting already spent the materials, building itself costs nothing extra. You can only place a building whose blueprint you've learned, even if you bought the finished item from someone else, the blueprint is the right to build, and it keeps its value.
Stations and fees
Many buildings are working stations. Set a usage fee on yours and other players who craft there pay you in Convertible. Price it well and a busy station becomes a steady income.
Specialize however you like, there's no fixed "island type." Your purpose emerges from what you build and the permissions you set.
The Vault
You can only carry so much. Your pack holds 28 stacks at a time, the same kind of limit you'd know from RuneScape, so once you're out gathering in earnest you'll fill up fast. The Vault is where the overflow goes: deep storage for everything you've collected, with no slot limit of its own.
Banking your haul
Step up to a Vault placed in the world and you can move stacks between your pack and storage freely, deposit what you don't need on hand and withdraw what you do. Your Vault is account-wide: it's the same store no matter which Vault you walk up to, so anything you bank is waiting for you wherever you find one.
Currency and gear aren't kept here, the Vault is for materials and goods. Your $SHELLS and Convertible live in the Bank, and your equipment lives on your character.
Moves are checked on the server one at a time: an item is taken from one side before it's added to the other, so a stack can never exist in both your pack and the Vault at once.
Combat
Not every island is peaceful. Creatures roam the world, and taking them on is its own way to play. A fight runs on steady ticks, each one a chance to land a hit, with the size of that hit and how often you connect decided by your combat skills and the weapon in your hand.
Four skills carry melee: Attack sets your accuracy, Strength your biggest hit, Defence how often you're struck, and Hitpoints your health. Hitpoints starts at level 10, so you're never made of paper.
Staying alive
Food keeps you in the fight: eat berries and other provisions to heal between blows. And if you do fall, there's no harsh penalty, you respawn after a moment and keep everything you were carrying. Death costs you the fight, not your loot.
One fight at a time
When you engage a creature it becomes yours for the duration. Nobody else can tag in on a monster you're already fighting, and it won't break off to swipe at a passerby. Defeat it and its loot drops for you to claim.
You can't gather, craft, or build while you're in combat. Move off (tap the map to walk away) to disengage, then get back to work once you're clear.
Melee is the first combat style on the water. More ways to fight are on the way.
Equipment & gear
Your weapon does more than look the part. Equip one from your character sheet and it carries real bonuses to your accuracy, your maximum hit, and your defence, and it sets your attack speed: a quick blade swings more often, a heavy one hits harder but slower. Whatever you're holding stays with you between sessions.
Yours to keep, or yours to sell
Gear you choose at creation is bound to you, it shows on your character but can't be listed on the Quay. Gear you find out in the world comes in tradeable, so a good drop is something you can equip or turn into Convertible.
Quests
The islanders you meet have work that needs doing. Talk to an NPC to take a quest, then follow its objectives, gather a certain material, defeat a particular creature, or reach a goal, with your progress tracked in your quest journal as you go.
Quests can run in stages, each one leading into the next, and seeing them through pays off in rewards. They're a guided way to learn what the world has to offer while your skills and balance grow.
The Quay
The Quay is Tidehold's player-run marketplace, a true order book, not a fixed shop.
- Post offers. List a sell offer at your asking price, or a buy offer at the most you'll pay.
- The market matches. When a buy and sell overlap, the trade fills at the resting order's price, so a new order can only get the same price or better, never worse.
- Funds are escrowed. Your coins or goods are held the moment you post, so every offer on the book is real and backed.
- Partial fills welcome. Large offers fill piece by piece as counterparties appear.
- A collection box keeps you safe offline. Proceeds and bought goods land in your box; nothing is lost if you log off mid-trade. Collect them next time you're in.
A flat 2% tax is withheld from the seller on every fill and returned to the reserve. It's the only leak in the whole economy, and it's a sink, it never pays anyone out.
Banking
The Bank of Tidehold is the bridge between the game and your wallet.
- Deposit $SHELLS to receive Convertible at 1,000,000 $SHELLS = 1 Convertible. Your deposit joins the reserve that backs everyone's balance.
- Withdraw Convertible to send $SHELLS back to your wallet, any time, up to a rolling daily cap.
The reserve is held separately and only ever signs payouts you've earned or deposited. Because deposits in and withdrawals out are the only ways tokens enter or leave, the bank stays fully backed at all times.
Sailing
The islands are spread across open water, and a boat is how you cross it. Step from land to your vessel to switch into sailing, then chart a course to other islands to gather where the nodes are richer, visit markets, or work a friend's stations. Sailing is its own skill, the more you sail, the better you handle the water.
Sound & music
Tidehold is meant to be heard. Every swing of an axe, strike of a pick, and blow traded in combat is placed in the world, so you hear where it's coming from, and each one varies from the last so steady work never flattens into a metronome. The tool sound lands on the exact frame your islander connects, not on a timer.
A world that sounds alive
The background shifts with where you are. Set foot on an island and a calm ambient bed settles in; take to your boat and it gives way to the wash of open water. Music underscores the moment on top of it, and you can set sound, music, and ambience to your own levels, the mix is yours.
Coming soon: a music player. Unlock tracks as you explore the world, then play your collection wherever you are, the way you'd line up favourites in RuneScape.