Golden Whale

01 Getting Started

From an empty pocket to your first hull in about five minutes. Here's the whole on-ramp.

1 · Get a Phantom wallet

Golden Whale runs on Solana. Install the Phantom wallet (browser extension or mobile app), fund it with a little SOL for network fees, and you're ready to trade.

2 · Buy $GWHALE

$GWHALE is the game's token — the ticker you buy and trade on the open market (launched on pump.fun, traded on its AMM once the bonding curve graduates). Everything in Sprat Cove is priced in it. Inside the game your balance and every price tag read $WHALE — same token, dock-side name.

3 · Deposit into the game

Send $GWHALE from Phantom to the game's vault address and paste the transaction — it credits your in-game balance instantly. Play itself happens off-chain, so there's zero gas and instant response on every action. When you cash out, withdrawals go through a 24-hour queue with a 5% fee (see Economy).

4 · Buy your first boat

Head to the Shipyard and buy the Old Dory (Tier 1) for 80,000 $WHALE (~$4.8). That purchase is also your first gacha roll — every hull rolls its own grade and bonus stats, so your Old Dory might come out a plain white common or a golden legendary. From there: fuel up at the Dock, pick the Coastal grounds, and set sail. Your catch sells at the Market, and the loop begins.

02 Boats & Voyage Slots

Your hull sets which waters you can reach, how much you haul, how many daily voyages you get, and how many crew you can seat.

The starter Raft is retired — you begin on the Old Dory. Fuel and repair are fixed $WHALE costs paid per voyage. All shallower grounds stay open once you unlock deeper ones. The Ghost Galleon is a season-limited hull.

Boat stats (rolled on purchase)

Every boat carries five stats that the gacha rolls a bonus onto (see Gacha):

Departure tickets (stamina)

Each boat has its own pool of daily voyages — its Voyages/day above. Tickets refill over the day, so a boat can only sail so many times before it needs to rest. Higher-tier hulls trade quantity of voyages for far bigger hauls per trip.

Voyage slots — how many boats sail at once

You can own as many boats as you like, but the number that can be at sea simultaneously is capped by your flagship (your highest-tier hull):

03 Fishing

Pick a ground, spend a departure ticket, and let the voyage run on the server clock — it keeps ticking even if you close the tab. On the way home, one bite decides your best catch.

The three grounds

Every boat has 100 durability. Each voyage chips it down by the amount above; at 0 the boat can't sail until you repair it. Bigger cargo (Hull) means each voyage fills more catch slots.

The catch tables

Each cargo slot rolls independently on the ground's table below. ★ marks rare species that Detect / Sonar weighting pulls toward. Sell prices are fixed in $WHALE and never change.

🏖️ Coastal Waters

🌊 Open Sea

🌑 The Deep

The bite (return minigame)

When your voyage settles, the game throws one bite — the server picks a moment 2–6 seconds out and you tap to hook it. Judging uses the server's clock (no fiddling with your device time):

• Perfect (within ±0.35s): upgrades the top 4% of your weakest catch.
• Good (within ±0.8s): upgrades the top 2% (minimum 1 fish either way).

The upgrade re-rolls those fish upward on the non-trash table — the count stays the same, the quality goes up, for a small bump (about +1–2%). A stronger Rod stat widens how many fish get upgraded (+10% per 1% of stat). Miss it or ignore it entirely and there's no penalty — the loop stays AFK-friendly. You have a 15-second window to answer.

04 Weather

The forecast is server-wide and rotates on a fixed schedule. Whatever weather is up when you depart locks in for the whole voyage — so storms are a choice, not an ambush.

• Weather runs on 6-hour slots, decided by a server hash — the forecast is deterministic and can't be manipulated, so what you see is what you'll get.
• Storm doubles durability wear and the repair bill, so that +25% haul comes at a real cost. Sail it when the payoff beats the wear.
• Golden Dusk lands once a day for one hour, sometime between 10:00 and 22:00 UTC (fixed by the day's hash). Every stat gets +15% — the best window there is to send a voyage out.

05 Gacha & Grades

Buying is rolling. Boats, gear, and crew all roll a grade and bonus stats the moment you purchase them. The price is fixed — the result is not. Same 80,000 $WHALE, and somebody out there just pulled a legendary Old Dory.

The bonus total is spread across 2–3 random stats. For example, an Epic Old Dory might roll Engine +12% / Luck +9% / Hull +4%. Land a Legendary and the whole server hears about it.

Reroll — keep the grade, reshuffle the bonus

Don't love how a legendary spread its stats? Reroll for 20% of the item's price. The grade stays locked — only the bonus distribution is re-drawn, and you can do it as many times as you like. It's the endless dopamine chase: keep spinning toward the perfect roll.

06 Gear

Every hull has four gear slots. Default (free) gear gives zero bonus — buying and enhancing real gear is the road to more income. Each piece costs roughly 15% of a boat of the same tier.

