Items & decay
Every advantage in Qwazy Land erodes — characters, gear, gold. This is the schedule. The decay doctrine is the game's anti-power-creep contract.
Decay is the load-bearing rule of Qwazy Land. Every advantage erodes. Your character level, your sword's plus, your bank balance, the buff you drank in the dungeon — all of them drift back toward baseline if you stop using them. New players don't have to grind to catch up; veterans drift down to meet them.
This is the opposite of how most MMOs work. It's deliberate. The predecessor — Adventure Land — died of power creep; Qwazy Land is the experiment to fix that.
What decays #
Character XP #
If you don't gain any XP for a while, the level XP you earned starts to leak. The leak rate is gentle for the first day, steeper after. You can't go below Lv 1; you can drop several levels if you stop playing for weeks. Your stats follow your level — including HP, MP, STR.
A new character + a returning character meet in the middle: the returner thawed their gear at zero cost while they were away, but their level is half what it was.
Item upgrades #
Every weapon and armour piece carries an upgrade level (a +N badge in your inventory). The plus drifts down one level per day if you don't visit an upgrader. You see this on the slot — the small +N badge flashes red when the next decay tick is imminent.
The base level of the item itself never decays — only the plus. That means a Lv 1 sword tossed in your bank for a year is still a Lv 1 sword when you find it; just the +10 you added to it has slid back toward +0.
Gold #
Gold inflates back toward baseline. Every twelve hours, both your wallet and your bank vault lose 1 % of their value. There's no shelter — you can't bank-yourself out of inflation. Spending gold is normal. Hoarding it for years isn't.
Class rank #
Class XP decays much faster than character XP — that's the price for ranking up much faster too. See Classes.
What does NOT decay #
- The kind of an item — your iron sword stays an iron sword.
- The slot of inventory / bank space you bought.
- Your name (and your friends' names).
- Cosmetics — once you have a skin, you keep it.
- Quest progress that hasn't expired yet.
The Adventure Land lesson #
"Would this have killed Adventure Land too?"
Every change to combat, gear, or progression in Qwazy Land runs through this single test. If the answer's yes — if it widens the gap between veteran and newcomer in a permanent way — the change gets redesigned or cut. Decay is the mechanism that enforces it. The exact tuning is in design/balance.md (the developer-facing spec).
How to think about it #
Don't treasure-up. The plus on your sword is something you use, not something you protect. Spend gold, fight tough monsters, lose fights, get back up. The decay machine assumes everyone is moving; it's how you stay competitive without grinding.