THARSIS

THARSIS is a browser RPG set on a half-terraformed Mars. You control your colonist in third person — your character walks, works and fights on screen while the camera orbits behind them. Gather resources, level five skills, fight feral machines, complete directives, and trade with every other colonist through a shared economy.

Your pack, vault, credits, skills and structures persist on the server and travel with you between zones.

You spawn instantly as a guest with a generated callsign. Open the Profile window (P) to lock in a permanent callsign and password so your progress is never lost.

When $TAR launches, the entry gate activates — but safely. In Profile (P) your wallet signs a short message to prove the address is yours (so nobody can use someone else's wallet), then we read its balance to confirm ≥ 1,000 $TAR. A message signature is not a transaction — it can never move funds or approve spending.

• Saves automatically: pack, vault, hotbar, credits, skills, structures, directives.
• Guest sessions persist in your browser for 30 days — claim the account to keep it forever.
• Entry gate: prove ownership with a message signature, then a read-only balance check. Never a transaction.

• Talk to the Quartermaster Bot next to spawn — it issues your plasma cutter, rock drill, cryo extractor, arc blade and starter supplies.
• Stand near the Med-Bay Beacon in the plaza any time you need health.
• Cut a few wreck piles in the west yard, drill the quarry boulders to the east.
• Open the Trade Network (M) to see what other colonists are selling.
• Avoid the Red Wastes until you have spare supplies — death there drops cargo.

The frontier is split into four zones connected by glowing airlock rings — walk into a ring and you emerge on the far side, no loading screen.

• Haven Dome — central hub: vault, trade hub, roulette, med-bay, quartermaster.
• Red Wastes — hostile wreck fields to the north. Best salvage and crystals; mobs roam; cargo drops on death.
• Greenhouse Belt — peaceful terraform gardens to the south. Biofiber, quiet ice pools, and the only ground where Hab Pods may be placed.
• Ice Fields — calm cryo flats to the east with the Melt Station refinery.

• Med-Bay Beacon — stand near it to recover health quickly.
• Vault Terminal — deposit and withdraw stored supplies (only accessible here).
• Trade Network Hub — the market landmark; the trade UI itself opens anywhere with M.
• Cargo Roulette — free spin every 12 hours once your average skill hits 3.
• Quartermaster Bot — tutorial and starter kit.
• North airlock → Red Wastes · South → Greenhouse Belt · East → Ice Fields.

The dangerous zone. Dust Crawlers patrol the open flats, Scrap Drones drift through the deep field, and Ridge Stalkers haunt the far north. The fenced camp by the south airlock is a safe pocket — hostiles won't follow you in, and its oxy-post refills your suit.

• Richest wreck piles and the only dense crystal veins.
• Suit O₂ drains out here — bring canisters or hug the oxy-post.
• Dying drops 40-60% of each resource stack into a wreck cache. Tools and weapons never drop.

• Bio-stalks yield biofiber (cut with the plasma cutter).
• Scattered ice pools for calm cryo work.
• The only zone where Hab Pods can be placed — one per colonist; /pickup moves it.
• Fully safe: no hostiles, no O₂ drain under the garden domes.

• Dense ice deposits — the cryotech leveling ground.
• Melt Station: refines 3 ice shards into 1 Purified Water (Engineering XP).
• O₂ drains on the flats; the field oxy-post by the west airlock refills you.
• North pass connects directly to the Red Wastes.

Die in the Red Wastes and a glowing wreck cache appears where you fell, holding the cargo you dropped. You have 15 minutes to return and click it before it disperses. Caches in safe zones don't happen — you only lose cargo where the frontier is dangerous.

• Gather salvage, regolith, crystals, ice and biofiber with the right tools.
• Refine ice into water, deploy heat beacons in the field, bank the surplus.
• Sell extras on the Trade Network; buy gear like the Pulse Lance from other colonists.
• Push into the Wastes for crystals, kills, and directive progress.
• Claim Daily Directives, spin the roulette, repeat tomorrow.

• WASD or arrows to move — your colonist runs in the direction you steer, relative to the camera.
• Drag the mouse to orbit the camera, scroll to zoom, Q/E to rotate.
• Click things in the world (nodes, hostiles, stations) to interact — walk within reach first.
• 1-6 select hotbar slots; consumables on the hotbar are used instantly.

Open the Wardrobe (U) to customize your astronaut with a live 3D preview. Five helmets, five suits, seven backpacks, six equipment attachments worn in any combination, plus suit colors, armor trims, visor tints, body frames, faces, and skin tones.

