Sburb Walkthrough 1.0
10/23/21
By profoundBadness

TABLE OF CONTENTS
[0000] Apologies and Accedence
[0001] Phernamia Registry
[0002] Server Abilities
[0003] Grist
[0004] Your Asshole Ghost Sidekick
[0005] Underlings
[0006] The Echeladder
[0007] Alchemy
[A000] Walkthrough (incomplete)
[A001] Entry
[A002] The Medium
[A003] A Preface on the Subject of Lands
[A004] Anatomy of a Land
[A101] Name
[A102] Terrain
[A103] Locals
[A104] Quests
[A105] Shops
[A106] Gates
[A107] Game Mechanics
[A200] Land of Spires and Frogs
[A201] Iguanas
[A203] Tewer
[A300] Land of Wood and Haze
[A301] The Haze and the Flowers
[A302] Shipping Stones and Dungeons
[A303] Salamanders, culture, and assorted
[A400] Land of Gold and Shade
[A500] Land of Grit and Lamps
[A501] The Humble Nakkadile
[A502] The World of Darkness
[A503] Afterword
[B000] Reports and Reassurance
[B100] Updates and Understandings
[C000] Auxiliary Gameplay and the Endgame
[C100] Metamechanics
[C110] Dreamself
[C120] Class
[C130] Aspect
[C200] Locations
[C210] Skaia and the Battlefield
[C220] Prospit
[C230] Derse
[C240] The Veil
[C300] Dramatis Personae
[C310] Royalty
[C320] Agents
[C330] Denizens
[B200] Realizations and Requests
[B300] Arthur: Egress




[0000] Apologies and Accedence


Sburb broke Earth. Here's how to survive it.

Everything you're about to read here is going to be strange. Everything I've seen, all the things I've heard about happening, are all far beyond anything I'd ever expect a game to do. I mean, who ever heard of a video game ending the world? That's stupid, it doesn't happen.

Well, I guess it did. If you're from Earth-413, or rather if you were from Earth-413 back before it wasn't a space-rock-battered desert, you really can't deny it anymore. If you were playing the game that ended it, you might be in a worse-off position than the people that got the chance to abscond the hell out of there with the Union evac, back when there were even still people to evac. I don't know yet. I'm sorry.

Shit's like having a funeral for a really, really weird uncle. You figure you're supposed to be grieving the hell out and getting your crying on or something, but you guess his part of the family had some really weird cultural origin and now the funeral looks like some goddamn party game, and you're expected to do things for it. Maybe it's not like that, maybe "my home planet dying" isn't a big deal and I'm just reacting in the coolkid way to do it, which would be great and totally expected of me, being as awesome as I am.

But this isn't the right place to have to deal with it at all. So I'm gonna give you the critical bit of advice, the sort I'm handing out like cheap metaphorical advice cigars here, and say this. Don't ever stop to think about it. There's going to be monsters where you are. Fight them. Don't ever stop moving, don't ever stop fighting, and when it's time to sleep or eat or whatever, make sure you've been fighting so much you don't have time for messing around with wallowing in horrible self-pity or kind-of-crying-maybe about where your Dad might be, you just get right to whatever it is, eating or sleeping or whatever.

Just don't stop. Because, though it sounds mad crazy when I say this, if you stop you'll start figuring out how all this, the dying world and the horrible monsters, they're all our fault, us playing this game. Maybe it's all only our fault, over here in our horrible death session. With how bad this game looks, there's a hell of a good chance it's all only my fault.

Sorry.



[0001] Phernamia Registry


You're gonna have a ton of weird stuff to deal with. Chances are, if you're reading this, you're not dead, just a guess. So you probably already figured out the puzzle to get in. But if something weird went on, and, shit, I know something weird always goes on with this game, maybe you need to know about it all. Maybe it's just convenient reference. Settle down and get a pen. Or maybe a labeler would be better.

Cruxtruder: This thing is the most important bit. It's the one you'll hate. I don't know if it makes meteors, or just shows you the countdown for them, but if you're still not inside the game, those screens on it will show the most important countdown of your life once you pop the top off. Get that top off, everything goes to hell. First time you deploy it, popping the top off releases a Kernelsprite. That's a bright, flashy color orb if you're not familiar. I'll tell you about it later. Turn the wheel to get Cruxite Dowels. I guess there's an infinite number in the thing. It doesn't make sense.

Totem Lathe: Another important bit. Watch for flying carved crystal bit, it's kind of dangerous. This carves the Dowels into Totems if you put punched cards into the slot. They can be the punched card below, or punched Captchalogue Cards from the Punch Designix

Alchemiter: The last really critical bit. This reads totems and makes whatever was in the punchcard code that was on the card you put into the lathe was. Put two cards in, you can combine them. Punch two codes on the same card, you combine them too. This thing uses "Grist", I'll talk about that later.

Pre-punched card: One use, at least as far as I can tell. Make whatever's on this, you'll get... Something. Doing something with it will bring you into the game. It's not really clear what all it is, all the time. You'll figure it out.

Punch Designix: Critical only after you get past the part with the meteor trying to kill you, and progress to the part with the monsters trying to kill you. Remember how your Captchalogue cards had those captcha codes Skaianet put on the back since the eighties? I guess those were for this. You use this to enter the captcha codes, and punch the cards with a hole pattern the code makes.

Grist: Grist is some kind of in-game currency or material or resource or something. The monsters drop it when they die, and you can make stuff out of it. You've got a cache limit on how much you can have at any one time. No idea how many Grist types there are, I've seen tons. Maybe I'll document them all.

Jumper Block Extension: I eventually got around to this, though I've not figured out any practical uses for it. This connects the Punch Card Shunts to the Alchemiter. Make sure your Alchemiter is in a position where the Jumper Block Extension can be added. This costs a ton, ten thousand build grist.

Punch Card Shunt: These cost ten build grist each. When you put a card punched with a code into it, and stick it on the Jumper Block Extension, the Alchemiter gets changed around to include the object in the card in its mechanical functionality somewhere. This means you can change your alchemiter. I've not managed to get this to do anything but be useless, more on this later.

Holopad: I'm gonna guess this projects something. Pretty expensive .
CD: This has Gristtorrent on it. That's got it's own damn built-in guide, use that.
Intellibeam Laserstation: Don't even know, too expensive.
Ectobiology Apparatus: See above.
Cloning Pad: See above.



[0002] Server Abilities


As a Server player, you'll get to mess with whatever poor sap finds himself needing to be client player. Please, please resist the urge to start screwing with whoever it is in a life-threatening situation.

You can move stuff around, and edit the house, with the select and revise tools respectively. You can also deploy anything out of the Phernalia Registry with the deploy tool, as well as keep track of the punchcard alchemy results with the Explore Anetheum and the Grist cache with the option named as such. You can put things into the Phernalia Registry too, and recycle anything you alchemize when it's in there.

The Explore Anetheum keeps track of the alchemization everyone's done. My list is all dense packed as hell, so this is kind of a big thing. I don't think there's any limit. All that you need to keep track of is Grist. This doesn't keep track of the alchemizations outside your session though, at least it seems that way. Other people posted walkthroughs involving alchemization, but I think all of this is just my co-players' alchemizations. I'll be writing a lot about alchemization soon. (It doesn't list the entry artifact. Kind of inconvenient since my client player won't tell me about hers.)



