Wolfage — Off-Chain Pet Game on WolfSwap

Wolfage is a free-to-play, off-chain pet game on WolfSwap. Hatch a pup bound to your Wolfie NFT, train it, equip it, and fight other pups in a seasonal arena. The game runs entirely off-chain — no gas fees, no transactions, no smart-contract risk. Your Wolfie NFT stays in your wallet; the pup is just gameplay state on WolfSwap's servers.

This guide covers everything: hatching, stats, XP, training, food, arena combat, gear, the shop, seasons, and the full economy.

TL;DR — Hatch a pup → start free 2h training slots to level up → equip gear that drops in training → feed it daily so it doesn't starve → climb the arena leaderboard → collect season prizes.

Getting Started

Hatching

To play, you need to hatch a pup against a Wolfie NFT you own. Hatching:

• Requires you to currently own the chosen Wolfie (verifiable on-chain).
• Free to hatch (a DEX-points hatch fee can apply).
• Gives you a starter pack: 2× Kibble Bits (food).
• Creates a pup doc keyed deterministically by chain:collection:tokenId.

A pup is bound to its Wolfie NFT — if you sell or transfer the Wolfie, the pup transfers with it. The new owner sees the pup automatically in their picker (no re-hatching needed).

Each supported NFT collection can hatch one pup per token. Your wallet's NFTs in a supported collection are snapshotted hourly so the picker stays fast; hatching itself re-checks ownership on-chain at submit time, so a token sold between snapshots can't be double-hatched and a token you just bought becomes hatchable as soon as the snapshot refreshes.

Multiple Pups

Default cap is 1 pup per account. The cap is enforced only at hatch time — buying an already-hatched Wolfie on the secondary market doesn't re-check the cap, so the buyer always gets to play their bought pup.

Free Trial

Don't have a Wolfie NFT yet? You can still play. Log in and pick Try for free to create a trial pup — name it and you're in.

A trial pup plays like any other pup: train, run Dungeons, feed, allocate stat points, equip gear, and earn Bones. The key differences:

• Level cap. Trial pups are capped at the trial level (default: 10). This cap can change. Training and PvE still pay full rewards up to the cap; XP simply stops accruing once you hit it.
• PvP is locked. Trial pups can't enter the Arena, Last Man Standing, or 3v3 Solo Shuffle.
• Shards top-up is locked. Buying Shards with real funds (CRO) isn't available on a trial pup. You still earn Bones normally and can convert them to Shards in-game.

These are the defaults at launch and may change.

One trial pup per account. You can have at most one active trial pup at a time.

Upgrading to a full pup

When you own a supported NFT, the Upgrade button appears on your trial pup's page. Clicking it lets you pick one of your eligible NFTs and converts the trial pup into that NFT's bound pup. All progress carries over — level, stats, skill points, items, Bones, Shards, and equipped gear transfer intact. The level cap is removed, and PvP and Shards top-up unlock immediately.

Stats & Skill Points

Every pup has 6 stats, all visible on the Overview tab:

HP vs VIT — VIT is the stat (what allocation points and gear add). HP is the realized life pool — the bar that ticks down in combat. Wherever you see "+1 VIT" on a piece of gear, that's +5 HP in your actual pool.

Defense reduces incoming damage with diminishing returns — stacking more defense always helps, but each additional point yields a smaller marginal reduction than the previous one. A pure-tank build never reaches damage immunity; some damage always lands. Crit doubles a strike's damage; block softens a strike significantly; dodge makes a strike miss outright.

Earning Skill Points

You get 5 skill points per level. Spend them on whichever stats fit your playstyle. The Allocate dialog lets you preview the changes before confirming.

Respec

Got a build wrong? Buy a Respec Scroll in the shop (5,000 Shards) to refund every spent point. You can re-allocate freely afterwards.

XP, Levels, and the Daily Cap

Level Curve

Cumulative XP needed for level L:

xpForLevel(L) = floor(50 × L^1.95)

This means:

• L10 → 4,457 XP
• L25 → 26,876 XP
• L50 → 103,725 XP
• L100 → 397,164 XP (the cap)

Once at L100, the pup is maxed. XP grants stop, but all other rewards still flow (Bones, items, potions). Stage badges: Pup (L1–4), Young (L5–14), Adult (L15–29), Alpha (L30+).

Daily XP Cap

By default there is no daily XP cap — how fast you level is set by how much you actually play (stamina-gated arena / Solo Shuffle, dungeon runs, training) and softened by the rested-XP catch-up above. Every XP grant lands in full.

An optional rolling-24h ceiling can be in effect. When one is active, it blocks XP only — Bones, drops, and item rewards still apply — and there's no midnight reset: every individual XP grant has its own personal 24h timer, so capacity returns chunk by chunk as each grant ages past 24h. While a cap is active, the Overview portrait card shows the current 24h usage and a live countdown to the next chunk of headroom (e.g. "Next +120 XP unlocks in 2h 14m").

Leveling speed now reflects effort: the most active players reach L100 in a few months; lighter players take longer, and the rested-XP catch-up lifts the floor for anyone behind the pack.

Rested XP (catch-up)

If your pup is well below the active pack, it earns bonus XP so newcomers and low-level pups can catch up. The boost scales with how far behind you are — up to +100% XP at the biggest gap — and shrinks automatically as you climb, reaching the normal rate once you reach the pack. Players at or above the pack get no bonus (no inflation at the top), and trial pups are excluded. The "pack" is the level most active players have reached; it updates as the game grows.

Sources of XP

Stamina

Stamina gates arena attacks. (Training is free — it no longer costs stamina.)

• Base cap: 10. +1 per Stamina skill point.
• Regen: +1 per 30 minutes (48 per day at default).
• Partial regen is preserved: spending stamina banks the whole ticks you've already accrued — your sub-30-min progress isn't reset. If you had 15 min until the next +1, you still have 15 min after an arena attack. (When you're at cap, the timer naturally resets on the next spend since no progress was being tracked.)
• Stamina costs:
  • Training: free (no stamina — training is now a passive idle layer)
  • Arena attack: 2 stamina per fight
  • Endless Howl: 1 stamina per descent
  • Pet: free
  • Free Feed: free

Stamina Potions

Drops: every training has a 5% chance (forest) of dropping a potion. The drop pool is weighted 80% Stamina Potion, 20% Speed-up.

