Battles and raids
Spend the Momentum your work earns on turn-based fights, boss raids with your team, and bug bounties that pay when real bugs close.
Where: XP chip→Your character→⚔ Play a level
Battles are where the XP, gold and gear from the game get used. Each fight costs 10 ⚡ Momentum, which your work earns. Win and you get XP, gold and a step along the story map. Lose your first battle of the day and the reaper offers you a death tax.
The death tax is a real bug. If you click Pay it, Griddler assigns you an unassigned bug from the Maestro backlog in Azure DevOps and posts it to the team feed. It shows up in your Azure DevOps work, and your team sees it. Nothing is assigned unless you click Pay it. See The death tax.
Choose which game Play opens
Settings→Play & music→⚔ Play opens| Option | What it is |
|---|---|
| The Gridfall Chronicle — turn-based story RPG (default) | A story map of rolls, treasure, camps and turn-based fights. |
| The Grid Dungeon — the original tower climb | A real-time climb: A/D move, Space double-jumps, click attacks, Shift blocks, E accepts a pact, 1–4 cast. |
| GRIDOOM: Return to Castle Griddle — first-person, three rooms and a boss | A first-person shooter: W/S walk, A/D strafe, ←/→ turn, Space fires, or click the view to aim with the mouse. |
All three cost the same and pay the same. In GRIDOOM everyone has 100 HP and the same gun; your gear and stats don't matter there.
Walk the Chronicle map
⚔ Play a level opens 📜 The Gridfall Chronicle. Each chapter is a row of steps:
| Icon | Step |
|---|---|
| 📜 | A story. Pick a roll like 🎲 … STR DC 11, or ⚔ Draw steel instead to fight. |
| ⚔ | A fight: ⚔ Enter the clash. |
| 💰 | Treasure: Open the cache for gold or an item. |
| 🏕 | A camp: 🏕 Rest at the fire for a blessing and a Tome of Knowledge to read. |
| ☠ | The realm's boss. |
A roll is a d20 plus your stat against a target. A natural 20 always passes and a natural 1 always fails. Fail and you're ambushed: you fight at the same step, act last, and the enemies hit a little harder. ☘ Spend Inspiration — reroll lets you try the roll again. Story, treasure and camp steps are free; only fights cost ⚡.
Every Tome you collect is kept under 📖 Tomes of Knowledge on your character sheet. Click one to read it again.
There are five realms: the Archive, the Cavern, the Circuit, the Garden and the Void. Beat the Void and Lap 2 starts, with harder rolls.
When you're out of ⚡, the map offers ⚡ Buy a surge — 100g. Otherwise, go back to work: every finished turn adds 2.
Fight a clash
Press 1–9 or click an action.
| Action | Does |
|---|---|
| ⚔ Strike | Attack with your weapon. |
| 🛡 Guard | Harder to hit, half damage, until your next turn. |
| Your signature and special moves | Unlocked with skill points. |
| ★ item powers | Once per fight each. |
| ☘ Inspiration | Your next attack gets the better of two rolls, and a miss rerolls once. |
| 🏃 Flee | An agility roll. If it works you leave with nothing and owe nothing. |
- Most fights open with a bargain: 🤝 Accept a pact that trades a bonus for a risk, or ✋ Refuse the bargain.
- Each run rolls its own weather, shown in the top bar of the fight.
- Signed in, up to 3 teammates who were active in the last 10 minutes fight beside you as Echoes. The enemies get tougher to match.
- Esc leaves the fight. You get nothing and pay no death tax; the 10 ⚡ is already spent.
A win pays +25 XP, 1 gold per kill (up to 30) plus 10, and the next step on the map. Every fourth win also pays a 📦 box, and one win a day can drop a bonus level box (15% chance). A loss still pays the gold for your kills, and you retry the same step.
The death tax
When you lose your first battle of the day, in any game mode or a raid, the loss screen asks: ☠ The reaper offers a bargain: claim an unassigned Maestro bug from the backlog as your death tax?
| You | What happens |
|---|---|
| Pay it | The reaper picks a random unassigned, open bug under the Maestro area, assigns it to you, adds the comment "Claimed by the Griddler death tax — your name fell in the dungeon and this bug is the price." and posts your death and the bug to the team feed. The loss screen shows ☠ DEATH TAX COLLECTED: and the bug's number and title. |
| Not today | The reaper shrugs and moves on. No bug today. Nothing in Azure DevOps changes. |
| Nothing, for two minutes (or you close the screen) | The same as Not today. |
If you pay and the backlog has no unassigned bugs, it says The reaper found no unassigned Maestro bugs. You got off easy. You get one offer a day: later losses that day don't ask again, whatever you answered.
To stop the offers, clear Settings→Play & music→☠ Death tax — a lost first battle can claim a real bug (asks first).
The tax only runs when Claude Code on your machine has the Azure DevOps tools and Griddler knows your Azure DevOps email (your River Logic account, or your global git email).
Turn the bug into loot
The taxed bug appears on the map as ☠ WANTED: BUG-id, the … with ⚔ Hunt. Hunting it is a normal fight that doesn't move you along the map. The real reward comes when the real bug is closed, resolved or done in Azure DevOps: a 📦 guaranteed legendary box.
Take on a guild errand
When a guild campaign you've joined is running, the map shows ⚜ Guild errand: … with ⚔ Face it. Win it once for a commit-grade box. It doesn't move you along the map. When a campaign rests the dungeon, ⚔ Play a level shows struck through and takes you to the campaign instead. See Guild Hall.
Raid a boss with your team
Raids need sign-in. The 🤝 Raid button only shows when the older mail setup in Settings→claude-mail is found. On Your character, click 🤝 Raid. Your guild gets an invite, and anyone who clicks ⚔ Join raid is in.
- The lobby stays open for 120 seconds. When everyone in it clicks ⚔ Vote to start now, it starts at once.
- The whole party plays the same dungeon. Monsters get 30% stronger for each extra player, and gold scales the same way.
- When everyone is done, RAID COMPLETE lists who won (🏆) or fell (☠), their kills and times. 👑 marks the host.
See the leaderboard
The top five players by XP show in a medal strip (🥇 first) in the Tavern, once at least two people are playing. It ranks each person's main character.
Limits
- One death tax offer a day at most.
- A fight you walk away from with Esc doesn't give back its 10 ⚡.
- The leaderboard is a preview: it shows the XP each player's Griddler reports.
Related
- The game: XP, loot, gear and the shop.
- Peek and co-op: pair your agents with a teammate's.