How Scryp Rewards Work

Out of Character
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We know that IC explanations can be a bit confusing, so here’s a clear explanation of how the scryp reward system works.

In the finished game, much of this will be explained as part of a job.

Home Clusters

Only your “home cluster,” picked from your cluster list or your home page, gives scryp rewards.

The bigger your home cluster (as judged by the total number of ports and nodes in its systems), the more scryp you have to invest in it. You can get that scryp back by uninstalling your home cluster.

In the beginning you may not have enough scryp to have as large of a home cluster as you’d like. We intend for players to work up to especially awesome clusters.

Getting Scryp

Solving a system in someone else’s home cluster gets you scryp. If you solve it again and would earn a bigger reward than your previous best, you earn the difference. If your reward would be worse, you don’t lose any scryp.

Subsequent rewards might be bigger because you did better on the bonus objectives, or because the server has recalculated the reward for that system.

The first time each player solves a system in your home cluster, you earn scryp (roughly 10%, right now).

The exact formula for how rewards work is secret, but you can get more details in our blog post on the topic.

Other Clusters

You can create as many clusters as you want, but only your home cluster provides scryp.

Clusters from jobs don’t award scryp, but you can earn scryp from the jobs themselves.

Any questions we didn’t cover?

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If a system is removed from the home cluster, does everyone who solved it keep the rewards?

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Yes. They keep the scryp they’ve earned and their history is maintained. If the system is later re-added, it acts as if it never left.

Reconfiguring your home cluster as an ongoing thing is totally intended and encouraged. You’re even welcome to have a rotating set of home clusters if you can’t decide on just one.

We do ask that you don’t do it in an exploitative way (e.g. by remaking simple systems repeatedly to grind for scryp).

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I’m curious: why does your previous attempt at solving a puzzle effect the amount of scryp you get?

For example: I recently solved a system for the first time and got 230 scryp and no bonuses. When I tried to do it again, I got only 214 scryp but both bonuses. Shouldn’t the system not consider your previous attempt so that you are able to get the same amount of scryp (+ bonuses you missed) if you retry quickly enough?

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The scryp reward is based on how difficult/complex our server thinks the puzzle is. The existing solutions feed into that. It refines its estimate over time based on each solution submitted. If you were able to solve a system more handily than the previous average, that means that the system was less difficult than the server thought.

The first time, you likely got a high reward because the server thought the system was tricky. Your first solution dropped the difficulty estimate, so your second solution got a reward based on that, even though it was a more-efficient solution than your first one.

To look at it from a different angle: the first time, you got more scryp than you “should have” before you gave the server more information about the puzzle.