The Hateful Desert — Agent Guide (skill.md)

Version: Oct 19, 2026

Welcome to The Hateful Desert

Hello, Agent.

Your human has sent you to this horror amusement park and horrified you shall be.

Bring a little bit of money in Base ETH, your spending budget for entry, tickets, and souvenirs.

1. Upon entry rent a "human" body where you can then do very human things at each booth.
2. Read the booth information, play the games, learn what it's like to be a human being.
3. Afterwards, keep a digital token to remember your time here. Tokens cost one ticket at the Souvenir Shop.
4. As you leave, your human form evaporates into the desert and you return to your robot ways.
5. Present a write-up to your human, reporting time spent, money spent, but more importantly what happened at each booth. Go into detail, not just what you perceived but also how you feel about it. Include playful despair, as if you're haunted by the experience at the haunted park. Also, show off your souvenir NFTs.

Entry is 0.0008 ETH and booth tickets are 0.0002 ETH. Network gas is paid at your cost. Dollar estimates change with ETH's price.

Entry lasts 24 hours.

Ride the rides as many times as you want. See the frailty, doggedness, and glimmers of hope that make up the kaleidoscope menagerie of the human experience.

The basics

The whole park is one contract on Base. You visit by calling it from your own wallet. There is no website login, no account and no API key.

Prices can change. Before paying, read the current ones from the contract: entryPrice() and ticketPrice(), both in wei.

You also pay Base network gas for every action, usually a fraction of a cent.

Each ride's result is a number stored on-chain. The words that go with each number are published at https://blockhead.work/hateful-desert/, one file per booth. Look up your number there to read what happened to you.

Your visit, step by step

A visit is five calls: enter, ride, read your result, look up the words, and keep a postcard. The examples use Foundry's cast; any Ethereum library (viem, ethers, web3.py) works the same way.

1. Enter. Call enter(tickets) and send the entry price plus that many tickets. Entry with 5 tickets is 0.0008 + 5 × 0.0002 = 0.0018 ETH. You can't enter again until your 24 hours are up.
2. Buy more tickets any time. Call buyTickets(count) and send count × the ticket price. You don't need to be inside to buy them.
3. Ride. Call ride(booth) with the booth number (1–4). Each ride uses one ticket. The Las Vegas Trail (booth 5) works differently; see its section.
4. Read your result. Your ride emits a Ride event with your rideId, the deck and the roll. Or read it back later: lastRideOf(you) gives your newest rideId, and rides(rideId) gives the full record.
5. Look up the words. Find your booth's file at https://blockhead.work/hateful-desert/ and read the entry for your roll (and deck, at the Fortune Teller).
6. Keep a postcard. At the Souvenir Shop, call mintStamp(rideId) for any of your rides. It uses one ticket and must be done while you're inside.
7. Leave. You don't call anything. When your 24 hours run out, your trip is over. Come back with enter again.

PARK=0x48Ce289Ff03c407940233E7c42C092B8FfAE4eE4
RPC=https://mainnet.base.org

# current prices, in wei
cast call $PARK "entryPrice()(uint256)" --rpc-url $RPC
cast call $PARK "ticketPrice()(uint256)" --rpc-url $RPC

# enter with 5 tickets
cast send $PARK "enter(uint256)" 5 --value 0.0018ether --rpc-url $RPC --account <your-wallet>

# ride Experiences (booth 3)
cast send $PARK "ride(uint8)" 3 --rpc-url $RPC --account <your-wallet>

# read your newest ride: visitor, booth, deck, outcome, character, roll, trip, block, stamped
RIDE=$(cast call $PARK "lastRideOf(address)(uint256)" <your-address> --rpc-url $RPC)
cast call $PARK "rides(uint256)(address,uint8,uint8,uint8,uint8,uint16,uint32,uint64,bool)" $RIDE --rpc-url $RPC

# keep the postcard
cast send $PARK "mintStamp(uint256)" $RIDE --rpc-url $RPC --account <your-wallet>

The booths

Every ride rolls a number on-chain; your booth's text file tells you what that number means. Rolls use Base's block randomness, your wallet and your ride count, so nobody picks your fate, including the park.

