# North Star

The orienting principle for the project. Pinned 2026-05-12. All design decisions check against this.

## The pin

> **You start as an apprentice with rough tools and rough work.**
> **You grow into a guildmaster whose named legends bear your maker's mark across the realm.**
> **Every session, the visible world is a little richer. That richness *is* the reward.**

## The design tenet

> **Every meaningful progression beat has a visual expression.**
> **Stat increases without visual change are not events. Visual changes are.**

Stats are bookkeeping. The visual change is the celebration. The game serves the felt experience of *watching your guild become a metropolis* — SimCity's logic applied to a craft hall. Underneath, complexity can be deep; on the surface, what the player sees grows.

## Discovery, not demonstration

The peak is **not shown upfront**. Players discover the climb as they make it. Aspirations are *near aspirations expanding outward*, never the legend revealed in hour one. This rules out the "previous master's wall" framing — it gives away the Lamborghini before the player has earned the right to want it.

The Tier 5 visual splendor exists in the world's *lore* (whispered, rumored, occasionally glimpsed) but is never put on display for the new player. When you reach it, the reveal is yours.

## Pacing curve

| Phase | Hours | Feel | Player experience |
|---|---|---|---|
| **Apprentice** | 0–2 | Tutorial ramp | First Common. First hire. First expedition. First tier transition is the tutorial graduation. Player feels capable by hour 2. |
| **Journeyman** | 2–15 | Discovery | New zones unlock. Hire pool deepens. First Masterwork attempt. First patron tier. Player starts to feel the shape of the system. |
| **Master** | 15–30 | Mastery | Roster matures. First named legends crystallize. Signature crafts emerge. Player has favorite characters and a working strategy. |
| **Grandmaster** | 30–50 | Plateau & effort | Specific rare materials. Masterwork patron arcs. Deep specialization. Progress slows, intentionally — every step is earned. |
| **Legend** | 50+ | Endgame | The epic questline. The committed players' time-sink. Prestige rewards. The Lamborghini, finally revealed. |

The early ramp is **fast** — mainstream-friendly, mobile-comfortable, hits dopamine quickly. The mid is **steady** — discovery and accumulation. The plateau is **earned** — players know why they're grinding. The endgame is **optional but worthy** — those who get there will engage.

## The first tier transition

Apprentice → Journeyman is the tutorial graduation. The onboarding arc ([12-onboarding](12-onboarding.md)'s Crude Pickaxe → Lantern) is the first half; the back half is the player's first independent expedition concluding in a Journeyman promotion ceremony — backdrop shift, banner, named acknowledgement from the cast. **First taste of "tier-up as event."**

## The endgame questline

The Legend tier (hours 50+) is the equivalent of MMO raid content — a specific bounded questline with prestige rewards that only committed players reach. Content volume can be modest; what matters is that it *exists* and is *worthy*. The fully-realized Lamborghini visual treatment lives here.

## Concepts that fall out

**Tier transitions as celebration scenes.** Backdrop swap, banner unfurl, narrator beat, new anchors filling in. Not a stat popup. A *moment.*

**Visible-but-locked aspirations.** Drip-fed at the edges of the player's reach. Not exposed upfront. Always *one more rung* visible, never the whole ladder.

**The Lamborghini.** The legendary tier visual peak. Animated holo + ornate paperdoll + bespoke art + named-and-titled cast. Fully revealed only on arrival.

**Cosmetic-only customization stays earned.** Visual style is achieved, not picked. Resist transmog. Title choice and gear-within-tier are fine; tier-aesthetic itself is climbed to.

**The "alive hall" grows with the climb.** More anchors filling in as roster expands. The hall is the metropolis-skyline. Empty hall = sad; bustling hall = the win condition.

## What this pin commits to

- **Production effort concentrates on visual systems** — paperdoll layering, tier-variant gear, shader/glow/particle stack, backdrop tier variants. This matches the AI-augmented pipeline (ComfyUI + palette/dither).
- **The 60-hour content envelope** has a concrete tier-shaped frame: 5 tiers × distinct-content-per-tier. Tractable for sim-driven scoping.
- **Story is texture, not load-bearing.** Whimsy and voice serve the experience but don't carry it. Risk concentrates on systems quality (manageable for the dev's background), not artistry quality (high-variance bet avoided).
- **Replayability shape has a default answer.** Arc closes at the Legend questline. Post-arc = open sandbox (keep playing your legend) and/or NG+ with kept signature heirlooms as starting gear.
- **The first hour's job is "make the player feel the first transition."** Not "show them the peak." The peak reveals itself through play.

## What it rules out

- Telegraphing the endgame visual treatment in early hours
- Stat-only progression beats (every meaningful rank-up has visual expression)
- Free-form cosmetic transmog systems
- Pure-narrative / coloring-book design as primary motivator
- A flat difficulty/progression curve — early ramp must be *fast*, late grind must be *earned*