Getting started

Arcanum is an anime card game that lives inside Telegram. You collect characters, talk to them, build decks out of them, and trade them with other players. There is nothing to install and no separate account to create — if you have Telegram, you already have everything you need.

This guide covers the first hour: getting in, opening your first pack, and learning what the three currencies are for.

Getting in

Open the bot in Telegram and press the button that launches the app. That is the whole sign-up. Your Telegram account is your account, so the collection follows you to every phone, tablet and desktop you use.

You can also play in an ordinary browser. Two ways in: the Telegram login button on the site, or a personal access token. The token is generated inside the app under Settings, then Account Access — copy it, paste it into the browser login form, and you are in. Treat that token exactly like a password. Anyone holding it has full access to the account, and you can rotate it from the same screen at any time.

The interface speaks English, Russian and Chinese, including card names and descriptions. Switching language changes nothing about your progress.

Your first pack

A pack is six cards. You open it in the shop, and every card in it is a real character from an anime series, with art, stats, an element and a personality.

What you do with a card afterwards is up to you. Talk to it. Level it up. Put it in a battle deck. Show it on your profile. Sell it to another player. A card is a character, an asset and a game piece at the same time, which is why the rest of the game has so many places to put one.

Duplicates are not waste. They feed crafting, they can be disenchanted into essence, and they are the raw material of the marketplace. The guide on rarities and packs covers what a pack actually rolls and how the guarantees work.

Coins, gems and energy

Three balances, three jobs.

Coins are the working currency. You earn them from battles, missions, the daily bonus, mini-games and selling cards, and you spend them on packs, crafting and the player marketplace. Coins are the only currency the marketplace accepts, and they have no value outside the game — there is no cash-out.

Gems are the premium currency. They buy packs, cosmetics, premium time and bundles. You can buy gems with real money, and you can also earn them from the daily streak, missions, events and the season pass, so a gem price is never a wall.

Energy is what conversations cost. Every message you send a character spends some, and it refills over time. If you never chat, energy piles up with nothing to spend it on, so the shop lets you drain it into coins at 65 coins per energy.

Gems convert into coins in the shop as well. The exchange is deliberately a shortcut rather than a discount: the top rung pays 36 000 coins for 100 gems, which is roughly a day and a half of ordinary play.

What to do every day

The daily bonus runs on a seven-day streak. Day one pays 500 coins and each day pays more, with day seven paying 1 500 coins and 5 gems before the cycle starts again. Miss a day and it resets to day one, so the streak rewards showing up rather than grinding.

Missions refresh daily and weekly and mostly ask you to do things you were going to do anyway: open a pack, win a battle, send a message, sell a card. Achievements sit behind them as a longer ladder with titles attached.

Beyond that, the game is a set of loops you can pick between. Battles and the campaign pay coins and experience. The marketplace pays coins for cards you do not want. Chats pay affinity, and affinity unlocks scenarios and generated art. Mini-games pay a capped amount of coins each day.

Bringing a friend

Every account has an invite link. When somebody opens the bot through it, both of you receive a bonus in coins and gems, once per invited account. The link lives in the referral section of the app and works as a normal Telegram deep link, so it can be pasted anywhere.

Where to go next

Six guides cover the game in the order most players meet it.

• Rarities and packs — what the seven rarities mean and how a pull is decided.
• AI chats and affinity — talking to characters, and what changes as they warm to you.
• Marketplace — listing, buy orders, prices and safe trades.
• Battles and decks — the eight-card deck, elements, and where to take one.
• Guilds and events — guilds, raids, wars and seasonal events.

Announcements and patch notes are posted to the official Telegram channel.