Docs → Crypt Cycles → Understanding penalties
⚖️ Understanding penalties
Work out what a penalty on your record actually is, which rule produced it, why it sits at the top of a brand new cycle, and what can be done about it.
Your score has a minus in it and you want to know where it came from. Two things answer that in almost every case: the date on the penalty and the name on it.
First, what a penalty is. Not an edit to the points you earned, but a separate record with a negative value, attached to one of the chests your clan set up for the purpose. Your chest points are never reduced or overwritten — the two are kept apart, and added together only when a total is shown or a target is judged.
Every rule that can penalise you
| Rule | What sets it off | Which cycle it lands in |
|---|---|---|
| Missed target — shortfall | You finished a cycle below your point target. The charge is the points you were short. On a cycle where the whole clan shares one target, missing a chest count target sets it off too, even if your points were fine — which is why this penalty can arrive on a cycle your screens marked as met. | The next cycle |
| Missed target — fixed amount | Same trigger, but everyone who missed is charged the same flat amount. | The next cycle |
| Login days | You logged in to the portal on fewer separate days than your clan's minimum. | The next cycle |
| No portal account | No active portal account is linked to your player at all. | The next cycle |
| Gold Pass — at close | The portal has not recorded an active Gold Pass for you. | The next cycle |
| Gold Pass — monthly | The same check, run automatically on a set day each month. | Whichever cycle is open at the time |
| Event points, chests or chat | You missed an event's point goal, its chest goal, or its chat requirement. | The cycle covering the event's end |
| Event resource goal | You did not reach the resource goal for your Guardsmen level on a resource event. | Whichever cycle is open when an admin closes the tally |
Your clan chooses which of these are switched on. The first five fire only when an admin closes a cycle — nothing closes one on a timer — so a run of overdue closes can deliver several weeks of penalties at once. The rules do not exclude one another: a single close can produce three or four records for the same member.
Why a brand new cycle already shows a minus
This one is deliberate, and it is the most misread thing in the portal.
Penalties produced by closing a cycle are not written into the cycle you failed. They go into the next cycle, dated one minute after it starts — so a fresh cycle can open at −1,000 before you have collected a chest. That figure belongs to the week before.
Your Points Statement is built to show this. On the shortfall method the amount appears under Carry over from last — a debt brought forward, not something you did this week. On the fixed-amount method it sits in the ordinary Penalties column of the cycle it landed in.
Where to look on your own record
The ⚖️ Applied Penalties card shows Active penalties and Penalty points, then your eight most recent penalties, newest first, with the date, the penalty chest's name and the amount. Anything older is counted as + N older. Penalties an admin has removed are not shown to you.
Further down the same page, the 🧾 Points Statement card gives one row per cycle: Cycle start, Chest Points, Penalties, Carry over from last, Net points, Target and Carry over. This is the screen that tells you whether a penalty belongs to the cycle it sits in.
Personal Dashboard is the first item in the menu and the page the portal opens on. It carries a Penalties tile with This cycle, opening a full All penalties list. In game, the chat bot answers penalties with your ten most recent active ones and a total.
You are told the moment one is created: a notification titled Penalty Chest Applied, reading A penalty chest '…' (… points) was added to your record on …
Reading a single penalty
Each row is named after the penalty chest it was written as, not the rule that produced it — most types carry no separate label. The chest name is therefore your main clue — a useful one only if your clan gave each rule its own chest. Date and amount narrow the rest down.
| What you see | What it is |
|---|---|
| Dated one minute after a cycle started | One of the close-time rules, triggered by the previous cycle's close. |
| An odd amount nobody else has | A shortfall penalty — it equals the points you were missing, so no two members match. |
| A round amount several members share | A fixed-value missed-target penalty, or the login, no-portal-account or Gold Pass rule. |
| Mid-cycle, on the same day every month | The monthly Gold Pass rule. |
| Dated at an event's end — or an hour after a cycle started, or a second before one ended | An event points, chests or chat penalty. It is normally stamped with the event's end, and only pulled to one of those two edges when the event ended outside the cycle it had to be filed into. The chest is the one configured on that event. |
| Mid-cycle, at no time you recognise | A resource-event penalty. This one is stamped with the moment your admin closed the resource tally, not with anything about the event, and it lands in whichever cycle was open at that instant. There is nothing to decode from the date — ask which resource event it came from. |
| Worth 0 points | A rule with a penalty chest chosen but no amount set. It counts as a penalty everywhere, but costs nothing. |
What can be changed, and by whom
Only clan admins and owners can touch a penalty, from Clan Management → Penalties Applied — the page heads itself Applied Penalties — or from your profile, opened from Clan Management → Clan Members. What they can do is narrow:
- Edit — the points and the date only. The member, the chest and the rule behind it cannot be changed.