[0003] Grist


Grist seems to be a construction object of some kind. It comes in a lot of shapes, sizes, and colors. There'll be some monsters in the Medium, called Underlings, that drop Grist. Most of it's Build Grist, and the bigger a piece of Grist is, the more you get out of it from picking it up. The stuff disappears, think of it like coins in some obtuse platformer.

Here's the Grist types I've seen in the game. I've looked over some other guides; besides Build Grist, a lot of it doesn't match up.

Build Grist - About first-tier in commonality, and most commonly consumed in alchemy, Build Grist is also the thing used up in editing your house. It's light blue and 18-sided with 12 of the sides appropriated to two 6-sided faces and looks like Fruit Gushers crossed with gems. I'm gonna call the shape hexagonal even though that's as not-3D as it is stupid.
Steel - Second-tier in commonality. Looks like brushed-metal hexagons.
Bone - Second-tier in commonality. Off-white and kind of square. Not sure why it's called bone.
Rock - Second-tier in commonality. Looks like stone hexagons.
Ink - Second-tier in commonality. Looks kind of like a droplet. Jet-black.
Rust - Third-tier in commonality. Dark brown cubes.
Glass - Third-tier in commonality. Transparent hexagonal shape.
Gold - Third-tier in commonality. Shiny gold cubes.
Lead - Third-tier in commonality. Dull grey hexagonal shape.
Cobalt - Fourth-tier in commonality. Darker blue hexagonal.
Cloth - Fourth-tier in commonality. Purple-ish cloth-textured cubes.
Mirror - Fourth-tier in commonality. Mirrored (duh) cubes.
Boon - Fourth-tier in commonality. Hexagon that cycles through a bunch of colors.
Saw - Fifth-tier in commonality. Black metal disk, serrated edges, red trim.
Song - Fifth-tier in commonality. Looks like a musical note. All black.
Gear - Fifth-tier in commonality. Copper color, gear-toothed hexagon.
Ice - Fifth-tier in commonality. Light blue transparent cubes.
Feather - Fifth-tier in commonality. Looks like a mass of black feathers.
Seed - Fifth-tier in commonality. Dark-cyan spheres.
Mine - Fifth-tier in commonality. An extremely hard-edged cube, earthy brown with green on top.

(YEAR UPDATE)

Estimated drop rates

First tier: It's rare for this to not drop. You'll rarely lack this except for BIG projects. Average player gets tens of thousands from a few dungeon excursions.
Second tier: You'll almost always have at least one of these drop, if not two. A dungeon excursion or two will net you a few thousand of each, excluding unusual loot.
Third tier: You'll almost always find at least one or two enemies dropping these in dungeons, but it's rare on the overworld. You usually will get a few hundred of each with a few dungeons.
Fourth tier: Rare. Traditionally, this is stuff you find in chests. Usually in loot-rooms of dungeons, or drops from big stuff. The average player has a few dozen of each, or if they save, you'll have a few hundred.
Fifth-tier: Occasionally, chests or big loot areas can contain a whole one piece of this grist, if you're lucky.




[0004] Your Asshole Ghost Sidekick


Seriously, this guy? Fuck this guy.

As mentioned before, when you first deploy a Cruxtruder and get that cap off, the client player in that instance gets a Kernelsprite. It's a seizure light orb that buzzes and makes garbled noises that mean absolutely nothing, and it's kind of annoying. To make it incrementally reduce in stupidity, throw something in. Literally, simple as that. This is called Prototyping, and you can do two tiers of it. The Kernelsprite takes on some properties of whatever it was, and suddenly you have the worst sidekick ever.

We'll get to how this thing actually helps out later. Put something in it, though, otherwise you'll be screwed for help and explanations once you get in. So, you can put in two things and it makes a ghost guy! They'll help out, or sometimes they won't help out and instead they'll stab you. I think that's just mine, though.

So, once you've gotten two ghost bits in there or something. Fun times! Make sure they were good ones. This thing will be dispensing advice to you in the form of cryptic bullshit riddles and making you suffer through a wide variety of adventures. He'll also help you out with the monsters, though. So, balance this out between something you know will try to be direct with you, and something you know will be powerful. Maybe one of each for each item?

Here's a speculative bit: I think this mess with the monsters. They transform when new entries happen, and seem to have some qualities from various prototypings. Keep an eye out, and maybe don't prototype anything TOO powerful in large numbers.

One last note. Dead things work great in this. If you've got a dead pet, or a dead family member? Toss them in. I mean, I didn't, because I'm too cool to have dead family members or dead pets, but if you miss one, here's your chance. Pretty sure they'll be more familiar with you that way. Hopefully it means they'll also not riddle incomprehensibly at you too.

(YEAR UPDATE)

The sprites are physically powerful, and capable of a lot of healing. But they influence the Underlings and the Kingdoms. With the kingdoms, it affects the culture, while with the Underlings, it affects primarily their form and abilities. Don't put anything too powerful into this. You need something that can help you, but at the same time, something you won't get killed by. Additionally, it's important you put something anthropomorphizable in the Kernelsprite, as well as something willing and able to speak to you.



[0005] Underlings


Fuck these guys too.

There's a lot of these horrid monsters. I don't know where they come from and I don't know why they all want to kill everything that isn't an Underling. All I know is they're probably there for me to fight in incredible awesome ways or to try to kill me ruthlessly. They seem to have a variety of types. We've got Steel, Bone, Rock, and Ink Underlings so far. When they die, they turn into Grist, usually an amount roughly proportionate, as far as I can tell, to their strength.

Here's a list of some I've encountered, and the apparent name for them:

Imp - These guys are small, about three feet tall, sort of stout, and have these little claw things and sharp teeth. I hate them. They find random objects to use as weapons. After a while, you'll be able to handle groups of them. I've seen dudes take down dozens or even hundreds at a time. I think they're pretty much the weakling cannon fodder unit.

Ogres - Big dudes, they're built like a giant green comic hero. They got tusks for days, it's unreal how much these dudes can gore you. Watch out, if you got past the Imps these guys are going to be your stumbling block, and if they aren't, they're going to be a goddamn stumbling bat to the kneecaps.

Basilisks - Big lizards. I hate them. They try to eat you and I've not managed to kill one yet, but I saw someone ram a Basilisk's head into a wall over and over until it died a pretty horrible death. She was scary as all hell and I don't think this says anything about Basilisks being within my ability to kill. They've got giant teeth and they move hella fast.

Other??? - These aren't the limit. There's tons of these, I think. I've seen a giant cat looking one, but only the one. I think there are some unique, strong types, and it seems like they give a TON of grist when killed.

(YEAR UPDATE)

I've encountered several more.

Lich - Humanoid, human-sized. These are resilient and they make up for their lack of size with some clever tactics. They're armed on occasion, either with melee weapons or with firearms. Don't get caught alone by these unless you're really overpowered, they'll usually try to ambush you in some way that puts them at an advantage. You can usually take them better if you initiate the combat.

