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Glossary
Glossary
Short reference for every term used across these docs.
- Ability
- A discrete combat modifier carried by a card at a given level. Abilities trigger on one of eight phases (passive, on_attack, on_hit, on_miss, on_death, pre_battle, per_turn, end_of_round). The full catalog lives on the Abilities page.
- Affinity
- The eight elemental allegiances a card can carry. Stellarch uses Neutral, Fire, Earth, Wind, Water, Light, Dark, and Divine. Neutral cards play in any deck; the other seven are gated by the match's allowed-affinity set.
- Affinity signature
- The set of abilities a given affinity tends to carry. Fire leans into burns and bloodlust, water into magic and slows, light into heals and shields, dark into life-steal and revive. The Affinities page lists the canonical signature for each.
- BCX
- Booster Card Experience. Cumulative XP required to combine duplicates into a higher-level copy. Each rarity has its own BCX-to-level curve — Commons run 1..10, Rares run 1..8, Epics run 1..6, Legendaries run 1..4.
- Commander
- A non-attacking card that grants stat modifiers and sometimes a granted ability to the whole team. The team is built around a single commander plus up to six fighters under the match's mana cap.
- Draft pool
- The shared, virtual pool of cards you draft your team from. You are not granted or given any cards and you own nothing by default. At launch the open pool is Commons and Rares at level 1. Epics, Legendaries, higher levels and tradeable cards are yours to own through packs and the market, where each rarity has a level ceiling an owned card can reach (Commons up to L10, Rares L8, Epics L6, Legendaries L4). During the closed alpha the pool is the full catalog at max level for testing.
- Edition
- A versioned print-run of cards. Stellarch ships its Genesis edition first; later editions stack on top with separate supply caps and release windows.
- Fighter
- An attacking card. Carries melee, ranged, or magic attack plus HP, armor, speed, and up to several abilities. The 1-6 fighters in a team line up in positions; the front fighter takes hits first.
- Fighter position
- A fighter's 1-indexed rank among its alive teammates. When the front fighter dies, the next one inherits position 1 — position is effective, not slot-locked. Eligibility (melee vs ranged vs magic) and many ability triggers branch on position.
- League
- The competitive bracket a player sits in. Bronze (the floor) ships clean rulesets and tight mana caps; Champion (the ceiling) ships up to three stacked rulesets and unbounded caps.
- Mana cap
- The hard ceiling on total team mana for a single match. The matchmaker rolls a value inside the league's band; the deck-builder filters cards above the cap.
- Rarity
- Four tiers: Common, Rare, Epic, Legendary. Each tier has its own level cap (10, 8, 6, 4) and its own BCX curve. Higher rarity acts earlier on speed ties in action order.
- Replay
- A persisted record of every event the engine emitted during a match — battle_start, hit_roll, damage_applied, died, etc. Replays are regenerated on demand from the original seed; same seed + same teams = byte-identical event stream.
- Ruleset
- A match modifier that rewrites one slice of combat. Examples: Earthquake (2 true damage to non-Lift-Drive each round), Reverse Speed (slow fighters act first), Aim True (melee + ranged hit chance forced to 1.0).
- Seed
- The integer fed into SeededRng at the start of a match. Every RNG draw the engine makes flows from this single seed. Replays are byte-identical because the seed never changes.
- Splinter
- Alternate name for affinity, inherited from the Splinterlands clone reference.
- Summoner
- Legacy name for commander. The term still appears in some pre-Phase-8 historical references; the canonical Stellarch term is commander.
- Target
- The fighter a swing is aimed at. The Targeting engine picks targets by ability: Scattershot (random alive), Flank (back-most), Pickoff (back-most ranged/magic), Hunter (lowest HP), or Standard (front-most).
- Trigger
- The phase on which an ability fires. Eight phases are wired: passive (always-on), on_attack (when the carrier swings), on_hit (after dealing damage), on_miss (after a missed swing), on_death (when the carrier dies), pre_battle (before round 1), per_turn (each round, on this fighter's turn), end_of_round (after every fighter acted).
- Username suffix
- A short chain identifier appended to usernames when an account signs in with a non-Hive method. Examples: -GGL (Google), -RON (Ronin), -AVAX (Avalanche), -ETH (Ethereum). Hive Keychain and Email-PIN identities carry no suffix.