Energy
Energy — the app calls it Attunement — is a bonus, not a gate. You can always play: a node never turns you away for being low on energy. What Attunement does is reward you for playing while you have it — a clear you pay Attunement for pays bonus loot. When you run dry, you keep playing at the normal rate. Think of it as a catch-up boost that tops up on its own, not a wall.
On this page, Attunement is your Journey energy pool. Elsewhere, "Attunement" also names the combat element bonus (an Avatar whose class matches a node's element hits harder). Same word, unrelated systems — this page is only about the energy pool.
The bonus: play while you're Attuned
When you play a node while you have Attunement, the clear is Attuned and pays +50% loot — more of everything the node drops: items (ingredients and materials), gear, Ascension Aspects, equipment chests, and Avatar Essence. Playing the node spends a little Attunement to earn that bonus.
When your pool is empty, nothing stops you — you still clear the node and still get its loot, just at the normal rate (no bonus). So Attunement is pure upside: having it makes your farming worth more; running out never locks you out.
A few details worth knowing about the bonus:
- It scales quantity, not your odds — a node that wasn't going to drop an Aspect still won't, but the drops you do get come out +50% bigger (on a single drop, that's a 50% chance of one extra).
- It applies to your repeatable farm loot. One-time rewards — a node's guaranteed first-clear bundle and the big first-clear / first-3-star Essence — are already large and are not inflated by the bonus.
- RSNC, Activity Score, and Battle XP are not loot — those are paid on the node's own schedule and are the same whether or not you're Attuned.
Because a full pool covers a good chunk of daily play, most players are Attuned almost all the time. Attunement mainly bites only if you grind far past a normal session in one sitting — at which point the extra clears simply pay the normal rate.
Your pool — how big it is
Your Attunement pool has a maximum size that you regenerate up to:
- Base pool: 120.
- +10 for every 10 Tune-In levels you've reached. So Tune-In 10 → 130, Tune-In 50 → 170, Tune-In 100 → 220. The more you've invested in Tune-In, the larger the reserve you can bank between sessions.
- Signal subscribers get +30% on top of that (a base 120 pool becomes 156).
Regen — how fast it refills
- Attunement regenerates on its own at +1 every 60 seconds — a full base pool (120) tops back up in about 2 hours.
- Signal subscribers recharge 25% faster — about +1 every 48 seconds.
- Regen is lazy: it accrues quietly while you're away and is waiting when you return, so you never have to log in on a timer. (Bigger pools take proportionally longer to fill from empty, since the per-point rate is fixed.)
What a node costs
Every node shows an energy cost on its card, and it depends on how you play it:
| Node type | Sweep cost (full) | Hand-play cost (half) |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | 6 | 3 |
| Elite | 10 | 5 |
| Swarm | 12 | 6 |
| Boss | 15 | 8 |
- Playing by hand (a single node or a full run) costs half the node's energy — the figure shown on the card is this hand-play cost. When you're Attuned it also pays the +50% bonus.
- Sweeping costs the node's full energy per run and pays baseline loot (no Attuned bonus). Sweep trades the extra energy for skipping the fight.
So the incentive order, best value to fastest, is: play a full run by hand → play a single node by hand → Sweep. And remember — being low or empty never blocks a hand-play; it just drops you to the baseline rate.
Refills
When you want to stack more Attunement — to keep the bonus flowing through a long session — you can refill your pool rather than wait for it to regenerate. Refills come in two independent tiers each UTC day:
| Refill tier | Cost | Per UTC day |
|---|---|---|
| RSNC ladder | 500 → 1,000 → 1,500 → 2,000 → 2,500 → 3,000 RSNC (rising each refill) | up to 6 |
| Paid | $1 each (USDSC or Card) | up to 6 more |
- The RSNC ladder rises with each refill you take that day — first 500, then 1,000, and so on to 3,000 on the sixth. That sixth refill is the day's last on the RSNC tier.
- The paid tier is a flat $1 each (USDSC or Card), for up to 6 more.
- Each refill adds a full pool and stacks past your maximum — so you can bank a reserve above your cap for a big session.
- Both counters reset at UTC midnight. The rising RSNC price is deliberate: refills are a boost when you're on a roll, not a way to buy unlimited bonus.
Refill pricing is server-authoritative, so the refill dialog quotes the precise cost of your next refill (which step of the ladder you're on, and whether you've moved to the paid tier). The values above are the current ladder; the app's live figure is the one you'll be charged.
Attunement rewards play, not power
The Attuned bonus grows the loot you pull, not your fighters' stats. Fighting in the Journey doesn't level up your individual Avatars — they grow through gear, skills, essence, and ascension. What playing grows is your progress through the map (nodes, stars, difficulty), your personal Battle Level, and the loot that feeds everything else — and being Attuned makes that loot go 50% further.
Quick reference
| Thing | Value |
|---|---|
| Base pool | 120 |
| Pool per 10 Tune-In levels | +10 |
| Signal pool bonus | +30% |
| Regen rate | +1 / 60s (Signal: +1 / 48s) |
| Full base pool from empty | ~2 hours |
| Attuned loot bonus | +50% quantity of all loot drops (items, gear, aspects, chests, essence) |
| Hand-play cost | half the node's energy (6→3, 10→5, 12→6, 15→8) |
| Sweep cost | full node energy × runs (baseline loot, no bonus) |
| RSNC refill ladder | 500 → 1,000 → 1,500 → 2,000 → 2,500 → 3,000 — up to 6/day |
| Paid refills | $1 each, up to 6/day (USDSC or Card) |
| Refill effect | +1 full pool each, stacks past max |
| Reset | UTC midnight |
See also
- Getting started — where the Attunement chip lives
- Node types — what you're playing through
- Loot & rewards — what you get back, and how Sweep trades energy for skipping the fight
- Signal subscription — the bigger pool + faster recharge