Frequently asked questions

Breachwalker is a web-first extraction survival game from Benum Labs. The Hold recruits breachers to enter rifts — expedition spaces where corrupted ledger entries have cracked open. You stand on the surface hold, pick a rift from the ledger, pack your expedition kit, and breach inward — managing Corruption Tolerance, fighting through procedurally derived space, and extracting loot to your vault before you collapse. Danger, scale, and density differ catalog entry by catalog entry because each rift grows from a different wound in the Record.

Yes — in the sense that rift terrain is derived from real Bitcoin data, not a cosmetic crypto skin. Fee pressure, transaction density, difficulty, and halving era shape each rift’s danger and scale. You do not need to own Bitcoin or connect a wallet to play the closed alpha. The public archive is read-only substrate for world generation — not a login gate.

Because Bitcoin is a public, immutable timeline of sealed moments — each block a record of how busy the network was, how hard mining was, and which subsidy era the chain was in. That is a natural spine for expedition worldbuilding: verifiable history instead of server-only fiction. Breachwalker maps public block statistics into rift danger, scale, and density, then seeds layouts and loot deterministically from each catalog entry’s identity. You read the archive; you do not need to trade on it to play.

Public block statistics — how many transactions fit, how heavy the block was, fee pressure at the time, mining difficulty, input/output complexity, and era flags such as halving or difficulty-adjustment blocks. These normalize into gameplay dimensions like density, scale, danger, and harshness. Congested, fee-heavy history tends to produce more punishing rifts; quiet eras read differently. Exact mapping formulas are Breachwalker’s generation spec and can evolve with balance — the principle is that rift feel grows from inspectable chain history.

The player-facing archive index for a rift — how the surface hold labels one wound in the ledger (for example a halving-era reference). Breachers breach rifts and read catalog numbers, not archive jargon in the UI. Each entry anchors to a specific sealed moment in the public record that seeds that rift’s identity. For how that archive maps to generation, see the Bitcoin rifts page.

No. The closed alpha needs only a browser — no wallet, no keys, no mempool literacy. Understanding why a halving-era rift hits harder helps you appreciate the world; it is not required to pack your kit or extract. The game teaches breach, extract, and craft. Curious about the archive behind the ledger? The Bitcoin rifts page explains the worldbuilding layer.

A rift is where a corrupted ledger entry has cracked open into breachable space — not a hand-authored level. Danger and loot crystallize from the same fracture: what makes a rift punishing is what makes it worth breaching. You choose rifts from the global atlas and your personal ledger. Halving-era rifts carry extra weight; high-density rifts feel resource-heavy and crowded.

Each catalog entry anchors to a real sealed moment in Bitcoin’s public archive. Statistics from that entry normalize into terrain scores — density, scale, danger, harshness, and related dimensions. Deterministic seeds derived from the entry’s identity then drive layout and loot generation so the same catalog entry always shares the same core rift parameters and fixed legendary coordinates. Personal survey fog can still differ between your runs; global atlas claims do not. Full plain-language glossary on the Bitcoin rifts page.

A breach is one run into a rift. Fabricate a breach key in the workshop, pack healing stock and gear into your expedition kit, cross inward, and either extract with loot or collapse back to the surface when Corruption Tolerance runs out.

The atlas is the shared global registry of charted rifts — which expedition spaces breachwalkers worldwide have mapped. Your personal rift ledger shows what you can breach today: open routes, sealed rifts waiting on anchor spikes, and rifts you have already run. Virgin rifts grow the atlas for everyone when a breachwalker extracts for the first time.

Top-tier rarity bands above routine loot. Legendary and mythic items can sit at fixed coordinates inside a rift — predetermined locations every breachwalker maps to the same place. One-of-one is the rarest tier above mythic: a single global instance tied to a specific find, not a stack of duplicates. These are the drops collectors chase and the items designed for NFT bridge export, because each carries real provenance.

Legendary and mythic items at fixed coordinates are globally unique on the shared atlas. The first breachwalker to extract one claims it for the world — recorded on the atlas so every other breachwalker knows that coordinate is spent. One-of-one global claims follow the same first-find-wins model on the roadmap. Routine gear below legendary still drops from personal encounters and is not atlas-locked at a single world coordinate. Full global claim authority ships with the live cloud atlas; the closed alpha focuses on the breach loop first.

Combat death severs the bond — that hero is lost. Anything carried unbanked stays behind. Gear already in the Hold vault is safe. Some banked equipped gear may survive depending on rarity; the rest of that hero’s investment is gone. You Bond a replacement from your Company. Run out of Corruption Tolerance and you collapse instead: dragged to the surface with what you kept — the hero survives. Collapse is not death.

