Thirty plates of mirror-black obsidian spiral down to the Crown Chamber. You carry four ingots, three actions, and a private reason for being here. Every card is a question, and the question is never what the card does. It is what the board does when you put it there.
The odds here are not a wheel. They are a formula, and you moved it before you arrived. Every Black Diamond you carry sharpens the seam. A Glitch Key buys certainty outright.
Three pieces on the felt, and a price on each. The bench behind the counter will raise what you already own, for a markup. What you put over the fence buys what you need now.
Nothing yet. The first descent is the one that fills this room.
Thirty plates spiral inward and down from the outer rim to the Crown Chamber, where the light is. The six districts are told apart by their material: mirror obsidian, smoked glass, brushed steel, gold leaf, dead signal, white gold. Walking is free of dice. You move one plate per action, and only to a plate touching where you stand.
You have three actions. An action is: move one plate, work the plate you are standing on, or play one ingot. Playing an ingot also costs energy, and energy is the only thing between you and the Crown. A VAULT ACCESS plate lets you spend an action to open the Double or Nothing Vault instead.
Eight classes. Black Diamond, Glitch, Shadow, Reallionaire, Artifact, Boss, Portal, Crown. Lift one and the board answers you in its own material: the stone brightens at the edges, the glass clarifies, the steel opens a seam. Put it down and it fractures.
Reallionaire cards strike coins, and a coin is not a resource like the others. Nobody can steal it, no event can drain it, and nothing in the deck can spend it. It counts for standing, it sharpens the seam at the vault, and it is the only thing in this place you can burn. The Artifact SPECIE melts two of them down into a Crown Fragment, if you would rather have the win.
Three ingots in the right order stop being three ingots. Glitch then Portal then Black Diamond is REALITY BREAK. Artifact then Crown is ROYAL ASCENSION. Shadow then Glitch is PHANTOM TAKEOVER. Reallionaire then Artifact then Black Diamond is CARBON THRONE. And a combo needs you to switch class.
Stay in one school and the chain pays instead. Every card belongs to a school: Carbon, Signal, Ledger, Crown. The longer you hold one line without switching, the more it pays, and it pays in Black Diamond Energy, which is what the endgame costs. You have three actions. A combo and a chain both want them, and you cannot buy both.
The second economy, and the one that decides the last floor. You do not collect it, you refine it: press Black Diamonds into it, take it off the districts you hold, or chain for it. It raises relics, it buys the market's rarest pieces, and it pays for the cards that only exist near the bottom.
Objects, not counters. Each one works while you carry it, and each has a hidden ability that only exists once it is raised to level III. Carry three, raise all three, and the last door opens. A rival standing on your plate can lift one out of your case. WARD it, or lose it.
Working a plate claims it. Hold two plates in a district and the district is yours, and held districts pay every turn. Some plates are buried treasure, some are running corrupted code, some bite, some are warded by whoever holds them. Glitch Gates open at random and join plates that had no business touching: while a gate is open, it is a legal move.
The descent is a clock. Each floor changes a rule. Floor 5 the Warden holds the vault, floor 8 a Glitch Storm never lifts, floor 9 corruption spreads plate by plate, floor 10 the board starts collapsing. The Shadow Market opens in the back room and trades in relics. Twelve named events happen to the board whether or not you are ready.
A Boss card summons him. He walks two plates a turn and drains every plate he stands on into a Dead Zone. Everyone may strike him. Whoever lands the final blow takes the rarest reward, and the ground he drained comes back.
The panel at the side of the board is your read on the game. It looks at your hand, your case, your ground and the floor you are standing on, and tells you what it would do and why. It never takes a turn for you. It is advice, in plain numbers, and you are free to ignore it.
Two ways, and both live on floor eleven. Hold three districts, carry three relics raised to III, stand on the dais, and run the four-step crown sequence while the floor comes apart under you. Or take it by force: reach the chamber holding four Crown Fragments. If neither happens, the descent ends after eleven rounds and the highest Legacy takes it.