The Ground Base — hold the line beneath the SkyScape
The Ground Base is the second act of Sonentius. Where the SkyScape event raised the orbital monument, the Ground Base is the settlement the community digs in beneath it and defends. Open it from the "Open the Ground Base" card on the SkyScape surface (and from your dashboard). This page is the playbook: the loop, every structure and its benefit, the daily World Boss siege, and the farms.
The SkyScape stands — but the sky is not quiet. A Sentinel rises each dawn, and the planet still wants its lattice torn back down. So the community stops being visitors and becomes residents: you vote what to build, transmute the ingredients you mine into the universal Sonentius Fragment to raise it, level it up, and hold it against the daily World Boss. Everyone builds the same base — but the fragments you personally cook rank you against every other Resonator.
1. The loop — one base, four moves
The Ground Base runs on a single, tight loop the whole community shares:
VOTE BUILD (contribute) DEFEND GROW
pick the -> transmute Sonentius -> fight the daily -> discover & work
next plot ingredients into World Boss on communal farms;
(or the next Fragments to fill the Siege tab level plots 1->5->10
farm to dig) the build bar (failure hurts) for stronger buffs
- Vote. The community votes what to raise next — a new plot OR a level-up of one already standing (a built plot appears in the vote as "→ Lv N" right alongside fresh construction), or the next farm to dig. Votes run a 24h window; the winner's build starts automatically.
- Build. Every plot is fed by the Sonentius Fragment — and you make Fragments by transmuting the Sonentius ingredients you mined on the Journey (see §2). The number of fragments a contribution credits is the sum of each ingredient's rarity value, so a handful of rare or mythic mats is worth far more than the same count of common ore. Fill the bar and the structure completes, flipping a permanent, community-wide buff.
- Defend. A World Boss Sentinel attacks every day (see §4). Fell it for Base XP, a place on the board, and your share of the RSNC; leave it undefeated and every built structure loses 20% of its HP that day (floored at the Bulwark), scaling its buff down until the community reinforces it.
- Grow. Discover communal farms and level each plot from tier 1 up to Lv 5 (and to Lv 10 once the Comms Tower story beat fires) — higher levels mean stronger buffs and richer farm drops.
2. The Fragment Transmute — turn ingredients into contribution
The build bar is fed by one universal recipe: the Sonentius Fragment Transmute. There's no fixed shopping list — you throw in whatever Sonentius ingredients you hold and get Fragments out, credited straight to the active build.
Every ingredient has a fragment value by rarity:
| Rarity | Fragments per item | Sonentius ingredients |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | 1 | Sonentite Ore · Sonentius Slag · Xeno-Protein |
| Rare | 5 | Voidsteel Ore · Living Resin · Cultivated Aetherspore · Refined Sonentite Ingot |
| Mythic | 10 | Aetheric Crystal · Voidsteel Ingot |
How it works:
- Open the build card and you'll see everything you hold, with a +/- picker on each ingredient. Choose how many of each to transmute — the card totals the fragments live.
- A single cook accepts up to ~10 items, so each transmute is a deliberate small batch. Whatever you put in, you get out: 10 mythic → 100 fragments; 8 ore + 2 living resin → 8 + 10 = 18 fragments.
- Hit Max to auto-fill the cook for the most fragments (it picks your highest-value ingredients first).
- Each transmute cooks for 2 hours, then credits the build. It queues like any recipe — if your cooking board is full, the cook waits in a Cook Queue slot and starts automatically as a slot frees, so a busy Kitchen never blocks you.
You mine Sonentius ingredients on the Sonentius Journey world — ore and slag from mining nodes, Xeno-Protein and Living Resin from xenofauna, the rarer mats deeper in. The build card links straight there. The transmute is not the only way to raise the base, but it's the one that turns everything you gather into progress.
3. The structures — every plot and what it does for you
Seven plots make up the ground base. Each is voted, then built with Sonentius Fragments, then leveled 1 → 5. A structure's buff applies at full HP and scales with its HP — a structure damaged by a lost siege delivers proportionally less until it's reinforced.
| Plot | Category | What it does for you | Tier-1 cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Fort | Military | +15 Base Power — the anchor every other plot builds around. | 5,000 |
| The Bulwark | Defense | Raises the siege erosion floor +10% — a lost Sentinel can't grind your structures as low. | 5,000 |
| The Research Lab | Economy | Unlocks the economy plots — the Skyfarms and the Barracks are built on the Lab's ruin-tech. | 5,000 |
| The Skyfarms | Economy | Opens the communal Farms and folds their harvested ingredients into the weekly payout. Requires the Research Lab. | 5,000 |
| The Habitat Ring | Population | +10 Base Power, and lets you put more Avatars to work — each level raises how many you can field +1 overall and +1 per farm (floor 3). Also part of the path to the Barracks. | 5,000 |
| The Barracks | Military | Unlocks group quests (2 slots) and adds +25 Base Power. Requires the Habitat Ring and the Research Lab. | 5,000 |
| The Comms Tower | Story | +20 Base Power. The story capstone — unlocks only once every other plot is at Lv 5; drive it to Lv 5 to trigger the next story beat (which raises every plot's level cap from 5 to 10). | 50,000 |
Base Power is the sum of every built plot's power contribution (HP-scaled). It raises the base's standing and feeds the siege math. The Research Lab is the tech unlock the economy plots are built on — it doesn't pay a bounty itself; it's what makes the Skyfarms and the Barracks votable.
