EMPIREMC

RANKS & PROGRESSION

Ranks are QuantumRift’s premium progression ladder — a series of purchasable titles that grow your economy, cosmetics, and research power the higher you climb. Every player starts free at Citizen, and can work their way up through five paid ranks using Imperial Tokens, the game’s premium currency.

The Rank Ladder

From the moment you join, you’re a Citizen — no purchase required, no permission node to grant, nothing to unlock. It’s simply where everyone starts. From there, five paid ranks climb above it:

Order Rank Chat Prefix
0 Citizen (free) [CITIZEN] — grey
1 Hero [Hero] — mint green
2 Mercenary [Mercenary] — blue
3 Aurora [Aurora] — pink
4 Legend [Legend] — gold
5 Imperial [Imperial] — purple

Your rank prefix shows next to your name in chat and in the tab list. Everyone starts with the grey [CITIZEN] prefix, and each paid rank replaces it with its own color. If you hold more than one rank, your highest rank’s prefix is the one that displays. The tab list is sorted by rank, highest first. Staff members show their staff prefix instead of a paid rank’s.

Creator ranks. Content creators can be given a [YOUTUBE], [TWITCH] or [TIKTOK] prefix. These are handed out by staff, never sold, and are not in /store. A creator prefix shows instead of a paid rank’s, a staff prefix shows instead of a creator’s, and the tab list puts creators between staff and the paid ranks.

“The top of the ladder. Nothing above this.” — Imperial rank tagline

How to Get a Rank: Rank Eggs

Every paid rank is unlocked by purchasing and using a Rank Egg — a special dyed egg item themed to that rank’s color. To get ranked up:

  1. Buy the egg. Visit the matching Rank NPC (there’s one dedicated NPC per paid rank), or open /store or /tokens to browse all five in one place — the cursor-based Rank Screen if your resource pack is active, or the classic chest-menu Tokens screen if it isn’t.
  2. Pay with Imperial Tokens. See the price table below.
  3. Right-click the egg to redeem it. Your rank, permissions, and the rank’s Crate Key Vouchers are granted immediately.

Each Rank Egg is one-of-a-kind under the hood — every copy is checked against your account when redeemed, so only one use of a given egg can ever succeed. Trying to redeem a copy that’s already been used (or one that’s been tampered with) will simply fail and the invalid item will be taken.

Rank Prices

Rank Price (Imperial Tokens) Egg Item
Hero 1,000 Green Dye (egg)
Mercenary 3,000 Cyan Dye (egg)
Aurora 5,250 Pink Dye (egg)
Legend 12,500 Yellow Dye (egg)
Imperial 25,000 Purple Dye (egg)

Earning Imperial Tokens

Imperial Tokens are the currency you’ll need to afford a rank. There are two ways to earn them:

  • Play the game. You earn 1 token per 10 minutes of active play, paid out every hour and when you log off. Idling doesn’t count — you need to actually be doing something for tokens to accrue.
  • Exchange Credits for Tokens. You can trade your Credits for Tokens at a live market rate. The rate is 16 credits per token when the exchange is quiet (it never goes lower), rising with demand to a 24 credits per token cap, and it is recalculated roughly every 15 minutes. You can exchange between 1 and 100 tokens per transaction.
  • Higher ranks get a discount on this credits-to-tokens exchange — see the perk table below.

Other players can also send you tokens with /tokens pay. The sender needs 10 hours of playtime and can send up to 1,500 tokens a day.

What Each Rank Gives You

Every paid rank keeps all the benefits of every rank below it — buying Imperial doesn’t mean re-buying Hero, Mercenary, Aurora, and Legend first. Upgrading only ever adds to what you already have; you’re never worse off for having bought a lower rank on your way up. (More on exactly how this works in The Max-Fold Rule below.)

Rank Bank Vault Slots Flea Listing Slots Flea Listing Fee Research XP Bonus Token-Swap Discount Cosmetic Discount Max Active Pets Crate Key Vouchers
Citizen 9 5 10% +0% — — 1 —
Hero 18 10 8% +10% — — 1 1
Mercenary 27 15 6% +20% — 5% 1 2
Aurora 36 20 4% +30% 5% 10% 2 3
Legend 45 25 2% +60% 10% 15% 3 5
Imperial 54 30 0% (free listings) +100% (double) 15% 20% 4 10

What these perks actually do

Bank Vault Slots — how much personal storage you get in the Banker’s vault. Slots come in rows of 9, topping out at 54 (a full double chest) for Imperial. If you ever downgrade, items sitting above your new cap stay safe and withdrawable — you just can’t add new items until you’re back under the limit.

