Cards and the wildcard
Every week Crescent publishes a small set of cards. A card is an idea with a requirement attached: build an emulator, ship a library, make a bot. A project that picks a card and meets its requirement earns a multiplier on every approved hour that card carried.
Cards are small challenges, not assignments. They exist for two reasons: to hand you an idea on an evening when you cannot think of one, and to pay a bit more for taking a harder or stranger route than you otherwise would.
The wildcard is not a penalty
The wildcard has no requirement and pays the full base rate for every approved hour. Picking a card is a bonus on top of that, never a condition for being paid. If you would rather build something that is not on any card, take the wildcard and go.
This is worth repeating because people get it backwards and force a project into a card it does not fit. A project you want to build at x1.00 beats a project you do not want to build at x1.40.
What the multiplier does
The multiplier applies to the approved hours on that project, and it is decided by the card the project shipped under.
- A card at x1.30 turns ten approved hours into the stars thirteen would have earned.
- Multipliers differ from card to card, and the number is on the card’s face.
- The wildcard is pinned at x1.00 and always will be.
- The multiplier never reduces anything. There is no card that pays less than the base rate.
Picking and changing
- You pick a card when you create a project. Cards from the week you created it in and the current week are open to you, plus the wildcard.
- You can change the card on the project page until your first ship. After that it locks: the multiplier a project earns is the one it shipped under, for every later ship too.
- That lock is why an update to an old project is paid at that project’s original multiplier and not at whatever is on offer the week you happen to ship the update.
- If a reviewer decides a ship does not meet the card’s requirement, the project moves to the wildcard and the hours are paid at x1. Nothing is lost, only the bonus.
What reviewers look for
Each card lists its requirement on the project page. Reviewers check that requirement first, then the hours. A description that says how the project meets the requirement makes review faster.
The requirement is the whole test. A card is not a judgement of quality or ambition: if the thing you built satisfies what the card asks for, the card is met.
Cards with a page of their own
Some cards have a guide written for them, with suggestions of what to build and the tools people usually reach for. When one exists, the card links to it.