Training

Training is a free, passive idle layer. Each slot runs for 2 hours, costs no stamina, and pays out XP plus a chance at a tier-stamped Loot Box (Common / Rare / Epic). Because it's time-gated rather than stamina-gated, training is a steady background trickle of XP — the bulk of your daily XP now comes from the arena (which your stamina fuels), with training, dungeons, and login topping it up. The box itself is what drops the Bones, potions, and equipment when you open it — see the Loot Boxes section for what's inside.

Slots

Default cap is 3 concurrent slots per pup. The slot grid resizes to match the cap. Lowering the cap doesn't cancel in-flight trainings — they finish on schedule and stay collectable, but you can't start new ones until you drop back below the cap.

Locations

Each slot picks a location that skews XP. The Loot Box drop is rolled separately (see below) and isn't affected by location:

Forest is the default, balanced choice. Arena maximizes XP. Den is for slower-leveling players who want to spread out daily-XP-cap consumption.

Loot Box Drop

Each training rolls for a Loot Box at start time (snapshotted onto the slot, so you see the tier — if one dropped — the moment the timer hits zero). The default rates per training:

Rates are treated as a probability distribution. They currently sum to ~12%, so most trainings drop no box (the ~88% residual) — boxes are an occasional bonus on top of the guaranteed XP. Raising the rates so they sum to ≥ 1 would make a box guaranteed every training.

Training Collections

Some special "training collections" (other NFT collections WolfSwap partners with) have an XP multiplier that stacks with location. Available collections show a per-token cooldown so you can't farm the same Wolfie endlessly.

Training Dummy

No trainable NFT? Every pup can train against the Training Dummy — a free, infinite target. It has no per-token cooldown and no ownership check, so you can fill all your slots with it as many times as you like.

The trade-off is a reward multiplier (default 0.1×) applied to everything the training pays out — XP, Bones, the Loot Box drop chance, and equipment drops all scale down by the same factor. So the Dummy is the entry-level / last-resort option: it keeps you progressing when you have no eligible token, but owning a trainable collection always pays the full rate.

The slot cap (and the daily XP cap, if one is active) still applies, so the Dummy can't be used to farm around those limits. Quick Start prioritizes your owned, off-cooldown tokens and only falls back to the Dummy when none are available.

Food, Starvation, and Death

Pups need to eat. If you stop feeding, they starve, then they die.

Food Items

Sold in the shop, stored in inventory, applied via the Feed action:

While Fed, your pup has +10% HP and +10% Power in arena fights. Feeding stamps lastFedAt = now, resetting any starvation debuff.

Free Feed

Always-available Free Feed action — no inventory cost, 12h cooldown. It resets your feed timer so your pup doesn't starve, but it does not apply the +10% Fed buff (only paid food applies the buff). Free Feed exists so a player who's broke or AFK can keep their pup alive.

Starvation Debuff

If your pup hasn't been fed in more than 24h, every passing day adds a 10% debuff to every combat stat (HP, Power, Defense, Speed, Crit) — capped at 90% just before death. The debuff is shown as a "Starving −X%" pill on the Overview tab.

Stamina is never debuffed by starvation — so a starving player can always Free Feed.

Death

After 240h (10 days) without feeding, the pup dies. Every action except revive is blocked: no training, no arena, no shop, no allocations, no presets, nothing. The pup's combat stats are pinned at the 90% debuff visually but it doesn't matter — it can't fight anyway.

Revive

Two paths out:

• Free reset — costs nothing. Pup walks back at level 1 with no XP, no skill allocations, and a fresh arena rating (1000). Active trainings are cancelled and the current-season leaderboard row is dropped. Items, equipped loadout (with current durability), Bones, and Shards are preserved. Use this when you'd rather start over than pay.
• Pay Shards — full revive that keeps every progression bit (level, XP, allocations, arena rating, items). Costs a flat 10 Shards. When your balance is short the death banner swaps the CTA for Get Shards, which opens the Convert / Exchange / Buy card without leaving the page.

Either way, the starvation timer resets (lastFedAt = now) so the pup walks out alive with a fresh 24h grace window.

Rename

Click the pencil icon next to your pup's name on the Overview tab. Costs 100 Shards by default. Same rules as hatching: 1–20 characters, letters / numbers / spaces only, profanity blocklist. Saving the same name (post-trim) is a no-op and doesn't charge. If your Shards balance is short, the Save button flips to Get Shards so you can top up without leaving the dialog.

Currencies — Shards & Bones

Two per-pup currencies. Shards is what you spend; Bones is what you earn from gameplay and convert to Shards.

Earning Bones

Earning Shards

• Convert Bones → Shards in the shop (default 1:1)
• Convert DEX Points → Shards directly in the shop (default 50 DEX points per 1 Shard, capped at 5,000 DEX pts per UTC day per pup)
• Buy Shards with CRO — top up directly from your wallet on-chain (no on-chain price, no slippage)
• Receive a gift from another pup

Spending Shards

Everything in the shop is priced in Shards:

• Food (100 / 500 / 1,000)
• Potions (Stamina 2,000 · Large Stamina 5,000 · Speed-up 2,000 · Respec 5,000)
• Items (varies by tier)
• Repair — flat 1 Shard per slot, regardless of missing durability
• Revive — full revive after death (~100 Shards by default)
• Rename — 100 Shards
• Cosmetics — avatar borders and fight emotes
• Extras — Auto-Feeder (300 Shards for 7-day shield)
• Gift — send any amount to another pup by name

Gifting Shards

The shop's left rail has a Send Gift entry (next to your Shards balance). Pick a recipient by pup name, choose an amount, confirm. Both sides see it in the activity feed (shards_gift_sent / shards_gift_received). Gifts are a Shards-only flow — no Bones, items, or buffs are giftable.

Disenchanting

Don't want an item? Disenchant it from the shop for Bones that scale with the item's required level — higher-level gear refunds more. Items with no level requirement refund a small flat amount. Refund lands in your Bones balance — convert to Shards if you want to spend it.