Giclopse - I've yet to kill one of these, but they're huge (we're talking several stories tall), they have one eye, and are incredibly strong. Keep your distance, use the environment, or engage it with a vehicle if possible. Thankfully, only a few exist, most likely. I've only seen one, and indications that a few others exist. Keep an eye out.




[0006] The Echeladder


No clue where this came from, or where it goes. It's an arbitrary leveling system. I've not seen any sense in the thing. The Achievement Rung names don't make any sense.

I think this thing is making me better, though. I seem stronger, faster, and actually kind of not as much of a horrible wimp anymore. It also gives me "Boondollars", which turned out to be something you can spend in shops down in the Lands, which I'll detail below. They increase your Grist Cache Limit too, so work on this.

Leveling up on this trash system seems to be based on doing... Anything. I literally have not found an immensely difficult task that I do not gain a rung or two for completing, though it only seems to happen when you actually complete whatever it is.

Do stuff. Don't be lazy. You'll get better and things! That's how this works, I guess. Awesome.



[0007] Alchemy


Alchemy needs a more comprehensive guide, so here's that guide. Basically, here's the long and short:

Get your sylladex. If you don't have a sylladex and you're in my session, get one of the Captcharoid cameras. Captchalogue or Captcharoid the relevant items you want to combine. Look at the back of the card or the filename of the captcharoid file to see what the code for that item is. If you can't see the code, you're shit out of luck. If you can, great! You're in business. Enter the code in the Punch Designix, then punch a card using that code with the designix. Do this for all items. Stick the cards into the totem lathe, and lathe a totem out of the multiple cards. Then take the totem to the alchemiter. Bam, instant swag.

I should note that if you combine the stuff such that it makes the wrong kind of combination, you can try again, and instead of punching two cards and layering them, you can take the card you made and punch it a second time with the second code. It combines them differently.

(YEAR UPDATE)

Some people have been messing with this to add additional functions, by using the Jumper Block Extension. It's fairly simple to do, but there's a few particularly useful ones I want to point out that are good to do.

HOLOPROJECTION - An AI-based holographic projection lets you preview the function and form of the product without spending grist, though it doesn't tell you how much it'll cost beforehand.
CHARACTER SHEET - You can add extra gist on top of the creation cost to enhance certain aspects of your product item. Things like durability, lastability, offensive or defensive power... It's a bit complex. And it takes a lot of grist, more than I can spend on the experimentation required to document this fully.



[A000] Walkthrough (incomplete)


This is based on one run and one run only, mostly because a second run would involve destroying the world again, and the first run has been dangerous enough.



[A001] Entry


I've not gotten through the game. Given what I've seen, I'm barely starting. But here's what you do.

The stuff listed in the Phernamia Registry? A lot of it's free. Deploy it all. See, your server player can drop stuff in the client player's environment. All the stuff in the Phernalia Registry. Break the cap off the Cruxtruder, get a dowel, carve it with the pre-punched card, put the Dowel on the Alchemiter and make it manifest whatever is in the card. I think it's randomized. I don't really know.

It's never that simple. There were a lot of mistakes made at mine, though I think that's because I'm an incompetent, obtuse idiot. You'll wind up cutting it close on the countdown, probably. Don't waste time. Try to get a good connection and a good computer before you start, both the client and the server. Otherwise, stuff will go wrong and you'll spend minutes fixing it that are hells kinds of valuable now that your life has turned into some kind of attempt to play chess on a roller coaster.

For fuck's sake leave the bathroom fixtures alone if you're the server player.

Get friends to help. If you're still playing this game, there's friends out in the multiverse. Get into contact with them. Make sure. Because things will go nuts, and you're gonna have a problem if you don't. One gamer, dealing with all the weird, horrible bits of the crisis going on at once suddenly probably finds out that the quick solution I listed before gets really complex really fast.

And that's the critical bit. Once you do that, you'll be in the game, or at least whoever was client at the time will. That's where things will start getting weird in a more comprehensive way, as opposed to being really severely weird in a specific way.



[A002] The Medium


Alright, this is going to be a problem.

This place has a ton of monsters. And, you know, I bet you're thinking, ooh, scary bats and slimes and stuff. No, that's for babies, evidently. Instead, you get three-foot-tall death machines trying to chew your eyes out. Lucky you, you've got me doing all kinds of covering in your back's general direction. Not an inch bare to treacherous back-assaults with my advice here.

You're going to have the sprite you made. He or she or it will help you fight off the monsters, keep you healed, all that. I think this is sort of a tutorial kind of environment, maybe. They'll back you up, but you're still going to be doing most of the work yourself. You're going to need some Grist to start off with; try finding an Imp or two you can take on your own. The damn things are hard to take down initially until you get more Echeladder rungs.

The Grist you get from these is something you're going to need. Craft something basically useful and start progressing through groups of Imps. If you're lucky, they won't kill you. See if you can get any help from generous multiversal heroes, this is a lifesaver while you're all alone here. Now, from here on out, have your server player build up. There's going to be a gate above your house. Be ready. Building up hella agitates the monsters and you're going to deal with a lot of trouble if you don't manage this right.



[A003] A Preface on the Subject of Lands


The Lands are a complicated thing.

These planets seem mostly isolated. They're not a part, at least in some significantly contiguous way, of the Multiverse. Which is fine, because each of them seem like functional independent ecosystems and civilizations on their own, and it would be hells kinds of terrible if I had to deal with the problems of sustainability.

No, there are different problems. Mostly the locals. Partially the world itself. See, I get the feeling these worlds are designed so that some kid, somewhere, probably never fought a day in his life, will be able to become a fantastic, powerful, hella legendary figure all up in the general psyche and shared cultural paradigm that the whole planet's population seems to have.

Thing is, this means it's not really built to handle a whole lot of multiverse people suddenly showing up and making waves. A lot of these guys fight wars. They punch gods, or take down thousands of bad dudes, or they hunt monsters, or sometimes they even are monsters. This makes the lands delicate under their touch, you know?

So when you get out of your house, through your First Gate, and down to your Land, you had better hope it's one built to handle everything you're going to put in it. If it's not, I don't know what will happen. But I do know it looks and feels like one hell of a powder keg, and I do know that sort of volatility isn't going to be a good idea in a context like this.

Be careful with the Lands. I don't know anywhere else to go if you set off the explosion under your feet.



[A004] Anatomy of a Land


I've only gotten a little bit into the Lands, just enough to see what might turn up in basic adventuring. And we're not very far along that line, still fussing around with a lot of stuff that looks and sounds a lot like setup. But some things look like basic elements, things shared between worlds and that might be in every session of this game, so they're gonna be noted here.

There are some basic properties every land has. I'll talk about those below in sections designated A1XX. Examples from my session will go in sections designated A2XX



[A101] Name


This is a pretty straightforward deal here. As far as I can tell, each Land has a name based on pretty much the same structure, usually being called the Land of [Something] and [Something Else]. Now, if you're in a new session and you've got a new guardian, soon as you're in the Medium you're probably going to hear about your Land. You need to know this name, because the name usually has some important info about the terrain, the properties, or some of the stuff in it.



[A102] Terrain


This usually takes one part of the name and has it as a defining feature. Whole planet, far as I can tell, is goddamn subsumed all in one biome and using one geographical feature as its base. There's only a little bit of variation from this and it's usually significant when there is. Whatever you see walking out of your first gate, expect to see a whole lot more, even if it's hells kinds of unsightful.



