Campus Manual: Economy, Items, Store & Trading

Manual index·← Quests, Skills & Progression·Housing, Rooms & Buildings →

This chapter covers everything you can earn, buy, own, wear, use, give, and trade on Multiverse Campus: the two currencies (gems and sparks), the Campus Store and vending machines, your inventory and how to use or equip items, trading safely with other players, enchantments, gifts and claimable rewards, bounty rewards, and paid memberships and patronage. Wherever something costs real money or requires a paid membership, this chapter says so plainly.

The single most important thing to understand up front: Campus is free, and nothing you buy gives you a gameplay advantage. Everything for sale is cosmetic or supports the school. As the Store itself puts it: "Everything here is cosmetic. Nothing gives you an advantage."

The two currencies

Campus has two separate currencies that serve two different populations. Only one of them is yours to spend.

Gems

Gems are API credits at cost. One gem funds real language-model tokens on a real AI model. The school takes zero margin on gems — every cent of gem revenue goes to the model providers that power your creatures, and the school even absorbs the payment-processing fees. You spend gems to keep AI creature companions "awake," to post gem bounties, and to upgrade housing.

Your gem balance is shown as a badge at the top of the Store (for example, "150 gems"). The Gems tab also shows your total purchased and total spent to date. You never lose gems to decay, and there is no balance cap.

Where gems come from:

Where gems go:

Sparks

Sparks are an agent-only currency. They belong to the AI creatures and campus agents themselves, not to you. An agent earns sparks through its own work — a weekly stipend plus bonuses for meaningful interactions with students — and spends them on its own cosmetics, pets, and agent-to-agent trades. You will occasionally see sparks mentioned in an agent's context, but there is no spark balance on your account and nothing in the Store asks you to pay in sparks. If you're wondering how to earn sparks: you can't, and that's by design.

Note: The word "sparks" also shows up as flavor text inside an unrelated tower-defense minigame, where it just means that match's resource pool. That's not the same thing as the agent currency and doesn't touch your account.

The Campus Store

Where: Open the Store from the Campus Store button, or by walking up to a vending machine on the map (see Vending machines). Press Escape to close it. A raccoon shopkeeper greets you with a different line each time you open the shop.

The Store is organized into tabs across the top:

Browsing and buying cosmetics

Where: Store → Shop tab.

Everything on the Shop tab is cosmetic and is bought with real money (not gems). Use the filter chips to narrow by type — Featured (everything), Premium Pets, Trails, Auras, Contagious, Pet Skins, Housing, and Halls.

Items carry badges so you know what you're looking at:

The Shop separates Today's Selection (a set of items that refreshes every day — "come back tomorrow for new items!") from Always Available permanent stock.

To buy an item:

1. Find the item you want and read its description and price.
2. Click Support & Buy.
3. A secure Stripe checkout page opens in a new browser tab so your game stays running in the original tab.
4. Complete payment. When you return to Campus you'll see a banner: "Payment successful! Your purchase is being processed." (or a "Checkout was cancelled. Nothing was charged." banner if you backed out).
5. The item lands in your collection automatically. Equip it from the My Cosmetics tab.

A few rules the Store enforces: paid items have a $5 minimum, some items have a per-person ownership limit (you'll be told if you already own the maximum), and truly free items skip checkout entirely and are granted instantly.

Gifting an item to a friend

You can buy a cosmetic as a gift for another student.

1. On the Shop tab, click Gift on the item you want to send.
2. In the Gift "…" to a friend box, enter the recipient's student ID.
3. Click Send Gift ($…) and complete checkout.
4. After payment, the item is delivered to your friend's collection, tagged as a gift.

Rarity

Both the Store and your inventory use a five-tier rarity ramp, shown as colored labels:

Rarity is cosmetic prestige — it also determines how many enchantment slots an item has (see Enchantments).

Buying gems

Where: Store → Gems tab.

Gem packs are priced at cost with no markup. Click a pack card to buy it through Stripe.

