Calculating Shard Rewards


Welcome!


Most Quests through the game will require you to create something! Through doing this you can earn experience and stat points for your characters, currencies, and items.

Each quest might have it’s own bonuses depending on what the quest is or what it requires, but for every quest you complete, earning shards is going to be the main source of rewards you will gain. This guide is for calculating the amount of shards you will be rewarded for each piece of work that is submitted.
While everyone’s art style, and skill is different, we try our very best to fit a guideline that allows players of all ages and skill to be able to earn, play, and still enjoy doing so, while also rewarding those who put more effort and time into their Kyvalorian's adventures gain what they should.

Shards from completed work can ONLY be claimed by the artist or artists that created it.While you cant complete quests for another player, you can take Painted Relics commissions and still claim the art through general claims and get yourself some shards. Neat!



Scoring Visual Art

When scoring visual art, it all breaks down to each part that is included in your work, and the effort that was put into it. While there unfortunately is no perfect way to determine how much effort one thing versus another is when creating art, because art is subjective to each person, this gets us as close as we can.



Visual art scoring breaks down into two sections, the characters included, and the rewardable bonuses, such as backgrounds, pets, or including special characters!

Scoring a character is broken into four sections. Linework, Color, Shading and Defined Size.

Linework, Color and Shading are the base values that score your work, while the characters visibility will add a multiplier to get the total shards rewarded.

For every character in your work, you'll add a calculator to determine the shard rewards for that character!

Sketches and Rough Lineless work is work that looks like it needs refined, or was done as in a quicker manner. These works usually have broken edges, gaps in the linework, or in lineless work it has rough edges with places with no clear form.

Lineart is defined by lines that have clear intent and meaning. They can still be broken lines, or 'sketchy effect' lines as long as it all looks like it was cleanly intended to do so.

For cleanly painted/lineless art, this is art that is lineless, but still has strong definition and intent around the character! It is very easy to fall into the sketch category with lineless if it doesnt have enough to it, so if in doubt, ask!

Sketch/Rough Lineless Work - +3 Shards
Clean Lineless/Lined - +6 Shards

This one is definitely the most self-explanitory!
You earn a flat rate if your work is colored in.

The character's markings must match or closely match their masterlist's design unless applying the simplified adjustment to your work! A character being colored can be in full color or color with grayscale as long as it is accurate to the character.

Color - +6 Shards

Shading art can really change the overall feel and depth of your art, while truly integrating your character into the scene and therefore hold a lot of weight to it! Because of this, this one is also one of the hardest ones to score.

There are a lot of different methods to shade, and some take significantly more time then others, so we want to reward you accordingly.

Shading is broken into two categories.

Simple Shading
  • Shading that is airbrushed, or quickly painted on with an effects layer like overlay, multiply, or shade.
  • Headshots/Busts - +1 Shards
    Partial Bodies - +2 Shards
    Fullbodies - +3 Shards
Intricate Shading
  • Shading that is done with more intention. Intricate shading is usually painted shading, clean soft shading or cell shading styles.
  • Headshots/Busts - +4 Shards
    Partial Bodies - +6 Shards
    Fullbodies - +8 Shards

A character's size determines what the base rewards from linework, color, and shading is multiplied by.

Headshot/Bust -> x 1
Headshots/Busts are defined by showing at minimum the head of the character, but generally show neck/chest/shoulders as well.

Partial Body -> x 2
Partial Bodies are anywhere from 1/2 of the character to 3/4s of a character. Anything less is scored as a headshot.

Fullbody -> x 3
Fullbodies is art that must show the full body of the character, or close to it.

  • Characters must be drawn large enough so you can tell who the character is, and general features of that character to count.
  • Fullbody characters that are positioned so most of the character isnt showing (such as the legs being hidden from laying down or an aerial view showing only the top of a character) will count as partial bodies.
  • Non-official/filler characters can be used to help tell your characters story and are redeemable for points at half the rate of a standard character redemption.


Defining Backgrounds

These are backgrounds with very basic elements,but enough elements to set a scene or environment.

Things such as just a gradient do not count towards this, but a setting that clearly had a ground and a sky of some kind but no other defining features count as a basic.

Basic Background - +10 Shards

Backgrounds that have at least three distinct elements such as trees, rocks, water, clouds, etc. and two of the following - foreground, middleground and background

Sky, ground, and water when used as a major part of the backdrop or ground do not count as elements.
Most backgrounds will most likely fall into this category!

Advanced Backgrounds - +25 Shards

Backgrounds that have at least five distinct and clearly rendered elements such as trees, rocks, buildings, plants, etc. and a clear foreground, middleground and background

Complex backgrounds must show clearly that effort was placed in creating the work! This isnt skill based, but more based on if it shows that you personally pushed yourself with it!

Complex Background - +45 Shards


Bonuses & Adjustments

There's bonuses to be had! By including certain things in your entries, you can redeem even more shards! We do this to encourage world-building and player interactions.

Another Player's Character or NPC: + 5 shards
Monthly Featured Character: + 10 shards
This cannot be combined with other players character bonus, and does not apply if it is YOUR character.

