Taking part in the forums earns points. Pass enough points and you climb a ladder that pays out money and an in-game item. Everything resets every week.

This page explains where the points come from, what stops them, and what you get.

The week

The ladder runs Monday to Monday, in UTC. When the week turns over, three things happen at once:

• Everybody's points go back to zero.
• New point values are drawn for each kind of activity.
• New point thresholds are drawn for each level of the ladder.

That last part is the important one. The numbers are not the same two weeks running. One week starting discussions might be worth the most, the next it might be replying in parts of the forum you do not normally visit. There is no fixed routine that is always the best use of your time, which is the point: the ladder rewards taking part, not working out the formula.

You can always see the current week's values on the reward panel on the forums.

Where points come from

The exact value inside each range is drawn at the start of the week and applies to everybody equally for that week.

Because posting in a new topic and a new forum both pay on top of the post itself, spreading your week around the forums is usually worth more than posting the same number of times in one thread. That is deliberate.

What counts as a post

Not every post earns points. A post has to actually say something.

This used to be a simple length check, which was easy to get around by padding a post out with filler until it was long enough. It is now judged on whether the post contains real content of your own.

These earn points:

• Answering a question, even briefly or bluntly
• Asking a question that includes real detail about the problem
• An opinion, a complaint or a suggestion with some reasoning behind it
• Reporting something that happened in game, with specifics
• A short reply that still says something concrete

These do not:

• Agreement or a reaction with nothing added, like "this", "agreed" or "+1"
• Text padded out to look longer while saying very little
• Gibberish or repeated words and phrases
• Text pasted from somewhere else with nothing of your own added
• Advertising or link dropping

A short post is not a low effort post. A one line answer that actually answers the question is worth points. A long post that says nothing is not.

Spelling, grammar, slang, swearing and posting in another language make no difference. What is being judged is whether you said something, not how neatly you said it.

The limits

There are ceilings, so that the ladder measures taking part rather than volume.

• Five posts a day can earn points. Anything past that still posts normally, it just does not add to your total.
• One post per topic per day. Replying to the same thread ten times in an afternoon earns the same as replying once.
• Replying to yourself with nobody in between never earns points.
• Near-duplicates of your own recent posts earn nothing, so the same message pasted around the forum only counts once.
• Reactions are capped at 30 a week, and only reactions from established accounts count at all.

Who can earn

To take part in the ladder you need to:

• Be signed in
• Have your Steam account linked, because the items are delivered in game
• Have had your account for at least 7 days

If any of those are missing the reward panel will tell you which one.

What you win

There are five levels. Passing a level's point total pays out straight away, and you keep everything you passed on the way up, so finishing the week at level 5 means you have been paid for levels 1 through 4 as well.

The point totals needed for each level are redrawn every week along with everything else, so level 5 is not the same distance away two weeks running.

Money is paid into your account and the item goes to your inventory. Both arrive as soon as you pass the level, not at the end of the week.

Common questions