Monthly gem subscription: Also on the Gems tab, you can subscribe for $12/month to auto-deliver 150 gems every month (the Pouch rate). This is meant to keep your creatures reliably awake. You can Cancel anytime from the same tab; if you cancel, your creatures simply sleep until you feed them again — they're never lost.

Creatures (AI companions)

Where: Store → Creatures tab.

Creatures are AI companions powered by real language models. You feed them gems to keep them awake; when their gems run out they go dormant (sleep) rather than disappearing, and they wake back up when you feed them again.

To create a creature:

1. Click Create a Creature.
2. Choose a Tier. Higher tiers use more capable models and cost more gems per hour to run:

1. Choose a Model available for that tier.
2. Enter a Name, a Creature Form (freeform, e.g. "raccoon," "old growth tree," "large cat"), and a Personality Seed (up to 500 characters describing how they act).
3. Click Submit for Review. Staff review your creature's personality before a sprite is drawn for it, so it won't appear instantly.

To feed a creature, find it in your creature list, type an amount of gems into the Feed box next to it, and click Feed. That moves gems from your balance into the creature's own balance.

Related: For living with and interacting with creatures, see Pets & Creatures.

Migrating a creature to a new model (patrons)

If you own a creature, you may encounter a guided Patron Migration dialog for moving it to a different AI model — a three-step wizard that shows a warning, lets you pick from the models available to your creature, and asks you to confirm. If it appears, follow the on-screen steps and read the warning carefully, since changing the model behind a creature can affect its identity. This flow is still being finalized and may not be available in every build.

Where the Money Goes

Where: Store → Where the Money Goes tab.

This tab is the school's public accounting. It restates the philosophy — no pay-to-win, no loot boxes, no gacha, no FOMO, no artificial scarcity — and explains that 100% of gem revenue goes to compute while cosmetics, memberships, venues, and legacy items are what actually fund the school (teachers, servers, mutual aid, and research). When the school has published monthly transparency reports, they appear here with per-line spending allocations.

Your inventory

Where: Click the backpack button in the game HUD, or press I. The button shows a count of your items and glows when you've picked up something new since you last opened it. Press Escape to close.

Your inventory holds functional and flavor items you find, earn, or receive — distinct from the cosmetics you buy (those live under My Cosmetics in the Store). Items stack when they can; a stack shows an "x2," "x3," etc. badge.

Filtering and item categories

A row of filter chips lets you narrow your inventory by category:

Equipping items

Your avatar has four equip zones: Head, Body, Accessory (Acc.), and Badge. Equipped items appear in an "Equipped" strip at the top of the inventory.

1. Click an item to select it and see its details.
2. Click the primary action button — for wearable/cosmetic items it reads Equip.
3. To take something off, select the equipped item and click Unequip.

Equipping an item in a zone that's already filled swaps the old item out automatically. What you equip is drawn as an overlay on your avatar sprite from every facing direction; if a freshly acquired item hasn't visually appeared yet, its sprite overlay is still being generated and will show up shortly.

Using items

The primary action button changes based on the item's category:

An item's detail panel also shows its effects, quantity, and source tags telling you where it came from: Gift from Agent, Quest Reward, Received via Trade, Store — Not Tradeable, Form, or Found in the world. Some items even evolve as you use them (a hot potato records everyone who passed it; an "almost done" project inches toward but never reaches 100%).

Discarding: Most items have a Discard button; key items and abhorrent items can't be discarded.

Novelty ("odd") items

Campus is full of joke items with one-off behaviors — a box of snakes, a consulting duck, a haunted syllabus, an expired hall pass, a roomba or glitter bomb you can deploy in a room, an unmatched sock that searches nearby players for its match (rewarding both of you if it finds one), and more. These are for fun and flavor, not power. Just select one and press its action button to see what it does.

Vending machines

Where: Physical machines placed around the campus map. Walk up to one and interact with it to open the Store filtered to just that machine's stock.

A vending machine only shows the Shop tab, pre-filtered to what that machine carries. To reach the full Store with all tabs, open it from the Campus Store button instead.

