Tavern Contests

• Arm Wrestling (20 seconds): press and hold to push back against a surging opponent, release to let off. Stay inside a drifting green zone for most of the round. Holding the whole time overshoots, so timing matters.
• Knife Throwing (up to 30 seconds): five knives at a moving target behind a fixed crosshair. Throw the instant the bullseye lines up. The target speeds up after every throw, so the last knife is the hardest.
• Drinking Contest (up to 45 seconds): stay upright on the bench by tapping left and right. Each tankard you survive makes the next one sway harder, and leaning past the edge ends the run.

Every run is scored from 0 to 1,000. Practice is unlimited and free, but it pays nothing and is never recorded. The server replays your ranked inputs to work out the score.

Each game gives you one ranked attempt per UTC day. Its score decides that day's matches and pays skill XP (10 to 90, in proportion to the score, so merely finishing is never worthless). If a run fails to finish or scores nothing, you get one ranked retry that day.

Beating your own best ranked score also pays a personal-best bonus: 25 gold (base, scaled by inflation) for each point you beat it by, and 5 to 50 skill XP. It needs a margin of at least 10 points and counts at most 250 points at a time. Your very first score is only a baseline, so sandbagging it to farm bonuses earns nothing extra.

Press Ready to join a game's board, then challenge other ready players. You can start 10 matches per game per UTC day, and being challenged never spends your allowance. The same two players can face each other at most 3 times per game per day, counted both ways, so trading wins with a friend all day does not work. A board shows up to 30 players, and someone who has not logged in for 14 days drops off it.

The odds come from the gap between the two players' effective scores: today's ranked score plus 1% per skill level, capped at 50%. Skill dominates, but nobody is a sure thing: the win chance stays between 5% and 95%. A defender who has no ranked score today is treated as having scored 400.

A match pays skill XP to both sides: 20 for a win and 8 for a loss between equals. Every 5 levels of gap doubles or halves that, so an underdog catches up fast and beating much weaker players is worth almost nothing.

Each game has its own skill level and there is no level cap. The curve slows you down instead: reaching the next level always costs more than the last.

Every level range has a title, shown on your profile:

• Arm Wrestling: Twig-Wristed Tankard Hugger (level 1), Barstool Challenger (level 5), Knuckle Duster (level 10), Table-Splitter (level 15), Grip of the Damned (level 20), Iron Forearm (level 30), Oakbreaker (level 40), Champion of the Bent Table (level 50), The Unbendable (level 75), Bonebreaker of the Shadowrealm (level 100).
• Knife Throwing: Butter-Knife Novice (level 1), Wobbly Wrist (level 5), Board Scratcher (level 10), Steady Hand (level 15), Blade Dancer (level 20), Thrower's Eye (level 30), Pinpoint Reaver (level 40), Master of the Throw (level 50), Silent Blade of the Shadowrealm (level 75), Deathsworn Marksman (level 100).
• Drinking Contest: Lightweight Sipper (level 1), Tavern Tippler (level 5), Mug Apprentice (level 10), Barrel Rider (level 15), Iron Liver (level 20), Tankard Tyrant (level 30), Keg Slayer (level 40), Legend of Last Call (level 50), Unquenchable Void (level 75), Bottomless Abyss (level 100).

Each game pays its top three players by wins each week (a week runs from Monday 00:00 UTC to the next Monday). Ties go to whoever reached that win count first. Gold is a base amount scaled by the live inflation multiplier.

The Hall of Fame is a monthly season. It ranks players by their best ranked score of the UTC calendar month, shows the top 10, and on the 1st the top three in each game are paid by mail. An all-time Hall of Fame pays nothing and records the greats.