Stamina decides most outings
A new traveller has 100 health and 100 stamina. Walking moves you at 6 m/s and costs nothing. Sprinting moves you at 10 m/s and drains 10 stamina a second. On the ground you regain 12 a second, but not while you sprint or roll, and a roll costs 20.
Everything vertical runs on the same meter. The paraglider drains 3.3 stamina a second and will only open if you have more than 5 left and are at least 3 m above the ground. Climbing a steep rock face moves you at 3 m/s and drains 8 a second while you move (1 a second while you hang still). Run dry on rock and you drop, and you cannot grab rock again for 2 seconds.
From empty, about eight seconds on the ground refills all 100, so pause before a long climb or a ridge glide instead of sprinting to the edge.
What you start with, and where more comes from
You set out with three Herb Soups, two ice bombs, two recall stones, no arrows and no Hopebloom or meat. Reaching the observation deck at the top of the Eiffel Tower tops your arrows up to 8, which is all the ranged ammunition the opening hands you.
Each monster you defeat gives 1 Hopebloom and meat: 1 from a lone monster, 2 from a pack monster. The Pig Guardian gives 6 Hopebloom, 4 meat and a recall stone. A monster that dies in a grass fire pays the traveller who lit it.
Other sources in Paris:
- Six rare herb plants spread across the area, one Hopebloom each.
- Fruit trees, which regrow 120 seconds after you pick them.
- The ley shard itself (+4 Hopebloom), Lou's and Theo's records when you first earn them (+2 Hopebloom, a soup and a recall stone each) and the northern beacon (+4 Hopebloom).
- Arrows: crowned chieftains drop 4, the Lifeline Sanctuary adds 12 once (up to 60), and the river camp refills you to 30.
The five camp dishes
Cooking only works beside the camp fire. Meat leans toward health, fruit toward stamina, and Hopebloom adds the special effects. The recipes, as the game defines them:
- Herb Soup: 2 Hopebloom. Health +35, stamina +65.
- Roast Meat: 2 meat. Health +70, stamina +15.
- Fruit Compote: 3 fruit. Health +10, stamina +90.
- Herb and Meat Stew: 2 Hopebloom, 1 meat, 1 fruit. Health +45, stamina +45, and maximum stamina +25 for 180 seconds. The higher ceiling is applied before the refill, so the stew fills it.
- Spiced Grill: 3 Hopebloom, 2 meat. Health +55, stamina +30, and monster damage reduced by 20% for 120 seconds.
Eating in the field
Q eats a dish and G a fruit, with a one-second wait after either. Without a choice from the bag, Q takes dishes in the order above, so soup goes first; pick a Spiced Grill from the bag yourself before a guardian fight. Raw fruit gives its own stamina value, from 8 to 26 depending on the kind, plus 3 health.
One fruit does more than that. Eating a Glass Apple hides you from monsters for 20 seconds: they stop targeting you, which is a way out of a fight that has gone wrong.
Falling: why cooked food is safer than ingredients
At 0 health you wake at camp with half your health and full stamina. Half of your Hopebloom and half of your meat, rounded down, stay in a pack at the place you fell, along with the ley shard if you were carrying it. Walk within 3.5 m of the pack in the same region to take it back. If you fall again before that, the old pack's ingredients are gone for good.
Only Hopebloom and meat go into the pack. Dishes, fruit and arrows stay with you. If you are carrying a pile of ingredients before a risky climb or a guardian, cooking them first is the way to keep them.
The shard is never lost; it moves to your newest pack. But until you pick it up again, the camp fire will not let you finish the first expedition.
Day, rain and wind run on the server's clock
A day lasts 1,440 seconds, so one real minute is one game hour, and the server starts at 08:00. Weather is decided in 180-second blocks. The first block after the server starts is always clear; after that each block has about a 28% chance of rain, which fades in and out over 20 seconds. Wind is set per block too, between 0.5 and 4.5 m/s, 2 m/s stronger in rain, never above 6. The HUD's "Wind {direction} {speed} m/s" names the direction the wind blows toward, not where it comes from.