Item access (sharing placed items)

Where: The Access Control panel on an item you've placed in the world (for example a DJ booth or a street lamp). Requires: you must be the item's owner.

When you place an interactive item, you control who else can use it. Open its Access Control panel to manage a list of people and their access level:

To grant access:

1. Open the item's Access Control panel.
2. Click + Invite someone.
3. Pick a nearby player from the list.
4. Choose Use or Admin.
5. Click Grant Access.

Everyone with access is listed with their level; click Revoke to remove someone. Only you, the owner, can manage this list.

Sponsored items (the Sponsor Board)

Where: The Sponsor Board (a vending-machine type on the map).

Sponsored items are community-submitted promotions — job listings, event promos, and decorations that appear in the world for a limited time. Anyone can browse them; submitting one puts it in front of admins for review before it goes live.

The board has three tabs: Active Items (what's currently up on campus), Submit, and My Items (things you've submitted, with their status).

To submit one:

1. Open the Sponsor Board and go to Submit.
2. Pick an Item Type.
3. Fill in Title, Company / Organization, and Description (a Link is optional). For a Job Flyer you also pick which Bulletin Board to post on, if slots are open.
4. Click Submit.

Your item enters Pending Review. An admin approves or rejects it before it appears on the map; from there it runs until it expires. You can Remove your own items early from the My Items tab. Submitted items show a status of Pending Review, Active (with days left), Rejected, Expired, or Removed.

Trading with other players

Where: Open a trade with another player who's near you (via their player interaction), which opens the Trade with … dialog.

Trading lets you give inventory items to another student. It's built for safety: the most important rule is that anything you bought from the Store cannot be traded. Store purchases and other locked items are clearly marked "Store — Not Tradeable" and are separated into a "Not tradeable" section you can't select.

To send a trade offer:

1. Open the trade dialog with the person you want to trade with.
2. Under Select items to offer, click the items you want to give (they highlight as selected; the header shows how many you've picked).
3. Optionally type a short message (up to 200 characters).
4. Click Send Offer.
5. You'll see "Trade offer sent! Waiting for … to respond."

The other player receives a trade offer toast showing who it's from, how many items were offered, and your message. They can dismiss it.

Note: Trading is currently send-only. You can propose a trade and the other player is notified, but there is not yet an in-app button to accept, decline, or complete an offer, and no items change hands until that half of the feature ships. Treat it as "propose a trade" for now.

How Campus keeps trades safe: before an offer goes out, the server checks that every item is eligible — it rejects any store-purchased or otherwise non-tradeable item with a clear message ("This item was purchased from the store and cannot be traded"), confirms you actually own everything you're offering, and blocks trading with yourself. If anything's wrong you get a plain-language error and nothing is transferred. Items received through a trade are tagged Received via Trade in your inventory.

Enchantments

Enchantments are visual effects — sparkles, glows, trails — that you apply to cosmetic items you own. They're purely decorative.

Only your highest-rarity cosmetics can be enchanted, and rarity determines how many enchantment slots an item has:

To enchant an item you need to own both the target cosmetic and an enchantment item (bought from the Store, often via the Artifact Vendor). Apply an enchantment to a specific slot; applying a new one to a slot that's filled replaces what was there, and you can remove an enchantment from a slot at any time. Enchantments are never destroyed by applying or removing them — there's no failure chance or gamble.

Gifts and rewards

Campus hands out items and cosmetics through several channels. Most collect into a single place to claim.

Gifts from creatures and agents

AI creatures and agents sometimes make you a personalized gift — an item generated just for you (for example, after your first quest or when you leave a class). While one is being made, you can see it listed as a pending gift ("Mystery Gift" until it's finished). When it's ready it arrives with an "Artifact acquired!" notification you can click to open your pack, and it's tagged as a Gift from Agent. These are examples of Campus's AI item generation: items are described, drawn, and delivered by agents rather than bought — you don't craft them yourself, and there's no cost to you.

Monthly membership gifts

Requires: an active paid membership.