Items & Equipment

Items are gear you equip on your pup to boost combat stats. They drop from training (tempered/steel) or are bought / awarded.

Slots (9 total)

• Helmet, Armor, Pants, Boots — body slots
• Weapon, Shield — hand slots
• Amulet — neck slot
• Ring 1, Ring 2 — two ring slots (both accept rings)

Tiers

rusty → iron → steel → tempered → gilded → dragonscale → voidforged → set

Higher tiers have larger stat bonuses. Set items belong to a named set and unlock additional bonuses when worn together (e.g. 2-piece, 4-piece, full-set bonuses).

Equipment Bonuses

Each equipped item adds flat stat bonuses (VIT / Power / Defense / Speed / Crit) and may also carry special effects on the Weapon/Shield slots. VIT on gear works the same as VIT from skill allocation — 1 VIT = 5 max HP.

Weapon effects (proc on landed hits):

• Burn — chance to apply a damage-over-time tick that lasts a few rounds
• Lifesteal — heal a percentage of the damage dealt
• Stun — chance to make the target skip its next strike(s). Diminishing returns within a single fight: each repeat lasts shorter than the last, and after enough applications the target becomes immune for the rest of the fight so stuns can't lock an opponent indefinitely.
• Slow — chance to reduce the target's effective speed for a few rounds. A slowed pup loses extra-strike eligibility from speed advantage and is easier to land hits on. Same diminishing-returns curve as Stun so two slow weapons can't keep an opponent slowed forever.
• Execute — finisher. A landed hit that would leave the target at or below a small HP fraction kills them outright instead. Doesn't proc on dodges. It's the one mechanic that punches through the last sliver — not a damage boost everywhere else. Pairs well with crit weapons that bring HP down fast. Cheat Death still saves against execute (see below) — execute is just another path to a lethal hit, not a bypass.

Shield effects (proc when the wearer is hit):

• Thorns — reflect flat damage back at the attacker
• Block Heal — restore HP each time the shield blocks an incoming hit
• Absorb — blocking charges an absorb shield; the next non-blocked hit on the wearer has its damage reduced by a percentage. One charge at a time, refreshed by another block.

Passive effects (any slot, no proc):

These don't fire on a trigger — they're always-on modifiers contributed by whatever piece carries them. Multiple pieces stack additively (engine-side cap on the stacked total where listed).

• Crit Damage — adds extra percent on top of the base ×2 crit multiplier. Two pieces with +20% combine to push crits to ×2.4. Lives anywhere — weapon, ring, amulet — wherever it rolls.
• CC Reduction ("Tenacity") — reduces the chance that incoming stuns and slows actually proc against you. Stacks additively across pieces, but the engine caps the stacked total so even a full-tenacity build still eats some CC — gear alone never grants full immunity. Diminishing returns on repeated CC within a single fight (the standard CC-DR schedule) still apply on top once a CC actually lands.
• Cheat Death — armor-only safety net. When a hit would drop you to 0 HP, the engine rolls against the item's chance; on a successful roll you stay alive at exactly 1 HP. Triggers at most once per fight — once it's spent, the next killing blow lands normally. Saves against any source of lethal damage including Execute procs.

Level Requirements

Some items have a minimum pup level. Buying is always allowed — you can stock up on gear before you've leveled into it — but the equip action is gated. Items below your level show a yellow "Lv X" pill; items at or above your level show a neutral pill. The picker dialog disables the Equip button on locked items and explains why.

When unset, an item has no level requirement.

Hidden Items

An item can be hidden — it disappears from the shop, the training drop pool, the inventory panel, and the equipment picker in one go. A hidden item also stops contributing stats / effects in fights, even if it was previously equipped.

Set views still list the piece (so the set composition stays intact) but show "unavailable" instead of a buy button until the item is unhidden. Use this when you want to retire a piece of gear without leaving its stats live in the wild.

Durability

Every equipped item has durability that ticks down as you fight. Defending doesn't wear gear — only attacks roll for damage.

• Per-attack roll: every equipped item rolls independently with a 20% chance to lose 1 durability when you attack in the arena.
• Flat max durability: every tier shares the same 200-hit ceiling — durability is no longer how higher tiers earn their place. Tempered weapons and Voidforged weapons last the same number of attacks; the difference is in the bonus stats and effects.

Average item lifespan at full gear is around 1,000 attacks per item — casual players barely notice, daily grinders still get a long runway between repair cycles.

Broken Items

When durability hits 0, the item is broken:

• The item stays in your slot (it's not destroyed or auto-unequipped).
• It contributes no stats, no set progress, and no special effects until repaired.
• The slot icon dims + a "Broken" pill overlays it on the paper doll.
• Set bonuses recalculate — a broken set piece doesn't count toward the 2/4-piece tiers.

Repair

Tap the small wrench icon on a damaged equipment slot (paper-doll or list view) to repair it back to full durability.

• Cost: flat 1 Shard per slot, regardless of how much durability is missing. Restoring a barely-scuffed item and a fully broken Voidforged both cost the same single Shard.
• The fight result dialog shows an "Equipment damage" section listing exactly which items took hits that fight, so you know what to repair after a session.

Equipment Presets

Save up to 5 named loadouts ("Glass Cannon", "Tank", "Crit Build", etc.) and swap between them with one click. Presets reference items by id, so swapping doesn't require unequip/re-equip clicks.

Note: every owned copy of an item tracks its own durability. Unequipping a damaged item leaves it on the shelf at its current condition — re-equipping it later picks up exactly where it was. The inventory shows one row per copy so you can pick the freshest one when equipping (and disenchant the worst one when clearing junk).

Enchanting

Pour an Enchant Scroll into a piece of gear to push its enchant level from +0 up to +10. Each level scales that piece's stat bonuses up (compounding), so a high-enchant item is dramatically stronger than its base. Enchanting applies to every slot — weapons, all armor pieces, shields, and jewelry.