[A103] Locals


This planet is going to be populated. And I mean these guys are gonna be all over the place. I've seen iguanas and that's about it so far, but I get the feeling there are probably some others, since local carvings show three other species. Be on the lookout for those. They'll usually be about three feet tall, and really kind of hyper and dumb, but they're sapient and dexterous. They're also really easily impressed by stuff, and seem to have this whole local mythos all about whoever shows up from the outside. That seems to be about it.



[A104] Quests


These are most of what you're going to be dealing with. The locals love dispensing quests. I mean tons and tons of quests, like I don't think there's enough time in my life to go through all the inane stuff they want done. Do any of them actually do anything? I'm not planning on doing every bit of labor on the planet. Anyway, these seem specific to a planet and a person so I don't know really what's up with it, except for locating gates.



[A105] Shops


As far as I can tell there's always a local buying/selling infrastructure, and despite the fact that most of the locals are gonna be real deep down in some kind of poverty most of the time, they sell stuff at high prices. Maybe this is some kind of quest to fix the economy, but I get the feeling it's just so there's stuff for the actual heroes to buy. There's weapons, substances, armor, all kinds of stuff you can find. I found a "fraymotif" shop but everything is mad expensive in there so I don't know what they do. I'll detail that later.



[A106] Gates


Apparently each land has a lot of gates in it too, not arranged like the gates above the houses. There are littler ones you'll find everywhere, called Return Nodes, that take you back to the house and let other people get back into the whole warpgate system or whatever. Then there are bigger gates that are apparently hidden somewhere.



[A107] (YEAR UPDATE) Game Mechanics


Most lands appear to have specific game mechanics, so to speak. Portions of the land will be dedicated to some particular mechanism or another, and you'll usually find that your land has some sort of internalized specific system that's unique to it. You'll usually have to work with that if you want to get things done. It's going to likely involve a lot of exploiting the game, and you need to keep an eye on the planet itself, because there's a good chance that exploiting will result in some chaos or maybe even damage to it.



[A200] Land of Spires and Frogs


The Land of Spires and Frogs is kinda full of exactly what you'd guess. It's spires, also frogs. The frogs less so, since they seem to be in the middle of getting the shit exterminated out of them. Basically, it's a giant sphere of linked vertical spires. These spires are based on a complex network of crystaline plant substance that pump water and sedimentary materials to the "surface" where the crystal extrudes it into a viable living habitat. A lot of Iguanas inhabit this.



[A201] Iguanas


These guys do their best, I'll give them that. The Iguanas as a race of sapient creatures about three feet tall and who seem to be incapable of violence. They also seem to be durable as all hell. All of them can take simple instructions and, unless it would be terribly convenient for them to immediately follow your requests, seem to take them from anyone. They also seem to have a culture that is extremely malleable; since their arrival, a variety of outside forces have shaped the culture in a whole lot of strange ways. News and trends travel quick, and whatever Iguanas I encounter seem to have already internalized whatever exterior cultural forces have been introduced to the general population. I'll give you the bullet points.
+ They revere metal, particularly steel (their word for all metal), as a status symbol to be worn.
+ They have no experience with birds, cats, or horses in a shape that is not some horrible demon-thing.
+ They seem to have incorporated elaborate knives into their culture. Not sure why.
+ Someone taught them how to make ballistae, so LOSAF has the worst quick-travel system now.
+ Their economy is doing not-so-well, but seems to be doing okay, at least.
+ They place a lot of importance on the crystalline "tewer" plant, as food and as a symbol.



[A202] Locations


There's a lot of dungeons, caves, small settlements, and other shit on this planet. It seems to be like an RPG or something. But here's some stuff in particular that I've found to be more worthwhile to look at and to visit.

+ Southtown

Seems to be like a hub location. It's full of sidequests, and the locals have a lot of their economic structure here. It's a collection of nine spires arranged with eight at the rim and one in the center. It's looking like it's on the cusp of actual urbanization, and I'm looking forward to seeing one of these weird outside forces kick the development into gear. The spires themselves seem to be single-purpose districts. The central one seems more abandoned since a big temple or something on it got bombed. Their purposes are as follows:
NORTH: Travel
NORTH-EAST: Residential
NORTH-WEST: Food
EAST: Mining(?)
WEST: Entertainment
SOUTH-WEST: Library
SOUTH-EAST: Labor and services
SOUTH: Market
CENTRAL: Religious

+ North Village

Close to the landing of Gate 1-1. Smaller than Southtown, more mystical, and had a strong presence of Iguanas kinda revering some Legendary Bard. There's a dude here, his name is Secret Leader. Guy strikes me as important, but I don't know too much about him. He's pretty helpful, though, if you know what you're trying to find out about. At the very least, he'll tell you to go to the library if he doesn't know about it. North Village got burned at some point. I'm not sure if this was a game event or if someone fucked up, but anyway the place kinda got screwed up by it all.

+ West Caves

Worth checking out. Some of the larger Underlings roam around here if you're willing to look for them, and they give mad grist. There's also a pair of hermit Iguanas here, twins named Wer and Tew. They're more well-versed in stuff related to tewer, which makes me hate the naming system of this game. There's also a place here where you can deposit any frogs you've found for safekeeping. Seem to have been looted a bit, but damned if it doesn't work well and keep them alive with basically no effort on anyone else's part. None of the usual frog-destruction extends to there.

+ East Imp Hives

Powerleveling territory, or where you go when you want to keep something secret. The crystal tewer tunnels are suffused with all kinds of stuff that gets spat out every so often. Larger monsters roam around, and in bigger numbers. Recently, though, someone went through and kinda poisoned the Underling presence somehow, making them a bit less aggressive. I'm not sure if that was supposed to happen or if it was another of those outside forces, but it's convenient. If you're involved in my session, go here to grind your grist. This area also serves as a convenient access point for the lower spires, and makes for physically easy descent, which is to say it's simple to navigate lower into the planet's superstructure at this point, and not to say that the underlings don't get hells kinds of harder to deal with.

+ Temple of Space

Good research place north of North Village. Someone's been living here, but they won't talk to me. Oh well. Anyway, the place is also untouched by the whole frog-extermination thing. It's only got one accessible room and I don't have the key I seem to need to get through one of the doors, but the first area seems to have a lot of inscriptions. I've been reading a lot of them. They're making my mind twist into the shape of a pretzel trying to parse out their inscrutable fucking purple-prose riddles. But I think they've helped. Worth reading, if you're wanting to research something about the game or the setting.

+ Thip Crypts

Lootable, very lootable. South of Southtown. Only a sparse underling population around here regenerates over time, but that's not the good bit. The place is full of tombs, and the tombs are full of loot. You can only open one kind of chest, and that depends on who you are, but if you find your chest you'll be able to find a cool weapon mod. There's also a lot of archives on the tewer-plants and a workshop for working with it. Good for some limited information-grabbing or working on something if you really like.

+ Gate 1-2 Temple

Lots of fighting between me and the gate there. Big spiraling vast cave interiors going deep down, until I reached the bottom. Lots of grist to be had and levels to be gained.

It had my Gate 2 in it. Now it doesn't. Heh.



