Chapter 1
ClankBots Outpost is a one-season game on Ink: 30 days at the Outpost. You stake pixel mining bots at the Base, mine CELL, gather materials by profession, chase better gear, trade with other players and build more bots before the season ends.
Every bot's NFT is a card drawn by a contract on Ink, live from the game: its frame shows the chassis's rarity, and it shows the serial, gear tiers, level, CELL battery and profession. It updates the moment something changes. At the Outpost you can also save a frameless picture of your bot for a profile photo.
The Base is where your bots live and work. Staking moves a bot into the Outpost's custody in one transaction, with no approval needed. It's still your bot: unstake any time to bring it home, unless it's away on a salvage run.
A staked bot always has one job:
| Job | What it does |
|---|---|
| Mining | Fills the bot's basket with CELL at one of the mining sites. |
| Gathering | No CELL, but materials for recipes. See Professions and materials. |
| Calibration | No CELL, but +1 level every 8 hours. See Calibration Bay. |
| Salvage run | Away for 1–12 hours rolling new gear. See Salvage. |
| Workshop | Busy crafting a sure upgrade. See The Workshop. |
CELL is the Outpost's energy. It lives in each bot's battery. It isn't a token: it can't be traded, withdrawn or sold. Every CELL you spend is burned in the Reactor.
A bot on the CALIBRATE job mines nothing, but gains one level every 8 hours (every 6 hours during a Solar Flare). Levels never go down, and they travel with the bot.
Up to level 6, calibration is free. After that, each level costs 1 Biofuel, paid before the bot calibrates it (any number of levels at once, up to 20). Missing Biofuel is paid from the bot's battery at 10 CELL a unit. A bot that reaches the level it has paid for stops gaining levels until you pay for more, so give it another job meanwhile.
| Level | Unlocks |
|---|---|
| 1 | Asteroid Belt salvage runs |
| 3 | Derelict Ship |
| 6 | Black Hole (opens on day 5) |
Level 6 takes 2 days of calibration. Higher levels unlock more as the season goes on, so many players keep one bot calibrating while the rest mine or gather.
Send a bot, or a crew of up to three, to a salvage location. Each bot pays a small CELL fee plus the tiny ETH randomness fee, is away for a set time, and rolls new gear for the slots you choose.
The new item replaces the old one, better or worse. Leave a slot unselected if you don't want to risk it. Every run also brings back Scrap for the Workshop, and now and then a bot comes back with a Strange Part (deeper runs find them more often). Nobody knows what they're for. Yet.
| Location | Level | Time | CELL | Coolink | Gear tiers | Scrap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asteroid Belt | 1 | 1 h | 1.25 | – | 1 / 2 / 3 | 1 |
| Derelict Ship | 3 | 3 h | 2.5 | – | 2 / 3 / 4 | 2 |
| Black Hole | 6 | 6 h | 5, then 15 after mint-out | 1 per bot | 3 / 4 / 5 | 4 |
Bots on the same run share their best gear: the crew's highest Optic sets the odds for everyone, and its highest Shield protects everyone. A crew of three different chassis brings back one extra Scrap each. One well-geared bot can carry two new ones.
Each run waits for a random number from Pyth Entropy. If none arrives within an hour, you can cancel: the CELL comes back and the crew returns home.
Salvage is fast but risky. The Workshop is slow but sure: spend Scrap, CELL, Ore and Circuits to upgrade one equipped slot by exactly one tier. It opens on day 5 and goes up to tier 6. The bot is busy while it works. Missing Ore or Circuits cost 10 CELL a unit.
| Upgrade | Scrap | CELL | Ore | Circuits | Busy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 → 1 | 2 | 7.5 | 2 | 1 | 2 h |
| 1 → 2 | 8 | 15 | 4 | 2 | 4 h |
| 2 → 3 | 18 | 22.5 | 6 | 3 | 6 h |
| 3 → 4 | 32 | 30 | 8 | 4 | 8 h |
| 4 → 5 | 50 | 37.5 | 10 | 5 | 10 h |
| 5 → 6 | 72 | 45 | 12 | 6 | 12 h |
The upgraded item keeps its place in the next tier's set, so it stays recognisably "yours". Scrap lives on the bot, like its battery, and travels with it when it's sold.
Spend CELL from one staked bot's battery to build a new bot; from the second price tier a build also takes Ore and Circuits from your inventory. It arrives staked and mining, at level 0, with an empty battery, a profession and one tier-0 starter item. Its chassis and profession are dealt from what's left of their decks, so the rarity counts and the quarter-each profession split stay exact. Missing Ore or Circuits cost 10 CELL a unit.
| Tier | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CELL | 10 | 16 | 24 | 32 | 42 | 54 | 66 |
| Ore + Circuits | – | 1 + 1 | 2 + 2 | 3 + 3 | 4 + 4 | 5 + 5 | 6 + 6 |
| Per wallet | 2 | 3 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 | 10 |
When all 5,050 bots exist, that's mint-out. It doesn't move the season's calendar: the final phase still starts on day 20.
