The Codebook

Every method a Drift will ever ask of you, on one page. The game never hides a method; higher tiers just hand you less of the work. Print this. Off-grid, DM chart to the bot and it will radio you the Morse table.

Playing over the radio

DM to the bot	what it does
`radio check`	am I getting through, and who am I to you
`join 3ch0` / `join nu11`	pick your side (per-Cycle, no defecting)
`status`	the board, the score, your Headroom
`me`	your rank on the S-meter and the badges you've earned
`name <new name>`	set your display name (≤15 chars, unique, free to change)
`link`	add a second radio to your identity (home + car share stats)
`engage <node>`	assault: spend 1 Headroom, receive a cipher
`fortify <node>`	raise your node's wall (cap T5)
`hint`	next rung of the ladder, it always reaches the answer
`resend`	didn't get the cipher? re-sends your open challenge (also: `engage` the same node again)
`chart`	the Morse table, over the air (with a Caesar or Atbash cipher open, the method instead)
`channels`	re-send your faction + shared channel invites
`me full`	every badge you hold, over the air (`me` alone is one packet)
`advert`	ask the bot to announce itself again, so a radio that just arrived can find it
`unlink`	detach the radio you send it from; `unlink yes` confirms
`hideme` / `showme`	step off the public roster, or back on; your play still counts
anything else	treated as your answer while a cipher is open

Answers are forgiving: case, spacing, and punctuation never fail a correct solve. Wrong guesses are free; you paid when you engaged, not when you answer. Walk away from an open cipher for a few hours and it lapses: the bot tells you on your next message and hands the Headroom back. The bot talks like a radio once you have a solve under your belt: SOLVED, QSL and Copy all mean logged; Negative, No copy and Static on that one all mean wrong answer, try again.

Two of the ciphers below have a hands-on helper that works with you: turn the Caesar dial until words surface, or tap the Morse in and watch each letter land. You're still the one cracking it. Folded under each is a full decoder for when you're truly stuck, treat that one as a last resort. Cracking these by hand is the game, and it's how you get quick at it.

Morse CYCLE 1

One group of dots and dashes per letter, a wide gap between letters, / between words. To read it: chop the string at the wide gaps into one group per letter, look each group up in the table below, and string the letters together. Nothing to guess, it's pure lookup.

Tap it out · practice pad

Read one letter's dots and dashes off the message, tap them in, and watch it land. Letter break commits it; word break adds a space. (Keyboard: . - space / ← work too.)

Decoder · last resort

Decode the whole string (space between letters, / between words)

Caesar CYCLE 1

Every letter slides the same distance down the alphabet, wrapping Z back around to A. "Shift 3" turns A→D, B→E; to decode, slide each letter back the same amount. The bot's shift is random (3 to 23), and at higher tiers it's hidden, so you won't be handed the number. That's fine, there are only 25 possibilities: walk the ciphertext back one shift at a time until real words appear. Shortcut: find the most common letter in the ciphertext, bet it's a plaintext E or T, and the gap between them is the shift to try first.

plain   A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
shift 3 D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A B C

Turn the dial · practice pad

Paste the ciphertext. If the challenge gave you the shift, set the dial to that number; otherwise walk the dial until the line below reads as words

− + shift 1

Decoder · last resort

Every shift at once, scan for the row that reads as words

Atbash CYCLE 2

The alphabet mirrored: A trades with Z, B with Y, all the way in. To solve, do that same swap on the ciphertext, count a letter's spot from the front and take the letter that far from the back (A↔Z, C↔X, and so on). Encoding and decoding are the same move: run it twice and you're back where you started. No key, no shift, nothing to guess.

plain  A B C D E F G H I J K L M
mirror Z Y X W V U T S R Q P O N

Decoder · last resort

Mirror it (same move encodes or decodes)

Vigenère CYCLE 3

A Caesar whose shift changes every letter, driven by a key word that repeats. The challenge hands you the key. To solve: write the key over the ciphertext, repeating it across the whole message, then for each column subtract the key letter's value from the cipher letter (A=0, B=1, …), wrapping past A back to Z. The worked example runs it end to end.

cipher  N W R G V Z
key     V O L T V O
        -21 -14 -11 -19 -21 -14   →  S I G N A L

Decoder · last resort

Decode with a key (you bring the key word)

Compound TIER 5

Two layers you already know, chained: decode the Morse first, and what it spells is still ciphertext, then Caesar it back with the shift the challenge gave you. T5 walls aren't a new secret; they're the same work, stacked.

Stuck is a state, not a wall: DM hint. Four rungs, and the last one is the answer. The only thing hints cost is bragging rights.