Base main-stat by tier

The gear ladder

Gear has no boat-tier restriction — you can bolt top gear onto a humble hull, builds are wide open. A full set of top gear with average gacha rolls is worth roughly +23–25% income (measured +23.5% in The Deep).

07 Enhancement

Take gear and boats from +1 to +10 at the Forge. Each level adds +4% to the main stat (up to +40% at max). The higher you push, the meaner the odds — and the deeper the money pit.

• Through +5, a failure just leaves the item where it is. From +6 onward, a failure knocks it down a level.
• ⚠️ At +9 and +10, a failed attempt carries a 20% chance to destroy the gear (gear only — boats are never destroyed). A destroyed piece leaves a wreck that returns 3 materials.
• Boat enhancement raises the Hull stat (cargo) at +4% per level, with no destroy risk.

What it costs

Each attempt spends enhancement stones plus a $WHALE fee:

• Stones = ceil(level × item tier ÷ 5), minimum 1. Higher levels on higher-tier gear burn more stones.
• Fee = item price × 5% × 1.35level — it grows fast as you climb.

Enhancement stones

Craft them from 5 recycle materials + 5,000 $WHALE — completing the trash → material → stone pipeline, so even your junk hauls feed enhancement. In a hurry? Buy them from the shop at 25,000 $WHALE each (a premium over crafting, on purpose, to keep the recycling loop worth doing).

🛡️ Blessing Scroll

A one-time destroy blocker. You can't buy it — it only drops from contests, raids, and season rewards, so it's a reason to show up for the competitive content. When a +9/+10 attempt would destroy your gear, the scroll eats the destroy for you (the −1 still applies).

08 Crew

Sailors ride along on your voyages and buff them. Recruiting is another gacha — same grade odds as gear — and your boat's tier sets how many you can seat (Raft 0 → T5 5 seats).

The six jobs

A sailor's effect is rolled inside its grade band: Common 2–3% · Uncommon 3–4.5% · Rare 4.5–6% · Epic 6–7% · Legendary 7–8%. The Meme Sailor is a fixed Luck +5 and only appears at legendary.

Recruiting cost

One recruit costs max(25,000, your flagship boat price × 3%) $WHALE. So it scales with how big you've grown:

Fusion & seating

• Got duplicates or sailors you don't need? Fuse 3 of them into 1 free recruit pass.
• Crew seats equal your boat's tier (T1 = 1 seat … T5 = 5 seats). Sailors show up as pixel characters right there on the voyage screen.
• Sailors on a boat that's currently at sea can't be assigned, unassigned, or fused — bring the boat home first.

09 Collection, Aquarium & Fusion Altar

Three things you can do with a fish besides selling it — and three long-tail reasons to keep hauling.

📖 Collection

Every species is logged automatically the first time you catch it. The Collection covers 24 catch types (all the fish plus the treasure chests). Fill it out and you earn a permanent Sonar +2%. Down the line it expands with 12 deep-sea relics — unsellable collectibles you can only pull from The Deep.

🐠 Aquarium

Instead of selling a fish, mount it in your aquarium — displayed on your public profile for the flex. Mounting consumes 1 fish and can't be undone. Complete a ground's full set (every non-trash species in it) for a permanent set buff:

Set buffs stack independently, and mounting itself is free.

⚗️ Fusion Altar

Offer 3 of the same fish plus a fee (10% of the target species' price) and the altar tries to promote them to the next fish up the ladder. Success is 60%; on a failure you get a single Anchovy back. Successful fusions register in your Collection, and the top species in each ground can't be fused further.

♻️ Recycling

Trash isn't a dead loss: 3 trash + 350 $WHALE → 1 material (Scrap Metal, Lumber, or Cloth). Those materials become enhancement stones — so even a junk-heavy haul feeds your Forge.

10 Contest, Lottery & Referral

Player-vs-player events — every prize comes from entry fees, not the vault, so the more people play the healthier the economy gets.

🏆 Fishing Contest

• Daily, 2 hours — 12:00–14:00 UTC.
• Entry 5,000 $WHALE. Your score is the total catch value you land during the window.
• Prize pool = 85% of entry fees (10% burned, 5% dev), split 50 / 30 / 20 to the top 3.
• Under 5 entrants? Everyone's fee is fully refunded.
• A 🛡️ Blessing Scroll goes to each of the top 3 finishers with a catch value of at least 100,000 $WHALE.

🎫 Golden Whale's Dream (daily lottery)

• Tickets are 1,000 $WHALE each (up to 100 per purchase).
• Draw at midnight UTC, ticket-weighted random — one winner takes the whole pot.
• Prize = 90% of ticket sales (7% burned, 3% dev). No tickets sold that day, no draw.

