Guide
Weekly Shadow Run survival guide
The Weekly Shadow Run is Cromon Quest's shared maze on Cronos: one 125 by 125 map, open for days, every Keeper inside it at once with a single Cromon. Nobody dies. At 0 HP you fall, wake at your last sanctuary with half your HP and 20% of your purse burned, and the rest lies in a pile anyone can pick up. The threats stack: a Miasma that swallows a 5-cell ring of the map every 24 hours, two ghouls that chase whoever they see, other Keepers who can steal 15% of your Shards, CroCoin and orbs or fight you, plus bounties posted on your head. The exit is sealed until the last 24 hours. The weekly is in open beta, so nothing you carry out is credited to your account yet: this guide is about surviving it, and about what banking will pay once the beta ends.
What should I know before I go in?
Three things. First, the beta: while it lasts, the exit credits nothing, no Shards, CroCoin, orbs, Pearl Orbs, XP or items reach your account, the run still ends and the report still names the haul. Second, the commitment: one run per Keeper per weekly, entry costs no Aether, and the Cromon you commit is locked out of the Arena, expeditions, the mines and the Dojo until the run ends. It can run alongside your daily maze. Third, the kit: every run starts with a free large HP potion in its stash, the Camp's Starter Kit adds more per level, the Lantern of the Rift widens what you reveal and at level 2 shows the exit area from the start, and the Energy Reactor adds 1 energy per hour per level to the weekly's own pool of 300 to start, +40 an hour, cap 500. A late entrant whose entrance the fog has swallowed starts at the live sanctuary nearest the centre.
What exactly happens when I fall?
You are carried to your last live sanctuary (or one live sanctuary, or the entrance), your HP is set to 50% of its maximum, your statuses are purged, and your purse hits the floor: 20% of your Shards, CroCoin, Shadow and Light orbs and item units are burned, the rest becomes a pile on the cell where you fell. One Pearl Orb joins the pile with a 25% chance; the others stay on you. You keep your XP, the cells you consumed, the wilds you defeated, your markers and your trail, and your run stays active: there is nothing to revive. The pile is picked up by whoever walks onto it first, you included, and it expires after 24 hours; a "Your purse" marker on your minimap points you back to it. A fall is not the only way to lose a purse, and not the worst one: a duel lost against another Keeper costs 10% of your scalars plus items to the winner and teleports you to a sanctuary at 10% HP, with no pile to recover.
How does the Miasma close the map?
On a fixed plan written when the weekly opens. Every 24 hours, starting 24 hours in, a 5-cell ring along the borders turns toxic, until only a 65 by 65 core remains: six closes on the 125 map. Standing in a toxic band costs 5 HP per minute times the band's age, and every step onto a toxic cell costs 1 HP times its age, through any shield. The minute tick runs every 60 seconds for every Keeper, connected or not: there is no catch-up cap, so a Cromon left overnight in a band that closes at 3 a.m. will be found at its sanctuary with a burned purse. The doomed band blinks on your map 2 hours ahead, the chat warns 15 minutes before, and each close rings a bell. Two rules follow. Move inward every day, ahead of the schedule, and never log off within 5 cells of the current edge. And do not count on a swallowed sanctuary: once the fog covers it, it is plain floor, with no protection and no regeneration. The exit is always pinned inside the final core, so the walk to it gets shorter as the week goes on, but the vault chest is only guaranteed clear of the first two bands.
How do I handle the ghouls?
There are two per maze, and they make a decision every 30 seconds: roam one cell, or chase two cells a tick, one cell at a time, at anyone within 10 walking cells. Being caught is not a fall: you are dragged back to your last live sanctuary and lose 10% of your Shards, CroCoin and orbs, never Pearl Orbs or items, your HP untouched, and you are immune for 5 minutes. A ghoul may cross a sanctuary but never catches anyone inside one, and there is no alarm inside a lit sanctuary. The client tags the ghoul whose prey is you with "Run!" and asks for confirmation before a deliberate step onto one. The Miasma is a wall for them, so late in the week they are boxed into the core with everyone else. When the tag appears, count the cells to the nearest lit sanctuary and to the ghoul; at two cells a tick against your one, the answer is usually to bank the walk you have and reroute, not to sprint.
What can other Keepers do to me, and I to them?
