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Tamer's Quest — Game Logic

Tamer's Quest is a real-time online monster-taming extraction RPG — live at tamersquest.com. Bring a team of monsters into a shared procedural cave with up to 16 players, fight and tame wild monsters, and extract through a portal before the closing safe zone ends your run. Lose, and you lose your run team.

This wiki is the single source of truth for the game's rules and formulas — it mirrors the code so you can verify behaviour at a glance. If a rule here disagrees with how the game should play, that's a bug to flag (fix the code, or this spec).

Status legend — every claim is tagged:

Tag	Meaning
[CURRENT]	How the code works today (the multiplayer loop is live)
[PLANNED]	Designed, not yet built (e.g. AI content gen)
[OPEN]	Awaiting a design decision

The 60-second pitch

Tamer's Quest crosses Pokémon-style taming with a Dark and Darker extraction loop. You don't "win" a round by killing everyone — you win by getting out alive with your gains. Combat is turn-based and AI-only — the judge LLM resolves every turn in both single-player and multiplayer (the deterministic engine is just a transient crash-net) — so every fight reads like a tactical duel. PvP is live: rivals duel on contact or by landing a spirit chain, and the winner loots the loser's team.

Game loop

flowchart LR
    A[Menu<br/>pick character] --> B[Base<br/>4 active + vault]
    B --> C[Queue<br/>up to 16 players]
    C --> D[Spawn<br/>procedural cave]
    D --> E[Explore<br/>top-down]
    E --> F{Encounter}
    F -->|wild| G[Fight / Tame]
    F -->|player| H[PvP duel]
    G --> E
    H --> E
    E --> I{Extract?}
    I -->|portal| J[Victory<br/>keep gains]
    I -->|defeat / timeout| K[Lose run team]
    J --> B
    K --> B

Loading

1. Title → log in or play as guest (nickname) → character select. The Singleplayer/Multiplayer choice happens later, in the lobby. [CURRENT] See Onboarding and Title.
2. Base inventory — you own a roster: a team of 4 active + a vault of up to 100. [CURRENT]
3. Queue into a round — matchmaking gathers up to 16 players (or starts after a countdown with ≥ min). [CURRENT]
4. Spawn on a procedural map (DLA caves + Voronoi biomes), at a seeded walkable point. [CURRENT]
5. Explore top-down (WASD / joystick), with server-side tile collision. [CURRENT]
6. Encounter wild monsters — some visible, some hidden (ambush), and some visible ones slowly hunt you (see Multiplayer and Networking). Walk into one (it acts first) or throw a spirit chain to engage with initiative → instanced turn-based combat / taming. [CURRENT] PvE and PvP (rivals duel on contact or by chain). [CURRENT]
7. Extract via a portal (keep your gains) or lose your run team on defeat. [CURRENT]
8. Results return you to the menu; profile saved server-side. [CURRENT] (in-memory; durable Postgres is coded, [OPEN] awaiting DB provisioning)

Pages

Page	What's inside
Onboarding and Title	Title screen, log-in vs guest, character select
Multiplayer and Networking	The authoritative server model, tick/snapshot rates, anti-cheat
Movement and Sprint	Top-down movement, sprint & stamina, terrain speed
Monsters Stats and Elements	Monster data, the gen pipeline, stat scaling formula, elements (flavour-only)
Combat and Taming	Damage/accuracy/crit formulas, status effects, catching
Spirit Chains	The throwable engage/capture item — tiers, acquisition, stakes
Progression	XP, levels, gold, Spirit Essence, Base Upgrades
Map and Biomes	The 3-stage generation pipeline + biome table
Extraction Round	Round timeline, safe zone, portals, win/lose stakes
Rendering and HUD	Engine (Phaser 3), procedural art, the online HUD
Open Questions	Undecided design points (Q10–Q12)