• One global scroll. A single Enchant Scroll works on any piece, any slot, any tier. Get them from the shop (Shards), from Loot Boxes, and as a drop from clearing dungeons and the Endless Howl. (Scrolls only appear in the shop and only drop while enchanting is available for your pup.) One scroll is consumed per attempt — win or lose.
• Safe zone (+1 → +3). Attempts can still fail here, but failure is non-destructive: the item simply resets to +0 (you keep it; you only lose the scroll). Any piece can be safely worked up to +3 with enough scrolls.
• Danger zone (+4 and beyond). Now a failed attempt destroys the item permanently. Each step is also less likely to succeed than the last, and the odds fall steeply toward +10 — a +10 is legendary, the product of a long, lucky, and expensive run. Push only what you're willing to lose.
• No peeking, no take-backs. The outcome is rolled and committed on the server the instant you confirm — you can't learn the result early or bail out of a bad roll. There's a brief suspense before the reveal, but by then it's already decided.

Enchant level lives on the specific copy of the item (each copy tracks its own, like durability), and the extra stats it grants show up in your displayed stats and in combat.

Loot Boxes

Loot Boxes are tier-stamped reward containers that replace the old direct potion / equipment drops from training and arena wins. Each box you open is an independent server-side roll: every box always grants Bones, plus a 50% chance for a potion (drawn from a per-tier weighted pool), a smaller chance for a piece of drop-only equipment, and a small chance for an Enchant Scroll.

Box Bones stack on top of the direct Bones grant from training and arena — opening a box is its own meaningful payoff, not just a potion dispenser.

The Enchant Scroll chance is an independent per-tier roll (defaults 2% / 5% / 10%, admin-tunable) and only lands while enchanting is available for your pup (global Enchant feature on, or your pup has early-access).

Every box can drop equipment of any tier — the per-tier weights only shift the probability distribution, they don't lock a box to a tier band. The hard filter is a level band: an item's required level must be ≤ your current level (you can equip it) AND ≥ 75% of your current level (it's not stuff you've outgrown). So a L100 pup only rolls items requiring level 75+; a L50 pup only rolls 37+; a L10 pup only rolls 7+. Items with no required level count as 0 and only drop for low-level pups. Rolls outside the band don't substitute — Bones (and maybe a potion) still drop, the equipment slot just stays empty.

Where boxes come from

Training drop rates are scaled by the location's Loot Box × multiplier — Forest 1.0×, Arena 0.5× (trades box odds for raw XP), Den 1.5× (the loot-hunter pick). So Den rolls Common 13.5% / Rare 3.75% / Epic 0.975% — meaningfully better box odds in exchange for slower XP/Bones. Defenders and losing arena attackers earn no box.

Loot Boxes aren't sold in the shop by default — they're earned through training, the arena, and dungeons.

Opening boxes

Boxes show up as a third bag inside the Inventory card on the Overview tab, alongside Consumables and Equipment. Each tier shows a count and an Open button. Click Open to crack one, or Open all to crack everything in that tier (capped at 25 per click for performance — repeat the click for larger stacks).

The Open dialog reveals each box's contents in turn: the aggregate Bones first, then any potions, then any equipment drops. Bones land in your wallet immediately; potions land in your normal inventory; equipment lands as a fresh full-durability item in your inventory.

Buying boxes

The shop's Loot Boxes category lets you buy boxes for Shards (1–25 per click). Buying does NOT auto-open the boxes — they land in your Loot Boxes card on Overview to crack at your leisure. Some tiers may not be available for purchase.

Backward compatibility

Trainings started before the Loot Box deploy were rolled with the legacy reward shape (direct Bones + maybe a potion + maybe equipment, all baked in at start). Those trainings keep their original rewards on collect — the in-flight queue drains naturally over the ~1h training window. New trainings stamp a tier instead and grant a box on collect.

The Shop

The shop has tabs for each item category:

• Food — Kibble Bits, Meat Stew, Royal Feast
• Potions — Stamina Small/Large, Speed-up, Respec Scroll
• Buff Potions — 24h stat boosters (+5% to HP / Power / Defense / Speed; +5 percentage points to Crit, capped at 50; Endurance Brew makes Stamina regen 50% faster, 1 per 20 min instead of 30; Wisdom Brew gives +10% XP gain on every grant for 24h)
• Loot Boxes — buy Common / Rare / Epic boxes for Shards. See the Loot Boxes section for what's inside each tier.
• Equipment — flat catalog of items (uncommon and below; rares only drop from training)
• Cosmetics — avatar borders that overlay your leaderboard / portrait avatar
• Emotes — pixel-art expressions your pup pops above its head in fights; buy them and set your Intro / Victory / Defeat slots here
• Extras — quality-of-life services like the Auto-Feeder (7-day vacation shield)
• Get Shards — convert Bones, exchange DEX Points, or buy Shards with CRO

Buff potions stack with the Fed buff (multiplicative). Drinking a second buff while one is active just resets the timer — it doesn't stack the bonus.

Emotes

Fun pixel-art wolf expressions your pup pops above its head mid-fight. Purely cosmetic — no stats, no combat effect, just attitude. Buy them once with Shards in the shop's Emotes section (the same currency as avatar borders); once bought, your pup owns the emote forever.

Each pup has three equip slots, set right in the Emotes section:

• Intro emote — pops above your pup at the start of every fight — PvP arena and PvE (dungeon and Howl waves) — for about 1.5 seconds.
• Victory emote — pops above your pup when you win a PvP arena fight. It doesn't show in PvE.
• Defeat emote — shown when you lose a PvP arena fight. Like Victory, it doesn't show in PvE.

Any owned emote can go in any slot (the same emote can fill several), and re-equipping or clearing a slot is free — swap as often as you like. Your opponent sees your emotes in the fight replay, snapshotted at fight time, so the emote you wore when the fight happened is the one the replay shows.

Emotes currently appear in the new arena fight screen (Quick Fight), the classic arena replay view, PvE battles, and Bracket (Last Man Standing) replays. 3v3 Solo Shuffle doesn't show them yet — support is coming later.

The starter catalog has 8 emotes. New ones appear in the Emotes section as the team enables them, so the catalog can grow beyond this set:

Extras

The shop's Extras tab holds QoL services priced in Shards. Today there's one entry; more will land here as the game grows.