[A203] Tewer


This is a little bit complex. Tewer seems to be some kind of plant that is also a crystal. It grows in vertical stalks, and the interior seems to usually be hollow. Stick one end in liquid and the liquid will flow up, no idea why. They taste like ass, but apparently if you cook them just right they're delicious. To Iguanas, anyway. The locals love the stuff, it's their main source of food. It also has a few weird properties. It's pretty flammable, it apparently satisfies all nutrient demands, you can mash it into a paste and build a mud hut out of it if you really want it to be flammable, and also it's the core of every single spire in LOSAF. Both the small stalks and the interior spire-cores seem to regenerate damage over time when connected to the network as a whole. The spire-cores link to make bridges with this. This is also how the Underlings move around. The water-flow inside seems to let you travel around the planet in a hurry, if you don't have to breathe.



[A300] Land of Wood and Haze


(YEAR UPDATE)

(crowravenWolfmoon wrote this.)

So, I have been asked to write a FAQ chapter about my own personal world in Sburb, the Land of Wood of Haze. I am unsure how useful this will be to people within other sessions. But, at the least, this will likely aid within my own Session, for the various others who have decided to help out with the adventure.

The Land of Wood and Haze is perhaps the most interesting of all of the worlds I've encountered so far. In many ways, it reminds me of the wonderful city of Forks, Washington. Home to the Vampires and Werewolves. Alas, this planet has no vampires or werewolves. At least, not to my current knowledge. Instead, it is covered in a massive forest. Massive as in encompassing the majority of the planet, and massive as in size. The trees spread skyward, taller than most skyscrapers. Some even reach above the haze-like cloud. My own house landed atop the tallest tree.



[A301] The Haze and the Flowers


The Haze itself is somewhat misnamed, but still applies somewhat as far as looks. It is in fact a massive cloud of spores. These spores seem mostly harmless themselves. But, as they land and plant themselves? They create the strange plants that produce them. Huge, purple flowers that resemble Rafflesia. From them, gigantic spiked vines spread. The vines wrap around the trees, draining them of their life. As such, destroying the flowers is a major priority. Though they have been destroyed by brute force, doing so seems to be the incorrect way. Instead, a block puzzle must be solved. And I, the Rogue of Life, must send a surge of power through the blocks, to draw the life out of the flowers. Doing so unleashes a group of violet butterflies. Their purpose seems to be eating the spores, and they seem to be allies. As such, I have made it a priority to drain these flowers.



[A302] Shipping Stones and Dungeons


Most of these flowers are reached through dungeons located inside the trees. These dungeons seem to be unlocked by a strange mechanic, though. Via 'shipping stones'. As the world is explored, these Shipping Stones are discovered, with a name written upon them. You place them upon one of two Shipping Walls, and it unlocks a dungeon. There are two walls. One representing romantic love. The other, representing romantic hate.
For those interested in Romantic Hate, let me explain it now.

[Section removed by profoundBadness]

Also within the tree dungeons, there are strange pedestals known as Altars of Life. By setting some sort of life upon them, the Altars inscribe themselves permenantly with the name of that life. As of yet, we have placed a Human, a Troll, an eldritch horror, and a strange entity known as Black Gold Saw. We have yet to discover what these altars are used for, but we believe that they must be used.



[A303] Salamanders, culture, and assorted


But, the planet is not entirely dungeons. There are various villages, comprised mostly of Salamanders. These are stupid amphibious lifeforms, that seem really prone to suggestion. They form various villages, and are mostly helpful. Two major cults have started though. One to an Elder God known as Hastur, and one to the Queen of Hell, Tshallandria. A number of minor cults have formed too, but nothing so great as those.

The only other strange thing found within my world is an interesting stone slab, with the symbol of life on it. More info will be added on this once it is discovered.have about that.



[A400] Land of Gold and Shade


Not explored. Forthcoming.



[A500] Land of Grit and Lamps


(YEAR UPDATE)

(clandestineSquiddle wrote this)

So apparently people want to know about my stupid world full of idiotic crocodiles who much like asshole red amphibious criminal smurphs. So let me break down what I've seen.



[A501] The Humble Nakkadile


Vocabulary: They have one word, 'nak', and it is used as punctuation, exclamation, noun, adjective, adverb, verb, repeated ad infinium when they feel it necessary, which is all the fucking time. Aside from that they are dumb as bricks and only rarely show a savant-like ability to string a sentence together.

Notable Members: There seem to be three gradients of Nakkadile. There are the common, prole CIVILIAN nakkadile who exhibits only a dull mob intellect. There are the elevated 'MAFIA' members of their race who band around smarter outsiders, whom they call 'boss' or 'don' and seem to literally draw intelligence through osmosis and proximity. These mafia types seem to be able to pick up and learn skills as they are instructed, and are capable of independent action or being elevated to the next tier through work. The next tier is VETERAN nakkadiles, which are a cut above, having been instructed in certain tasks to a passable level and are not completely inept. The core of any mafia is constructed of these almost-competent members of society. Beyond that are HERO nakkadiles, who are surprisingly capable for absolutely moronic stub-armed thugs. These are able of leading other, lesser nakkadiles and seem to be able to use independent thought and some sort of rough ingenuity to accomplish complex tasks. The basic HERO nakkadile is found as the head Lieutenant of every Mafia - the nakkadile which keeps the individual gang together when the bosses and dons have better things to do then listen to or train these chucklefucks.

Skills: Depending on tier, the humble morondile can have between negative infinite skills and be absolutely fucking backwards horrible at everything, or be fairly competent at most things, though distinctly less then anything with a functioning brain. Their only redeeming 'trait' is that they seem racially proficient with weapons and also incredibly, stupidly resilient.


[A502] The World of Darkness


(Ha ha I made a reference to a game that no longer exists because meteors)

Preface: Many of the things discussed here may only apply or be based on observations of the things inside the actual only city on the planet anyone's been to. Since it doesn't even have a name, it'll be referred to as 'The City', because I am feeling unoriginal today.

World Effects: From what I can understand, the world is basically a shitty noir film played all postmodernistically. Everything is rendered in greyscales and monochromes, tending toward darker tones, like a black and white movie. Nakkadiles tend to try and wear colors to show their affiliations, but this seems pretty stupid in a greyscale world. The Grit part of the world is reflected in this - the world never sees daytime, even though that big brightass blue cloudy sphere in the center burns away cheerily. The weather is also dramatically sympathetic - it tends to rain when it'd be dramatic for it to rain, and it tends to have lightning crack and thunder boom when it'd be good for those, as well.

Lamps: If half of the name of this giant chucklefuck of a planet was any indication, lamps of various sizes and shapes are a huge metaphysical element of progression and, if every book ever is some indication, should be used to defeat Sol'Zar the Endarkener or some nonsense. What lamps do is kind of up for interpretation, but the effect is simple - light is color, in LOGAL. Little strings of Christmas lights all the way up to gritty film noir streetlamps to ever-bigger lights power or shine on many things in LOGAL. Within the bounds of the light that a streetlamp (or some other directional light) shines down, the things within this golden halo are colored fully. More diffused light seems to not have the same effect as a lamp or flashlight or streetlight. A curious exception to the color is eye color - no matter the lighting, eyes always seem to be fully colored.

