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11 The Star-Wanted system is the heat meter that tracks player aggression in populated areas of Rewinding Cadence. It draws an explicit line of inheritance from the wanted-level systems used by long-running open-world crime games: the more violence the player commits in front of NPCs, the higher the meter rises, and the more aggressive the world's response becomes, with specific escalation tiers and reset behavior not yet disclosed.
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33 Overview
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55 The system is the world's reaction layer for the open-ended combat allowed in towns, cities, and other populated regions. Most NPCs in Rewinding Cadence will react to the Returner using force, with witnesses raising the wanted meter, faction enforcers responding when the meter crosses thresholds, and ambient services such as merchants suspending business while the heat is up. The system is not a punishment for aggression, it is a way for aggression to have consequences that persist for the rest of the cycle.
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77 How it Rises
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99 Public material is consistent on the broad triggers even if the exact thresholds have not been published. The meter rises from:
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1111 Attacking civilians or non-combatant NPCs in front of witnesses.Killing faction-aligned NPCs in their home territory.Robbing or looting in clear view of others.Provoking faction enforcers and refusing to disengage.
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1313 How the World Responds
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1515 As the meter rises, the response escalates. Lower tiers usually mean fewer services, scared NPC routines, and small-scale pursuit. Higher tiers escalate to dedicated faction patrols, blocked travel, and pursuit that does not stop with a single fight. The exact tier names, the threshold numbers, and the per-faction reaction tables have not been published outside the closed beta, so the wiki will fill in those specifics post-launch.
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1717 How it Resets
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1919 The meter is loop-bound, not save-bound. It resets along with most other world state when the cycle ends or the player rewinds. This is the key difference between Rewinding Cadence's wanted system and a more conventional crime-game implementation. Within a loop the heat compounds and shapes how the rest of the cycle plays out, which means a player who attracts attention on day five will spend the next thirty-seven days in a more hostile world. Players who want a clean run through a faction's questline will often rewind specifically to clear the meter rather than try to grind it back down. See the time-loop system article for what does and does not persist.
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2121 Strategic Use
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2323 Because the meter is cycle-bound, the system can be used deliberately. A player who knows a region's enforcers will appear at a fixed tier can use that knowledge to bait specific encounters, farm resources from enforcer drops, or test combat against a stronger opposition than the open world would otherwise present. This kind of intentional aggression is then traded against losing access to that region's services for the rest of the cycle.