Gold, Scrip & Gems

Railwake runs on three currencies, and they don't work the same way. The rule that matters most:

Gold is for this run. Scrip is forever.

A run ending — by finishing the line or by your train being destroyed — banks everything you earned. But gold you haven't spent by then doesn't come home with you as gold: it's converted into scrip at a poor rate, so holding gold at the end of a run is always worse than spending it in the Depot while you still can. Gold spent on a Depot level was a live upgrade for the rest of that ride; gold left in your pocket is worth only a fraction of a single scrip.

There is no gold between runs at all — your run's opening purse is handed over when you Depart. The Armory deals only in scrip and gems, and nothing bought there is ever at risk. That's what a "grade" is: the permanent, scrip-bought version of a Depot stat, and it's also what a Depot level resets to rather than to zero when your run ends. Guns work the same way: a gun bought at the Armory is on your train every run, and a gun bought at the dock is this run's only. See The Depot and The Armory for the two shops in full.

Where gold comes from

Kills pay a bounty, but they are not the only source — the game pays for how you fight, not only for damage:

• Kill bounty. Every kill, scaled by the line's danger.
• Checkpoints. A payout at each tenth of the line, growing as you go — a run that dies halfway has still banked five of them.
• Armour. Every hit your armour blunts pays a little for the damage it prevented. No armour, nothing paid.
• Afflictions. A kill on an enemy that was burning, poisoned, frozen, slowed, stunned, shredded or marked pays more, per affliction, up to a cap — and more again for every other enemy afflicted at that moment, so a field that controls a crowd is paid for the crowd.
• Burn and poison. Each tick pays part of the eventual bounty up front; the kill pays the rest. A damage-over-time build is paid earlier, never more.
• Ramming. A kill by contact at speed pays a bonus on its bounty. The train has to be moving.

Gems

Gems are a separate, rarer currency, earned as an occasional drop in combat — more dangerous fights are more likely to drop one. Unlike gold, gems are never lost, run or no run. They're what you spend to research and level up Cores. Beating a boss for the first time is a reliable source of them; the rest come as luck in a fight.

Buying in bulk

Every list of upgrades — the Depot dock included — carries a ×1 / ×10 / ×100 switch. It changes what a single Buy press does to any upgrade that has levels (stat upgrades, carriages, gun mounts, grades, game speed):

• The button always shows a price, not a discount — it's the plain sum of however many individual levels you're about to buy, and buying in bulk never costs more or less per level than buying one at a time.
• It only greys out, never shrinks. A card prices the whole batch and greys out until you can afford all of it — exactly like a single purchase greys out when you're short, it just checks a bigger number.
• The last batch on a track is sized to fit. If a track only has a few levels left before its cap, buying at ×10 or ×100 buys exactly what's left, not more.
• A batch purchase is one purchase — one confirmation, one save.
• Purchases with no levels — like unlocking a new gun rarity, or a one-off research node — ignore the multiplier; there's nothing to batch.

See Also

• Getting Started
• The Track Ladder — why upgrade prices are built to outpace an easy line's income
• The Depot / The Armory