Pets(max of 5 Redeemable) - +5 Shards per pet
  • must be a clean painted/lined and colored pet to redeem

  • Monsters
  • Painted Relics monsters are redeemable for the same rate that official characters are, but do not qualify for the NPC or other character bonus!
  • Adjustments come into play when there are additional matters of the image to take into account.


    Simplified
    Redeems 1/2 of the shard total instead of the full total for being simplified.
    • Keep in mind that not all chibis are truly simplified as this will highly depend on how the character is drawn and rendered.

    Highly Rendered
    Adds a multiplyer of 1.5 (rounded up) to the shard count for the extra effort.
    • Highly rendered works that have gone the extra mile in detail, depth, and form. The scoring of highly rendered on a work is ultimately up to the discrestion of the judging mods, but if you feel like you've hit that mark, make sure you toggle it on your submission!

    Unofficial Characters
    Sometimes in your quests you'll want to use characters that dont exist on the masterlist to tell a story. Whether this be family members of a character of background npcs, you can use them as long as you note that they are unoffical!
    • Unoffical characters get scored the same as standard characters in a peice of work, then are divided in half.

    Coming soon! Sorry! Still needing to hash it out with the team!


    Other Visual Art

    Pixel art is graded a little bit differently then standard art!
    Pixels are broken down by their canvas size, and are rewarded a rate based on that.

    50x50-99x99 Pixels - +20 Shards
    100x100-149x149 Pixels - +30 Shards
    150x150-200x200 Pixels- +40 Shards

    Anything larger then a 200x200 pixel will be graded as standard visual art.

  • If a pixel is shown with an increased image size, the original size must be posted along with it for scoring
  • coming soon! Sorry! Still needing to hash it out with the team!




    Written Art

    Writing Guidelines

    Creating visual art isn't for everyone. Or sometimes it doesn't fit the story you are trying to tell. Or maybe, drawing might take too long, and writing is faster for you. Whatever the reason, writing is supported by all of the prompts unless the prompt specifically states otherwise. Or sometimes there are prompts that are ONLY for writing! Here's where to find what you'd redeem for writing entries.

    • Key characters and components relevant to the prompt must be noticeably significant in your piece and featured throughout the work.
    • Chapters and parts are permitted as long as the sections submitted still hit the mark of the key points of the quest!
    • Collaborative stories and/or RPs are permitted as long as each player's parts are clearly labelled, each player has reached the minimum word count individually, and equal distribution of effort is shown.
    • Please avoid padding your lit with excessive adjectives and descriptions just to drag out the word count.
    • Remember to stay within the limitations of the world of Kyvalore (don't write your character as having traits and powers they haven't earned yet).
    40 Words = 1 Shard
    Every 40 words rounded down redeems you 1 shard, until you hit 2,000 words (which will redeem you 50 shards).

    You cannot redeem for more then 2000 words in one writing entry, but you are welcome to break things up in the chapters or sections as long as the submitted chapter still meets the requirements of the prompt!
    This is to keep the entries in consumable sections for the mods to be able to read in sections, instead of leaving one mod with a significant amount more work then others.

    Writing Bonuses

    • Including certain things in your writing can redeem you bonuses! These are little bonuses that reward you for character interaction, and exploring the world of Kyvalore.

    • All characters and pets included need to have a place and meaning in the story! If they do not have any meaningful interaction, they will not grant bonus shards.


      • Owned Characters - + 4 Shards per Character
        • This bonus is for adding in characters that you own.

        Another Player's Character - + 6 Shards per Character

        Monthly Featured Character - + 8 Shards
        • This cannot be combined with other players character bonus for the same character, nor does not apply if it is YOUR character. Sorry!

        Official NPC - + 6 Shards per Character

        Unofficial NPC - + 2 Shards per Character
        • Sometimes you need filler characters to tell a story, such as parents, family, or otherwise!

        Pets - + 2 Shards per Pet
        • Max of 5 Pets

        Intricate Setting - + 8 Shards
        • Your story has a clear setting where the events are taking place!
          This should be at least a paragraph's worth of details, though not necessarily all in one section, enough to set the scene and give the characters in the story some world to stand on.

          Just some things to think about when writing;
          Think about the five senses! What can you see, smell, hear, taste and feel? What about the weather? Is is raining and the mud squashes with each step, or does the clear skies and sunbeams make your characters fur tingle with warmth? Are they in a town? What about the wildlife and pets running about? Is there a festival or a bustling market? What are the townsfolk doing?

    Addressing Reward Equality

    Please keep in mind that we do our very best to keep the system as fair as possible to all players. We strive to reward based on effort and time put into art and writing instead of the skill involved.

    If we find that a quest submission goes directly against the intention of the game, or otherwise is found to break the system due to finding loopholes in our rules it will be subject to custom scoring by the mod team in order to reward an amount that reflects a fitting amount that still rewards their effort, but also remains fair to other users who have redeemed rewards in the intended way of the game.

    As Painted Relics is still in a beta testing state, shard counts are subject to update and change to continue to provide the best scoring platform we can to reward fairly and equally.