The Time System

It is not a countdown

There is no real-time clock draining while you stand around. Rebel Wolves said so directly at the Road to Launch event:

"it's not a timer or a ticking clock, it's not meant to frustrate or rush you… in our game you can still freely explore the world, fight, analyse your build and talk with random villagers, and time doesn't move."

Rebel Wolves, Road to Launch event

Explore, fight, loot, talk to villagers, stare at the valley for an hour. The clock does not move.

What does move it

Time advances only when you take a marked action. Reaching a key beat in a quest. Choosing certain dialogue options. Buying some perk levels at a shrine. Some world activities too, baiting a fishing hook and playing hide-and-seek have both been shown costing time.

And the game prices it up front:

"you'll always have an indicator of what actions are going to actually move time, and by how much."

Rebel Wolves, Road to Launch event

On my save that looks like this. A tracked quest step prints its price before you take it, 1 ⌛ beside the step in the journal and again on the HUD tracker, and the map drops an hourglass marker on the bar where the objective will land.✓ The bar previews the cost as grey segments sitting ahead of the marker, and a dialogue line that costs time carries the number in the option itself, marked (n) →⌛.✓ The prices are not all small either: clearing the rubble off a gate cost seven segments in one go, which ran the day out and took a segment of the night with it.✓

The indicator has gaps, and they are worth knowing before you walk into one. The tracker only prints the price of the objective you are actually tracking, so an untracked one charges you anyway when you finish it, with nothing on screen at the moment it does.✓ Camps, monster encounters and world activities charge a segment on completion with no number printed anywhere; the only warning is a single grey segment lighting up on the bar as you walk in.✓ And HOURS GO BY — Time Has Passed is not a reliable tell. It never plays on a perk purchase, it does not play on those one-segment charges, and when it does play it can be up to six seconds late.✓

And it isn't only a price list. Some objectives are marked Time Sensitive, with a clock icon. The game's words: "Ignoring it for too long will have consequences."✓

That is the whole design. Not a leash. A price list, with the odd deadline, and a few prices you only read after you have paid them.

The unit is a segment, not a day

A daytime phase is eight time segments. So is a night. Sixteen per full cycle, thirty cycles, which gives you a total budget of 480 segments. Thirty days and thirty nights, in Bandai Namco's own words. A phase ends when its eight segments are spent, or when the story moves you on: a scene sets the clock to the time it happens, so Evening 7/8 can put you at Midnight 2/8 with everything in between simply gone.✓

The bar sits top right of the screen: a sun or moon icon, an hourglass marker, eight segments and a phase label.✓ Day runs Morning, Noon, Afternoon, Evening, two segments each, and the night mirrors it exactly: Moonrise, Midnight, Wee Hours, Dawn.✓

The day count is public, and it is not the bar. On the first night after the prologue the main goal reads Rescue your family • 29 days left, and from there the journal footer carries Days Until Brencis's Coronation with the number beside it. The journal's timeline strip numbers the days and draws eight segments per half-day, and it ticks over at sunrise, not at nightfall.✓ The prologue sits outside all of it: Day 1 starts the morning after it ends, so nothing you spend before that comes off the 480.✓

The hourglass icon is the price tag, and it is counted in segments. A perk level always costs skill points, and it costs one time segment exactly when its price line prints an hourglass. No hourglass, no time.✓ Buying one can also end your day: a purchase made at Evening 7/8 rolled the bar straight to Moonrise 0/8.✓ Every other price is shown to you as you reach it, and none of them are published. The Confirmed list at the bottom of this page is where I log the ones I've paid on my own save, and the planner keeps the books for the rest.

When the thirty days run out

The game does not end.

"the game won't end, just the circumstances will change."

Rebel Wolves, Road to Launch event

Brencis is crowned at the end of the thirty, and Coen's family are the occasion. Miss it and you keep playing into a changed world. How much of the game a run covers is not settled. Creative director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz's pre-launch estimate was roughly eighty percent. Reviews that finished the game do not agree with him or with each other, and nobody has published the prices, so nobody has measured it. What a run actually covers is what the Confirmed list below is for.

Plan your thirty days →