Anyone on your cell or an adjacent one, diagonals included, can act on you, and you on them, unless either of you stands in a lit sanctuary or the target is immune. A steal costs the thief 15 energy, succeeds 40% of the time as a base (12% floor, 80% cap, driven by Speed and Resolve), and takes 15% of each of your Shards, CroCoin and orbs (20% on a critical), never Pearl Orbs or items. Even a failed steal takes 10%. An attack costs 10 energy, runs at most 18 rounds, and on a knockout the loser wakes at their sanctuary at 10% HP while the winner takes 10% of their scalars and a share of their items; a rout without a knockout takes 3% of the loser's Shards. Whoever was stolen from or attacked is immune for 6 hours afterwards, and stepping into a sanctuary clears that shield early. Offline Keepers are attackable: it is a persistent world. You can also heal a neighbour with one of your HP potions, at no energy cost. Sanctuaries regenerate 10% of your max HP per full hour spent inside, and the map carves 20 sanctuary blocks of which 14 are lit at any moment; from the second day each light moves once a day, one hour after the previous one, so the safe room you left this morning may be an ordinary room tonight. Eight bot Keepers roam every weekly and are indistinguishable in the roster; the weekly damage board ranks the top 20 by damage dealt to real Keepers.
How do bounties and supply drops work?
Both are ways to turn the crowd into an opportunity. A bounty is posted, taken or dropped from any sanctuary cell, with the reward taken from the poster's purse in escrow: four tiers, Rumor at 100 Shards, Trail at 200 Shards and 5 CroCoin, the third tier (shown as Hunt on the board) at 400 Shards and 10 CroCoin, Premium at 750 Shards and 20 CroCoin, each giving the taker a search box around the target that refreshes every 20, 10, 5 or 1 minutes. The maze burns 20% on settlement, a poster can hold 5 open contracts and a taker 2, a bounty duel runs practically uncapped at 200 rounds, and every 10 contracts a taker settles pays 1 Pearl Orb. Supply drops land every 4 hours on fixed UTC slots, announced in chat 5 minutes ahead in a 30 by 30 sector: 6 bags, four of 40 to 60 Shards, one of 8 to 12 CroCoin, one potion, with 3 or 4 tier-1 ambushes around them, first come first served, gone after 6 hours. One slot in six is golden: double bags and a guaranteed large potion. Chat itself is live in the maze, 240 characters a line.
Where are the Pearl Orbs, and what is the vault?
Five per week: three hidden in the three deepest of the map's five zones, at least 158 walking cells from the entrance, and two from killing the boss. Pearls are exempt from steals, duel payouts and flee penalties; only a fall can move one, into the pile you dropped, which anyone can pick up. They are banked as a count at the exit and their use is announced later: today nothing in the game spends them. The Tricolor Vault is the other deep prize: one chest per maze, three keys (blue, green, red) placed once on the shared maze and collected by each run, two of them guarded by tier-3 wilds, and 400 Shards, 20 CroCoin, 2 Shadow and 2 Light orbs inside; keys are not loot and cannot be stolen, and the Ash Keysmith event forges a missing one for 320 Shards at a 62% success rate. A Quarry Niche event, at most two per maze, hands out a free Quarryman's Mallet: one swing opens one adjacent wall for every Keeper until the next weekly, up to 200 holes per map, which is how a corridor that was a dead end on Monday becomes a shortcut on Wednesday.
When and how do I get out?
The exit is sealed until the last 24 hours of the window and you must stand on its cell. Bells ring at 24 hours and 1 hour before the close; when the window ends, every active run expires and the maze keeps what it carried. Outside the beta the exit credits Shards, CroCoin, Shadow and Light orbs, Pearl Orbs, XP (through the shared daily cap) and the items that are not maze consumables; HP potions, stamina flasks and scrolls stay inside, they are meant to be drunk during the week, and weekly wilds drop them more often than daily ones (50% to 70% by tier). The plan that survives most weeks is simple: reach a lit sanctuary in the final core before the last two closes, bank your purse in your head by not carrying more than you can afford to lose to a steal, and walk to the exit as soon as it opens rather than at the last hour, when everyone else is doing the same thing in the same 65 cells.
The gates open on the Keepers' schedule
Free to start: connect your wallet, receive three starter Cromons, and watch your notifications for the next weekly opening.