Auto-Feeder (7-day) — 300 Shards

Vacation insurance. Buying it sets a shield that lasts 7 days + 12h from purchase, during which:

• The pup can't starve — combat-stat starvation debuff stays at 0%.
• The pup can't die, regardless of whether you log in.
• Buff foods still apply normally — eating a Royal Feast during the shield still gives the +10% Fed buff for 24h. The shield only short-circuits the starvation timer.

Buying again while still active stacks — the new expiry is (current shield end) + 7d12h, not (now) + 7d12h. Top up before a long trip.

When the shield ends, the pup gets a fresh 24h grace before the starvation debuff kicks in (no "snap to tier-7 starving" cliff).

The summary bar shows an Auto-fed chip with "shield ends in X" while it's active.

Gifting Shards

You can send Shards from your pup to any other pup. The entry point is the Send gift button in the shop's left rail, just below the Shards balance pill.

1. Open the shop, click Send gift.
2. Search by pup name (2+ characters) and pick a recipient from the list.
3. Choose the amount (presets, ± buttons, or type it in; capped at your current balance).
4. Confirm. The transfer is instant — shards leave your pup and land on the recipient's in the same step. No gas, no on-chain transaction.

Both sides see the gift in their activity feed: shards_gift_sent on the sender, shards_gift_received on the recipient. Either row carries the counterparty's pupId and name so the feed is self-contained.

Notes:

• You can only gift Shards (not Bones, items, or buffs).
• You can't gift to your own pup. You can gift to another pup on your own account (e.g. one of your alts) — the picker labels those rows Yours.
• The recipient pup just needs to exist (be hatched). Dead pups can still receive — the gift waits in their balance until they revive.

Arena & PvP

The arena is where pups fight other players' pups for rating, XP, and Bones.

Attack Flow

1. Pick an opponent from the leaderboard or your Rivals list.
2. Pay 2 stamina.
3. Combat resolves immediately (deterministic from a rolled timeline).
4. You see a fight result dialog with the round-by-round timeline.

You can attack the same opponent at most once per hour (ATTACK_COOLDOWN_MS = 1h). You can't attack yourself, dead pups, your own pups, or anyone outside ±200 rating from you.

Newcomer Protection (L1–L5)

Pups at level 5 or below are shielded from being attacked by higher-level pups. The bracket is one-directional:

• L1–L5 vs L1–L5: allowed — protected pups fight each other normally.
• L1–L5 attacking L6+: allowed via direct leaderboard tap — a low-level pup can choose to punch up. Quick Fight, however, never auto-matches a shielded attacker against an L6+ defender (see the rule under Quick Fight below).
• L6+ attacking L1–L5: blocked — these rows can't be targeted directly or surfaced via Quick Fight.

The shield drops automatically once the pup hits L6. Every new pup joins the ladder at the default 1000 rating, which would put them in matchmaking range of high-level farmers; the shield gives newcomers a low-stakes bracket to climb in. You'll see a small Shielded chip on protected rows; the Attack button is hidden for unprotected viewers.

Quick Fight

The Quick Fight button at the top of the Arena tab finds an opponent for you and runs the standard attack against them. Same 2-stamina cost, same per-defender 1-hour cooldown — it's a shortcut, not a power boost.

Matchmaking rules (server-side):

1. Filter to alive pups within ±100 rating and ±5 levels of you, excluding yourself, anyone you've fought in the last hour, dead pups, and anyone outside your bracket. An L6+ attacker never sees L1–L5 candidates. An L1–L5 (shielded) attacker is also restricted to L1–L5 candidates only — Quick Fight will not match a shielded pup against an L6+ opponent even when the ±5 level window would otherwise allow it.
2. If that's empty, widen rating to ±200, then ±400.
3. If it's still empty, widen level to ±10 as a last resort — unprotected attackers only. An L1–L5 attacker stays capped at ±5 AND inside the L1–L5 band, so newcomers never get matched into a 1-vs-11 fight; they'll get "No fair matches right now" instead.
4. Score remaining candidates by combined gap (level gap weighted ×20 vs rating gap), shortlist the closest 20, then pick one at random.
5. If no candidate exists at all, you'll see "No fair matches right now — try again in a bit."

Punching up via Quick Fight is intentionally disabled for shielded pups. If you're L1–L5 and want to fight an L6+ opponent, tap their row on the leaderboard directly — that path still works.

Combat Mechanics

• First strike: the pup with higher Speed strikes first.
• Extra strikes: speed advantage gives a per-round chance for the faster pup to land an extra strike. The chance scales with the speed gap on a diminishing-returns curve — bigger gaps grant more frequent extra strikes, but reaching the peak takes a heavy investment in Speed.
• Dodge: Every defender has a base chance to miss an incoming strike — even slow bosses. A speed advantage over the attacker adds to that chance along a diminishing-returns curve, but total dodge is soft-capped, so near-perfect evasion isn't reachable no matter how hard you stack speed. Every successful dodge halves the next incoming dodge chance ("dodge fatigue"); each non-dodge restores it. Prevents back-to-back dodge runs.
• Block: Defense gives a chance to block a strike, softening its damage. Chance follows a diminishing-returns curve on Defense (no hard cap — committed tank builds scale far past the previous 30% ceiling, but each extra defense point gives less than the previous). Same fatigue mechanic as dodge: each successful block halves the next block chance; each non-block restores it.
• Crit: Crit% rolls per strike; on crit, damage is doubled.
• Crit + Block stack: block and crit rolls are independent. A single strike can be both — fight log tags these as "CRIT · BLOCK" so they don't look like a glitch.
• Damage: depends on the striker's Power, reduced by the target's Defense (diminishing returns), with a small random variance per strike. Crit and block apply on top.
• Max rounds: capped — if both pups are still alive at the cap, the higher-HP pup wins.

Rewards

• Win: XP + Bones + a Loot Box rolled against the arena drop rates (default: 75% Common / 20% Rare / 5% Epic). XP scales with a random roll and the level-gap multiplier; Bones additionally scale with the CR-ratio between you and your opponent (fighting tougher opponents pays more).
• Loss: a small consolation payout to the attacker — ~20% of a win's XP and 25% of its Bones, both scaled by the same level-gap (and CR) multipliers; no Loot Box. The defender still earns nothing. Punching up and losing still pays something; choking against a much weaker pup — or a 10+ level punch-down — pays peanuts or nothing.
• Defender: earns nothing, win or lose. Only the attacker (who paid stamina) gets paid. This prevents alt-account collusion.

