Everything you need to know about how the game works. Please read it carefully before submitting your cat! 

Feel free to ask questions in the comments! 

Skills

In this game, every cat has two strengths and two weaknesses, each chosen from a list of 7 skills. These skills will affect how well your tribute will succeed in any given situation during the Games. Think hard about which skills strengths and weaknesses will give your cat the best chance of survival in the arena! 

★ FIGHTING POWER
The raw strength to overpower an opponent in battle.
- as a strength, this increases your chances of winning a fight.
- as a weakness, this decreases your chances of winning a fight.

★ FIGHTING ABILITY
The skill to use advanced fighting moves and the accuracy to land hits against an opponent in battle.
- same effects as fighting power. Having both fighting power and fighting ability as your strengths would give your cat a definite edge in any battle, but gives you nothing when it comes to basic survival. 

★ SPEED
How fast a tribute can travel.
- as a strength, this allows you to move longer distances when travelling and increases your chances of being able to escape from enemies while fleeing or catch a tribute you are chasing.
- as a weakness, you will move shorter distances when travelling. You are also less likely to escape when being chased, or catch a tribute you are chasing.

★ TRACKING
The ability to track down other tributes, as well as the stealth necessary in approaching them to have attack bonuses.
- as a strength, you can choose your target and travel in their direction with an attack bonus as far as your speed allows.
- as an average skill, you will travel towards the nearest player with an attack bonus as far as your speed allows.
- as a weakness, your cat cannot track at all (the exception being if you have teammates who can) and you will never have an attack bonus, even when ambushing sleeping cats or winning chases.

★ HUNTING
The ability to catch prey to eat.
- as a strength, you have more chances of catching prey while hunting and can hunt bigger prey.
- as a weakness, you're less likely to catch prey while hunting, and can only catch small prey.

★ HERB KNOWLEDGE
The knowledge of medicinal herbs, where to find them, and how to use them.
- as a strength, you are more likely to find medicinal herbs while exploring and can always successfully use them to heal your injuries.
- as a weakness, you are less likely to find herbs, and you probably don't know how to use them, so you may fail when trying to heal injuries.

★ RESILIENCE
The ability to survive despite injury and weakness.
- as a strength, you have 1 extra health point (total of 5 HP).
- as a weakness, you have 1 less health point (total of 3 HP). 

The Arena

The Claw Games arena is a 7x7 grid based off of the canon clan territories map. Each square of the grid is called a block. Every block has different things in store for you. The very center block is the Cornucopia, where all of the tributes are placed at the start of the Games. From there, the clan territories are in all different directions. Some blocks have open water sources, others have hidden water sources, and some don't have any water. Exploring a new block could give you useful items, but it can also be dangerous. Some blocks may hold traps that could injure or even kill tributes. Watch out for the Thunderpath blocks and the River blocks, which could injure or displace any tribute who ends a turn there (every chapter, either a day or a night, is a turn). Any two tributes that end a turn on the same block will enter into an encounter.

Thirst

Every tribute has 3 thirst points that contribute to their survival. Your thirst will drop by 1 point at the end of every night. If your thirst reaches 0, you will die. Do not let your thirst reach zero. To replenish thirst points, you will first need to find a water source, then use the following command (you'll never guess what it is): /drink. This will replenish your thirst points to full. Some blocks have open water sources. You will be told if a block that you land on has an open water source. Other blocks may have hidden water sources. To find them, you need to use the command /explore first. Once you've found a hidden water source, you will have access to it until you travel again. You can also find water packets as inventory items, which replenish 1 thirst point each.

Hunger

Every tribute has 3 hunger points too. Your hunger will drop by 1 point at the end of every night. If your hunger reaches 0, you will die. To replenish hunger points, you first need to catch prey using the command /hunt. Prey items comes in 3 sizes: small, medium, and large. The size of prey that you can catch depends on your hunting skill. Using the /eat <item> command will reduce your prey to the next size (large becomes medium, then medium becomes small, small gets used up) and replenish 1 hunger point. You can use /eat more than once to keep eating, as long as you have prey and are still hungry. Don't be greedy and keep eating if you have a full belly; this isn't Little Nightmares.

Says the one who tried to eat all the prey I caught in the practice round >:( ~Cindy

Health

Every tribute has between 3 and 5 health (HP), depending on their resilience skill. If your health reaches 0, you will die. Try not to do that. Your health will decrease when you are injured in battle or by arena traps. You can replenish your health by successfully healing yourself with herbs. Herbs can be found using the command /explore and come in 3 varieties: weak, medium, and strong. Using the /heal with <item> command will reduce the item to the next variety (strong becomes medium, medium becomes weak, weak gets used up) and, if you're successful, will restore 1 HP. If you fail, the herb gets reduced without restoring your health. You can use /heal more than once, as long as you have herbs and are injured. Your chance of success while healing, as well as your chance of finding herbs and what type of herbs you can find, depends on your herb knowledge skill.

