Wiki › The Delvers

The Delvers

Bram, the old miner at the well in Aldhearth's crafters' quarter (west of the plaza), keeps the Book of Delvers: who went deepest, of all time and of the week, and who was the first of all to get anywhere. Talk to him to read it, or open the Journal (J) and its Delvers tab. The deepest five are on the title screen too.

He keeps a cabinet too, of the finds delvers bring up out of the rock: three for every part of the way down, and an egg for every full shelf. See Digging deeper.

How deep you are

Your depth is the number on your screen: The Marrow Caves · 12,340 down is 12,340 rows below the surface of the column you stand in, counted from your feet. That is the number the Book keeps.

• A depth counts once you stand there: on your feet on the ground, on a ladder, or in water. Not while you fall, not while you are dead, not inside the rock.
• It does not count on a rift's floor, in a dungeon, in a town, or up in the Skyreach.
• Your best is the deepest you have stood. Bram writes it down with the day you got there.
• Your best is what Vesna, the curio-keeper of the Delvers' Lodge, asks about before she sells you one of her relics: each goes only to someone who has been as deep as its band. See Weapons of the Deep.

Your own trail

Only depth you reached by your own way down counts: walking, falling, swimming, climbing, digging or riding a mount. That is your trail.

• Any kind of teleport that sets you down more than 64 rows below your best takes you off your trail: a waystone, a delve gate, your stake, travel to your group, a lift stone, the road Home, a recall scroll, a rift's floor, waking in your bed, an admin's move. You are told once, plainly, and a chip in your buff row says Off your trail while it lasts.
• Off your trail, nothing counts: not where you were set down, not anything deeper.
• You are back on it the moment you stand within 64 rows of your best again: climb back up, go to town, or come down another way. Then every row below your best counts again.
• A teleport that sets you down within 64 rows of your best keeps you on your trail. So the gates and your stake bring you back to where you stopped, and you go on from there.
• An elevator ride is the one move with no 64 rows of grace: one that sets you down any deeper than your best takes you off your trail, and you are back on it only once you stand at your best depth or higher (see Tools and elevators).

So a friend's group travel or lift cannot carry you up the Book. "Who dug the deepest" means who got there.

Admin accounts are never in the Book.

The Book

• All time: the deepest fifty. A tie goes to whoever got there first.
• This week: the rows each delver went deeper than their own best this week, the top twenty. The week turns with the rift ladder's season, on Monday at 00:00 UTC. Its three deepest are told to everyone, and each gets a Delver's laurel from Bram by letter: a trophy to set in a home (on a trophy mount, or standing on its own). A character made this week is not on the week's ladder (its first week would count all of its depth as gained); it is on the all-time one from its first stand, and on the week's from the next Monday.
• The first of all, told to everyone and kept forever:
  • the first to reach each band, from the Bone Gardens to the Last Dark;
  • the first to stand 100,000 rows down, then 200,000, and every hundred thousand to a million;
  • the first to stand on the floor of the world;
  • the first to slay a great one of each band;
  • and one more first, at the floor of the world, which this wiki leaves for you to find.
• Under every band someone has reached, Bram writes what he knows of it.

The deepest ten and the week's five are also at /delvers.json (names and depths, for anyone who wants to show them).

Titles on the way down

Show one with your name from the Achievements window (Y).

Reaching a band on your trail gives the titles of the bands above it too: you came through them.

Delve gates

A delve gate is a stone older than the Flame, in a small chamber with a carved floor. Nothing in the chamber can be dug, built or burnt, and no Grown is born in it.

• Where: one in every region, halfway between two towns (210 paces from each), at 2,560, 5,120 and 7,680 rows below the old floor of the world in the Upper Deep, and just below every band's seal: 12 rows into the Bone Gardens, the Drowned Halls and every band under them. A gate shows on your minimap once you are within about a hundred paces of it, seen or not.
• Attune one by standing by it: it knows you from then on, and you are told.
• Travel: press F at a gate for its menu, or open the map (M) and its Deep list. From either you can go to every gate that knows you, to the towns, and to your stake. The waystone rules hold: nothing may have hurt you for 10 seconds, you stand still for 3 seconds, no trade pack, no red name, and not from a rift's floor, a dungeon or any place the waystones cannot reach.
• The waystone fee: to set you down at a gate or at your stake the waystones ask gold, by the depth they set you down at: about what twenty-five common Grown of that depth drop (530 gold at the gate at 2,560 rows, about 1,700 at the top of the Bone Gardens, about 6,000 at the top of the Last Dark). The menus show the fee beside every gate and your stake, and it is taken when you arrive (nothing if the travel is stopped). Travel up to a town, to a waystone or to your group costs nothing.
• Arrival: you are set down on the gate's floor. If that spot is taken (two free tiles over a solid one, and no lava, oil, acid, toxic sludge or toxic gas), you are set down on the nearest good spot within 6 tiles that you could walk to from it: never through any of those, never in a pocket sealed off in the rock, and never inside a landmark other than the gate's own chamber. If there is none, the travel is refused and you stay where you are.

The gates are what lets a long descent go on after a logout or a death: attune each one as you pass it.

The Delver's stake

Your own way back down, one to a character.

• Buy one from Bram (500 gold), or make one at a workbench: two embersteel bars round a voidglass shard, on a handle of two sticks.
• Plant it where you stand (use it from your bag or your hand): in the Deep's stone below the old floor, on ground you may build on, not in a town's ground, not in a landmark, not in lava, oil, acid, toxic sludge or toxic gas, with your feet on the ground. It is used up.
• Planting another moves it: the old one is gone.
• Only you can see it. It changes no tile, so nobody can break it or follow it: your page draws it for you, and marks it on your minimap.
• Travel to it from any gate or from the map, by the same rules and the same arrival check as a gate.
• Its depth is your own trail if you stood there on it: travelling back to it keeps you on your trail. A stake planted where you were carried, more than 64 rows below your best, takes you off your trail when you travel to it.

The road Home and red names

The road Home (to a lit Home that lets you in, from the map) will not carry a murderer, as waystones, lift stones and group travel will not: it is refused while your name is red, and called off if your name turns red while you wait.

See also The Deep, The bands below and Might and temper.