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Living matter
The bands below are not only rock. Oil stands in the makers' floors, acid eats through the geodes, toxic sludge lies at the bottom of the flooded rooms, and three airs rise through it all: steam, smoke and toxic gas. They all meet each other, and they meet you. A wet body will not burn, an oiled one burns twice as long, a spark runs through water and everyone standing in it, and a powder keg sets off the keg beside it. Carry any of it in a glass flask, pour it where you want it, or throw it.
What meets what
| This | Meets | And |
|---|---|---|
| Water | Lava | The lava cools to basalt, and steam rises from it |
| Oil | Water | Oil is lighter: it rises through still water and floats on it |
| Oil | Fire or lava | The oil catches at once and the fire runs along it; burnt oil leaves smoke |
| Oil | A torch or a burning brazier | The oil catches: anything hot sets it alight |
| Acid | A block | Standing acid eats a block beside it (the one under it first), and is used up doing it |
| Acid | Water | The acid thins into water |
| Acid | Lava | The acid boils away into toxic gas |
| Sludge | Water | Sludge is heavier: it sinks through still water to the floor |
| Sludge | Fire or lava | It burns slowly, and burnt sludge leaves toxic gas |
| Toxic gas | Fire, lava or a spark | The gas flashes into flame, all of it that touches |
| Steam | Fire | Steam puts the fire out |
| Steam | A ceiling | Steam spreads under it, and may fall again as a drop of water |
| A spark | Water, acid, sludge or metal | It runs through them all, and shocks whatever stands in them |
| A spark | Oil, toxic gas or a keg | It sets them off |
| Fire | An oil barrel | The barrel bursts into burning oil |
| Fire or a blast | A powder keg | The keg explodes; the kegs beside it go too, one after another |
Everything here keeps the rules fire and fluids already keep (see Fire and fluids): nothing flows, burns, eats or drifts into a town, onto ground someone's Home holds from outside it, into a dungeon, onto the land a town grows back around it, or into a place kept as it was. And all of it happens only where someone is near enough to see it: land nobody is near sleeps, and wakes as it was.
Oil, acid and sludge
They flow as water and lava do: they fall, then spread sideways from where they land, and what flows is fed by what it came from (cut the feed and the flow dries up behind it; a pool or what you pour from a flask never dries up). A flow is still a flow after the server restarts.
- Oil runs up to 4 tiles each way (water runs 5), a little slower than water. It floats: poured into a cistern it climbs through the water and lies on top. It burns fast and easily, and once it has caught the fire runs along it faster than you can walk, leaving black smoke behind.
- Acid runs up to 4 tiles. Standing acid eats one block beside it (under it first), a block a moment, and is used up doing it: one tile of acid, one block, never more. It eats stone, dirt, sand, wood and planks, and the ores and rock a mythril pickaxe could break. It never eats glass (which is why you carry it in glass), basalt, iron gates, chests, stations, doors, beds, holders, emberwork parts, bedrock, the Deep's hardest rock (abyss rock, the bands' own stone, embersteel, starsilver and voidglass ore), or anything in a town, on held ground, on the land a town grows back, in a dungeon or in a kept place. Standing in acid burns: 4% of your life a second (acid someone else poured: see Who it belongs to, below).
- Toxic sludge is thick: it runs only 2 tiles, slowly. It sinks through water to the floor. Wading in it poisons you. It burns, slowly, and its smoke is toxic gas.
- You swim in all three as in water, and a block goes into them as into water.
Steam, smoke and toxic gas
Every air rises, a tile at a time, spreads sideways under a ceiling, and fades.
- Steam (from water meeting lava) fades in 4 to 6 seconds. It wets you and scalds (2% of your life a second), and it puts out any fire it touches. Under a ceiling a little of it may fall again as a drop of water.
- Smoke (from burnt oil) fades in 5 to 8 seconds. It does nothing but take the light: light crossing it fades fast, so a smoky cave is a dark one.
- Toxic gas (from burnt sludge, or acid boiled on lava) fades in 8 to 12 seconds and rises slowly. Breathing it poisons you. Any fire, lava or spark that touches it makes it flash: all of the gas that touches burns at once, for a moment.
- In the Last Dark there are pockets of toxic gas closed in the rock. A pocket stays where it is until you break into it; then it comes out.