Every plot builds at tier 1 for a flat 5,000 fragments. Leveling a plot up costs more each tier: 10,000 (→Lv 2), 15,000 (→Lv 3), 30,000 (→Lv 4), 60,000 (→Lv 5). The Comms Tower is the exception — it costs a flat 50,000 at every tier. Tier-1 is deliberately within a single player's reach, so there's always somewhere to contribute while a bigger build climbs. Level-ups are voted just like new builds — a plot you've already raised shows up in the vote as "→ Lv N" next to fresh construction, so you can push the base wider or deeper.
Only plots whose prerequisites are met are votable. The Research Lab opens the economy branch: the Skyfarms need the Lab, and the Barracks need both the Habitat Ring and the Lab. The Comms Tower is gated behind all six other plots reaching Lv 5 — it is always the last thing you raise.
Every plot builds at tier 1 and levels up to Lv 5. Once all six other plots are at Lv 5, the Comms Tower becomes votable; driving it to Lv 5 fires the story beat, which raises the cap to Lv 10 for every plot — the second half of the base's progression opens only after the story capstone.
Once the Barracks is built, its Group Quests co-op board appears on the Sonentius base. Group Quests are shared quests you take on with other Resonators, paying pro-rata Essence by contribution. Right now the board is live to view and join, but the Essence payout is still staged — completions are recorded and will be paid out when rewards are switched on. Treat it as a preview until then.
4. The daily siege
The Ground Base faces a guaranteed daily World Boss — a shared Sentinel the whole community fights together on the Siege tab. It's the real Sonentius World Boss: a team ATB battle against one global HP pool, not a tap-to-chip minigame.
- Open the ⚔️ Siege tab (or tap Strike on the World Boss card / dashboard banner) to load the battle. Bring a team of avatars and chip the shared HP down.
- You get 3 strikes per day, and the whole community's damage stacks on the same pool — fell the Sentinel before the day ends for Base XP, a place on the leaderboard, and your share of the RSNC.
- The Sentinel adapts: it starts at 700,000 HP. If the community defeats it, tomorrow's Sentinel is +100,000 HP tougher; if it survives, the next one is −50,000 HP easier. The fight self-tunes to the community's power.
- Miss the kill and the base pays for it. A Sentinel left undefeated when the day ends strikes the Ground Base: every built structure loses 20% of its HP that day (clamped at the Bulwark's erosion floor). A battered plot's buff scales down with its HP, and a plot ground to 0 HP delivers no buff at all until it's reinforced back up. It happens once per undefeated day.
- Your defensive plots make it easier: The Bulwark raises an erosion floor that siege damage can't cross, so an ignored Sentinel can never grind your structures all the way down. Reinforcing a damaged structure repairs its HP and restores its full buff.
5. The farms
Once The Skyfarms is built, the base opens a set of communal farms — the Apiary, the Grove, and the Quarry — a passive ingredient lane that harvests on the weekly reset. This lane is live: at the Monday reset each farm's yield is minted straight to you as real ingredient tokens, into your inventory — no claim step.
- Everyone who earned RSNC that week shares the harvest. Every community member who took a cut of the week's RSNC bounty gets a baseline harvest from each active farm — even with zero avatars committed. Committing avatars stacks an extra cultivation yield on top of that baseline; it's a bonus, not the price of entry.
- The community votes which farm to dig next; the winning dig auto-starts.
- A dig is a timed discovery you can speed up by committing avatars — the more avatar power committed, the faster it surfaces (roughly 1% faster per 14 power). You start with 3 avatars total across the farms (up to 3 on any one farm); raise The Habitat Ring to field more — +1 to your total and +1 per farm for each Habitat level. Avatars committed to a farm are locked out of Journey and other duties until you pull them back.
- Once a farm surfaces, the same avatars keep working it. Your committed-avatar yield scales with those avatars' power (element-matched ones count ×1.5), and leveling a farm raises both its output per power and its rare/mythical drop mix. So the two buildings compound: the Habitat Ring puts more avatars to work, while a farm's own level makes each of them produce more.
- Farms level up by community vote — just like structures. A farm below its max level joins the same "What do we raise next?" slate as a "→ Lv N" candidate; when it wins it takes the build slot and is funded by cooked Sonentius Fragments. A farm level is far cheaper than a structure level (roughly 2,700–3,200 fragments), so it's an easy pick to slot between bigger builds.
6. Rank & the leaderboard
Everyone builds the same base, but the Ground Base keeps a competitive leaderboard — the fragments you personally cook rank you against every other Resonator (the same board you know from the SkyScape tab). Tap any builder to inspect their avatars, teams, and team power. Collaboration and competition at the same time: the base rises because the community pushes it, and the biggest pushers get the top spots.
Structure costs, siege numbers, and buff magnitudes here track the live catalog and may still be tuned as the phase settles in.