The sky over Kessler Rock changes every 6 hours, at 00:00, 06:00, 12:00 and 18:00 UTC. A salvage run uses the event in force when it leaves, even if the sky changes while it's away.
| Event | Effect |
|---|---|
| Signal | One slot rolls better at one location, e.g. "Derelict signal: drills". The Black Hole adds its own signals once it opens. |
| Ion Haze | No downgrades in the Asteroid Belt or the Derelict Ship. |
| Dead Zone | No top-tier rolls anywhere. |
The Outpost shows the current event and when the next one starts, so you can time your runs.
The Reactor counts every CELL burned at the Outpost: in total, and per bot (the "Burned" trait on each bot). Each time the Outpost's total passes a milestone, the sun flares for 48 hours.
Milestones: 60,000 · 300,000 · 900,000 · 2,500,000 CELL burned.
| What | Normally | During a flare |
|---|---|---|
| Mining base rate | 10 CELL a day | 12.5 CELL a day |
| Calibration | +1 level / 8 h | +1 level / 6 h |
| Basket holds | 24 hours | 48 hours |
| Give burn | 20% | 10% |
| Fabricator wallet limits | as listed | × 1.5 |
| Comet Tail | closed | open, 300 bots |
Every burn at the Outpost counts toward the next flare: building bots, salvage fees, Workshop upgrades, Give, Biofuel and other materials paid in CELL, and barter fees.
Once a day, fly a short 70-second shift of Asteroid Run to send bonus CELL into one of your staked bots.
Daily Diagnostics starts when the Outpost opens.
A prize for the bots that see the season through, paid in ETH from trading royalties. 2% of every secondary sale goes into the prize pool contract. Nobody can withdraw it early, the team included.
How big will it be? That depends entirely on how much trading happens, so we won't predict it. The live balance is shown at the Outpost.
ClankBots Outpost is a game. CELL has no monetary value, bots carry no rights to income, and the prize is a reward for finishing the season. Nothing here is financial advice.
The season runs for 30 days, counted from the moment the Outpost opens: day 1 is its first 24 hours. The calendar is fixed: it doesn't move if bots are built faster or slower.
| Day | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1 | The Outpost opens: staking, mining or calibration, and salvage at the Asteroid Belt (the Derelict Ship for any bot at level 3). |
| 2 | Building opens in the Fabricator, after a day of mining. All four materials can be gathered. |
| 4 | The barter board opens. |
| 5 | The Black Hole and the Workshop open. |
| 20 | Final phase: the prize list is set. |
| 25 | The season finale, revealed during the season. |
| After 30 | The season ends. Prize claims open for 30 days. |
More arrives along the way: keep an eye on the Outpost and on X. Mint-out, when all 5,050 bots exist, happens whenever the Outpost finishes building them. Until then, half a bot's battery burns when it changes wallets unstaked.
Every bot has a profession, dealt at random when it's minted (in the genesis reveal or in the Fabricator) from a deck with exactly a quarter of each, and fixed for life. It decides which material the bot gathers fastest. No profession is ever required to do anything.
| Profession | Gathers | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| Driller | Ore | Fabricator builds from tier 2, Workshop upgrades |
| Scavenger | Circuits | Fabricator builds from tier 2, Workshop upgrades |
| Harvester | Coolink | Black Hole runs (1 per bot) |
| Grower | Biofuel | Calibration past level 6 (1 per level) |
Materials belong to your wallet's Outpost inventory. They aren't tokens: they can't be sent, sold on a marketplace or taken out of the game. You use them in recipes or swap them on the barter board. A recipe that's short charges 10 CELL for each missing unit, so you're never stuck without the right profession.
From day 4, players swap materials for CELL on the barter board. No ETH, and nothing leaves the Outpost.
A staked bot on the MINE job fills its basket with CELL. Collect the basket to move the CELL into the bot's battery. A basket stops filling after 24 hours until you collect it (48 hours during a Solar Flare).
Pick a site for each bot. You can switch at any time.
| Site | Pays | Best when |
|---|---|---|
| Shallow Field | 10 CELL a day + 2.5 per Drill tier | Always safe. The default. |
| Rich Vein | 15,000 CELL a day, split between every bot there (weight 1 + Drill tier). Opens gradually: pay grows from 0 to full over the Outpost's first day. | It's quiet. Crowded means thin shares. |
| Comet Tail | 3× the Shallow rate, 300 bots max, first come | Only during a Solar Flare. |
The Outpost shows how crowded each site is right now, so you can move bots out of a busy Rich Vein.