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 Commanders: 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.
• 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.

🌟 Stardust

Raw, reactive, and account-locked: Stardust pays for the strange work rather than the everyday kind. Every new Commander 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 Commander.

🔷 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 are free, no Prisms required: 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 Commander.

🎐 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.

Spent on

• Infusions from a companion's own Progression panel: re-rolling its passive trait (150) or raising its stat ceilings (250). Each companion can take at most 2 infusions, ever.
• Commander unlock claims from your Captain Progress page: 200 per claim, one more available every 5 Commander levels, for extra roster, nest, or expedition capacity.

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

🔩 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 Commander. See Factions for standings.