MECHANICS
Everything the game does without telling you, stated plainly. The numbers here are read from the game's own tuning, so they are whatever the current build says.
The vigil
You never move. Combat is fully automatic: every choice happens at level-ups, bargains, and the Reliquary. XP gems drift toward you on their own (faster inside your pickup radius, base 90). The vigil's own bolt needs no choosing: an innate shard of pale light (15 damage every 0.56s at wave 1) that grows with the horde itself, the same relative power on every wave, untouched by your stats. Your build is everything on top of it.
Waves and spawning
A wave is 30 seconds. Every 5th wave opens with an elite, every 10th with a boss. Skill choices begin at the first level-up: THE VIGIL WAKES offers three new skills, with no refusal.
Combat-gated regen
Life regen only ticks after 2s without taking damage. The life bar desaturates while suppressed. Combat heals (aura pulses, chain leech, heal soul echoes) bypass the gate.
The cursor layer: helpful, never required
The cursor never clicks the arena, it conducts. Beacon: your cursor biases skill targeting toward where you point (beams steer to it). Vacuum: every pickup, XP and relics alike, within 110 of the cursor races home to the vigil. Soul echoes: lights that appear every 15–25s and burn out in 6s. Sweep your cursor over one to collect a minor grace: a heal when hurt, a small stat bump otherwise.
Rerolls, banishes and skips
Each run carries some rerolls (redraw the level-up cards), banishes, and skips. BANISH is a mode: press the button, then click an offered skill to strike it from the run's pool forever. The emptied slot is not refilled. SKIP consumes the level-up without taking anything and heals 10% of your maximum life, the escape valve when every offer deserves the void. Foresight and Anathema add more rerolls and banishes. Whenever anything can still be upgraded or evolved, at least one such card is always among the choices.
Skill evolutions
Evolutions begin sealed: perfecting a skill (max level, in any past vigil) unseals its evolved form forever, see Rites. Transcendence is then earned at the bosses: each boss wave fully beaten banksone evolution charge, and an unsealed skill at max level spends a charge to take its evolved form, offered the moment the boss falls or as a gold upgrade card at any later level-up. Evolved forms are single-level and terminal.
The choiceless vigil
Once the build is complete (all 6 skills at max level, every possible evolution taken), the game stops asking: each further level-up automatically grants a small random blessing, drawn from any of the vigil's stats with life regeneration among them, and bargains stop rolling. The run becomes a pure idle and cursor depth-race. A fully-upgraded active run completes its build around fifteen minutes in, then goes as deep as the horde allows. One exception: if a late relic makes an evolution newly possible, its gold card is still offered.
Death and the Reliquary
Death banks soul shards. Spend them on permanent Reliquary upgrades.
Relic stacking and graces
Each relic applies its bonus per copy up to its stack cap; extra copies grant aminor grace instead, a heal while below 75% life (a share of max life that grows with depth), otherwise one small permanent stat bump drawn from across the vigil's stats. Soul echoes grant the same grace when the cursor passes over them, so they stay worth sweeping forever.
Vigils and the Ledger
Today's vigil: one shared seed per UTC day. Every keeper of the vigil, everywhere, faces the same drops, omens and bargains. Vows may be sworn on any run for a per-run shard offering. Every finished run earns a votive score:wave×100 + bossKills×500 + kills×0.1, multiplied by1 + 0.25× total vow weight. A sacrificed (voluntarily ended) vigil keeps half. The Ledger keeps the honors: best score, deepest wave, and the best of each daily and each vow weight, forever.