1. Found a base. Place your Core on open ground. It claims a wide disc around it and makes a slow trickle of wood, stone and grain. Your flag flies at a fixed size over the Core, so settlements stay visible when you zoom out. Pick a territory colour on your profile — that is the wash on land you own, and it is separate from the banner itself.
2. Work the ground. The coloured flecks on the map are resource nodes. A Camp stands on timber, ore, crystal or a regional node; a Farm wants open ground or fertile soil. Rare gilt flecks on any land are Crown tiles: plant a Farm on one for a single Crown. Each biome has a look — forest, rock, sand, snow, magma — and a resource that only appears there.
3. Craft. A Workshop turns wood, stone and grain into Parts. Later buildings also want the regional finds: resin for a Lodge, flint for a Workshop, silt for a Granary, salt for a Foundry, rime for a Sanctum, ember for an Obelisk. Ember is only in the Magma Fields, and only a Harvester can work that ground.
4. Expand. A Totem costs only wood and claims a small disc. A Beacon is planted on your land, then aimed: a dashed line marks a long corridor. An Obelisk claims a large square around itself — no aiming.
5. Climb. Harsh country — Saltflats, Frostreach, the Magma Fields — carries the richest nodes and needs a Lodge or a Harvester to work at all. Plant those on the node; you do not have to raise a Camp first.
6. Make war, or make peace. A Catapult watches a hundred cells and fires itself at the first hostile that steps in, then reloads — a push has to spend buildings and plant through that cooldown. A Mortar is the gun you aim: click it, then click anywhere within 50 cells — empty ground is fine, splash still applies. War buildings eat stores every tick — grain, and stone or Parts — and each shot spends more, so a battery without farms goes silent. Buildings have health, more of it the more advanced they are. A Bulwark shows its shield disc, and anything under it is highlighted so you know the Bulwark takes the hit first; unpaid, the disc drops. Raze a Core and their land and stores become yours. Sign in to talk on the console and to ally with up to two others — neither of you can fire on the other. The console under the resources list carries chat and the events that matter — yours are highlighted, and nearby fighting only shows if it is close to your Core.

Every structure produces or consumes once every five seconds, online or not, and up to twelve hours are banked while you are away. Catapults, Mortars and Bulwarks take a cut each tick even if they never fire. Stores are finite: each building raises the cap, and common goods hold more than Alloy or Essence. Overnight will fill the bays, not print a fortune. Territories can never overlap, so the map is a race for good ground.

The map runs for a week and is then wiped and scored. Territory, structures and stockpiles all go; your name, your heraldry and your Crowns are the only things that cross the reset. Crowns are cosmetic and confer no advantage whatsoever.

A player wipe empties one settlement. This empties every settlement. Regenerating also throws the map away and draws a new one from a seed you choose — a word is as good as a number.