• Cosmetics are strictly visual — they never change stats or balance.
• ★ premium pieces (military gear, jet packs, rare colors) are free during beta and move to the $TAR shop at token launch.
• Your configuration saves to your account and is visible to everyone in the colony.

• 24 pack slots; stackable resources stack to 999.
• Six hotbar slots — assign items from the Pack window (I).
• The Vault adds 48 protected slots in Haven Dome.

• Wreck piles → Salvage (Plasma Cutter) — Salvaging XP.
• Regolith boulders → Regolith (Rock Drill) — Mining XP.
• Crystal veins → Core Crystals (Rock Drill) — Mining XP. Wastes only.
• Ice deposits → Ice Shards (Cryo Extractor) — Cryotech XP.
• Bio-stalks → Biofiber (Plasma Cutter) — Greenhouse Belt.
• Hostiles sometimes drop Core Crystals on top of credits.

• Heat Beacon — 30 salvage, 15 regolith, 3 core crystals. Heals anyone nearby for 60 seconds. Place anywhere.
• Hab Pod — 400 salvage, 150 regolith, 40 biofiber. Greenhouse Belt only, one per colonist, permanent landmark.
• Open Build (B), pick a structure, click the ground to place. Type /pickup in comms to remove yours.

• Combat — kills. Raises damage and max health.
• Salvaging — wrecks and bio-stalks.
• Mining — boulders and crystal veins.
• Cryotech — ice harvesting.
• Engineering — refining at the Melt Station.
• Early levels come fast; the cap is 50. Average skill level 3 unlocks the Cargo Roulette.

Combat is melee: get close and click the hostile. Your Arc Blade swings every half second; the Pulse Lance (player market) hits much harder. Hostiles telegraph by charging you — back out of range between swings to kite them.

• Dust Crawler — weak, fast to kill, light pay.
• Scrap Drone — tanky, 15% crystal drop.
• Ridge Stalker — far-north apex. Heavy hits, best rewards, 30% double-crystal drop.

• Inside Haven Dome and the Greenhouse Belt your suit recharges on its own.
• The Wastes and Ice Fields drain O₂ steadily; at zero, your health bleeds instead.
• Refill at oxy-posts (cyan pylons) or pop an Oxy Canister from the hotbar.

• Med-Bay Beacon in Haven plaza — fast aura heal.
• Heat Beacons — buildable field heal, 60 seconds.
• Purified Water (+35 HP) and Med-Gel (+65 HP) from the hotbar.

Gold are the in-game currency: mobs, directives and the roulette mint them; player trades circulate them. Resources flow from gathering into building costs, refining, and the market.

• Gold in: hostile bounties, directive rewards, roulette jackpots, selling to players.
• Gold out: buying from players, future shop sinks.
• $TAR sinks (on-chain, at launch): paid roulette spins (50% burned / 50% treasury) and the 5% treasury fee on credits-for-$TAR sales.

• Open anywhere with M; the physical hub stands in Haven Dome.
• Buy — browse colonist listings, pay credits.
• Sell — list pack items at your price; they escrow until sold or cancelled.
• My Listings — cancel and reclaim anytime.
• Gold ⇄ $TAR — at token launch, sell in-game gold for $TAR on-chain; sellers keep 95%.

• 20 segments — roughly 1 in 20 spins pays a 120-credit jackpot; the rest are supply drops.
• One free spin every 12 hours (average skill 3 required).
• Paid spins arrive with $TAR: $3 of $TAR per spin at the live price — 50% burned, 50% to the colony treasury.

$TAR (Tharsis Reserve) is the THARSIS token on Solana. It gates entry to the colony and powers the separate Marketplace — and it does so under a strict wallet-isolation rule for your safety.

• Entry gate: hold ≥ 1,000 $TAR, confirmed by a READ-ONLY balance check.
• Ownership is proven by signing a one-time MESSAGE (not a transaction), so nobody can pass the gate with an address they don't own.
• The game never submits a transaction or requests a spend approval — there is nothing for an exploit to drain.
• All $TAR trading is fenced off on the separate Marketplace page, away from gameplay.
• We never ask for your seed phrase or for you to 'validate'/'approve' a wallet. Ignore anyone who does.

• 48 slots inside the Haven Dome terminal; stacks to 999 per slot.
• Vault items never drop on death — bank before long Wastes runs.

• World chat in the bottom-left corner — every colonist online sees it.
• Rate-limited to keep the channel readable; 240 characters max.
• Slash commands: /pickup removes your placed structure, /help lists commands.

• Three objectives every UTC day — gather, hunt, or refine.
• Progress counts automatically as you play; claim rewards in the Directives window (J).
• Rewards: credits plus a chunk of skill XP.