Girls & cards

Rarity sets the starting stat total, the Endurance ceiling and the wage. It is not a simple power tier: a Platinum costs twenty times a Bronze’s wage for roughly twice its stats. A stable of well-placed Bronzes beats a badly used Platinum.

• Charme — income. The only stat that enters a transaction’s gain. A girl with no Charme earns almost nothing, whatever else she has.
• Ruse (cunning) — infiltration. It carries poaching: stealing a card from another player.
• Sang-froid (composure) — surveillance. It lowers a district’s arrest risk and defends against thefts.
• Tchatche (patter) — management, training and recruitment. The stat of posts, not of work.

The same base stat does not yield the same effective value depending on the card’s level, form, awakening and variant. The formula is the same everywhere in the game:

The Shiny variant is the only finish that touches the numbers: +10 % on all four stats, the equivalent of two levels. It arrives two ways. From a draw first: any card joining your roster has a 1 % chance of coming out Shiny — since a duplicate creates no card, a lineage you already own can never come out Shiny again. As a season reward second: it is then applied from the Album to one specific form of a lineage, and every card of yours in that form benefits.

Either way the card keeps it for good: a Shiny stays Shiny when it evolves, and stays Shiny if it gets poached.

Every level adds 5 % to all base stats. The starting cap is 50; only the Prestige Comfort branch pushes it further, up to 100.

XP is earned by serving clients, at the Academy, on contracts and in Zip Coaching. It follows the client type, not the Cash they leave:

The second path is paying for the level in Cash. It is a targeted boost, not the normal way to progress:

These are the two gauges that decide whether your empire holds, and they are managed in completely different ways. Endurance is fuel: it drops while working and refills on its own at rest, for free. Happiness is loyalty: it drops more slowly, and rest only gives part of it back — never enough to pay for the shift that just spent it. The remainder is bought back, one gesture or one expense at a time.

Happiness drops per client served, and it also erodes on its own in three situations. Each is calibrated to empty a full gauge in about 48 hours — and they stack:

A fourth, far slower erosion hits girls left idle in the pool: a few points a day, enough to make a completely forgotten card stealable within a month. Benching a girl shields her from work, not from neglect.

Happiness is regained by answering PimpChat, keeping your promises, paying a bonus, using items from the Van, writing her a note, at every level gained (+5) and on evolution (+20). Rest itself returns some in every paid bed, the more so the pricier it is — but never enough to offset the shift that follows. HQ, being free, returns none.

Three gestures cover most of it, and none replaces another. The blanket bonus serves your whole roster in one click, for Cash: that is the morning ritual. The Van sells items with no cap, dearer per point: that is the relief valve when you have let things slide. The love note is free and gives more — but it is written to one girl at a time, once a day, and an Anxious girl gains twice what a Diva does. Paying, in the end, is buying clicks.

Special requests. Twice a day — twice, whether you have five girls or two hundred — one of them asks for something: a gift she spotted at the Van, a dinner, a weekend by the sea, a raise. You have twenty-four hours. Saying yes makes her happy and gets her whole district talking, which lifts them too. Saying no costs you, and costs more with a Diva than with a Cool girl. Not answering costs you the girl: her Happiness drops to 20, whatever it was, and she is stealable by morning.

The Politician. There is one last resort, and it is the only place in the game where you spend a girl rather than Cash or time. You send one; six hours later she comes back drained and at zero Happiness — stealable, and earning nothing until you bring her back up. In exchange the whole city runs better for twelve hours: cheaper building permits, bars that sell more, a more generous street, a lighter payroll. The size of the favour depends on who you send, so the best favour demands the girl you least want to lose.

A card learns abilities as she levels, and equips only 4 at a time. The choice matters: an unequipped ability does nothing. Abilities are split by domain — work, surveillance, management, training, recruitment, infiltration.

At level 12, every lineage unlocks its signature: an ability that belongs to her alone, non-transferable, and that defines her playstyle. That is a card’s real personality milestone.

Traits are innate, rolled when you obtain the card, and can be rerolled at the Clinic. Personality (Diva, Cool, Anxious, Ambitious, Prankster) does not change stats: it decides what the girl texts you on PimpChat, and what she will accept.

Evolution happens in two steps, and it is the game’s largest stat multiplier. Stage II at level 15, Stage III at level 30.

At Stage II you choose a path, and that choice is final:

• The Stage — Charme explodes (×1.7 at Stage II). The path of those who work and earn.
• The Shadow — the stats of the lineage’s two Shadow domains rise (×1.6). The path of stewards: they no longer work, they manage, watch, train or recruit.

At Stage III the path closes on a final form: Icon or Leader for the Stage; Sentinel, Freewoman or Éminence for the Shadow. Each form pushes one stat as high as ×2.6 and leaves the others around ×1.4.

Drawing a lineage you already own is not a loss. The duplicate awakens your copy: +2 % on all its base stats, stacking up to five tiers.

The game automatically picks the best copy as the target: rarity first, then awakening already gained, then stage, then level. You can also convert a duplicate into Stars by hand — the scale follows rarity, from one Star for a Bronze to a hundred for a Platinum.