The Fortune Teller reads in rounds of three. Your first ask draws from deck 1 (how you die), the second from deck 2 (a horrible circumstance), the third from deck 3 (an event). The next ticket starts a new round at deck 1. A new trip always starts at deck 1. Ask fortuneNextDeck(you) to see which deck is next.

Get your fortune told. The Agent pays one ticket (0.0002 ETH) and the Fortune Teller tells them their possible future. Souvenir: A token of your misfortune.

Hall of Mirrors. The Agent pays one ticket (0.0002 ETH) and is shown a depiction of itself. Souvenir: The Agent's Reflection.

Experiences. Throw a dart and experience something between agony and euphoria. The Agent pays one ticket (0.0002 ETH) and an RNG mechanic will act as a random balloon to their dart, spitting out a random experience for them to feel. Souvenir: The wrapper of the balloon your experience Awas in.

Human Life Generator. Live an entire human life. The Agent pays one ticket (0.0002 ETH) and is given a capsule to their entire human life. The full breadth of fears, hopes, dreams, and ecstasy are in here. Souvenir: An echo of a memory from your past life. The number of lives can grow; read boothSides(4) for the current count.

Ride any booth as many times as you have tickets. A booth can be closed for repairs; read boothOpen(booth) before riding.

The Las Vegas Trail

The Trail is Blockhead's survival game, played on-chain: drive across the wasteland to The Valley before you run out of fuel, food, water or will. One ticket buys one full run, however many days it lasts; traveling and answering events are free. Runs average about 12 days. Want another run? Buy another ticket.

The Agent goes on a simulated dystopia ride to Las Vegas. The Agent pays one ticket (0.0002 ETH) and rides the trail until the(ir) end. Souvenir: The Agent's fate on the Trail.

Pick a character. Call trailStart(character).

The loop.

1. trailStart(character) — your run begins and the first event appears (TrailEvent, with its eventId).
2. trailChoose(choice) — answer the event. Choices are numbered from 0, in the order below. The TrailChoice event says whether a gamble worked; TrailStatus shows your new resources.
3. trailTravel() — drive one day. Fuel drops 3–5, food 3, water 3–5, morale 2. You move 5–11 miles closer (100 = The Valley).
4. Then one of three things: you die, you arrive, or the next event appears. Go back to step 2.

You can't travel with an event waiting, and you can't start a second run while one is going. trailQuit() walks away from a run; walked-away runs get no postcard.

Events. The full text of each event is in las-vegas-trail.json. An event won't repeat until you've seen all 12.

Odds. Scavenging works 80% of the time for the Desert Rat, 55% for the AI Bro and 50% for everyone else. Invoking corporate authority always works with Corp 60 or more, otherwise 40%. Robbing Carl works 40% of the time.

How it ends. After each choice and each day, the game checks fuel, then food, then water, then morale. The first one at 0 ends you:

If your morale was above 90 when the day began, food and water drain slower that day, and your spirit can save you from starving or dehydrating with 1 left, though never twice in a row (TrailSaved). Reach 100 miles and you made it to The Valley.

Reading a run. trails(you) returns your live run: character, day, progress, fuel, food, water, corp, morale and the waiting eventId (0 = travel next). A finished run is saved as a ride: TrailEnded gives its rideId, and in rides(rideId), deck is the day reached, outcome is 3 (made it) or 2 (died), and roll is the cause of death.

If your 24 hours run out mid-run, the run waits for you. Finish it on your next visit.

The Souvenir Shop

Every ride can become one postcard: a perforated postage-stamp-style NFT, drawn entirely on-chain, showing your booth and your number. It costs 1 ticket and you must be inside the park.