Yes for the hero — combat death ends that bond permanently. No account wipe: your Walker, Hold vault, lore, and formulas persist. Collapse from empty Corruption Tolerance is a soft failure only. The Company is what makes hero permadeath tolerable — lose one operative, not everything the Hold has banked.

Yes. The core loop is pack your kit, breach a rift with a bonded hero, push while Corruption Tolerance drains, and extract loot to your vault before greed or combat ends the run. Unbanked loot is at risk every breach; combat death costs the hero. It plays in the browser as solo expedition survival rather than a squad tactical shooter.

Similar extract-or-lose-it pressure — kit packing, greed punished, high-stakes loot — but Breachwalker is expedition survival in procedurally derived rifts, not a military FPS. Single-player in alpha; CT, collapse, and hero permadeath on combat death drive pacing alongside combat.

Each breach is single-player in the alpha. Breachwalkers share an asynchronous global atlas — charted rifts, virgin ledger entries, first-extract milestones — so the world grows together without live co-op or PvP in the same instance.

Not on the current roadmap. Breachwalker is built around solo expedition runs and async world progression. Synchronous squad breaches are a permanent non-goal for the core design.

The Walker is you — the investigator who runs the Hold, vault, lore, and Company. A hero is a mortal operative Bonded into that Company and sent into rifts. The Hold’s progress outlives any single hero; combat death severs that bond, not your account.

Bonding commits a Company slot to a new hero. Immersion saturates that hero with the Record so they can survive rift pressure — it is what makes an operative breach-ready, not a blessing or bloodline gift. When the bond is severed, capacity frees for a new Bond.

Four starting paths for a Bonded hero: Warrior, Attuned, Ranger, and Keeper. Each brings its own ability tree, attributes, and gear affinities. Display names stay those four — not generic mage or cleric labels.

Specialization trees unlocked as a hero deepens — eleven locked paths, including unique lines (Berserker, Unraveler, Quill, Sentinel, Warden) and bridge subclasses that join two archetypes (Conduit, Paladin, Oracle, Druid, Duelist, Rune Archer). A subclass tree is endgame-scale investment, not a short unlock list.

Depth you invest into archetype and subclass trees. Points buy ranks on nodes; some nodes need matching gear equipped to stay live. Each hero only sees their own archetype tree plus unlocked subclass trees.

Three kinds of ability node. Passives are standing stat scaling from investment. Echoes auto-fire when something happens in combat — a hit, a block, being struck — you never choose their timing. Arts are player-activated, turn-consuming actions you choose when to cast. Arts cost Corruption Tolerance, Saturation, or HP depending on the Art; Passives and Echoes do not charge those resources for firing.

Corruption Tolerance (CT) is the expedition vital — it drains as you push a rift and taxes combat turns; empty CT forces collapse, not hero death. Saturation is a separate pool many Record-flavored Arts draw on; it regenerates over world time and on winning encounters. Some Arts cost CT or HP instead. Passives and Echoes do not spend Saturation or CT to fire.

In the in-game Codex and ability trees on the Company / Hold screens — node names, costs, and gates live there. This FAQ stays high-level on types and identity; it is not a full ability encyclopedia.

Early access for breachwalkers who test the breach loop before wider release. You breach rifts, extract loot, fabricate in the workshop, and send feedback while we harden the client and backend. Alpha testers directly influence Corruption Tolerance tuning, loot pressure, and workshop balance.

Play the full breach loop in the browser: pick a rift from the ledger, pack your expedition kit, breach inward, manage Corruption Tolerance, extract gear to your vault, and fabricate breach keys and healing stock between runs. Report bugs, friction, and whether the loop feels worth repeating.

Invites roll out in batches — the game is not open to the public yet. Join the alpha list on the signup page; we email when your cohort is ready.

Join the alpha list with your email — Discord optional. Invites are manual and sequential. Check spam if you do not hear back within a few weeks of signing up.

Yes. Closed alpha access costs nothing. No purchase, no wallet, no crypto required. You are helping us prove the breach loop is sticky before marketplace and NFT features ship.

Modern desktop browsers — Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge. Breachwalker is web-first; a native mobile build is not planned for the alpha.

No. The closed alpha runs entirely off-chain: no seed phrase, no gas fees, no NFT minting. Wallet connection and the asset bridge arrive on the roadmap after the core loop proves out.

Every valuable item starts in gameplay. Breaches drop gear and reagents. The workshop turns reagents into breach keys, healing stock, and equipment. Breachwalkers list surplus loot on the player marketplace for Marks, or — on the roadmap — bridge high-tier pieces to tradeable NFTs on Base. Rare drops from harsh rifts carry provenance collectors value — which catalog entry, which era of the Record shaped the fracture.