- The Grown of venom breathe toxic gas without harm.
Wet, oiled, burning, poisoned, shocked
These are the same for you and for the Grown. Yours show as chips under your life bar, with the seconds they have left; on others you see them: drips, flames, green bubbles, sparks.
| Status | You get it from | Lasts | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wet | Water, steam, rain under the open sky, a flask of water | 10 s after you leave the water | You cannot catch fire, and fire on you goes out. A spark hurts you twice as much |
| Oiled | Oil, a flask of oil | 30 s | Anything hot sets you alight, and you burn twice as long (8 seconds, not 4). Swim to wash it off |
| Burning | Fire, lava, a flask of lava, a burning body beside you while you are oiled | 4 s (8 if you were oiled) | You lose 2.5% of your life a second (a Grown 3%). Water, steam or rain puts it out |
| Poisoned | Sludge, toxic gas, a flask of sludge | 6 s after | You lose 1.5% of your life a second (a Grown 2%) |
| Shocked | A spark through what you stand in, lightning | a moment | 6% of your life at once (a Grown 8%), twice that if you are wet. A shocked Grown is slowed a moment |
- Burning spreads. A burning body sets alight any oiled body it touches, what burns under its feet (planks, wood, oil), and an oil barrel or a keg beside it.
- Great ones (bosses) take a fifth of all of this.
- The Grown of fire never burn, the Grown of venom are never poisoned, the Grown of storms are never shocked.
- On a town's ground it all stops: burning, poison and shocks end there.
- As strong as your hand. What you give takes what your own blow would, never more: an acid splash about one of your blows at once, burning, poison or a shock about a quarter of a blow (a second, for burning and poison), the Grown's armour taken off it as off a blow. The shares of life above are the land's own: its fire, lava, acid, sludge and gas, and machines, take them, and what you give never takes more than they would.
- Who it belongs to. What you give with your own hand is yours: a flask you throw, a fire you light on a Grown, a burning Grown of yours setting another alight. A Grown that dies of it is your kill, by the usual rules. What you pour is yours too, for ten minutes, as poured lava is, and so is all that comes of it: the flow it runs into, the fire it catches (oil a torch of yours lights burns as yours), the smoke and toxic gas it leaves. To another player all of it is your blow, by the same rules as your sword: with PvP off it does them no harm, and with it on it marks you as a blow would (a flask of water may always be thrown at anyone: put your friend out). What a Grown catches from the land itself (a fire, lava, sludge, a cloud of gas) is the world's, whoever lit or poured it: a Grown that dies of it pays nobody, and what you poured takes from it no more than your own hand would.
- Not from a sanctuary. Nobody throws or pours a flask from inside one, and nothing you gave harms anything while you stand in one.
- Machines wound, people slay. Sparks from an arc stone and the blast of a powder keg, and the fire they light, never take a Grown below a tenth of its life, and hurt players only by the rules of machines: on open ground never another account's player (see Emberwork machines).
Glass flasks
Made at a Workbench: 3 glass make 2 glass flasks. A flask holds one tile of water, lava, oil, acid or sludge.
- Fill: hold an empty flask and right click water, lava, oil, acid or sludge that stands still (a pool, or the spot a pour came from) within reach. That tile is gone and your flask is full: it takes the empty one's place on your hotbar (or the next free place, if you still hold empties). What is running from somewhere fills nothing: a flask (and a bucket) fills only where it stands still.
- Pour: with a full flask, right click a spot within reach: its tile is there, as a bucket pours (the bucket's rules: not in towns or dungeons, not on someone else's ground, nothing but water on the land a town grows back, no lava, acid or sludge right beside anyone, you included). Water on lava, or lava on water, makes basalt; acid poured into water thins into it.
- Throw: right click farther than your reach, or at a Grown, or hold Shift and right click. While you aim, the arc it will fly is drawn. It flies, and shatters on the first block, fluid or body it meets: its tile spills there (where you could pour it, and never acid or sludge right beside someone) and it splashes everyone within about a tile and a half. Water wets (and puts out the fires it reaches), oil oils, sludge poisons, lava sets alight, and acid burns (about one blow of yours at once, never more than 8% of a player's life or 10% of a Grown's) and eats the block it lands on, where you could dig. Up to three of yours fly at once.