Flea Market Slots & Fee — how many listings you can have live at once on the Flea Market, and how big a cut is taken when one of your listings sells. Citizen’s baseline (5 slots, 10% fee) is simply the game’s default — every paid rank improves on it, all the way down to free listings at Imperial.

Research XP Bonus — a multiplier on your personal contribution to your team’s tech research (credits you inject and resources you donate toward team tech). It doesn’t boost your teammates’ contributions — just makes your own pushes count for more, so a higher rank means you personally move your team’s tech tree forward faster.

Token-Swap Discount — a percentage knocked off the credits-to-tokens exchange rate, applied exactly (down to fractions of a credit), and shown on the exchange before you buy. This one only kicks in starting at Aurora (5%), climbing to Legend (10%) and Imperial (15%).

Cosmetic Discount — a straight discount at the Wardrobe Master cosmetics shop, starting at Mercenary (5%) and climbing to Imperial (20%).

Max Active Pets — how many pets you can have out and following you at once. Citizen and Hero both cap at 1; from Mercenary up it climbs by one pet per rank, topping out at 4 for Imperial.

Crate Key Vouchers — a one-time bonus the moment you redeem that rank’s egg (not a recurring reward): 1 → 2 → 3 → 5 → 10. Each voucher trades for a key to any open crate you choose, at the Crate Master or by right-clicking the voucher. Vouchers can also be sold on the Flea Market.

The Max-Fold Rule

If you hold multiple rank permissions at once (for example, after buying several ranks over time), your numeric perks — research bonus, token-swap discount, cosmetic discount, and max pets — always use the best value among every rank you hold, not just your most recent purchase. In practice this means:

  • Buying a higher rank never lowers any perk you already had.
  • You don’t need to “use” your ranks in order — Imperial’s benefits apply immediately, using the best number across your whole collection.

Crate Key Vouchers work differently — those are not max-folded. Each rank egg you redeem grants its own vouchers independently. So if you buy Hero and later buy Imperial, you keep the voucher from Hero and get the 10 from Imperial — nothing is lost or replaced.

Exclusive Cosmetics

Every paid rank unlocks its own exclusive cosmetic line — a full set of 6, one per category (pet, trail, aura, jump, hit and kill effect) — that can’t be obtained any other way:

  • Hero unlocks the Hero line (green).
  • Mercenary unlocks the Mercenary line (cyan).
  • Aurora unlocks the Aurora line (violet).
  • Legend unlocks the Legend line (gold).
  • Imperial unlocks the Imperial line (pink).

Like every other rank benefit, the lines stack downward: a rank also unlocks every lower rank’s line, so an Imperial owns all five, even if they never bought the lower eggs.

Every rank (paid or not) has access to the standard cosmetic catalogue at the Wardrobe Master — paid ranks just get a discount on it, as shown in the perk table above.

Rank NPCs

Each paid rank has its own dedicated NPC where you can browse and buy that rank’s egg. Talking to a Rank NPC opens a three-tab info screen:

  • Economy tab — vault size, flea market tier, and your discounts.
  • Cosmetics tab — chat prefix preview, exclusive cosmetic access, cosmetic discount, and pet cap.
  • Perks tab — research bonus, Crate Key Vouchers granted, and active pet cap.

You can also reach the same rank shop through /store or /tokens at any time — no need to track down a specific NPC if you already know which rank you want. In /store, picking a rank on the RANKS tab opens that rank’s own page on its Perks tab, the same page its NPC shows, with a way back to the store; the egg is bought on that page’s Buy tab.

Quick Reference: Crate Keys

Crate keys can also be bought with Imperial Tokens from the Crate Master, one crate at a time (see the Crates page):

Crate Key price (Tokens)
Tags 25
Pets 60
Effects 30
Combat 50

Summary

  • Start free at Citizen, climb through Hero → Mercenary → Aurora → Legend → Imperial.
  • Buy a Rank Egg with Imperial Tokens from a Rank NPC or /store / /tokens, then right-click it to redeem.
  • Earn tokens by playing (1 per 10 minutes active) or exchanging credits at the going market rate.
  • Every rank keeps everything from the ranks below it — perks max-fold to your best held value, and one-time Crate Key Vouchers stack across every rank you’ve ever bought.
  • Every paid rank unlocks its own exclusive cosmetic line, and includes the lines of every rank below it.

Last updated 4 October 2026