Mastery and rank 昇格
A level you cannot grind and cannot lose. Where mastery points come from and what the six ranks mean.
Most learning apps level you up for turning up. Points for a session, points for a streak, points for opening the thing - a number that measures attendance and calls it progress. It feels good and it tells you nothing.
EdoQuest levels you for what you know. Your level is a function of how well the things you have studied are actually held, and nothing else moves it.
Where mastery points come from
Every card carries a level - a band over how stable your memory of it has become, described on the scheduling page. That level is what each card contributes, counted up to 7, which is the band at three months. A card you saw once contributes almost nothing. A card you have held for a season contributes its full weight.
Put as one rule: every level-up of any item adds one mastery point, and an item at level 7 has given its full 7 and gives no more. There is nothing else that adds a point.
So the only way to gain is to make memories that last, and the only way to do that is to come back and be right after a gap. There is no session bonus to farm, because there is no session bonus.
What a level costs
Level L needs 35 × L² points in total - so level 2 costs 140, level 10 costs 3,500, and level 50 costs 87,500. The curve is quadratic on purpose: the early levels arrive quickly enough to show the system works, and the late ones are a real undertaking. The ceiling is level 75.
A level never falls. It is a high-water mark. If a card lapses and your point total dips, your level and rank stay where they were - you did reach that, and forgetting one character does not unmake it. The points are what recover; the standing is yours.
The six ranks
Rank is a title over your level, and it changes on the tens:
- 弟子 Deshi - from level 1
- 侍 Samurai - from level 10
- 武士 Bushi - from level 20
- 浪人 Ronin - from level 30
- 大名 Daimyo - from level 40
- 仙人 Sennin - from level 50
Your companion changes with you: each rank has its own outfit, and it is drawn at the same thresholds as the title, so a promotion is something you can see rather than something you read in a notification. The last rank 仙人 is open-ended: it is where the ladder stops naming things and simply keeps counting, because an immortal never stops growing.
What rank does not do
It unlocks no learning material. Nothing in the corpus is behind a level, and no card is made easier or harder by your rank. It decides what your companion is wearing and where you stand on the board, and that is the whole of its power.