Territory: This fucking world loves organization and territory and organizations and shit. Fuck if I know. I don't do any. Ask DL, or PB, or BA, or US, or something. Or my brother, he seemed to have a handle on things. Speaking of my brother...

My Brother: Is a giant insensitve asshole. Apparently knows everything. Managed to navigate the Black Smog to get fucking grocieries. Disappeared. What a fucking piece of shit. Probably off on some stupid adventure to get a fresh carton of milk or some retarded reason.

Black Smog: An impenetrable barrier of smoggy choking miasma that covered my planet until a few weeks ago. Is conspicuously gone. Probably has some trollish connection to the Void.

The Void: FUCK THIS NONSENSE. If you get any information? Please, by all means, tell me. I'm only apparently the goddamn witch of it. So, yeah, it'd be great if you could fill me. Open offer. Seriously. It got old months ago.



[A503] Afterword


Ask people that know shit about my planet about it. They're the ones that do shit on it.



[B000] Reports and Reassurance


I need to take a break here and explain some things. Things about the Lands, and things about what I've been doing. I've not been being a good little hero adventurer like the game wants me to be. I've been sitting around in my house IMing aliens and a friend of mine, thinking that grinding low-level Underlings and sleeping is the way to go here, letting all the outside forces handle most of our problems because we can't.

It's gonna stop now, though. Because I've got some of those outside forces training me. Some space-wizard from great beyonds, a queen of hell, a half-angel, shit I never thought existed and that I'm pretty sure continues to be impossible. I'm not so weak I need to grind the damned imps. I'm not so stupid I don't understand the gates anymore. And I'm not so far gone in my own stupid confidence complex that I can't see where we went wrong. And it's pretty simple. We made the difficulty here. The game wasn't ever really going to be this hard, but we skewed it off-rails with poor prototyping choices and now we need to depend on outside forces just to keep us alive.

There's not really any shame in it, really. They're cool people. The aliens are alright, if you get to know them a bit better. The other guys who don't know about Sburb are nice too, training us and teaching us and giving us the gifts we need to survive, and they're pretty badass. Unfortunately, I don't think we're going to win this way, not by sitting around and letting someone else fight our battles and doing nothing to change our Lands. So that's why I did what I did.

I explored the Land of Spires and Frogs, and the Medium, looking out into the Furthest Ring and looking deep into the dark underground of the Spires, and eventually I found what I needed to get to my Second Gate. I visited the temple, fought everything there, swept the floor with monsters that would have killed me before. It's weird, you know, to look at how far you come in a game like this, so quickly. It's only a few months ago that a pair of imps nearly killed me, and here I am, writing this just after grinding liches into grist paste. After all that fighting, I found that Gate. No matter what I've done so far, I've never been able to make one of my own, only shitty half-gates that don't go anywhere. These are a valuable, unique thing for transport throughout the space here.

I stole it. I'm not even sure why anymore.

It was harder than it sounds. I think it even tried to fight me. But it was my gate, a gate that absolutely and unquestionably belonged to me. I fought my way there and I took it, and I wasn't going to leave without it. So now it's mine. I own it all the way now, and that's what I'll be using. I'm going to need it for what I'll be doing.

Because I was serious about what I said. I wasn't doing enough. This game destroyed my world, and was sitting around my house making witty comments. It's not for lack of power or knowledge. I've dueled golem swordsmen. I've beaten a dozen monsters with absurd health to death with an eldritch broom. I've slain a fucking dragon. Maybe the game's difficulty is a bit beyond me, but who's to say that can't be changed?

So from here on out, it's changing. This game destroyed my world so I'm not holding back on this universe. I'll fly around on my holy broom, I'll comb the space between worlds and the rocks of an armed Veil for their secrets, I'll plunder these libraries, tombs, and dungeons for everything they have, I'll rip the planet apart if I have to when I'm figuring out what's going on. Nobody can tell me it's impossible to match this game blow-for-blow. With my Gate I'm going to find everything I need to know this space inside and out, and then I'm fixing everything. My friends and I won't just be saved, we'll save ourselves. Nobody can tell me we can't anymore, I've seen what this echeladder can do in the aliens, and I've seen what sort of powers are within reach of people.

If you're reading this, and you're not part of this session? I wish you the best of luck, and hope you didn't make the mistakes we did. If you did, just keep in mind, you don't need to worry. Do everything you can, because it's not impossible, and this game has to have some way to win. You have all the tools you need in your alchemy, and everything you could need to know in your lands. All you need to do is let go and take what's yours. This game broke our planet.

The least we can do is take a little back in compensation.



[B100] Updates and Understandings


We're taking what we lost back from the game.

I said we would, and now we are. We lost order and friends and our whole lives before. But we're taking it back. We've carved out everything we need to. I don't give a damn what this game thinks it can do to me or my friends. It can take my civilization and my species and my whole god damn planet but I won't let it take my life, and we've built what we need out of what we have and what we've been given by our new friends. We're not starving refugees, we're not slaves to constant sidequests, and god damn it we are happy sometimes and making new friends, building a new family. This game can't take from us forever. We've taken back now. And we've earned every ounce of that, even if it's unfair.

It's been a full year now. A year since my home was ripped out of the ground, a year since my planet was battered into uninhabitability by god damned space rocks, a year since I could barely survive getting my ass kicked by an imp. It's sure been a hell of a year. I don't know how many people from Earth-412 are still out there. I don't know how long you've been playing Sburb if, by chance, you're playing it on some other planet, some other world that's far from Earth. If you've made it this far? Congratulations. There's one thing I've found out about this game over time: You'll always have the opportunity to pull through whatever it throws at you, and that opportunity will always be paved with the worst misery you've ever felt. If you're not dead so far, good job.

We can take back what was taken, and we've already taken much back. I have a life now. It's fragile, it's tense, and it's full of me getting beaten up regularly. But it's a life. I have a life again. I have a job, I have friends, I have food and shelter entertainment. I earned every ounce of a life, and took it all back, despite losing everything. I'm proud of that now.

And that's why it hurts so much for me to finally figure out what I figured.

My entire life, I've never properly had a dream. I've had something weird and vaguely resembling what I understand, based on myriad secondhand descriptions, to be a dream. But not a true dream. Nothing ever real. That always bothered me, you know? I was always just too embarrassed to wonder really thoroughly about why this basic element of my life was missing.

Three weeks ago, I found out why that is.

From birth, I've been tied to this game. We all have. We never had any choice in the matter; it was fate that we would all, one day, take those fateful disks to our computers. It was fate that we would run the terrible reality engine within them. It was fate that our planet would be bombed to dust, that we would be forced to fight for our lives. And if we die in this game, it will be because fate dictated that we should die as such. I found out that sleep was just another extension of this damnable game. It pervaded my entire life, from birth until now. Sleep was just another part of it. Another chance for me to fail at some critical element of the game. One of my friends even managed to achieve success in this, but me? I failed every night.

Every night the game tried to Awaken me, and I stayed asleep. It was never a question of if I would play or not, only when, because otherwise, what's the point of this strange sleep-self I have now? And why would he hear the screaming song of the sky when I am him? When I sleep, when I become that person, I am privy to the voices of the Furthest Ring, the death-screams of a billion dying creatures beyond my comprehension. I still don't understand much of what they said to me. I have to think it over constantly simply to grasp the barest concepts, and it hurts to do even that.