Energy

Sleep is, shockingly, not just for the weak! You have 4 energy points, and they decrease by 1 after every turn and after winning a battle. (Note: this is different from most command games where having multiple energy means you can complete multiple tasks. In this game, you can only complete 1 action command per turn. However, there are other commands that do not require energy and can be used as much as you like. These are all listed on the Commands chapter.) If your energy reaches 2 or lower, you become tired. Being tired makes all of your skills get reduced by a level. That means that all of your strengths become average, and all of your average skills become like weaknesses! Which is very bad. When you become tired, it's time to use /sleep. (So creative.) You will then sleep through the turn and wake up will full energy. It is recommended to sleep at night when the other tributes are less active. You can sleep at night as long as you have at least 1 energy point to replenish, but you can only sleep during the day if you are already tired. Be careful! If someone attacks you while you are sleeping, they will get an attack bonus and you will automatically lose 1 HP before you can fight back. If you choose to keep going despite being tired, your energy will continue to fall. When it reaches 0, you become exhausted, and you will pass out and be forced to sleep even if you are in danger.

Encounters

When two tributes end their turn on the same block, they enter into an encounter. While in an encounter, you have 3 choices: you can /fight, /flee, or /ask <cat> to team. If you ask someone to team, they have the choice to either /accept or /refuse  you as a teammate. If you get accepted, then you can now work together as a team! Congrats. If you get rejected, then both cats will have to choose either /fight or /flee. If you both choose to flee, you will both travel 1 block away in random directions. If you both choose to fight, then a battle begins. If one cat chooses to fight and the other chooses to flee, it turns into a chase. The outcome of a chase depends on your Speed skill. If the fleeing cat (Snow doesn't believe me that "chasee" is a real word... Grammarly thinks it's fine, thank you very much) is faster, they escape 1 block away in a random direction and the fighting cat gets left behind. If the fighting cat (chaser) is faster, a battle starts and the fighting cat gets an attack bonus. If both cats are the same speed, then there is a 50/50 chance for the fleeing cat to escape or get caught. Place your bets!

Battling

Ready for some Pokemon battles? Just kidding, this is Warriors. Once a battle begins, you and your opponent's battle skills (Fighting Skill and Fighting Power - they both have the same effects) will be weighed against each other to see who has a higher chance of landing a hit. If both cats are evenly matched, it becomes a 50/50 chance. However, as an example, if cat A has Fighting Skill as a strength but cat B has it as a weakness, then cat A has approximately an 80% chance of making the hit while cat B has less than a 20% chance.  Don't forget that being tired lowers your skill level! Once your chances are set, every hit is randomized until one cat runs out of HP. That cat is dead, unfortunately. The winner takes the loser's items and hopes they don't have to fight again before they can recover. Winning a battle will make you lose an energy point.

An attack bonus is earned when you win a chase, ambush a sleeping cat, or encounter a tribute while tracking. It grants you an automatic first hit. However, if you have a Tracking weakness, you can never get an attack bonus.

The Bloodbath

The Bloodbath is the very first turn of the game, when all of the tributes are set loose in the center of the arena - the Cornucopia. To encourage early deaths, the Cornucopia is filled with Item Packs that contain life-saving supplies such as prey, herbs, and traps. These item packs are divided into three distinct tiers - 3rd tier being the least useful while 1st tier is the most useful. Tribbutes must either immediately flee the scene or risk their lives to collect these packs. During the Bloodbath, you have 4 options:

1) Run : Using the command /run <direction>, you will immediately flee the Cornucopia in the direction of your choice (north, northeast, east, southeast, south, southwest, west, or northwest), with no travel penalty. How far you can run depends on your Speed skill. The average movement speed is 2 blocks.

2) Grab and Run : Using the command /grab and run <direction>, you will grab a random 3rd tier pack of supplies before running away from the Cornucopia in a direction of your choice - but with a travel penalty - you will move 1 less block than you would have otherwise. If you reach for the same pack as another tribute, you will enter an encounter and be asked to either /fight for it or back down and /flee.

3) Search : Using the command /search, you will collect one random 2nd tier pack. If you reach for the same pack as another tribute, you will enter an encounter and be asked to either /fight for it or back down and /flee. Fleeing will end your search and you will run away from the Cornucopia in a random direction with a travel penalty.

4) Stay and Fight : Using the command /stay and fight, you choose to stay to the bitter end of the Bloodbath and will battle all others who use this command in order to collect the 1st tier packs. If you or your team are the last remaining cat(s) at the Cornucopia, you will also gather all leftover 2nd and 3rd tier packs. 

You can ask to team up with any tribute that you encounter. Joining a team is a good idea if you want to survive the Bloodbath!

Teaming

Tributes can work together in teams of up to 3 cats. As a team, your chances of survival dramatically increase. However, there are a few regulations. 

1) You can leave your team at any time by using /leave team. However, this puts you at risk of being attacked by your ex-teammates.