🎁 Referral

• Share your code (format GW + 6 digits). A friend who registers it gets 5% off their first boat.
• You earn 1% of that friend's spending back, paid 1:1 in $WHALE — up to a lifetime cap of 100,000 $WHALE per referee.
• Earnings only start after your friend has deposited on-chain at least once (this blocks self-rebate farming), and the code can only be registered before their first paid boat.

Referral payouts come out of the dev share — no new tokens are minted for them.

11 Fleet & Kraken Raid

Band together. Fleets pool spending into shared upgrades, throw down against rival crews, and gang up on a weekend boss.

Founding a fleet

• Costs 500,000 $WHALE — half is burned forever, half goes to the reward pool. You pick a name, a pixel emblem, and a flag color, and you're the captain.
• Starts at 20 members, expanding to 40 as the fleet levels up (20 → 22 → 24 → … → 40 across levels 1–10).
• Roles: Captain, up to 2 Officers (approve members, run quests), and Members.

Levelling up

Every 1,000 $WHALE a member spends anywhere in the game adds 1 XP to the fleet — automatically, at no extra cost. Levelling raises the member cap, unlocks buildings, and opens fleet war.

Fleet buildings

Funded from the shared fleet vault and built in order, each gated behind a fleet level:

Co-op voyage

When 3+ fleet members sail the same ground at once, everyone in that group gets catch +5% and fuel −5%.

⚔️ Fleet War (weekly)

Fleets within ±2 levels get matched. Each side stakes 100,000 × fleet level from its vault, then it's a 48-hour total-catch showdown. The winner takes 91% of the combined stakes (6% burned, 3% dev); a draw returns the stakes.

📜 Weekly quest

A rotating shared goal — "500 Tuna," "100 Deep voyages," "5,000,000 catch value," or "300 Coastal voyages." Clear it and every member gets 5 materials + 1 enhancement stone.

🐙 Kraken Raid (weekend)

The Kraken surfaces Saturday 00:00 – Monday 00:00 UTC — a 48-hour fleet boss.

• Entry 10,000 $WHALE per member. Your damage is your catch value during the window (any ground counts).
• The Kraken's HP is built from participants' boat tiers (roughly 4k / 8k / 31k / 116k / 468k / 1,330k by tier), and each player's share is added on their first hit — no lurking at full HP to block the kill.
• Payout of the entry pool: 75% split by damage dealt, 5% to the last hit, 10% to the top-3 damage dealers (5/3/2), with 7% burned and 3% dev.
• Slay it and a 5% slice of the jackpot pool (capped at 2× the entry pot) rains down on the damage split on top. Fail to kill it and only the entry pool pays out — still zero-sum.

12 Economy & Fairness

The one rule behind everything: the game never mints a single new token. Every $WHALE you earn is a token another player spent. Here's how that stays solvent and fair.

Fixed prices

Every price and reward is locked in $WHALE and never moves. The Old Dory is 80,000 forever; an anchovy is 110 forever. That makes your spending 100% predictable and kills any "the team is tweaking prices" mistrust. Inflation is fought with supply, not price — if the reward pool gets unhealthy, the server nudges trash odds (up to +5%p) and fish density, but the price list never budges.

Where your spending goes

Every sink — boats, upgrades, fuel, repairs, recycling, the trade tax, withdrawal fees — is split four ways:

The daily payout budget

Market sales aren't paid from an infinite well — they're paid from a daily budget drawn from the reward pool. The budget is:

min( max( last-7-day avg inflow × 90%, pool × 3% ), pool × 12% )

In plain terms: the game pays out a bit less than it takes in, with a floor so it keeps paying during a drought and a ceiling so the pool can't be drained. The math guarantees the pool survives at least 8 days even if inflow stopped cold.

• Per-player cap: each account can be paid at most max(20% of the daily budget, 50,000 $WHALE) per day — so no whale or bot can grab the whole budget first.
• When the daily budget is spent, further sales hold your fish until the budget resets the next day. Nothing is lost.

Withdrawals

• 5% fee, recycled back into the vault split — so cashing out still feeds the reward pool.
• 24-hour queue before tokens hit your wallet.
• Daily total withdrawals are capped at max(pool × 10%, last-7-day avg inflow × 30%) — a bank-run circuit breaker.
• Re-deposit what you withdrew and you get a 5% fuel discount — the system rewards rolling your stack over parking it.

🎰 The three jackpots

Fairness & transparency

• Provably-fair RNG: gacha, enhancement, and catches all use a daily seed hash that's committed up front and revealed the next day — the results can't be quietly rigged.
• Circuit breaker: if the on-chain price swings ±50% within an hour, the shop and withdrawals pause for 10 minutes to absorb the shock.
• Open books: the vault, jackpot, and burn wallet addresses are public, with a live in-game dashboard showing pool balance, daily inflow/payout, and total burned.

13 FAQ

The questions every new captain asks at the dock.