Time tokens are Immortal Realm's playtime currency. They're separate from gold and from PvP currency, with one specific job: rewarding you for being on the shard. The design intent is that show-up time gets recognized.
This page covers how time tokens work, where they come from, and what they're for.
What Time Tokens Are
A time token is a unit of account-bound playtime currency. Tokens accumulate while your account has at least one character actively playing on the shard. They're spent at the Token Reward Vendor at the Britain bank (Trammel, ~1436, 1699) for cosmetic and utility items. Check your current balance any time with [TokenBalance in-game (AccessLevel.Player).
Tokens are:
- Account-level — earned by the account, spendable across all your characters.
- Account-bound — non-transferable. You can't give your tokens to another player.
- Earned through active play — anti-AFK gating ensures only real play time counts.
- Durable — they don't expire.
- Separate from gold — they're a parallel currency, not an alternative gold form.
How You Earn Them
Verified earn mechanics from PlaytimeTokenBootstrap (Scripts/custom/Core/PlaytimeTokenSystem.cs):
- 1 token per 15 active minutes (
TokenIntervalMinutes = 15). - The system polls every 60 seconds and counts the tick as "active" if your character's position changed since the last poll.
- After 10 minutes without a position change (
AfkTimeoutMinutes = 10), accrual pauses. The next position change resumes it. - Convoy zones multiply the active-tick by 3× (
ConvoyRewards.GetTickMultiplier) — escorting a convoy is the fastest passive earn rate available. - Mentoring sessions add a separate bonus tick (
MentoringTracker.GetMentorTickBonus) on top.
In practice this means a 4-hour play session yields ~16 tokens of pure passive accrual; a session that includes a convoy escort earns 3× during the zone time on top.
Anti-AFK Gating
The gate is position-based, not action-based. Each 60-second tick records your character's position; if the position is the same as last tick, the timer toward 10-minute AFK keeps running. Move the character before the 10-minute window expires and you stay active.
What this means in practice:
- Standing in one spot crafting at a forge, casting in place, or fighting without moving will eventually trip the AFK gate even though you're "playing" — move occasionally to keep accrual going.
- Walking, running, recalling, or any positional change is what the system reads as activity.
- The check is intentionally simple — there's no advanced macro detection in the token system itself, just the position poll. A macro that bounces a character between two tiles would defeat the gate, but doing so is a TOS-grade exploit handled outside this system.
Players who genuinely play accumulate tokens at the listed rate.
What You Can Spend Tokens On
The Token Reward Vendor has a catalog of items priced in tokens. Categories include:
- Character slots — extra character slots beyond the account default.
- Dye tubs and dye recharges — cosmetic dye options for clothing and equipment.
- Skill scrolls — selected utility skill bumps.
- Titles — character titles tied to time-token milestones.
- Mounts — vanity mounts available only via tokens.
- Decoration items — house decoration, statue items, banners, themed cosmetics.
- Vanity weapons / armor — cosmetic gear that can be turned into actual gear with appropriate skill, or used as deeded display items.
The catalog rotates. Some items are permanent fixtures; others come and go with seasonal content (see also the planned Seasonal Ledger which will eventually layer on top of tokens for season-specific rewards).
Why Tokens Are Separate from Gold
The design intent is that gold rewards productive in-world activity, while tokens reward simply being present. These are different things and shouldn't be conflated:
- Gold rewards combat, crafting, trade, dungeon farming. Players who do more in-world get more gold.
- Tokens reward play time. Players who simply show up regularly get tokens.
Conflating them produces bad incentives. If tokens were just gold under another name, players would optimize for whichever gave better rate, and the "show up to be recognized" intent would erode. Keeping them separate means a player who logs in for short, regular sessions builds token wealth even if they don't have time for big productive sessions; meanwhile a player who runs hard for a few hours but plays less frequently builds gold wealth even with fewer tokens.
The two currencies serve different player rhythms and produce different reward catalogs.
How Quests Interact with the Token Economy
The shard's hand-authored quest line pays in tokens, not gold (mostly). Quest content is meant to be evergreen — the same quest produces the same reward whether you do it in your first week or your second year — and tokens are a better fit for that than gold (which inflates over time).
A new player working through the quest line accumulates a meaningful token balance alongside their gold. A returning player who already cleared the quest line keeps their existing token balance even if they take a break.
Cosmetic vs Utility Rewards
The vendor catalog leans heavily cosmetic, with some utility:
- Cosmetic rewards are the bulk: dyes, decorations, vanity items, titles. These don't affect gameplay power; they affect how your character looks and the visible markers of your account's history.
- Utility rewards are the smaller share: extra character slots, specific quality-of-life items. These have some functional impact but aren't power creep.
The shard intentionally avoids power-creep token rewards. There's no "spend tokens to skip a 100-skill grind" item, no "spend tokens to get a master-crafted weapon" item. The currency rewards play time; it doesn't shortcut the rest of the game.
What Tokens Are NOT
To be clear about boundaries:
- Not pay-to-win. No real money involvement. No power gap between token-rich and token-poor players in actual gameplay outcomes.
- Not transferable. Account-bound. You can't gift tokens, sell them, or trade them. Your account's tokens are yours.
- Not gold equivalent. Different earn mechanics, different spend catalog. Treating tokens as gold or vice versa misses the point.
- Not seasonal. Tokens persist across seasons. Future planned Seasonal Ledger content may add seasonal goals that consume tokens, but the base token system isn't season-bounded.
- Not a treadmill. No "spend 1000 tokens this week or lose them" pressure. Tokens accumulate at your pace.
Where to Read Next
- For how tokens fit into the broader player economy, Immortal Realm Economy.
- For the institutional / system layer the token economy sits inside, Immortal Realm Custom Systems.
- For the planned seasonal layer that may layer on top of tokens, Seasonal Ledger.
- The download page is the on-ramp when you're ready to play.