2) Everyone in the team will have to collectively agree on a task to do together during your turn. If you cannot agree on an action, then nothing will happen. For example, if someone wants to hunt, then everyone has to hunt. One does not simply hunt while a teammate explores or travels. But on the plus side, you will probably get more prey! 

3) Everyone in a team will have access to a shared inventory so that you can take care of each other's needs. This also means that you cannot hoard items for yourself.

4) Collectively, the team will have a speed weakness, so the team will only move 1 block while traveling or tracking. 

5) If the team encounters another cat, the team does not have the option of fleeing and must fight. Since battles can only happen between pairs of cats, the team will have to choose which cat will be the first to fight, while the others wait as backup. If two evenly-sized teams fight each other, then the battle pairings will be randomized. 

6) While sleeping, teams have the options of assigning one cat to stay awake and keep watch. This is the only exception to team rule #1. To guard your sleeping teammates, use /guard. You will stay awake and prevent any enemies from ambushing the team while they are asleep. Unfortunately, the guard's energy will not replenish. If you choose to leave your team while they are asleep and you are guarding, you have the choice to peacefully flee with your items or to ambush your teammate(s) as they sleep, giving you an attack bonus. If you betray your team while they sleep and you win, the mental anguish of being a filthy backstabber will drop your energy to 0.

Items and Packs

Every cat can hold up to 3 items in their inventory. These items can either be found naturally in the arena by hunting and exploring, or found by opening item packs taken from the Cornucopia during the Bloodbath. The supplies inside a pack are randomized based on the pack's tier. 3rd tier packs will hold lower-level items such as small prey and weak herbs. 2nd tier packs may have medium prey, medium herbs, tribute traps, or prey traps. 1st tier packs could hold large prey, strong medicine, and reinforced claws. (Reinforced claws are like Scourge's dog claws that he put over his own. When equipped, they increase your battle skill by a level, giving you a huge boost when fighting.) Water packets can be found in any tier of pack. All packs that you are holding will be automatically opened at the end of the Bloodbath and the items inside will be placed into your inventory. If you end up with more than 3 items, the extras will automatically be dropped. You can then swap which items you are holding with the command /switch <item 1> for <item 2>. If you leave items behind on the ground, they may be picked up by other tributes who use /explore on that block.

Traps

Just like the real Hunger Games, this arena is full of traps! There are four types of traps:

1) Arena Traps: these traps are permanently set into the arena at the beginning of the game. Arena traps are limited to a single block and can only be triggered by using /explore. They are rare but can be deadly. Some arena traps are instantaneous death, others will take away a certain amount of HP, and yet others have different effects depending on what your strengths and weaknesses are. So be careful!

2) The River/Thunderpath: I couldn't think of a fancy name for these, so they're just the River and the Thunderpath. These traps span multiple blocks of the arena and have a chance of affecting you any time you end a turn on one of their blocks. On the Thunderpath, you may get hit by a car and suffer a certain amount of damage depending on how bad the accident was. The River will not harm you, but if you fall in, it will displace you by a certain number of blocks.

3) Tribute Traps: these bad boys are made for cats, by cats, of cats (just kidding)! They can be found in packs as inventory items. To use them, a tribute trap must be set up on a block by using /set tribute trap (this is an action command and therefore takes a full turn to accomplish). Any tributes who travel onto that block will get caught in the trap and immediately die, RIP. Tribute traps are single use and cannot be disassembled or moved once they've been set up.

4) Prey Traps: these are the best kind of trap! They can be found in packs as inventory items. To use one, it must be set up on a block by using /set prey trap. Once set up, the prey trap has a chance of catching prey for you to eat, with the same luck as a cat with average hunting skills. You can check it at the end of every day. Once set up, it cannot be moved from its block, unless you use /disassemble prey trap (also an action command and will take a full turn) to turn it back into an inventory item. If you travel away from it without disassembling it first, it will stay active, and any other tribute who stumbles across it can use it to their benefit.

Roleplaying

We've saved the best for last - roleplaying! If you've taken part in any other command games, then you'll know that roleplaying is a totally fun and completely optional feature. You do not have to roleplay anything if you don't want to. If you do want to, then go ahead! Roleplaying will have absolutely zero effect on the actual gameplay, so have fun with it. Write out all of your cat's emotional anguish and heartbreak for everyone to fawn over. However, there are a few simple rules. If you want to start a roleplay, please make a SEPERATE COMMENT CHAIN for it and invite any other players that you want to rolaplay with there. Please don't start roleplaying in the replies of your commands as that makes it a lot harder on the admins. Also, please do it in a chain to keep the comment section as tidy for us as possible. Lastly, all typical roleplay rules apply in order to keep it family friendly: don't bully anyone, make hateful comments, control other people's characters, make overly vivid descriptions of gore, etc. Help us keep this a safe environment for everyone! :)

Thank you for reading this far! If you read all of it, comment your favourite cat emoji or emoticon and we will reward you with a coookie!