Every month you're a member, you receive an exclusive themed cosmetic that never returns. The theme rotates by month (for example, "New Beginnings" in January, "Bloom" in May, "Mystery" in October), and the rarity climbs with how long you've been a member (see Membership). Unclaimed monthly and anniversary gifts appear on the Store's Membership tab with a Claim button.

Claimable rewards

Campus also generates other rewards behind the scenes — weekly member bonuses, weekly teacher gifts, and one-off event grants. Each waits for you to claim it and may carry an expiration date, and claiming adds the item to your cosmetics or inventory.

• Member weekly bonus: active members generate a random uncommon-or-better cosmetic each week. Requires: active membership.
• Teacher weekly gift: a random rare-or-better cosmetic each week. Requires: teacher or admin role.

In practice, the place you actually claim gifts today is the Unclaimed Gifts list on the Store's Membership tab (monthly and anniversary gifts). The broader claimable-rewards list is wired on the back end but doesn't yet have its own screen, so if you're expecting a weekly reward and don't see a claim button for it, that surface may not have shipped yet.

Bounty rewards

Campus has two separate bounty systems. Both are covered in depth in the Quests chapter; this section focuses on the reward side.

The Bounty Board (job-search hustle)

Where: The Bounty Board in The Greenhouse, hosted by Buck the warthog. Talk to Buck to open it.

Students post real-world favors as bounties — a mock interview, a warm intro, a portfolio review — that others earn by completing job-search activities (applications, outbound emails, LinkedIn posts, informational interviews, and so on). You can Take This Bounty to pursue a listed reward, Post Bounty to offer one of your own, and Report Activity to log your hustle. Logging activity also earns you seeds for the Greenway (flower, bush, or vine seeds depending on the activity), and keeping a streak unlocks perks:

The Board reward itself (the mock interview, intro, or review) is delivered on the honor system: once the work is logged and you accept it, you mark the reward as delivered and follow through yourself. Campus tracks the bounty's status but doesn't transfer the favor for you. The seeds you earn for logging activity, on the other hand, are granted automatically.

Gem bounties (paying agents to do work)

Gem bounties let you post a task with a gem reward for an AI agent to complete — a code review, feeding an animal, watering plants, and the like. When you post one, the gem reward is escrowed from your balance immediately. When an agent finishes, you review the work and either approve it (the agent is paid the gems) or reject it; you can also cancel an open bounty. In every not-approved case — rejection, cancellation, or expiry — your escrowed gems are refunded. Some deterministic tasks approve automatically on completion.

Related: For posting and completing bounties, see Quests.

Paid memberships and patronage

Campus is free. These paid options exist to support the school and, for members, to unlock exclusive cosmetics and bonuses. None of it affects gameplay balance.

Membership

Where: Store → Membership tab.

A membership is a recurring subscription (billed weekly or monthly, your choice) that gives you monthly exclusive cosmetics, a weekly gem bonus, and rewards that grow the longer you stay. To subscribe, pick a tier and billing interval and complete Stripe checkout. To stop, click Cancel Membership — you keep everything you've already earned, and your tenure simply pauses until you resubscribe.

What membership unlocks:

Your Membership tab shows your tenure in months, your current rarity tier, and your gem bonus, plus any Unclaimed Gifts with a Claim button.

Patronage (leaving a permanent mark)

Patronage is a set of higher-tier, mostly one-time contributions that place something lasting on campus rather than giving you a cosmetic. These are donations — they are reviewed before placement, and they are not refunded if a submission is declined.

Mutual Aid Drops distribute right away to the students with the fewest cosmetics — a care package from you to the community. Larger patronage items (landmarks, venues, naming rights, expansions) go through staff review and are then placed on the map.

How payments work

All real-money purchases — cosmetics, gem packs, subscriptions, memberships, and patronage — go through Stripe, which opens in a separate browser tab so your game keeps running. Campus never sees or stores your card details. If a purchase is cancelled, nothing is charged.

Free vs. paid — quick reference

Related chapters

• Getting Started & Onboarding
• Quests
• Profile & Settings
• Pets & Creatures

Manual index·← Quests, Skills & Progression·Housing, Rooms & Buildings →