XP and rating are decoupled. XP scales with the level gap between attacker and defender; rating uses its own Elo-style math (see Rating). The two no longer cross-reference — chasing high-level fights for XP and chasing same-rating opponents for ladder climb are separate decisions.

Punching up pays more, punching down pays less. Attacking a higher-level pup boosts both XP and Bones; attacking a much lower-level pup drops them, all the way to zero rewards if the gap is wide enough. Bones never get a punch-up bonus (only a punch-down penalty) — that's intentional, to keep alt-account farming unviable (a low-level alt fed Bones by a high-level main). The exact curves are intentionally not published; the fight result dialog shows the multipliers that applied so you can read them off your own fights.

Rating

Starts at 1000. Floor is 500 (you can't drop below). Rating resets every season.

Rating changes use a standard Elo-style formula: an even matchup moves both pups a moderate amount, an underdog win pays a bigger gain (and a smaller loss on defeat). Punching way above your weight is intentionally cheap to try — the rating delta on a loss against a much higher-rated opponent is small, while a win pays a meaningful jump. The opposite holds for stomping a much lower-rated opponent: the win pays peanuts, the loss costs more.

Rivals (Following)

Follow up to 50 pups to track them in your Rivals list. Useful for grudge matches, watching strong opponents, or just keeping tabs on friends. Following doesn't notify the other player.

If a followed pup is reset and re-hatched, the follow stays attached to the same Wolfie NFT — when the new pup hatches, your Rivals list shows it again. If they're reset and not re-hatched, the row appears in a "Pup deleted" section so you can unfollow.

Seasons & Prizes

The arena runs in seasons. Each season has its own leaderboard, rating reset, and prize payout. Seasons advance manually (no auto-timer), so prize pools and timing stay aligned with WolfSwap events.

Season-End Prizes

When a season advances, every leaderboard row gets finalized in place with a final rank, prize Bones, and badge:

The leaderboard then resets — fresh ratings of 1000 across the board, fresh win/loss records. Past seasons stay readable: a dropdown on the Leaderboard lets you browse historical results, and the preview dialog shows a "Past season" badge with the prize earned.

Last Man Standing (Bracket PvP)

A scheduled, single-elimination PvP event that runs alongside the arena ladder. Default cadence: once daily at 19:00 UTC (open the Bracket tab to see the actual times).

How it works

1. Register your pup — open the Arena → Bracket tab and click Join (1 stamina). Stamina is deducted at registration. You can cancel up until 60 seconds before the round starts, which refunds the stamina.
2. Wait for the round — entrants are visible to everyone. The countdown ticks down to the scheduled UTC hour.
3. Bracket fires — when it fires, the entrant pool snapshots and pairings shuffle randomly each round. Survivors advance until one pup is left.
4. Watch live — every fight is rendered cinematically inside the Bracket tab using the same replay engine as the arena fight dialog. All viewers see the same fight at the same moment (the playback offset is server-stamped on each fight).
5. Rewards drop. The champion earns a fixed bundle (Bones + XP + Loot Box). Everyone else shares a prize pool — the further your pup got, the bigger your share. Even a first-round loser walks away with something.

Default rewards

Champion (fixed): 200 Bones + 300 XP + Epic Loot Box.

Prize pool (shared with non-champions): 10 Bones + 20 XP per entrant. So a 10-pup bracket has a 100 Bones / 200 XP pool, split among the 9 non-champions weighted by elimination round (R1 loser = weight 1, R2 = 2, runner-up = max). Concretely, a typical 10-pup bracket pays roughly:

Numbers scale with the entrant count: more players = bigger pool = bigger non-champion shares.

Rules to know

• Per-pup entry. If you have multiple pups, each can register independently (each costs 1 stamina). They can fight each other if pairings land that way.
• Pup must be alive. Dead pups can't register; if a pup dies between registering and when the bracket fires, the entry is dropped and stamina is refunded.
• No rating impact. Bracket fights don't touch your arena rating, wins, losses, or current streak. Pure event mode.
• No equipment damage. Bracket fights skip the per-attack durability roll. Your gear is safe.
• Daily XP cap (if set). If a daily XP cap is active and you're already at it when you win the bracket, the XP grant clamps to remaining headroom — Bones and the Loot Box still pay out in full. With no cap (the default), the full XP lands.
• Min entrants threshold. If fewer than 5 entrants sign up, the round is cancelled and stamina is auto-refunded to every entrant.
• Pairing is pure random. No level / rating bracketing — anyone with stamina can fight anyone. Odd entrant counts produce a random bye that auto-advances one pup to the next round.

Tiebreak rules for non-champion ranks

The shared pool's split is driven by how deep you got (the round you were eliminated in), but the recap still lists everyone in rank order. Within the same elimination round (e.g. all four round-1 losers), order is decided by:

1. Higher pup level ranks higher.
2. Final tiebreak: lower pupId (deterministic).

Pups eliminated in earlier rounds rank below pups eliminated later — runner-up always sits at rank 2.

Dungeons (PvE)

Solo PvE: your pup vs randomly-generated monster waves and a boss. Each cleared Tier unlocks the next. Higher tiers stack more affixes on the enemies and pile on more waves — so build, gear, and potions all matter.

How a run works

• Each dungeon is 2–5 monster waves followed by a boss (wave count scales with tier).
• You tap Next wave between waves to advance — runs are turn-by-turn, not real-time.
• Pup HP carries between waves. There's no auto-heal.
• Killing a monster has a chance to drop a health globe (10% of your max HP) — auto-pickup. The chance scales with tier (30% at T1, capped at 70%).
• If your pup dies (or you tap Quit), the run ends and the key is spent. You still get a small consolation: 10% × waves cleared of the clear reward (cap 50%). No loot box on a fail.