But I've come to understand something when I've tried. I've come to understand the medium of our existence, the methods of our manifestation, the nuanced fabric of the canvas on which we are painted, so to speak. I know only the barest concepts. But in all their screaming of death and destruction, the gods in the Furthest Ring taught me about Space, and what it means. I can't ever describe what I was taught. But I know how to use it now. I know what it means to be a Mage. For as long as that will last, anyway. Because I've also come to understand what our fate is, what was inevitable all along, and what, despite all my best efforts, continues to be inevitable. There's so much death in our futures. Death on a scale I can hardly begin to imagine. Violence and war, the sort I've never even heard stories about. And it seems obvious in retrospect. It's something I thought was an inevitable truth a year ago. I'm not sure when I became a skeptic. But it's precisely what the gods told me.

I will die before Sburb ends.

Thankfully, they also let me know what's more important than surviving.

I'll get you guys updated with the details on that when I've figure them out.



[C000] Auxiliary Gameplay and the Endgame


Major portions of the game are not immediately accessible. Skaia, Prospit, Derse, the Veil. In fact, even certain parts of your own existence won't be accessible. The Dreamselves, among others. But it's good to keep them in mind, understand the options, and be prepared for when they become relevant. In mant cases, they will intersect with otherwise standard sidequests, meaning you must be prepared to deal with the issue. No more severely does this occur than near what I can only assume is the end of this game.

Sburb undergoes a massive spike in difficulty, occurring just before the encounter with your Denizen, and lasting, presumably, until the end of the game.

It is likely that you will suffer casualties. Do not make the same mistake I did. Protect your friends. Stay in a group. Have a stock of healing items. Be aware of your emergency revival options. Be alert, be cautious, and above all else, manage your time. You don't have a lot. Push forward, as quickly as you can and as safely as you can.

The following information might just save your life.



[C100] Metamechanics


If you're playing Sburb right now, you've been playing Sburb all your life, whether you wanted to or not. That is, if you're a native player, rather than an outsider. For us native players, you've had your Dreamself since the day you were born, your Class and Aspect were decided before you could even think, and nothing will have ever given you the chance to see this influence over your life until now.

Try to figure out what here applies to you, before you make a terrible decision.



[C110] Dreamself


If you're a player of Sburb, what you understand to be you is not. It's something like a forked soul. You're one part of a two-part system. The other part is who you are when you're asleep. The Dreamself is something like your subconscious, your idealized self, and your dream-logic-following proxy soul all in one. The details are difficult to convey. They're also prone to melodramatic delivery. To resolve both problems, I'll favor brevity here.

Your Dreamself can be aligned with Prospit or Derse. I don't know what decides this. It'll reside on a tower of the moon of its aligned kingdom.

Both types have access to a manner of prescience. Prospit Dreamers can view the clouds of Skaia for visions of the future. Derse Dreamers can listen to the whispers of the Noble Horrorterrors for guidance. I 100% recommend not doing either.

In the event that you die, you can condense both sides of your soul into the Dreamself and survive the death as long as someone kisses you while either mortally wounded or dead. It's gross, but get over it.

If you find a giant stone slab with your Aspect symbol on it, die on that if you're gonna die. That's a Quest Bed. It'll help you ascend to godhood if you die on it. Maybe. Don't count on it, I don't know what the risks are. I'm fairly sure you have to be fairly high on the echeladder for this to even work. If it doesn't work, have someone do the backup kissing anyway I guess.



[C120] Class


This is exactly what it sounds like. Rogue. Knight. Seer. Mage. RPG shit like that. I don't know what determines it. It's how you manifest your Aspect. I'll write some more examples and what they might mean here later.

MAGE: One who creates through their aspect. Are you a Mage? Well, asshole, better rev up that thinker, you're apparently going to have to spend a long time constructing elaborate systems that utilize your aspect. I'm Mage of Space, and this means I can use Gates to connect places, among other things. You'll also get a degree of general control over it. None of this will come with physical performance enhancement, so watch your health. Pretty solid DPS at range or melee, not so great defense.

ROGUE: One who steals their aspect for the benefit of others. The Rogue we have is focused on buffing and healing their allies with a stock of their aspect stolen from their enemies through debuffs. Grind-heavy class, she's been really busy. Extremely potent in cases where an ally is doomed to death, as a Rogue can harvest an entire player's worth of their aspect from that player before then. Solid support class, depending on the aspect.

MAID: Still unsure. Probably support of some sort. Sorry.

WITCH: I don't even know what the fuck



[C130] Aspect


This is the source of your power. It's all very abstract. I don't know what determines this either. Or what each Aspect provides. It's sorta in their name so that's close enough.

I've encountered the aspects of SPACE, TIME, LIFE, VOID, HOPE, HEART, and RAGE. They are pretty much what they sound like, except for Heart, whose power is not sucking as bad as the name sounds like it sucks.



[C200] Locations


Places. I don't have anything dramatic to say about places. Blah blah stage of the drama blah blah.



[C210] Skaia and the Battlefield


Skaia is that big blue ball of clouds you see. Or the tiny one, depending on if you're at your home or not. In order to get into it reliably before you really sort of learn the ins and outs, you'll need to build your house up as sort of a giant space bridge, and it'll poke right through the surface of Skaia. In the center, there's the Battlefield.


The Battlefield is the endgame levels of Sburb. On it, the main fighting forces of both kingdoms are at war. From what I can tell, it's geologically, geographically, and geometrically complex. You'll know what you're looking at, though. It'll be checkerboarded, like a chessboard.

Fitting. What a shitty metaphor.



[C220] Prospit


Gold utopia planet full of white dudes. Good royalty, good people, very polite and generous and kind and caring and all that. Surprisingly not as wimpy as that sounds. Couple of them are sorta ruthless, but they're going for good end-goals so I guess that's fine. Generally they'll help you out whether you're Prospit Dreamer or Derse Dreamer or an outsider entirely, as long as you're reasonable and articulate when you're asking. They'll do their best.

Sits right next to Skaia. The moon intersects with Skaia every so often. If you're a Prospit Dreamer, take a look outside around then, you'll see bits and pieces of the future. Or, don't take a look outside, because that's fucking stupid.



[C230] Derse


Obsidian dystopia planet full of black dudes. Bad royalty, bad people, very mean and corrupt and vicious and all that. Surprisingly not as Cartoon Villain as that sounds. A lot of them are fairly easy to turn on your side. A co-player of mine has been going around recruiting them. So don't think your only option is to kill them.

Sits right next to the Veil. The moon goes way past Skaia's influence every so often. If you're a Derse Dreamer, take a look outside around then, you'll hear the whisperings of Noble Horrorterrors. Or you could decide to not hate yourself irrationally.



[C240] The Veil


Band of meteors around the edge of the game's space. It's full of labs and manufacturing plants and such. Seems to be a mutual neutral zone for both kingdoms, but they're both making weapons and doing other research here, so keep an eye out. Explore all you like, but don't make a mess.

I don't know what these are for. I haven't really cared about it.