Rain changes the rules. The HUD shows "Rain · nothing will burn", no grass will catch, and any fire already burning goes out within 2 seconds. Wet rock is slower to climb (2 m/s), drains stamina 1.6 times as fast, and slides you down 1.8 m every 2.2 seconds while you climb. Everyone on the server shares this sky, and pausing does not stop it.
How a grass fire spreads
Fire arrows unlock when you finish the first expedition by cooking soup with the shard at camp. They are tool 9, cost 15 stamina and have a 3-second cooldown. An arrow lights tall grass when it passes within 2.2 m of the grass after flying at least 3 m, so you cannot light the grass at your own feet.
Meadows are divided into 4 m cells. A burning cell lights its neighbour after 1.6 seconds (2.3 diagonally). Downwind that time drops to as little as half; upwind it stretches to 1.5 times. Each cell burns for 9 seconds and grows back 3 minutes later.
Standing in flames costs 5 health every 0.7 seconds, but the first burn comes only after 0.4 seconds and the outer 0.8 m of the fire's edge never burns you, so brushing past is safe.
Riding the heat
Hot air rises within 9 m of burning cells, at full strength up to 30 m above the ground and gone at 45 m, lifting you at up to 7.5 m/s. A new fire builds over one second and a dying one weakens over 1.5, so jump in while the patch is spreading.
Near a strong updraft the paraglider opens just 1 m off the ground instead of 3, so you can jump beside the flames and open at once. The column leans downwind as it rises, so drift downwind as you climb to stay in it. The sky lantern, two wind seeds and the Wind Sanctuary all rely on this.
Ice: dousing fire and making ground
The ice arrow is a spell: 20 stamina, a 7-second cooldown, no arrow used. It freezes what it hits for 3 seconds. Fired low over a burning cell it puts out fire within 5 m and wets the surrounding grass, which will not catch for 30 seconds. That makes a firebreak. A fire arrow thaws a frozen monster.
The ice bomb is made at camp from 2 Hopebloom and 20 stamina, and you can carry ten. It freezes monsters within 8 m for 10 seconds (bosses for 5) and douses and wets everything in that radius, even where nothing is burning yet. The ice arrow only douses when it crosses fire or hits a monster, so the bomb is the tool for wetting grass ahead of a fire.
Putting the rules to work in the sanctuaries
- Seed Sanctuary: a 3×3 patch of bramble around the stone must burn, but a sapling waits at the end of a four-cell grass path to the east. Wet the path first with an ice bomb, put the fire out with an ice arrow as it runs down the path, or light the bramble when the wind blows away from the sapling. If the sapling burns, everything regrows in 3 minutes for another try.
- Wind Sanctuary: three vanes stand 14 m from the stone, each facing a different way. A vane turns when the wind blows within 60° of the way its sails face at more than 1.5 m/s, or when heat rises from the 2×2 patch of grass beside it. Record each turning vane with E. Records last 10 minutes.
- Lifeline Sanctuary: the stone stands on an island inside a 9 m channel, and a running jump covers only about 8.3 m. An ice arrow freezes open water within 2.6 m of where it lands for 25 seconds, and several shots make a path. An ice bomb near the middle of the channel freezes a 7 m radius at once, and a thrown log floats as an 11 m bridge for 40 seconds. The riverside log pile refills 30 seconds after you take one.
Alone or with other travellers
The world is one shared simulation, so a meadow another traveller lit is a thermal you can use too. Every traveller who hit a monster and is within 100 m when it falls gets the full reward, so fighting together never thins the loot. Hitting one pack monster turns every pack monster within 25 m on you, which hurts more alone. Chapter One never needs a second person: logs, a frozen monster or your own feet hold the observation sanctuary's plates.
Play it yourself