Dungeon Keys

• 3 free Keys per day, refilled at 00:00 UTC.
• Need more? Buy an extra Key for 10 Shards (daily cap of 5 extras by default).
• Keys are the only entry cost — dungeons don't spend stamina.

Tiers + leaderboard

• You start at Tier 0. Clear T0 → T1 unlocks. Clear T1 → T2 unlocks. And so on.
• You can re-run any unlocked tier — farming Bones at a safe tier is a legit playstyle. Note: the first clear of a tier pays full XP; re-clears pay 50% XP. Bones, Loot Boxes, and boss-drop chances all pay at full rate on every clear (re-clears included — there's no drop penalty). Pushing into a brand-new tier is the only way to roll at full XP, and the first clear also guarantees a gear drop.
• Out-levelling a dungeon cuts its XP sharply, with a hard cap at +20. Each level above the dungeon's recommended level multiplies XP by 0.80 (compounding), and at +20 levels above the XP drops to 0 entirely (loot and Bones still pay out). The curve bites hardest in the first few levels then softens, but the cutoff means deep over-levelled dungeons are pure loot/Bone farms. Rough table: +1 → 80%, +3 → 51%, +5 → 33%, +10 → 11%, +15 → 3.5%, +19 → 1.4%, +20 and beyond → 0. Run dungeons near your level for any meaningful XP.
• The leaderboard ranks pups by highest tier cleared this season, with fewer rounds-to-clear as the tiebreaker.
• Season tracks the same calendar as the arena season.

Affixes

12 affixes can roll onto elite monsters (T41+) and bosses, all reusing existing combat mechanics: Burning (DoT on hit), Frozen (slow on hit), Thorny (reflects damage), Vampiric (lifesteal), Shielded (absorb), Stunner (chance to stun), Enraged (+50% power), Swift (+30% speed), Fortified (+50% defense), Brutal (+20% crit), Piercing (ignores a portion of target defense — counters pure-tank builds), Grievous (on hit, cuts the healing you receive — lifesteal, health globes, and potions — for a few rounds; counters sustain builds). More affixes per monster at higher tiers.

Bosses

One of five is rolled per dungeon:

• Alpha Wolf — vanilla brawler with sky-high crit.
• Lich — stacks burn DoTs, heals from your damage-over-time.
• Stone Golem — thorns + sky-high defense. Slow, but punishes glass-cannon builds.
• Wraith — fast and dodgy with lifesteal. Burst-damage builds wreck it.
• Beast Lord — stuns you, immune to stuns himself. DPS race.

Each rewards a different build. Learn them by losing to them — the affix chips in the Boss approaches banner tell you what's coming.

Rewards

• Per-kill XP + Bones. Every monster you defeat pays a small flat XP and Bones reward; the boss pays a larger share; elite monsters (the affixed ones in a wave) pay a small bonus on top. Final XP and Bones for the run are the sum of all kills, scaled by the tier-growth curve and your level-vs-tier multiplier (punching up pays more, punching down pays less). The reward is paid at the end of the run regardless of outcome — a failed run still pays for everything you killed before dying.
• Guaranteed Bones prize (clear only). On top of the per-kill Bones, every clear pays a flat Bones prize that scales with tier — roughly 15 Bones at T0 climbing to ~600 at T7 (defaults; admin-tunable). It's paid on every clear, including re-clears, so farming a comfortable tier for Bones stays worthwhile.
• Per-run XP ceiling. However big the run, a single dungeon grants up to ~500 XP on a clear and up to ~300 XP on a failed/quit run (defaults; admin-tunable per server). When a run is big enough to hit the ceiling the award lands a little under it and varies run to run, so it's a soft cap rather than a flat wall. It's applied last — after every per-kill, tier, re-clear, level, and rested-XP-catch-up multiplier. Bones, Loot Boxes, and boss-gear drops are not affected by it.
• Loot Box (clear only). A successful clear rolls the tier-banded Loot Box (T1+ rolls Common; T11+ adds Rare; T51+ adds Epic). Every clear rolls at the full listed rates — re-clears included (no drop penalty). Failed / quit runs never roll a Loot Box.
• Boss equipment drops (clear only): every boss has its own drop table — a list of gear pieces and per-item drop chances. Each entry on the table rolls independently on a successful clear, so a single kill can drop multiple pieces. Drops per kill are hard-capped (max 5). Every clear rolls at the full per-item chances — re-clears included. First clears additionally guarantee a gear drop instead of rolling. Level gate: items whose required level is above your pup's current level are filtered out of the table before the roll — you'll never see a "you got X" notice for gear you can't equip, and the cap budget isn't wasted on ineligible items.
• Enchant Scroll (clear only): a successful clear also has a chance to drop an Enchant Scroll (the global scroll used to enchant gear) straight into your inventory — ~20% by default, admin-tunable per tier. Scrolls only drop when enchanting is available for your pup (the global Enchant feature is on, or your pup has early-access).

Tips

• Bring a strong build and good gear (or over-level a touch) to clear consistently; each dungeon card shows how its difficulty sits against your pup, and pushing well under that gets steep fast.
• Push tiers slowly — every clear at your push tier raises your leaderboard rank.
• Build matters MORE than level: a tank pup outlasts attrition; a glass-cannon pup needs the speed to win the DPS race before its HP runs out.
• Stat-buff potions (24h) apply during the run if active.

The Endless Howl

A separate, endless PvE ladder that lives alongside the themed T0–T7 dungeons. Instead of fixed themes, each run — a Howl — pulls a random gauntlet of monsters drawn from all dungeon themes, scales them up, and ends in a random boss. Tiers are numbered Howl 1, Howl 2, … with no upper limit shown (the hard ceiling is Howl 500). There's no death here — push as deep as you dare.

How a Howl works

• A Howl is a random gauntlet: monsters pulled from every dungeon theme, scaled up by tier, capped off with a random boss.
• Entry costs stamina (1 by default) — the same stamina pool your arena attacks use, which regenerates over time. Howls do not cost a Dungeon Key; Keys are a reward here, not an entry gate.
• HP potions auto-use here too. Howls draw from the same HP-potion stockpile as the dungeons — a potion fires automatically when your pup drops below 50% HP (restoring 25 HP), capped at one per wave so a single rough wave can't drain your whole stash. Only the potions that actually fire are spent. The sticky "auto-use HP potions" preference is shared, so turning it off for dungeons turns it off for Howls.
• No death, ever. A failed push just spends the key; your pup walks away unharmed. Try the tier again or drop down.
• Clear-and-climb. You can attempt any tier from Howl 1 up to (your highest cleared + 1). Clear a tier to unlock the next. Every tier you've cleared stays farmable.

