~/vaf
what's a vaf
3Scapes has never charged anyone to play, has no subscription, and keeps every playable feature open to everyone regardless of who's paid anything. A Voluntary Access Fee, or VAF, is money a player sends in purely by choice — nothing on the game asks for it, and nothing on the game is locked behind it. What VAFs actually fund is the unglamorous stuff: the servers 3Scapes runs on. The people behind the game describe the arrangement better than we can: "It's kind of like PBS, but with monsters."
where it goes
The Marble Group Inc., the non-salaried outfit that runs 3Scapes and its sibling game, publishes exactly how a VAF dollar gets split. It's reproduced below verbatim, joke included:
| Where a VAF dollar goes | Share |
|---|---|
| ISP Hosting & Related Costs | 25¢ |
| Hardware/Software Upgrades | 25¢ |
| Taxes, Legal & Accounting | 20¢ |
| Operations, Savings, Charity | 20¢ |
| World Domination Initiative | 10¢ |
buying credits
Credits are priced one-to-one with the dollar, sold in five fixed bundles: 25, 50, 100, 125 or 400 credits at a time. Checkout runs through The Marble Group's Square storefront. Partway through, Square will ask which of their two games your purchase should benefit — pick 3Scapes. That choice is final: credits are locked to whichever game you selected at checkout and can't later be shifted over to their other title, so double-check before you confirm the order.
Once the payment clears, send an in-game mail VAFS with your transaction ID attached, and the balance should land on your account inside a day — often far sooner. Paying by post works too: a cheque or money order, US funds, made out and mailed to the address below. Write your character's name in the memo line, and round to whole dollars, since anything after the decimal point gets dropped.
Two more things worth knowing up front: none of this is tax-deductible, and unspent credits sit on your account forever — there's no clock counting down on them.
what they buy
Every enhancement below is priced in credits and split into two families. Reselectable entries are consumable — buy the same one again the next time you need it. Permanent entries are one-time upgrades to a character that stick for good. Costs shown here are current as of this writing; type vaf list <keyword> in-game for the live price and a fuller explanation of any single entry.
Reselectable
| Keyword | What it does | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| ident | Three charges of remote identify, ready whenever you need them | 15 VAFs |
| scar | Erases one scar from your character | 20 VAFs |
| weapon | Three charges that stop a weapon from ever breaking | 20 VAFs |
| untrain | Fully untrains a single skill of your choosing | 20 VAFs |
| bestk | Clears your recorded Best Kill | 25 VAFs |
| uncurse | Three charges of remote uncurse | 30 VAFs |
| newbie | A one-time pass back into Newbieland | 35 VAFs |
| archf | Clears your current Arch Foe | 35 VAFs |
| unquest | Strikes a single completed quest from your log | 35 VAFs |
| unbind | Three charges to strip a binding off yourself | 35 VAFs |
| neutral | Returns your alignment to dead-center neutral | 75 VAFs |
| kreset | A skills reset at no coin cost | 100 VAFs |
| sreset | A stat reset that skips the usual experience penalty | 120 VAFs |
| gquit | Leaves your guild instantly, with no penalty attached | 125 VAFs |
| item | An autoloading item unique to you, cosmetic description only | 150 VAFs |
| xchar | Authorizes one extra, fully legitimate character slot | 150 VAFs |
| allscar | Wipes every scar you carry, not just one | 175 VAFs |
| marble | A quest marble personalized to you | 200 VAFs |
| nchange | Renames your character | 200 VAFs |
| restore | Rolls your character back to an earlier saved copy | 400 VAFs |
| restart | A bundle combining sreset, gquit, nchange and restore in one purchaseNew! | 500 VAFs |
Permanent
| Keyword | What it does | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| lt | One more linktell slot (stacks up to five times) | 5 VAFs |
| mywho | Five more mywho slots (stacks up to five times) | 5 VAFs |
| tellb | Unlocks a tellblock-everyone toggle | 10 VAFs |
| alias | Twenty-five extra aliases (stacks up to four times) | 20 VAFs |
| afk | Lets your afk note run three times as long | 20 VAFs |
| muffs1 | Earmuffs, first tier (740) | 35 VAFs |
| desc | Lets you add ANSI color to your own description | 35 VAFs |
| muffs2 | Earmuffs, second tier (940) — needs tier one already bought | 40 VAFs |
| tellhis | Quadruples your tell history, up to 64 saved tells | 40 VAFs |
| mbox | A hundred more mailbox slots (stacks up to five times) | 50 VAFs |
| plan | Unlocks a colored plan on your finger entry | 50 VAFs |
| wname | Colors your name on who and finger listings | 50 VAFs |
| align | A custom alignment blurb, up to 20 characters | 50 VAFs |
| pretit | Stretches your pretitle to 20 characters | 50 VAFs |
| pretit2 | Colors your pretitle — needs 'pretit' already boughtNew! | 50 VAFs |
| align2 | Colors your alignment blurb — needs 'align' already boughtNew! | 50 VAFs |
| title | A custom title, up to 80 characters | 100 VAFs |
| title2 | Colors your title — needs 'title' already boughtNew! | 100 VAFs |
| yadda | Doubles how much you can shout at once | 100 VAFs |
| pose | A pose message of your own writing | 140 VAFs |
| stimer | Drops your personal cooldown on shouting | 175 VAFs |
| checker | Lets you read and post to boards remotely | 250 VAFs |
| super | Every permanent enhancement on this list, bundledNew! | 500 VAFs |
spending them
Redemption happens at the Vault of Ancient Fables. Kneel down in Center of Town to reach it, and Guardian Atriel will walk you through the options and make the selections you ask for. Your balance is attached to you as a person rather than to one character — every character you own draws from the same pool — but the second you spend on something, that pick belongs permanently to whichever character was standing there when you bought it.
That covers VAFs end to end. For everything else 3Scapes offers away from the game itself, head back to ~/community.