- On a phone ACTION says SCOOP with an empty flask (the fluid in front of you) and THROW with a full one (at the nearest Grown, or ahead of you). A tap on the world pours there, within reach, or throws there.
- Acid only travels in glass. A bucket will not take it: it would eat through the iron. (A bucket is for water and lava; oil and sludge go in a flask too.) A bucket of water poured on acid thins it.
- Flask of oil: at a Cauldron, a glass flask and 3 wheat seeds (seed oil, pressed and boiled).
- Flask of acid: at a Cauldron, a glass flask, 2 copper ore and 2 of any monster essence (green vitriol).
- Water, lava and sludge you scoop where you find them.
- A full flask sells for what its glass is worth: the fluid in it sells for nothing.
Oil barrels and powder kegs
| Thing | Made at | From | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oil barrel | Workbench | 6 planks, an iron bar, 3 flasks of oil | Fire touching it, a burning body beside it, a fire shot, a spark or a blast bursts it into 5 tiles of burning oil |
| Powder keg | Workbench | 4 planks, an iron bar, 4 blast powder and 20 gold | Fire reaching it lights its fuse (about a second); a blast, a shot or a spark sets it off at once |
- A keg breaks what a blast charge breaks: within 2½ tiles, everything the one who set it off could dig there with their best pickaxe. Nobody set it off (a fire the world lit)? Then it breaks for the one who put it down; found in the Deep, for nobody, and it breaks nothing. A third of what it breaks drops for them; the rest is lost.
- It wounds the Grown within 3 tiles (40% of their life, never below a tenth) and throws them back; players within 3 tiles lose 40% of theirs, by the rules of machines.
- Kegs set each other off. A keg sets off every keg, barrel, blast charge, oil and toxic gas it reaches, one blast after another, half a second apart: count them as you run. Someone else's kegs, and every blast charge, keep their own count beside yours (at most four kegs a second in the whole world).
- On held ground, only the ground's own people (whoever may build there) can set off a keg or a barrel there, or the world (a Grown's shot, a fire nobody lit): an outsider's shot, spark or blast does nothing to it.
- Rams never shove a barrel or a keg.
The arc stone
An emberwork part, made at an Anvil from 3 ember dust, 3 copper bars and a crystal.
- Warm, it sends a spark into the water, acid, sludge and metal it touches, every half second (right click it to make that every second, or every two seconds).
- The spark runs through all of it that touches, as far as the stone's warmth drives it: 8 tiles and 4 more for every step of warmth (at most 68). Oil does not carry it.
- Everything standing in it is shocked, and it sets off the oil, toxic gas, kegs and barrels beside its path.
- Metal carries it too: copper, iron, mythril and the Deep's ores (embersteel, brass, tide-iron, dawngold, nightsilver, starsilver), brass panelling, iron gates and Ironbound blocks, anvils, and the iron emberwork (belts, chutes, gleaners, sorters, far-bells) and ballistas.
- It is a machine of whoever put it down: it wounds the Grown, never below a tenth of their life, and hurts players only by the rules of machines. Cold, it does nothing.
Lightning
In a storm, now and then a bolt strikes near someone standing out under the sky. On land it shocks whoever is right there; on open water it sends a spark through the water, and shocks everyone in it. In a storm, stay out of the lake.
Where you find it
- Oil: the makers' oil stands in the floors of the Gearworks (with their oil barrels standing in it), and tar pits lie on the Cinder Plains.
- Sludge: marrow rot in the Marrow Caves, and on the floors of the flooded rooms of the Sunken Courts, under the water.
- Acid in the floors of the geodes of the Geode Choirs, and the grey's sap in the Wane's Root.
- Powder kegs left in the rooms of the Brass Vaults.
- Toxic gas, in pockets closed in the rock, in the Last Dark.
- Every pool is at rest when you find it: it stays put until you open its side.
- The makers' stillrooms, in the Gearworks and the Brass Vaults: a masonry room with a basin of oil in its floor, oil barrels and a powder keg, shelves, a lantern and a chest. On its shelf, a page of the Stillwright's book: eight leaves of what a stillwright of the Under-city learned about oil, vitriol, the sump, the airs, bodies, the spark and the powder. You find the next page you do not have yet.