Monk Took Book Belfry Guide: Bell Timing and Scribe Requests

What is the belfry, exactly?

The belfry is the abbey’s bell tower and the hinge of the whole game loop. The day flows: books arrive at the dock, you shelve them into your own system, and at some point you climb to the belfry and sound the bell — the signal for the Scribes to put in their requests for chosen tomes. From that moment until sunrise, the game stops grading your shelving and starts grading your memory.

The full loop, step by step, lives in our how-to-play guide; this page is about the bell decision itself.

When should you ring the bell?

This is the most interesting decision in the day, and early gameplay suggests three postures:

1. Ring early — a short shelving phase, then requests with plenty of daylight margin to fetch calmly. Safest for your first in-game week; the trade-off is books still sitting in the staging pile that could have been placed.
2. Ring late — every spare minute shelving is capacity the evening can draw from, but the fetch window tightens. Observed rewards lean on speed and quality, so a late bell with sloppy fetches can earn less than an early bell with clean ones.
3. Ring on a rule — many early players converge on a personal trigger: one cart fully shelved, or one full shelf row, then ring. A consistent rule beats a mood-based one, because your memory map stays predictable.

The honest caveat: reward formulas are unverified — treat every claim about optimal timing as an early-footage observation until tested.

What do the Scribes ask for?

Chosen tomes — specific books, fetched by remembering where you put them. This is the exam your own filing system set up: shelve by symbol, by zone, by whatever your memory holds, and the requests walk you back through it. If the requests keep stumping you, the fix is almost never running faster — it is a better shelving system.

What happens at sunrise?

Sunrise is a deadline, not a reward. The night ends whether the requests are served or not — unserved work and damaged books carry over, and early footage showed the Abbot’s mood reacting to the day’s outcome (“The abbot is displeased” when things fell apart). Damaged books get repaired with the quill, and Blessings earned from good service feed back into the perks and chambers system.

How does the bell work with four monks?

In co-op the same loop scales: more monks, more shelving hands, and requests that grow with the party. Who rings the bell — and whether everyone agrees the shelving is done — is a genuinely funny coordination problem covered alongside the rest of multiplayer in our co-op guide.