Rules of Brinkhaul

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The shift and the deck

A shift runs from 05:00 to 05:00 the next day, Paris time. Every shift, Brinkhaul opens a new deck of the season's station: the same one for every crew. A deck has an airlock and ten rooms over four depths. The deeper a room, the harder its trial and the more it pays on average, but values overlap from one depth to the next: the crates on the map show each room's value (■ up to 45 scrip, ■■ up to 85, ■■■ above). Everyone sees the map; a room's trial is revealed when you enter it. Last departure at 04:53.

Time limits

The game is played against the clock, the server's clock: these limits are the rules of the game, stated here and at the briefing. A dive starts with 300 seconds of oxygen. A corridor costs 12 s, 18 s if it is damaged; a corridor between depths 3 and 4 costs 4 s more, both ways. Oxygen also runs down while you read the pages and during searches; a search you start goes on to its last question, with the oxygen running all the while. For the network, oxygen leaves a margin of 1 s, and the time for a question 0.5 s.

Cargo

Cargo starts at zero. Every mistake or timeout immediately damages the cargo you carry by 10% (rounded down). At the end of a search, the room's haul is added: base value × right answers ÷ questions, +20% in a room of your specialty's skill. The more you carry, the more a mistake costs: carrying 600 scrip, a mistake costs 60, more than the haul of most rooms.

Return or lose

You can return to the airlock as long as your oxygen covers the cost of the way back (the shortest path). Once back, the cargo is sold to Brinkhaul at the shift's settlement. Out of oxygen, or after dropping the cargo, the diver is hauled up on the cable and keeps only a tenth of the cargo (10%), half with an insurance policy.

Crew

You dive for a crew of 1 to 4 members, one crew at a time. You create it, or join it with its 6-letter code, an invitation link (the link's page expires after 7 days; the code it carries stays valid until the captain changes it), or from the list of recruiting crews. In 24 hours, you can create at most 3 crews and join at most 10. Each member picks a specialty, one of the five skills: +20% on the haul of that skill's rooms. It can change once per shift, before passing the airlock. The captain signs contracts, renames the crew, opens recruiting (the crew appears in the list) or keeps it invitation-only, and can hand over the cap. When closed, the crew still recruits through its code and links: “New code” voids the old ones. Each member has one dive per shift, only one on the whole site.

Contract and quota

The captain signs a contract with Brinkhaul: it takes effect at once, or at the next shift if fewer than 6 hours are left in this one. At the 05:01 settlement, every dive of the shift is sold: its value at the dock goes into the crew's cash box. Every three shifts a deadline falls: the cash box must cover the due, the quota per member times the members present at the start of the period (at signing for the first one). The quota per member rises by 60% each period: 150, 240, 380, 610, 980 scrip, and so on. Due paid, the surplus stays in the cash box and the next period begins; due missed, the contract ends, the cash box and the workshop are lost, and a new contract can be signed from the next shift.

A shift without a dive is worth 0 to the crew. A dive only counts as present if it searched at least one room; absences are counted at the 05:01 settlement. After two shifts absent in a row, any member can remove the absentee, even if they have dived again since, until the next settlement: the period's due drops at once. A member who joins mid-period only counts in the due from the next one; their dives count at once. Leaving voluntarily does not reduce the current due.

Workshop

The cash box pays for upgrades for the whole crew, for the length of the contract; their price is multiplied by the number of active members. Tank: +30 s of oxygen per level (120 then 240 scrip per member). Scanner: one charge per level and per dive, which reveals a room to the whole crew (60, 120, 180 scrip per member). Padded crates: damage per mistake of 10%, then 8%, then 6% (100 then 200 scrip per member). Insurance policy: 40 scrip each. A policy in stock is set aside when a dive departs: if the dive is lost, it uses the policy up and keeps half of its cargo instead of a tenth; if it returns, the policy goes back to stock at the 05:01 settlement, which never keeps more policies than active members (at least one). So a crewmate who leaves after the others may find none. Any active member can buy at the workshop. Value at the dock only goes into the cash box at the 05:01 settlement: a dive's value can only be spent after that.

Between divers

Scouting: when a member enters a room, it is revealed to their whole crew for the shift (trial, difficulty, result). Relays: an extracted dive leaves an oxygen relay in the deepest room it reached; another crew member who enters it during the shift gains 15 s per relay found, 3 relays per dive at most. Notes: each member can mark a room “easy”, “hard”, “profitable” or “avoid” for their crew. Wrecks: a dive lost with cargo leaves it in its room; a diver from another crew who searches the room with at least half right answers recovers, after their haul, a quarter of the biggest wreck of another crew found there: one per search, three times per wreck at most. Every deck also has a wreck of a Brinkhaul crew.

Directive, leaderboards and prizes

The directive is a goal shared by all players, over 1 to 7 days: scrip extracted (the nominal value of the dives that made it back), rooms of the week's skill at least half passed, or flawless dives (at least one room searched). Once reached, it pays 10% of its due into the cash box of every contract in progress, and a mention in the events feed to those who contributed; never credits. Only dives that made it back enter the daily leaderboard, by nominal value (without specialty or wreck, damage always counted at 10%), then oxygen left (the Tank and relays count), then departure time. A season lasts a month, on one station: crews are ranked on their best contract, by shifts held, then value sold per member and per shift, then the contract signed first; no place is shared. At the end of the season, the top ten crews receive credits, for each member active at the end of their best contract: 150, 100, 60, then 25 from 4th to 10th, with at least 8 ranked dives in the season (returned or lost, not flagged, at least one room searched). Ranks are counted among the crews with at least one member eligible this way. A crew that held no shift gets nothing, even with eligible members, and its place does not pass to the next. A crew frozen by the administration at the end of the season (the 1st of the month at 05:00) gets nothing and gives its place to the next.

What the settlement also does

• A contract ends at the settlement of the season's last shift, with all its shifts held, even if its period is not over (its due is then not claimed); a new contract can be signed from the first shift of the next season.
• A contract ended by a missed due or a disbanded crew keeps only the shifts of its paid periods for the season leaderboard.
• A captain absent two shifts in a row loses the cap at the settlement, to the member with the most dives in the contract, unless that member is absent too.
• A crew with no dive for 14 shifts is disbanded, along with its contract.
• Two members of a crew on the same address or the same browser three shifts in a row flag the crew: their dives leave the leaderboards and prizes, and the crew's dives no longer count for the directive until the administration lifts the flag. Two people playing from the same home are affected.
• The value per member and per shift counts every active member of each shift, including the absent ones and those who joined after the last departure.
• A guest player (no account) dives and is ranked like everyone else, but gets no prize: only the registered members of their crew receive it.

Simulator

The simulator needs no account: a practice deck of five rooms, 240 s of oxygen, unranked. Five practice dives per hour without an account, unlimited for members.

Accessibility

Pages reload by themselves when a time limit ends; the “no automatic refresh” option in the preferences turns these reloads off: the server then applies the time limits at your next click. The colour-blind aid in the preferences writes the colour of each light; the colours of the Wiring Bay each have their own pattern. When the system asks for reduced motion, the Tampered Panel shows before and after, one above the other, instead of blinking. The map has a table view.