Version 1.0 rebuilt the progression spine, and the rebuild is the source of most outdated advice about this game. In Early Access, Fame was a passive buff. Now it is a meter that pays out in a currency you have to spend deliberately.
What Fame does now
The August 2026 devlog describes the change directly: the Fame Gauge becomes the Token Acquisition Gauge. When accumulated Fame reaches certain thresholds, you receive guild tokens.
The bonuses that used to arrive automatically were not deleted — they were turned into Operation Know-how, a lobby menu where you buy the specific bonuses you want. That menu opens from chapter 2.
So Fame has one job: move the gauge. It is not a stat that makes your inn better while it sits there.
How tokens arrive
| Source | Detail |
|---|---|
| Fame thresholds | The gauge pays out guild tokens as it fills |
| Stage goals | Tokens are awarded for the goals a stage sets; they are not farmed outside the stage |
| Difficulty | Casual runs earn more tokens from quest rewards |
Because token payouts are tied to goals and gauge thresholds rather than raw profit, a week spent maximising gold can produce fewer tokens than a week spent clearing objectives. That is the first place a struggling run goes wrong.
Where tokens go
There are three destinations, and they compete:
- The guild lodges. Beds and facilities on the Mountain Guild side are bought with Mountain Guild tokens; the Seaside lodge has its own stock. A token from the same guild as the lodge is required.
- The lobby. Operation Know-how (the repurposed Fame bonuses) and Image Control (suspicion reduction) are bought here and apply to the whole inn. Both open from chapter 2.
- The Dragon Token exchange. From chapter 4, a set number of tokens from each guild buys one Dragon Token.
Why one-sided play stalls
The Dragon Token exchange is the mechanism that prevents a player from simply picking a favourite guild. It needs tokens from both sides, so neglecting one guild for nine chapters leaves you unable to convert the other’s surplus.
There is a second, slower cost. Because each lodge only accepts its own guild’s tokens, an ignored side’s beds never grow, its guests keep being turned away, and its suspicion bar keeps being fed by the same collisions. The run does not fail suddenly; it just gets narrower.
The priority that survives a bad week
- Image Control before a facility when either bar is high. A failed week costs more than a delayed upgrade.
- Beds before lobby luxuries when a lodge is turning guests away.
- Operation Know-how before both when the week is comfortable — it compounds for the rest of the run.
- Dragon Tokens when both sides have spare stock; they are the one purchase that gets cheaper the more balanced you are.
What the numbers are not
No public source checked here lists the threshold values on the gauge, the token price of individual rooms, or the exchange rate for Dragon Tokens. The structure is well documented; the arithmetic is not. Pages that print exact token costs without saying where they came from are guessing.
If the question behind the search was “how do I get tokens faster”, the honest answer is the goal sheet, not the purse: tokens come from stage goals and the Fame gauge, and profit only helps indirectly.