Listening rewards are built around continuity, timing and clean confirmation. The game tracks how long the session truly stayed alive, how much of that time still sits inside the current UTC reward windows, and whether the chain remained stable enough to pay out.

The strongest sessions feel unbroken. They reach the long-listening window, stay inside the rewarding part of the UTC day, and end cleanly. When that happens, the radio stops feeling like a timer and starts behaving like a current.

• Every listening session has a hard cap of 4 hours — 14,400 seconds.
• Once that ceiling is reached, the session stops growing for reward purposes.
• The same cap is respected across the whole listening flow: session tracking, reward accounting, popup footer and cap-left display.

Listening can happen at any hour. What changes at 00:00 UTC is the reward window behind it.

If a session crosses 00:00 UTC, the game splits the listening segment across two UTC days and applies the correct reward window on both sides. That is why some popups show a day split instead of a single uninterrupted block.

• ⏳ Reward windows left today (UTC) — the remaining 100%, 50% and 0% budget until the next UTC reset.
• 🎛 Session cap left (this session) — the remaining time before the current listening reel reaches its 4-hour cap.

• 📚 Listening time credited — the clean accounting line for what was accepted into totals.
• 🕰 Season reward window (UTC) — a full breakdown of 100%, 50% and 0% time for that payout.
• 🌗 Off-peak detected — part of the segment landed in the 50% reward window.
• 🌑 Late hours detected — part of the segment fell into the 0% window, where points, relic rolls and season time stop.
• 🗓️ Your session crossed 00:00 UTC — the reward window reset in the middle of the session.
• 📅 UTC day split — the popup is showing the two-day breakdown explicitly.
• Daily cap applied — the reward window cut away a piece of the segment at the UTC-day boundary.
• Pacing applied — the session tried to claim more time than could have realistically passed since the previous paid endpoint.
• Too short to award — the resulting credited segment fell below the minimum payout length.
• Previous award still finalizing — a safety lock is still closing the previous payout.

Listening sessions are kept alive by heartbeat confirmation. The game compares the recent heartbeat history before accepting the next one, so a long disappearance leaves a visible gap in the chain.

• The system looks at both the previous and the last heartbeat.
• A forced ending can trigger when the gap from the previous heartbeat is more than 45 minutes and the last heartbeat is already more than 5 minutes old.
• In that state, the session can be closed with a heavy penalty instead of continuing as though nothing happened.

• Under 30 seconds — no points are paid for that segment.
• Pacing — a payout cannot claim more time than could have realistically passed since the previous paid end.
• Award locks — the game closes one payout before it opens the next, so parallel claims cannot race each other.

A listening payout can perform a relic roll. The order is always the same: the game checks the rarest edge first, then moves downward until something lands.

1. Legendary
2. Epic
3. Rare
4. Simple

Listening relic rolls use effective reward time. Time that fell into the 0% reward window contributes nothing to the relic side of the session.

• Explorer Status multiplies listening relic chances by 1.5×.
• That is a clean +50% increase to the relic-roll side of listening.

Once the player reaches level 30, Relic Transmuter begins adding direct weight to the listening relic roll.

• Simple: +1.00% per level
• Rare: +0.10% per level
• Epic: +0.01% per level
• Legendary: +0.0005% per level

Equipped resonance relics can also lean into listening. A listening-focused build can raise the total listening relic roll and add extra pressure to the higher rarity tiers. That layer belongs to your equipped board, so it rewards deliberate build shaping rather than passive collection alone.

Long Take Legend gives listening its most musical curve. It starts after the first hour, climbs through the body of the session, then changes character in the final ten minutes.

• Long-listening effects begin after 1 hour.
• The strongest relic-scaling window runs from 1:00 to roughly 3:50.
• The final 10 minutes are a buffer zone.

• From 1:00 → ~3:50, the base long-session relic multiplier ramps from ×1.2 up to ×8.0.
• After roughly 3:50, the buffer zone resets the base multiplier to ×1.0.
• Long Take Legend adds +2% scaling power per level inside the main long-session window.
• Inside the last ten minutes, it keeps a smaller tail: +15% flat plus +2% per level.

• Endurance points begin after the first hour and can climb to +30% near the top end of the long-session window.
• If LTL 3+ and effective time reaches 2+ hours, the session gains +1 🧩.
• If LTL 10+ and effective time reaches 3+ hours, the session gains +1 🧩 more.

• If no relic dropped, and the session reached 90 minutes with LTL 5+, the game can perform a second scaled relic roll.
• The second-chance layer grows with Long Take Legend and is internally capped, so it stays meaningful without becoming wild.

Field Recordist Bag lives one step after the drop. It governs extra listening fragments, relic upgrades and duplication.

If the session reaches 8 minutes, Bag adds listening fragments by tier:

• Bag 3+ → +1 🧩
• Bag 7+ → +2 🧩
• Bag 15 → +3 🧩

• Bag 5+ unlocks the listening relic upgrade roll.
• The server-side formula starts at 0.8% at Bag 5.
• By Bag 15, the pre-multiplier upgrade chance reaches 8.0% before long-session scaling is applied.
• If the next step would become Legendary, that final jump is divided by 10.

• Bag 10+ unlocks duplication for listening relics.
• The base duplicate chance starts at 5%.
• Long listening can scale that duplicate layer further.

Long Take Legend always helps the listening relic roll itself. The extra long-session amplification for Bag upgrade and duplicate scaling fully opens only when Expedition Pathfinder is 10+. That bridge belongs to the late-game architecture of the talent tree.

Listening fragments are their own current. A session can earn fragments even when the relic roll stays silent.

• Bag fragment milestones begin at 8 minutes.
• Long Take Legend adds extra fragment milestones at 2 hours and 3 hours.
• These fragment layers can stack inside the same session when both talents are active.

• Keep the session alive. Large heartbeat gaps are where good listening turns into damaged listening.
• Respect the UTC reward windows. The first 16 hours of the UTC day are where season time still grows.
• For long-session relic play, the richest stretch is 1:00 → ~3:50.
• Let the stop happen cleanly. Pacing and award locks are there to keep the line honest.
• Treat the popup as a session ledger. It tells you exactly what part of the session was full, reduced, zeroed, trimmed or split.