XP & Progression
GRIMOIRE Public is built around earned-not-given progression. You start with a 10-tool starter kit and 5 intro labs, and you build the rest of your toolkit, your authority, and your reputation through play. Everything ships pre-bundled in the ISO; XP grants execution permission via Curtain v3 capability tokens.
The system is implemented in the synos-progression crate — 57 tests, 111-entry seed catalog, integrated with the Bevy SkillTree plugin for visual unlock animation.
The starter kit
Section titled “The starter kit”Out of the box on GRIMOIRE Public:
| Tool | Why it’s in the starter kit |
|---|---|
nmap | Port scanning — universal language of recon |
wireshark | Packet capture — see what’s actually on the wire |
netcat | The Swiss Army knife of TCP |
curl | HTTP probing, header manipulation |
tcpdump | Headless packet capture for SSH-only sessions |
strace | Trace syscalls — understand what a binary actually does |
ltrace | Trace library calls — one layer up from strace |
hexdump | Read raw bytes when text utilities lie |
binwalk | Find embedded files and entropy boundaries |
strings | Extract printable strings — the dumbest tool that wins |
Plus 5 intro labs covering basic recon, web inspection, and binary analysis.
How XP works
Section titled “How XP works”XP = base × difficulty_multiplier × (1 - hint_penalty) + faction_bonus + cert_track_bonus| Difficulty | Base XP | Multiplier |
|---|---|---|
| Beginner | 100 | 1.0× |
| Intermediate | 250 | 1.5× |
| Advanced | 500 | 2.0× |
| Expert | 1,000 | 3.0× |
| Legendary | 2,500 | 5.0× |
- Hint penalty — each hint reduces the lab’s XP award by 10–25 % depending on hint depth
- Faction bonus — completing a lab inside your faction’s specialty stack multiplies the award
- Cert track bonus — labs aligned with an active cert path you’re pursuing pay extra
- Streak bonus — 5 in a row without hints unlocks a cooldown-skip token
Unlock tiers
Section titled “Unlock tiers”The progression system organises content into five tiers. Each tier requires both XP threshold and completion of a tier-gate lab.
| Tier | Threshold | Tier gate | Sample unlocks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 — Initiate | 0 XP | First boot wizard | Starter kit + 5 intro labs |
| 1 — Apprentice | 1,500 XP | ”First Foothold” Beginner lab gate | nikto, gobuster, enum4linux, dig, whois, AD recon labs |
| 2 — Journeyman | 6,000 XP | ”Pivot or Perish” Intermediate gate | metasploit-framework, crackmapexec, bloodhound, web app labs |
| 3 — Master Class | 18,000 XP | Advanced certification-aligned challenge | RE labs, malware sandbox, cloud labs, full Purple Team track |
| 4 — Expert | 50,000 XP | Expert-tier boss contract | AI security labs, blockchain labs, war-game participation |
| 5 — Sovereign | 150,000 XP | Salvage Yard chapter complete + peer-verified solution | Full ALFRED Master mode (where allowed by Curtain), mesh node leadership |
Certification mapping
Section titled “Certification mapping”GRIMOIRE labs are tagged with the cert paths they prepare you for. Activating a cert track in your profile triples relevant lab payouts and gives you a study-roadmap view in the SkillTree plugin.
| Cert family | Tracks supported |
|---|---|
| Offensive Security | OSCP · OSEP · OSWE · OSCE³ |
| SANS / GIAC | GPEN · GWAPT · GCIH · GCFA · GREM · GMON |
| (ISC)² | CISSP · CCSP |
| EC-Council | CEH · CHFI |
| INE | eJPT · eCPPT |
| Cloud | AZ-500 · SC-100 · CCSP-AWS |
| Defensive vendor | Splunk Core/Power · Sentinel · Elastic |
Activating a track does not commit you — you can swap any time. The SkillTree plugin animates a “what’s next?” recommendation engine driven by ALFRED’s hippocampus crate (long-term memory consolidation of your performance patterns).
The Sovereign Operator Path
Section titled “The Sovereign Operator Path”A long-form questline that graduates a player from CTF novice to running their own encrypted mesh:
- Initiate — finish the 5 intro labs
- Apprentice — pick a faction, complete the faction onboarding chapter
- Journeyman — complete one lab from each of 8 of the 13 categories
- Master Class — earn one peer-verified solution (your write-up reviewed by a tier-3+ player)
- Expert — survive a full war-game season and finish in the top 25 % of your faction
- Sovereign — complete the Salvage Yard arc (build a 3-node ARCANUM mesh from reclaimed hardware, run a local LLM on it, host an instance of GRIMOIRE for at least one other player)
Sovereign-tier players can host their own GRIMOIRE instances, federate (within the GRIMOIRE tier) with other Sovereigns, and earn the Sovereign Operator credential — peer-issued, verifiable on-chain via the synos-audit-trail HMAC-SHA256 chain.
What XP does not unlock
Section titled “What XP does not unlock”XP does not promote you to Master. It cannot. Curtain v3 enforces a hard ceiling regardless of progression:
- AI dispatch syscalls 470–474 always return
ENOSYS - LLM federation stays tier-isolated to GRIMOIRE peers
- Audit chain HMAC roots stay separated
- Fragment Field IDS kernel-side detection stays Master-only
This is by design: GRIMOIRE produces operators; Master is what gets sold to customers who need the actual weapon for actual work.