Day Cycle
The world keeps its own clock. Time in Wildoria runs faster than the time on your wall, so a full cycle of day and night passes in the space of an afternoon. The same accelerated clock drives the weather over the land and decides when night falls, and both of those quietly change how far and how safely you can travel.
How game time runs
The world clock is a simple acceleration of the real one, measured from a fixed origin:
Game Time = Epoch + (Real Time - Epoch) x Speed
The origin (epoch) is 2024-01-01 00:00 UTC, and the speed is fixed.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Speed | 6x real time |
| 1 game day | ~4 real hours |
| 1 game hour | ~10 real minutes |
| 1 game week | ~28 real hours |
Wildoria's accelerated time does not govern every system.
| System | Time base | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Day and night, weather | Game time (6x) | Natural world simulation |
| NPC schedules, shop hours | Game time | The rhythm of the city |
| Quest timers, skill cooldowns | Game time | Gameplay tempo |
| Bank interest (Loans, Savings) | Real-world day | Financial figures are calendar based |
| Prison sentences (Prison) | Real in storage, game time on screen | Lore reads in game time, the count is real |
| On-chain transactions (Reserve Vault) | Real world | The blockchain keeps absolute time |
Rule of thumb: money and finance run on real-world time. Life and atmosphere (day and night, NPCs, weather) flow on game time. Prison sits between the two: the stored value is real, the display you read is game time.
Day and night
Night is a fixed window of the game clock:
| Period | Game hours |
|---|---|
| Day | 06:00 - 22:00 |
| Night | 22:00 - 06:00 |
Because a game day is roughly four real hours, the world swings from day into night and back again about six times in a real day. The current game hour, and whether it is night, is read straight from the world clock.
Weather
Weather is derived from the world clock and the region you stand in, rather than rolled at random. Two travellers in the same region at the same moment see the same sky, and it drifts gradually as the hours turn instead of snapping from one state to the next. Each region carries its own climate, so a desert stays mostly clear, a swamp broods under fog, and a coast runs windy. See Regions and Terrain for what shapes a region's weather.
| Weather | Character |
|---|---|
| Clear | Open skies, no penalty. |
| Cloudy | Overcast, no penalty. |
| Foggy | Thick air; the road slows. |
| Rainy | Heavy going; the road slows the most. |
| Snowy | The cold regions' rain; slows the road like a downpour. |
Temperature
Every region also has a temperature, shown in degrees. It climbs through the afternoon and falls before dawn, and the region's climate sets the baseline: the volcanic reach bakes while the iceblade highlands sit below freezing. Cloud cover flattens the daily swing, and rain and wind make the air feel colder. For now the reading is there to make the world feel alive; deeper effects (cold that bites, heat that tires, crops that freeze) are planned.
How time and weather touch travel
The world clock does more than set the mood. Weather and the hour combine into a travel time factor that lengthens a personal journey:
| Condition | Effect |
|---|---|
| Rain / Snow | x1.25 to travel time |
| Fog | x1.10 to travel time |
| Night (22:00 - 06:00) | x1.10 to travel time |
The weather that counts is the one over your destination region. These stack. A rainy night, for instance, multiplies your travel time by 1.25 x 1.10. The game shows you why a trip is slower than usual, so a long crossing in foul weather is never a mystery.
This slowdown applies to personal travel only (your own walk or vehicle). A scheduled line carries you as a passenger and is never slowed by weather or darkness; the bus, train, metro, ferry and plane keep their timetable through any storm. See The Transit Network.
Standing still is safe
The dangers of the road only find you while you are moving across it. Stand still on a hex and you are in a safe state: no encounter can be rolled against you, day or night, fair weather or foul. Step onto the open road and the risk returns. The full account of what stalks the road, and how a warrant raises the odds against you, lives in The Roads and the Watch.
Energy
Travelling on your own steam spends energy; riding a scheduled line spends none. Energy is the budget that decides how far you can roam before you have to stop, and it ties the day cycle, the weather and your route planning together: a slow trip through a rainy night is also a longer drain on your reserve.
Still to come
A deeper day cycle is on the way: living NPC schedules tied to the hour, shop opening times, nocturnal creature spawns and seasonal events are all planned. vp1-departure For now, the clock's most important job is the one above: setting the weather, marking the night, and shaping the journey between one place and the next.