Earning Photocards

As mentioned previously: “Photocards are, quite simply, a reward for engaging with the site in its intended purpose: reading.”

So, yes, if you wish to earn more photocards to expand your collection, you have to read and/or write.

(Note: Here, a roll is referred to often, hereby defined as the trigger point at which you may earn a photocard; however, hitting a roll is not a guarantee, and you are still at the mercy of the RNG gods.)

(Note: Please be aware that any numbers mentioned below, whether hours or limits, or whatever, are subject to change and also can be dynamic.)

On any occasion below, where you roll for a photocard and are successful, you can earn any photocard in the droppable pool. The droppable pool currently consists of all 1st and 2nd edition cards, as well as the current limited collection (Summer ‘26 at the time of writing).

While the rates are not visible, as the rarity increases, the cards are less likely to drop. The droppable rarities are as follows. The most common at the top, rarest at the bottom.

Common
Uncommon
Rare
Epic
Legendary
Ethereal
Cosmic
Celestial

You may notice that the previously mentioned Secret cards are not part of the droppable pool. How to acquire these will be covered in the shrine section of the guide.

Reading

There are two main ways to roll a chance to earn a poca while reading, and one is, well, just reading, while the other is commenting.

As you read a story, you pass several hidden ‘checkpoints’ within a fic, where a roll occurs with a fairly high % chance to drop a random photocard. 

These checkpoints scale with the length of the fic, so you are not punished for reading one long story, or several short ones. While the specifics aren’t clear, you can make a good assumption that a story with 2k words may contain 1-2 checkpoints, while something at 6k words may contain 3-4 checkpoints.

(Note: No, you cannot just scroll/skim through a fic to hit the checkpoints without reading; there is protection in place against this.)

So yes, just by sitting down and reading your favourite author, your collection will grow.

However, if you wish to more actively engage with a story, every single in-line comment, story-level comment, or series-level comment you make triggers a roll. Now, this is a lower % roll; it may take several comments before you see a card successfully drop, but in my experience, actively commenting as I read through a fic has massively increased my drop rate.

So in effect, the most efficient way to grow your collection is to read and comment.

Other actions such as bookmarking do not trigger rolls, so no, you will not benefit from going around and spamming surface-level interactions with stories.

One final note is that there is a cooldown between rolls that is dynamic in nature, but is roughly 10 minutes, so there is no need to rush reading or to spam comments. Just go naturally, and the pocas will flow.

Writing

Fear not, dear writers; you do not have to take time away from your busy period of procrastination ahem I mean writing to go farm photocards by reading, because writing now passively earns you photocards too!

While every time you post a new story/chapter/part does earn you a single roll for a photocard, this isn’t a consistent income, so with the latest update, passive poca rolls have been introduced!

So every time your lovely readers interact with any of your posts, it triggers a roll for the author too. So you can passively earn cards by putting out stories that people love to read and comment on!

And yes, that means for readers, your support just got even more valuable, as you are effectively generating photocards for your favourite authors just by reading their stories; isn’t that kind?

Fulfilling wishes

For those who are kind of heart, it is possible to earn a roll by fulfilling the wishes of another user. By visiting the wishlist and gifting one of your hard-earned photocards to someone’s wish, you are rewarded with a roll for a new card.

Good karma is real.

Giving Flowers

Flowers are a way for you to show your appreciation to other users, and each time you give one out, you get a roll!

This site really is all about kindness…

Daily Photocards

For those who have subscribed to Fan+, you will receive a daily photocard drop of a random photocard. You will be made aware that this has been added to your inventory by a notification.

Then, you can find it by viewing your inventory and sorting by newest.

You can change the timing of your daily drop via the settings under the premium tab:

This daily gift does not count towards your photocard limit.

Photocard limit?!

Right…

Photocard cap

There is a limit to the number of photocards that can be earned by each user, and it works on a rolling token system.

The limit for standard users appears to be 7, while Fan+ can earn up to 10.

Each time you earn a photocard, you use up one of your tokens, and the token goes onto a roughly 22-hour cooldown (this is also slightly dynamic and can vary slightly). Each of these tokens operates individually, so there is no hard daily limit, but if you’re suddenly unable to earn any more, then you may have consumed all of your limit in the past 22 hours.

An easy way to check is to filter your notifications to photocards and count:

Praying at the Shrine

This will be covered in further detail as part of the shrine guide, but every 22 hours you can pray at the shrine for a photocard gift, in which you can earn a single gift, multiple gifts, or even zero.

Exclusions

You now have the option to exclude groups of your choice from your pool of drops. 

By heading to the Content section of your settings, you will find an area in which you can choose which collections are excluded from your drop pool. All users are able to exclude 3 collections from their drop pool, while Fan+ users are able to exclude 5.