- Remove — the record is hidden rather than erased, and every total it affected is recalculated. Because it never edited your chest points, removing it puts the figures back exactly as they were.
- Restore — puts it back. You are not notified a second time.
Nothing else reaches an existing penalty. Changing the clan's penalty amount, swapping the penalty chest, editing a cycle's targets or fixing the chest catalog have no effect on penalties already written — a wrong one has to be edited or removed.
Being spared a penalty
| What an admin sets | Effect |
|---|---|
| Your penalty status, on your profile | Standing, and the one to ask for. No Crypt Penalties spares you the missed-target penalty only; No Penalties spares you every clan rule and event check. The default is Apply Penalties. |
| The Penalty toggle on a target group | Found beside each group's targets in the cycle's requirement editor, and on each rule under Override Rules. Switching it off turns the missed-target penalty off for a whole Guardsmen level or Might bracket that cycle. The other three rules still apply. |
| The skip box in the close dialog | A one-off pass decided as the cycle is closed. It covers all four close-time rules and is not remembered next time. |
What a penalty costs you
- Your requirement is judged on the total after penalties. That is how a penalty turns a cycle you thought you had cleared into a miss — and, on the shortfall method, into a bigger one next time.
- The statistics screens undercount them. Their Penalty figure leaves out shortfall carry-overs. Your Points Statement is the complete picture.
- Rewards can be affected. A reward distribution built from a chest cycle subtracts penalties from each member's points and from whether they met the requirement.
- Your AI penalty score drops. By default a member starts at 100 and loses 20 points per penalty received in the last 30 days, reaching 0 at five. Your clan can change all three numbers.
If you administer the clan, the full picture — configuring each rule, choosing penalty chests, closing a cycle safely and removing penalties in bulk — is in the guide Understand the penalty system.
Common questions
Can a penalty be removed?
Yes, by a clan admin or owner — nobody else, and not by you. They can also correct its points and its date, and restore it later if they change their mind.
Nothing is lost when one is removed. A penalty never edited the points you collected; it was a separate negative record, so removing it recalculates the cycle totals back to where they were. You are not notified when a removed penalty is put back.
Why do I have a penalty in a cycle where I did everything right?
Because penalties from a cycle close are written into the next cycle, dated one minute after it starts. It belongs to the cycle before — the one you missed — and it is sitting at the top of the new one.
Check your Points Statement on My Progress. If the amount shows under Carry over from last, that is exactly what it is.
My penalty gets bigger every cycle even though I am playing the same. Why?
Your clan uses the shortfall method, and the shortfall is worked out on your points after the penalty carried in from last time. Miss by 1,000 and you begin the next cycle 1,000 down, so identical play leaves you 2,000 short, and the charge grows each cycle.
It does not correct itself. Ask your clan admins to lower your target, change your penalty status, or switch that rule to a fixed amount.
Do penalties affect my rewards?
They can. When a reward distribution is built from a chest cycle, penalties are subtracted from each member's points and count towards whether they met the requirement — so the figure used there is lower than the chest points shown on the statistics screens. Distributions built on other measures may not use penalties at all. Ask your clan admins which method they use.
An admin excluded me from this cycle, so why was I penalised anyway?
Because the Exclude from penalties this cycle action on Dashboards → Chest Cycle Points marks the member on that page but is not read when the cycle is closed. It is a known gap, not a mistake by your admin.
Two things do work: the penalty status on your member profile (No Crypt Penalties or No Penalties), and the per-member skip box inside the close dialog. If a penalty has already been written, an admin can remove it.
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