The Currencies of Starforge

At a glance

Only Glimmer moves between players today (Trading Square, the Marketplace, User Shops, Stud fees): everything else stays in your own wallet. Prisms remain account-bound during Alpha.

✨ Glimmer

The currency you'll earn and spend the most. Nothing about it is rare or precious: it's the everyday chit economy that keeps ordinary trade off of raw Stardust.

Earned by

• Sparky's Daily Wheel, most spins.
• Incursion Battle, Vault, and Boss rooms.
• Turning materials in to NPC Requests: a flat 12 for a common item or 20 for an uncommon one, per turn-in.
• Inviting a friend who forges their first companion: 250 to you and 100 to them. See My Invites.
• Your faction's shared Construction Goal payout, split by contribution.
• Void Surge event pools.
• Selling to other Captains: Trading Square, the pet Marketplace, and User Shops all move Glimmer between wallets rather than creating new supply.

Spent on

• The base Starlight Nesting cost: 100 Glimmer, before any Stardust add-ons.
• Stud Market fees (a 2% levy is kept as a sink before the rest reaches the stud's owner).
• Removing a mutation: 150.
• Removing an individual marking in the Marking Studio: 75.
• Recalibrating a companion's stats: 50 base plus 10 per allocated point returned.
• Unlocking Dressing Room Backdrops, once per account: 1000.
• Glimmer-priced items in the NPC Shop Hub and crafting ingredients.
• Tickets for the Weekly Raffle: 250 each, no purchase cap.
• Expanding your berths with Glimmer after the Prism expansion: the next one-slot purchase starts at 500 and follows the live curve (currently exponent 1.5).
• Rerolling an NPC Request: 25 each, up to 3 per hour.

🌟 Stardust

Raw, reactive, and account-locked: Stardust pays for the strange work rather than the everyday kind. Every new Captain starts with 500 of it.

Earned by

• Claiming your Daily Bonus from the Command Post: a base 100, with a repeating streak that pays more the longer you keep it going.
• Sparky's Daily Wheel.
• Incursion Boss rooms.
• Void Surge event pools.

Spent on

• The Starlight Nesting add-ons: a Catalyst (200), a Celestial Marking attempt (400), and Twins (600). Any or all can be stacked on one Nest. See How Starlight Nesting Works.
• Stardust Shop listings in the NPC Shop Hub.

Stardust is account-locked: it can't be gifted, traded, or sold to another Captain.

🔷 Prisms

The premium currency. Its main source is a real-money purchase, so treat it as scarce and plan spends deliberately rather than expecting a steady gameplay income.

Earned by

• Buying Prisms with real money at Buy Prisms, at 100 Prisms per $1. Bigger purchases can also unlock a one-time bonus item.
• A rare Prisms bundle from the Weekly Raffle (100–300 Prisms, one of three weekly prizes).
• A small chance on an NPC Request turn-in: 8% of the time, for 3–10 Prisms.
• Staff or event grants.

Spent on

• Custom pet creation at the Prism Observatory (a Refraction): a per-species base cost (e.g. 100 for a Feline) plus 100 per marking you choose. This is the site's primary Prisms sink. Your first 2 Refractions of an eligible, lightly-marked companion may be free when the current Observatory rules allow it; the creation page decides eligibility and shows the final price. See Prism Observatory.
• Expanding your crew's berths: 500 Prisms for +5 slots, from Your Crew.
• Applying or replacing a mutation in the Mutation Workshop: 200 Prisms.
• Adding a new marking in the Marking Studio: 150 Prisms.
• Prism Shop and Apparel Shop listings in the NPC Shop Hub, and Prism-priced Stud fees.

Prisms are account-bound during Alpha: they can't be gifted, traded, or sold to another Captain.

🎐 Legacy Echoes

What a companion chooses to leave behind when its journey with you ends. Never taken, never extracted: this is the resonance of everything it practiced and learned, offered forward.

Earned by

• Letting a companion depart your crew (a release), from its own page. The amount scales with how far it came: 10 base, plus 5 per generation and 2 per level. A deeper-bred, higher-level companion leaves more behind. You can't release your only companion. An already-Echoed companion leaves less this way.
• Echoing a companion at level 15 or higher, from its own Progression panel. This resets its current life (level and stats) but keeps its lineage, traits, and permanent bonuses, and pays out Echoes on top: later Echoes on the same companion pay less than the first.

Spent on

• Infusions from a companion's own Progression panel: re-rolling its passive trait (150) or raising one stat's ceiling only (250; no stat point included). Each companion can take at most 2 infusions, ever.
• Captain unlock claims from your Captain Progress page: 200 per claim, one more available every 5 Captain levels, for extra roster, nest, or expedition capacity.

Legacy Echoes are account-locked: they can't be gifted, traded, or sold to another Captain.

🔩 Star-Steel

Ore that only comes out of the deeps, changed by long proximity to the fragment. It exists to be banked toward shared works, not spent on yourself.

Earned by

• Faction Supply rooms in an Incursion: its main source.
• A small chance on an ordinary expedition collection: 10% for 5–30 Star-Steel.

Spent on

• Your faction's weekly Building Race and seasonal Infrastructure, from Faction Buildings.
• Contributing toward the shared, server-wide Construction Goal: this doesn't cost you anything extra, it's simply what Faction Supply rewards feed automatically as they're banked.

Star-Steel is account-locked and faction-facing: it can't be gifted, traded, or sold to another Captain. See Factions for standings.