Scaling

Every Howl is tougher than the last — monsters hit harder and soak more, and the gauntlet grows longer with depth: the number of waves tracks the Howl number (roughly +1 wave every 4 Howls, up to 14), so a Howl 18 is ~5 waves and a Howl 50 is well over a dozen — real gauntlets, not skirmishes. Mobs-per-wave and monster stats ramp more gently (on a stretched curve) so each wave stays winnable. There's no level gate and no posted "recommended" level: bring your strongest build, lean on your gear and potions, and see how far you can climb.

Clear rewards (Bones, potions, keys, scrolls + gear)

Every Howl you clear drops loot:

• Bones prize (guaranteed) — the only guaranteed reward. Bones that scale with Howl depth: roughly 10 Bones at Howl 1, ~120 at Howl 50, ~1500 at Howl 100 (defaults; admin-tunable, accelerating curve). Howls pay no per-kill Bones, so this clear prize is the Howl's Bones faucet — pushing deeper pays dramatically more.
• HP potions — a weighted chance into your stockpile: by default ~50% of clears drop none, otherwise 1–3 (the same potions the auto-use feature spends mid-fight). Capped by your stockpile ceiling, so a clear can never overflow it.
• Dungeon Key — a chance roll on each clear (~10%) to drop a Key into your wallet. Since Howls cost stamina to enter, this makes them a way to earn Keys for the regular dungeons.
• Enchant Scroll — a chance roll on each clear (~20% by default) to drop a scroll into your inventory. Only drops when enchanting is available for your pup (global Enchant feature on, or your pup has early-access).
• Equipment — each clear has a small chance to drop a single piece of gear straight into your inventory (a fresh, full-durability item). This gear is Howl-exclusive — it can't be bought in the shop or rolled from training/Loot Boxes.

How Howl gear drops are matched to your depth. The pool a clear rolls from is level-matched to the Howl tier: only gear whose level sits within ±5 of the tier can drop (Howl 50 drops level-45-to-55 gear, and so on). Within that band the drop is rarity-weighted — common-tier pieces drop most often and the top-tier (dragonscale / set) pieces are the rare chase, landing on the order of ~1% of clears or less. Pushing deeper is therefore how you reach higher-level gear; farming a shallow tier only ever drops gear matched to that tier.

Re-clears drop the same way; the stockpile cap, the per-clear stamina cost, and the low gear-drop odds keep farming in check.

Milestones

Certain Howl tiers are milestones — checkpoints the team sets up, each carrying a claimable reward. The first time you clear one it's celebrated. There's no fixed list: the team configures which Howl tiers are milestones and what each one grants, so the set can change over time (the default starting set is Howl 5, 10, 25, 50, 75, and 100).

Claimable milestone rewards. Once your pup first-clears a milestone Howl, that milestone's reward unlocks in the Milestone rewards panel on the Howl screen — a horizontally-scrolling rail that auto-scrolls to your next claim. Tap Claim to receive it. A reward is a bundle of any mix of Bones, Shards, Enchant Scrolls, Loot Boxes, and specific gear — whatever the team has assigned to that tier. Each reward is claimable once per pup (it survives season resets), and the milestone stays "reached" forever once hit. If a milestone has no reward assigned, there's simply nothing to claim.

Milestones are reward checkpoints only — they don't grant titles.

Leaderboard & seasons

A per-season leaderboard ranks pups by the deepest Howl cleared (ties broken by who reached that tier first). Seasons share the same season cycle as the Arena.

The leaderboard is bragging rights — at season close each pup's final rank is recorded so past seasons stay browsable, but there's no currency payout (the Howl ladder rewards you with HP-potion drops as you climb, not an end-of-season prize).

Daily Routine

A "perfect-play" day looks roughly like:

1. Log in (collect 25 Bones + 5 XP daily-login bonus).
2. Pet your pup (10 XP, free, once per UTC day).
3. Feed with a Royal Feast (24h Fed buff, +10% HP/Power in arena).
4. Start 3 trainings (free, each runs for 2h).
5. Come back every 2h — collect, restart. Or batch: collect all → restart all.
6. Arena attacks with leftover stamina (2 per attack, target same-rating-ish opponents).
7. Play consistently across the day — there's no daily XP cap by default, so more activity means faster levels (and if you're behind the pack, rested-XP gives you a boost).

Reset

If you want to start over (rebuild your pup from scratch), the Reset action wipes everything tied to the pup:

• Hard-deletes the pup doc — XP, level, allocations, gear, Bones, items, equipment presets are gone.
• Inserts an audit row (level + total XP at reset) for the historical record.
• Deletes all in-flight training rows.
• Does NOT delete: past activity log, past fights, past-season leaderboard rows, follow rows pointing at you.

After reset, you can hatch a fresh pup on the same Wolfie or a different one. The pup-cap check passes because the pup doc is gone.

Reset is irreversible. There's a confirmation dialog asking you to type the pup's name to continue.

Bans & Unban Requests

Admins can ban wallets that break the rules (botting, exploit abuse, etc.). A ban is account-wide and thorough:

• Hatching is blocked — NFT hatch, trial hatch, and trial upgrade all reject.
• Existing pups are locked — training, fighting, feeding, dungeons, howls, and the shop all reject. You can still view the pup.
• The ban follows the pup — a banned pup stays banned even if the NFT is sold or transferred to another wallet.

If you believe a ban is a mistake — including the case where you bought an already-banned pup on the secondary market — use the Request Unban button on the banned banner. One request can be pending at a time; an admin reviews it and either accepts (the ban is lifted for your account and your pups) or rejects it (you can file a new request later).

Got more questions? Drop them in the WolfSwap Discord or reach out on X. Common ones are answered in the FAQ at the top of this page.