Marks are Breachwalker’s only currency — one pool for every breachwalker, with no separate premium token for spenders. You get Marks by selling items on the in-game marketplace (buyers pay; sellers receive net after a platform fee) or by purchasing them with fiat. Breaches drop items and reagents, not Marks. Free-to-play breachwalkers earn Marks the same way: extract loot, list on the marketplace, receive payment from buyers.

Yes — a breachwalker-to-breachwalker marketplace (Exchange) is built for post-alpha live play. List crafted gear, reagents, and rare extractions at a Marks price; buyers pay; you receive net proceeds after a platform fee. High-tier items retain provenance — which rift they came from and their craft history — which supports collector pricing. Closed alpha stays off-chain without marketplace settlement.

Breachwalker is item-first soft P2E: economic upside comes from valuable gear and skilled play, not from logging in for a token drip. Planned paths: sell loot on the in-game marketplace for Marks, then cash out through platform fiat rails when available; or bridge gear you earned to a utility NFT on Base and sell on OpenSea or another external market. Returns depend on demand, rarity, and how well you play — nothing is guaranteed. Marketplace and bridge are roadmap features.

Designed as no pay-to-win. Equippable gear comes from breaches, workshop fabrication, or player trade — not a cash-only gear tab. Marks are one currency for everyone; free-to-play breachwalkers earn them by selling items other players want. Spending fiat is a shortcut to Marks for marketplace convenience, not a gate on the best mythic loot.

Yes. Gameplay is how items enter the economy. Extract reagents, fabricate competitive gear, sell on the marketplace, and spend the Marks you receive on other breachwalkers’ listings — without ever topping up with fiat. Skill in rift selection, extraction timing, and crafting choices should matter more than whether you bought Marks.

No purchase required for the alpha. At full release, breach entry uses crafted consumables — breach keys and anchor spikes you fabricate from reagents extracted in play — not a direct cash gate per run. Fiat buys Marks for marketplace convenience; it does not mint exclusive tier loot.

Extraction, crafting, vault storage, and the Corruption Tolerance loop — all off-chain. Marketplace listing, Marks trading, NFT bridge, and OpenSea export follow once the core breach loop proves out. Alpha testers shape loot and workshop balance before economy features go live.

Yes. Utility-first item NFTs are on the roadmap. The goal is gear that stays meaningful inside rifts when you bridge it back — weapons and armor with stats tied to what you extracted and crafted, not JPEG collectibles with a reskin.

Legendary, mythic, and one-of-one gear — the globally unique tiers tracked on the shared atlas. Each is a distinct instance with provenance: which rift, which catalog entry, often which fixed coordinate was claimed first. Routine common-to-rare loot is stackable gameplay gear and is not designed for NFT export. Bridge targets are the finds worth carrying off-chain because only one walker can own that world history.

Loot lives off-chain in your vault by default. Bridge out: the item becomes a tradeable NFT on Base and leaves your playable inventory — no duplicate on-chain and in-game at once. Bridge in: connect a wallet holding that NFT and the item returns to your expedition kit. Sell the NFT externally and in-game function for the previous holder ends after ownership is reverified.

That is the intended path after the asset bridge launches on Base. Earn gear in a rift, bridge out to Base, list on OpenSea or another NFT marketplace, and a buyer acquires the on-chain item. Bridge a different piece back in when you want playable loadout gear again. External trading ships with the bridge — not available in the closed alpha.

Base — lower fees and mature marketplace tooling than minting everything on Bitcoin L1. The public archive remains the substrate for rift generation; Base carries the tradeable representation of gear you choose to export. Coinbase Wallet is the onboarding target, including paths that reduce seed-phrase friction for players new to crypto.

We are exploring sponsored minting through a game-operated wallet so your first bridge-out may not require holding ETH for gas. Limits and eligibility will ship with the asset bridge.

After the breach loop and in-game marketplace prove out in live play. Closed alpha testers shape extraction, combat, and crafting before any wallet connection or mint button goes live.

Planned separately from the Base asset bridge. Ordinals-era holder partnerships — recognition items, soulbound rewards, bonus rifts tied to historic mints — would use Bitcoin-aware verification, not the same pipeline as EVM NFT custody.

No separate whale mint track. NFTs export gear you already earned — bridge out a blade you extracted and fabricated, sell it on OpenSea, or bridge it back for rifts. There is no cash-only on-chain mythic crate. Utility inside breaches is the design bar.

Not yet. The closed alpha is fully off-chain — no wallet, no minting, no bridge. You are testing the breach and extraction loop. NFT export arrives on the roadmap after marketplace and live-play validation.