The Surface Won't Save You. Build Something That Will.

Playstyle

Grudges plays as a third-person action RPG with optional first-person aim. You start as a survivor — one blade, one coat, one grudge. Everyone else you meet is a survivor too. The whole game is the question of who you let into your camp, what you build there together, and who you raise a banner against.

There is no main quest railroading you toward a final boss. There is only the camp you anchor, the allies you take in, the guild you found, the faction you pledge to, and the four other banners that turn on you the day you do.

Living NPCs — Same Rules As You

This is the load-bearing rule of the whole game: every NPC runs the same systems you do. Your hired Woodcutter, the wandering survivor at the crossroads, the Hollow Lord raider chief — they all share the same stat sheet, the same profession trees, the same XP table, the same perks, the same combat math, the same building and crafting recipes. Nothing is scripted “for the AI” and nothing is scripted “for the player.” There's just the system, and everyone is in it.

Recruit smart. A Woodcutter with Gathering rank 4 outproduces three rank-1 Woodcutters. A Captain who's been in a dozen raids has perks that turn the tide of the next one. Equally, a Hollow Lord warband that's been raiding the surface for a year has earned every perk they're going to use on you.

"There are no monsters here. There are only people who've had more time to practice." — Network field notes, Sector 7

Combat & Professions

Seven professions. Five branches each. Four ranks per branch plus a Master capstone. Every profession costs the same to fully master (95 skill points), so no one path locks you out of another.

Combat

Pistol, Rifle, Blades, Hammers, Theft. Each branch is a complete weapon path — wield its signature item for +25% Combat XP.

Hunting

Fishing, Animals, Bounty contracts, Tracking, Trapping. Set passive snares; chase rare bounties; reveal map fog as you walk.

Gathering

Forestry, Mining, Permafrost, Rift Crystals, Salvage. Each tier unlocks a new biome or wreckage type to harvest.

Crafting

Equipment, Bladesmith, Gunsmith, Armour, Tinkering. Tinkering unlocks gun attachments and prototype gadgets.

Chemistry

Cooking, Goos (potions), Demolitions, Toxicology, Refining. Brew poisons, refine ore, transmute crystal.

Survival

Combat Training, Resolve, Endurance, Wilderness, Veterancy. Biome resists stack into damage bonuses.

Township

Leadership, Buildings, Trade, Diplomacy, Defenses. Where the camp comes from — and where the hires live.

Mastering a profession requires fan-in from all five of its branches at rank 4 plus the 20-point Master skill — a total of 95 points per profession. With a budget of around 150 points, you'll master one profession and dabble heavily in two others. Or spread thin across all seven and master none.

Camp Building

Township's Buildings & Prosperity branch unlocks the modular kit — floors, walls, doors, windows, frames, stairs, roofs, balconies, even chimneys. Pieces snap to a uniform grid so you can stack a clean keep without hand-tweaking scales. Material cost drops 10–25% as you climb the ranks.

"Build the wall before the bed. The bed can sleep on dirt. The wall cannot be put up after the raid arrives." — Township handbook, anonymous

Settlement Tiers

Your camp grows by counting the survivors who actually live there — hired NPCs, joined wanderers, recruited refugees. Cross a population threshold and the camp ranks up automatically. Each tier unlocks new building schematics, infrastructure, and faction reactions.

Allies count if they sleep in your camp's bed-roster. Lose enough population (death, desertion after a defeat) and your settlement drops a tier. Tier-down doesn't refund the XP, but it does revoke the unlocks until you re-cross the threshold.

"Five hands and a fire is a tribe. Ten hands and a wall is a village. Twenty hands and a banner is a town. Thirty hands and no plan is a graveyard." — Network proverb

Guilds & Factions

Every actor in Grudges — you, every wanderer, every hire, every raider — carries a five-element reputation vector, one number per faction. The number is what governs whether a Keeper paladin nods at you on the road or charges you with a relic-hammer. It is also how the AI factions decide who is worth raiding next.

AI Harvesting

Once your camp is standing, you don't have to swing every axe yourself. Township's Buildings branch unlocks harvester hire types as you rank up. Each one needs a small support structure to live and work in.

Camp Defense

The Township Defenses branch is your wall and your watch. Each rank adds a layer: first detection, then walls, then automation, then a fortress that can shrug off a faction warband.

Without a hire, your watchtower is decorative and your turret fires at base accuracy. Buildings are the bones — survivors are the muscle.

Recruitment & The Claim Flag

Allies don't cost gold. They cost conversation and infrastructure. Whether they join comes down to four things, in order:

The Hire Roster

Fifteen NPC roles across three families. None cost gold. Each has a recruit method (dialog / attribute check) and counts against either your Recruit Cap (camp staff) or your Follower Slots (party companions). All require flag + campfire + crate + their own tent.

Harvesters — gather while you sleep

Vendors — turn loot into gold

Ally Fighters — guards & followers

Diplomacy & Surface Communication

The surface has no central government — only fragments. Township's Diplomacy branch is how you weave them together (or pry them apart). Every faction, every wandering survivor, every ally caravan is an agent that remembers what you've done.

"We share warnings before we share food. That order matters." — Network charter, fragment

Controls

Default keybinds. Most can be remapped in the in-game settings.

Nexus API Systems

Grudges is the flagship voxel-era survival MMO (product era voxel only; a separate “nexus” product era is deferred). Its character, stats, and catalog APIs are still shared across the fleet — titles read the same eight attributes (BIO…GRA), the same derived-stat catalog, and the same asset CDN — so a survivor sheet, a VoxGrudge loadout, or a Nexus Ground toon all speak one language.

Survival · Voxel · Nexus Eras

How each Open-library era consumes the Nexus stack:

API Endpoints

Public JSON surfaces used by Grudges and sibling Nexus-era clients. Prefer caching; definitions change only on deploy.

Integration Snippets

Minimal browser examples for survival, voxel, and nexus clients.

const BASE = 'https://grudges.grudge-studio.com';

const primary = await fetch(`${BASE}/api/stats/primary`)
  .then(r => r.json());

// primary.primaryStats → [{ key:'bio', abbr:'BIO', label:'Biomass', ... }, ...]
for (const a of primary.primaryStats) {
  console.log(a.abbr, a.label, a.archetype);
}

const STORE = 'https://molochdagod.github.io/ObjectStore'; // or fleet mirror

const weapons = await fetch(`${STORE}/api/v1/weapons.json`)
  .then(r => r.json());

// Prefer slug, never display name, as the stable key
const blade = weapons.categories?.swords?.items?.[0];
const icon  = `${STORE}/icons/weapons/${blade.id}.png`;

// Character payload shared by Grudges + Nexus Ground
const survivor = {
  toonId: 'female/03',           // CDN models/characters/{gender}/{id}.gltf
  origin: 'scavenger',           // survival origin — not a class role
  attributes: {
    bio: 12, neu: 10, kin: 14, qnt: 8,
    syn: 11, chr: 7,  ent: 9,  gra: 8,
  },
  // derived stats computed client-side or via /api/stats/*
};