Twenty-four hours, every time.

Why "true" offline progression is rare in idle games

Most idle games on the App Store advertise offline progression. Most of them then quietly add caveats:

• "Up to 8 hours offline" (then ads to extend)
• "50% offline multiplier" (active play earns 2× what offline does)
• "Watch a video to unlock today\'s offline rewards"
• "Offline cap scales with your VIP tier"
• "Combat XP doesn\'t accrue offline" (only passive skills do)

Each caveat trades one of the genre\'s real promises for short-term retention metrics. The pattern is so common that the genre veterans — players coming from RuneScape, Melvor Idle, Idle Slayer, NGU — assume any new idle game has the same retention-engineered caveats hidden somewhere.

Tideward made a different commitment. The 24-hour cap is the only constraint. Within that 24 hours: full speed, every skill, every combat encounter, no premium gate. The "what happened while you were away" summary is real. The numbers in it are the same numbers active play would have produced.

The math, in plain English

When you close the app, Tideward writes the current Unix timestamp to your save file. The save also includes your active trade, current gear, current Vitality, food stack, prayer state, and active buffs. Everything needed to resume.

When you open the app again, the simulator looks at:

• Elapsed wall-clock time since the last save (capped at 24 hours).
• Per-action duration for your current trade (e.g., one Forging tick = 2.4 seconds; one Mining tick = varies by ore tier).
• Resource availability — do you have enough coal for the bars? Enough arrows for Ranged combat? Enough food to survive the elapsed combat?

The simulator then runs N action ticks, where N is elapsed-time / per-action-duration. Each tick rolls success/failure, applies XP, consumes inputs, produces outputs. For combat, the simulator additionally rolls accuracy, damage, food consumption, prayer drain, and death checks.

The whole simulation runs in about 100-300 milliseconds for a full 24-hour window — short enough to feel like an instant transition rather than a loading screen. The result is presented as a "what happened" timeline: XP gained, drops collected, food consumed, items crafted, deaths (if any) and the time at which they happened.

What\'s special about Tideward\'s implementation

Three things matter:

• Closed-form simulation, not a real-time tick loop. Some games approximate offline progression by replaying a fast-forward of the active loop. Tideward does the math in O(actions) rather than O(time elapsed) — the simulator collapses long stretches of identical actions into a single statistical draw rather than rolling each tick separately.
• Deterministic seeding. The same offline window produces the same result regardless of which device simulates it. You can\'t game the simulator by re-opening on a different device.
• Real-resource accounting. If your character would have run out of food at hour 14, the simulator stops the combat loop at hour 14. If your arrows run out at hour 6, the Ranged loop pauses there. The simulator doesn\'t cheat to give you an unrealistically full reward.

How offline progression interacts with the 23 trades

Different trades behave differently offline:

• Combat trades (Attack, Strength, Defense, Vitality, Ranged, Magic, Vigil, Quarry) consume food, ammunition, and runes. Death stops the loop at the death timestamp.
• Gathering trades (Woodcutting, Fishing, Mining, Pilfering) loop on resource availability — Mining stops if your inventory fills up, Fishing stops if the spot is exhausted in some configurations.
• Farming is the unique case: it uses real wall-clock time independent of the offline-simulator cap. A magic tree planted at midnight matures at 6am whether the app is open or not. The 24-hour cap doesn\'t apply.
• Artisan trades (Kindling, Cooking, Forging, Handicraft, Bowcraft, Inscription, Apothecary) consume materials at the rate they would actively. The loop stops if you run out of inputs.
• Wayfaring trades (Wayfaring, Stargazing, Binding) interact with offline progression in skill-specific ways — Stargazing observation windows still depend on real-world time; Binding familiars still expire on their normal duration.

For per-skill offline behavior, see the individual skill pages — each has a section on what changes between active play and offline simulation.

Why 24 hours and not something longer?

Two design reasons. First, daily check-in retention: idle games that allow unlimited offline time train players to skip days, which is bad for long-term engagement. The 24-hour cap encourages a once-a-day rhythm without punishing missed days (the cap stays at 24, not "your missed days carry forward").

Second, simulation cost: a closed-form simulator gets slower the more actions it has to roll. Twenty-four hours of high-tick-rate combat is roughly 30,000 simulated actions; 72 hours would be 90,000. That math runs at app launch, on-device, with no spinner. The 24-hour cap keeps the resume-to-summary transition feeling instant.

FAQ — offline progression in Tideward

How does Tideward's 24-hour offline progression actually work?

When you close the app, Tideward writes the current timestamp to your save. When you open it again, the offline simulator runs the same combat math, gathering rolls, and crafting cycles your character would have done — at full speed — for the elapsed time, capped at 24 hours. You return to a "what happened while you were away" summary: XP gains, drops, food consumed, items crafted. There's no throttle, no ad-watch button, no premium tier that doubles it.

Why is the cap 24 hours?

Two reasons. First, retention math: idle games that allow unlimited offline time train players to never open the app daily, which collapses long-term engagement. Twenty-four hours encourages a daily check-in without punishing missed days. Second, simulation cost: the offline simulator runs on the device when you open the app — running 72+ hours of math at app launch is slow enough to feel like a loading screen. 24 hours is the sweet spot.

Does offline progression work the same as active play?

Yes. The simulator uses the same RNG seeds, same accuracy formulas, same drop tables, and same XP curves as active play. A 1-hour AFK Forging session produces (within statistical noise) the same number of bars and the same XP as 1 hour of standing at the anvil. There's no offline-tax. Some genre-veteran games charge a 50% offline multiplier — Tideward doesn't.

What about combat? Does my character actually fight while offline?

Yes. The combat simulator runs accuracy rolls, damage calculations, food consumption, prayer drain, and Vitality regen exactly as it would in active play. If you set a Quarry assignment and close the app, you'll come back to the count progressed and the loot table rolled. If your character runs out of food and dies during the offline window, the simulator records the death and stops at that timestamp — you don't lose more time than the moment you would have died in active play.

Can I exceed 24 hours of offline progress somehow?

No, by design. Stargazing constellation buffs and certain Vigil prayers can boost your offline XP rates within the 24-hour window, but the wall-clock cap stays at 24 hours. If you've been away for 72 hours, the first 24 are simulated and the remaining 48 are forfeit. The cap is the same for everyone — there's no premium tier that extends it.

Does offline progression require a server connection?

No. The offline simulator runs entirely on your device when you open the app. CloudKit syncs the resulting state to your other devices afterward, but the simulation itself doesn't need a network. You can play Tideward fully offline (no Wi-Fi, no cellular) and the offline-progression math still works.

What happens with offline progression across multiple devices?

CloudKit reconciles to the most recent save. If you had an active session on iPhone yesterday at 11pm and pick up Tideward on iPad at 11am today, the iPad will simulate 12 hours of offline progress from the iPhone's last-saved state. The deterministic seed means the same offline window produces the same result regardless of which device runs the simulator.