Time
The Cleft of Dimensions is a real-time game. Even if nobody is online, the world is in motion and time marches forward.
Pulses
One Pulse is about four seconds. Almost everything in the game happens on pulse timing or multiples of it.
The duration of affects on characters and rooms is measured in pulses. A character's natural HP, MP, and MV recovery happens on pulse timing also. See Statistics for more info on how these gains are calculated.
Ticks
One Tick is 60 pulses, or about one minute. The duration of affects on items is measured in ticks.
Every four ticks, the weather system updates.
Beats
One Beat is 1/16 of a pulse, or about 1/4 of a second. Beats are used for input lag from skills and spells. When a skill or spell is used, a character can't input any more commands until the lag wears off; additional commands entered will be queued up instead.
The game attempts to make each beat exactly 250,000 microseconds long, but this can get stretched out if the game is doing a lot of processing or something.
Confusingly, a beat can also be referred to as a pulse in the code.
Day and Night
Each day has 24 hours. The sun always rises at 5am and sets at 7pm, regardless of season or latitude.
Time in the Cleft of Dimensions runs on a schedule that is significantly faster than the real world. One in-game hour is about as long as one real-life minute.
At night, outdoor areas will become dark. Players without dark vision will require a light source to see properly, regardless of current weather or moon phase.
The day/night cycle affects many spells, but mostly ones belonging to the Geomancer class and its subclasses.
Days of the Week
There are seven days in every week:
- Mana Holy Day
- Luna's Day
- Salamando's Day
- Undine's Day
- Dryad's Day
- Jinn's Day
- Gnome's Day
These are cyclical and since the months are of a fixed length that is a multiple of seven, Mana Holy Day will always be the first, eighth, fifteenth, and twenty-second day of every month, with the other days being similarly predictable.
The Mana Spirits Lumina and Shade don't have days named after them. This is so that the days of the week coincide with the elemental innates available to characters.
Months and Years
There are twelve months to the year, and they are named normally (January, February, etc). Each month has exactly 28 days, for a total of 336 days every year.
In-game years are not actually counted by the game. Year numbers mentioned in the History article and other places have no relevance to gameplay.
Lunar Cycle
While months last 28 days, the lunar cycle is only 27 days. The moon doesn't exert any tidal forces on the oceans of the Cleft, but the Saiyan race's special ability relies on the moon's phase.
One Time Mage spell (Lunatic) is improved when the moon is closer to full.