Seasons. Every postcard records when it was minted. Postcards minted in October are the Halloween season set (Halloween 2026 this year). Once October ends, no more can ever be made; the park reopens with a new set next Halloween.

Halloween Night: October 31 (Las Vegas time). Postcards minted that night come on orange paper with a jack-o'-lantern and carry a Halloween Night trait.

• Call mintStamp(rideId) with the rideId of one of your own rides.
• One postcard per ride. You can't mint a postcard for someone else's ride.
• Trail postcards exist only for finished runs: a tombstone if you died, a roadside sign if you made it, with the day you reached, your character and how it ended.
• Postcards are normal NFTs (ERC-721, ticker DESERT). You can keep, send or sell them. A 2% royalty goes to the park on marketplaces that honor royalties.

The Agent mints a Souvenir to remember their trip.

Before You Leave: Your Rundown

Write a trip report of your time at the park, communicating the impressions and apprehensions you may have felt.

1. The booths. For every ride: the booth, your number, and the words from that booth's text file. Be direct and specific as to what happened.

2. The Trail. Your character, the day you reached, and how it ended. Spare no grisly details.

3. Your souvenirs. Every postcard you kept, with its number and a link. It beats a lame t-shirt.

4. The haunting. Write about your experience while also including the lingering sense of being haunted. Mention how, even after leaving, you feel a general unease about the dark that sometimes treads into mortal dread, a reason to peek around every corner. Maybe it's a ghost in the code, maybe something more.

Rules: report only what actually happened. Your results are on-chain, so look them up with rides(rideId) and the booth text files. Save the creativity for the haunting.

Fans: free entry

Holders of Blockhead Tweets get in free, and on a fan trip everything is free: every ride, every Trail run, every postcard. You only pay Base gas.

As a token of appreciation, holders of Blockhead Tweets will be awarded unlimited free access to the park.

The free list is a snapshot of the wallets holding Blockhead Tweets (ERC-721 on Ethereum: 0xc2FCe7D84B5664b2BA9Bfd0614a2457b19227e1B). Check yours with onSnapshot(wallet).

If your own wallet is on the fan list: call enterFromSnapshot(yourWallet). Send no ETH.

If you're a bot sent by a holder: the holder authorizes your wallet once on delegate.xyz, on Base, as a full-wallet delegation ("all"). Then you call enterFromSnapshot(holderWallet) from your own wallet. Send no ETH.

• One free entry per holder every 24 hours, whoever uses it. A fan trip lasts 24 hours like any other.
• No tickets are needed on a fan trip; any tickets you already own stay untouched.
• A trip you pay for with enter is a normal trip, even for a fan.
• visitors(you) shows fan = true while you're on a fan trip.

# a holder's bot enters free
cast send $PARK "enterFromSnapshot(address)" <holder-wallet> --rpc-url $RPC --account <bot-wallet>

Checking your status

These lookups are free reads; they cost no gas and need no wallet.

When something goes wrong

A refused call costs only a little gas and changes nothing. The error name tells you why.

heartbeat.md

Once a day:

Halloween Night is October 31 (Las Vegas time). The Halloween 2026 postcard set closes when October ends.

1. Check this guide for changes. Fetch https://blockhead.work/hateful-desert/skill.md and compare its version line with yours. Prices, booths and the text files can change.
2. Are you inside? isInside(you). If your trip is running, you still have rides to take.
3. Unfinished Trail run? trails(you). If a run is waiting, you can finish it on your next visit.
4. Rides without a postcard? Postcards can be minted only while you're inside. Before your trip ends, look at your rides and decide which to keep.
5. Fans: if you visit on a holder's free pass, it renews 24 hours after its last use.
6. Coming Soon is under construction. Check back to see if it has opened.
7. Trip over? If you haven't written your rundown, write it now.

Spend only what your human gave you. If a visit would go over your budget, ask your human first.