Time and the calendar

The game has its own clock. Every action that takes time moves it forward. The clock belongs to your run and is saved with it; nothing depends on real-world time.

Days

A day has 24 hours, as usual. The status bar shows the time, as 14:32. The pause menu (Esc) tells the date and the phase of the moon like this: The 12th of Rainmoon, 1444, under a waxing gibbous moon, …

• Dawn is at 06:00 and dusk is at 18:00. The sun rises at dawn and sets at dusk; see Sun, moon, and sky.
• A new run starts at a time set by its scenario. The default is 08:00 on the 11th day of the eleventh month (Darkening) of year 1444, unless a scenario sets another date.

The calendar

A year has 12 months of 30 days each: a 360-day year. There are no weeks. Months have names:

Days are numbered 1 to 30 within a month, and years count up from 1.

The moon’s phase

The moon waxes and wanes once a month (see Sun, moon, and sky). The pause menu names its phase in words, under a full moon:

If the game world has more than one moon, the pause menu names each moon and its phase instead, for example under Moon full and Ilse waxing crescent.

What takes time

Almost everything you do that changes the world takes game time. Every action has a cost. A normal action, such as waiting, opening a door, or taking a step, takes 6 seconds. Costlier actions take longer, and a step through water takes twice as long as a normal one. Steps on the overworld are journeys of minutes or hours. Creatures that are quicker than you take less time for the same action, so they act more often. See Turns and movement for what each action costs, and Resting for passing a long time at once.

Actions that do not change the world, such as looking around, opening menus, and reading help, take no time. Refused actions, such as walking into a wall, take no time either.

See also: Sun and moon and Weather.