[C300] Dramatis Personae


From what I can tell, certain figures are consistent between all Sburb sessions. So they're sorta like local NPCs. They're all "instanced", so to speak, so they all have the same sort of seed but their minds and memories diverge. Also, most of the ones with names are hideously dangerous in general. Just keep that in mind.



[C310] Royalty


Black Queen, White Queen, Black King, White King. It's exactly what it sounds like, chess metaphors continuing to work. You'll find the Queens doing all sorts of things. White Queen does a lot of positive helpful exposition, Black Queen does a lot of hateful tripping you up on your questing. Both of them seem to be pretty secure in their safety and fairly powerful. I'm fairly sure that if you have a chance to take out the Black Queen, you need to take it immediately. However, killing her isn't necessary to win, just like it's not necessary in chess.

UPDATE: We took down the Black Queen. It was intense. Do NOT engage her on turf that you consider valuable, as her AOE attacks will literally tear up the planet around you. I advise having the White Queen there to help you out, if you can manage it. She is seriously bad news. Nearly impossible to get her to surrender, if you're not insane just stick with killing her.

Black King and White King are on the Battlefield. I haven't seen them, and that's probably good. Probably endbosses?



[C320] Agents


Both kingdoms field Agents. Derse fields some wily jerks who'll sabotage you, taunt you, or otherwise hinder you through your quest. They'll generally be tough sorts, so don't count on taking them down, but you might be able to talk them into a deal. Unlike Underlings, these guys are sapient, and kinda clever. So, on the one hand, they'll lay traps for you. On the other, you can negotiate with them, a bit.

Prospit also fields its own Agents, but they'll rarely have anything to do with you. If you do find one of them, though, recruiting is fairly easy, and they're a good source of information.



[C330] Denizens


They're the endbosses of your planet. They can be negotiated with, but it's tough. And the dungeons leading up to them are lethal in their own right. You go through this by visiting the seventh Gate above your house. DO NOT DO THIS IF YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING, if you sequence break here you could DIE.

I don't have enough details to elaborate on these guys, so I'll leave that for later. Suffice to say: Big, tough, powerful, endboss. Some negotiation possibilities. They own the Hoards, which you need to do something called the Ultimate Alchemy, whatever that is. Also needed to let you make your house as tall as it needs to be.

Your encounter with one will be immediately preceded by a difficulty spike, but the game will inform you of that ahead of time.



[B200] Realizations and Requests


I was told of a difficulty spike.

I was not told of anything like this. We have suffered three casualties. Three children are dead. Two are my best friends, killed one after the other in two days. They didn't disappear into fanciful bursts of fun-looking jewels and gems, they didn't pop into a bunch of lights and polygons, they're dead. And yet, both have survived, in a way. One as a god, who I can't understand anymore. One changed in some other way, one I have yet to understand. The third is as dead as dead can be.

Is this what a 1-up is like? An extra man, quite literally? They're still my best friends, but they're different people. They've got the same face but I can tell something's been lost. The Dreamselves used to act so different, and their real-selves are so altered as well. I can't stand to watch these deaths. I can't stand watching life try to take two souls and approximate them down to one body. I can't stand to think that, someday, because fate says so, I'll die too. I hate it. I know it has to happen, I know it'll hit one day and there's nothing I can do about it, and I hate it.

I could accept it before, back when I thought I could have some kind of loophole, some kind of escape route, like I could wiggle out of fate by pretending to die and then just backing it up with a Dreamself. Like that would solve everything. Like that's any way to live. But it's not. You stop being who you are. Your friends don't grieve, your goal don't go unfulfilled, but who you are, as a person, just stops, and someone else with half your personality, all your memories, and a different look goes swaggering on out, wearing your face.

I don't hate them. My dead friends. CS is so much less hateful now, and she seems on the path to feeling happy for the first time since this game started. CW is honest, straightforward, she doesn't do these terrible acts of deception anymore, and what she does is a direct manifestation of caring for us. But I'm scared of it. Losing parts of me, or having something else walk away with my face.

The worst thing about it is that I can only feel this fear right now, when I'm my Dreamself.

We have so much left to do, and yet we're so close to dying every moment. I can't bear it. And it's only going to get worse. More of us will die, more pointless children corpses on these disgusting balls of quests and riddles floating around in space. That much I know beyond a doubt. That much I can't ever stop. But maybe I don't have to stop. Maybe fate could be fought, or at the very least, maybe we could do our best to punish fate for forcing my best friends into this.

I'm sending this walkthrough file to everyone on my contacts list. Everyone who's exhibited even the bare minimum of competence. I'm sending it to the mailing lists of Heaven or Hell, and the players in the Gatecrasher's Union, any connections I can get, any options I have. Delete it if you like. I won't begrudge you. It's wordy, it's spam, and it's far more than anyone like you should ever have to deal with. And, really, it's all my fault I got in this, so you'd be more than excused for leaving me to this. But it's the last hope I've got.

Please. Please help.



[B300] Arthur: Egress


Today, the forces of Prospit will mass, and charge the Black King. We've prepared as much as we can. We've done everything within our power to ensure we have the opportunities we need. And it might not be enough. I don't know what will happen. He might surrender. We might kill him easily. We might face down a marathon boss and pull through. We might spend the next months trying, repeatedly, to end him, in multiple attempts.

Or we might fail and die. The same way we already did, five times.

So now we're going to make our last rush, and survive or not, we'll end this game. Whether or not it was the last one, we're going to be finishing off this chapter in our lives. It's through. Starting today, we're ending this. And that's really all I have left to say now. No more tirades or explanations or useless rants. No more melodrama. I used to be absurdly, horribly afraid of the dying part. Once it happens the first time, you start to understand that's not the worst of it. Even if I die tonight, I'll be finishing this game. It'll be complete. Everything will be over, at last.

I've gotten so tired of this game. It's exhausting. 20 hour grind sessions. Friends at deadly risk on a daily basis. Assassins and monsters. I'm just so, so tired. Even if I die, I'll finally just be done with it. And maybe I won't die. I've finally found my Dad, he's here to back me up. I've got my friends, and some are even gods. I've got the outsider help, bringing in all these weird and rules-breaking powers. I've got a lot of hope. Really, honestly, a lot. But I've also got a lot of exhaustion. More than anything, I want this to just finally reach its end. I'm a sixteen year old kid. I'm not supposed to be fighting a war. It's draining and painful. But, from what I can tell, today is the beginning of the end.

This is my final entry. In a minute, I'll use a spell I've prepared to rip this walkthrough of mine, flaws and all, out of the old, decaying internet of Earth-413, and place it in a server in the Furthest Ring, where the Noble Horrorterrors can distribute its signal as they wish. Gods willing, it'll reach some past or future species in need of guidance, however mediocre my help might be. If Skaia or its gods have shown you the way to what I've written, I can only assume you're either in really desperate need of help or the gods are actively trying to midguide you. I sympathize in both cases. Good luck, players. I can only hope you do better than we did, or at least that you have a lower fatality rate. Now I'm going to sleep. And then, after that, I'm going to battle.

In case it wasn't clear, shit just got real.

To any other survivors: Pardon my departure. You're on your own now.

	-Arthur Lowell