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Might and temper

Below the Upper Deep the Grown stop getting higher levels: level 300 is as high as they go. They grow in Might instead. And you grow with them: you have a temper for your weapon, one for your body armour and one for your pickaxe, raised tier by tier with the materials of the bands below and gold. They are yours, and work on whatever you hold and wear. Your pick temper is also what digs through each band's rock.

Might

From 10,240 rows below the old floor of the world (the top of the Bone Gardens, the first band under the Deep), every Grown is born with a Might. It is fixed the moment it is born, from the row it was born on, and it never changes after: a Grown that follows you up keeps it, and one that evolves keeps it too.

A Grown's Might multiplies:

• its life,
• the damage it does (and the most one of its hits may take: its hit cap grows with it),
• and what it pays: experience by Might^0.8, gold and essence by Might^0.5.

In the Deep a Grown's level past 150 is its pay, not its strength: from level 150 on, its life and its blow are those of a level-150 Grown, times its Might, and only what it pays still grows with its level. Might is the Deep's slope.

Might rises smoothly with depth, about half again every band, with no wall at a band's top:

Everything born down there has its Might: the Grown of the bands, their swarms, the great ones in the lairs, the Grown that come for a Home in a raid, and the brood a great one calls.

You can see it: a Grown's nameplate says its Might after its level, Lv 300 ×2.3, and so do the target frame and a great one's bar. Big numbers are written short: 31.1k is 31,100, 4.56M is 4,560,000.

The Grown of the bands

• Every band has its own family of Grown, the same under every land, and a swarm kind: small, weak things that come six to twelve at a time. A swarm pays little for each one, and teaches your bestiary like any other kind.
• More of them come the deeper you go, more often in packs and more often elite.
• Every stratum of every region still has its lair. In the bands the great one in it is one of the band's own, with powers of its own and a blow it telegraphs: a red area on the ground fills up, and when it is full the blow lands. Step out of it. Killed, a band's great one leaves extra loot (some of the band's temper material, when the band has one), sometimes a trophy, and the world hears who brought it down.
• A great one of the Deep that calls its brood calls its own kind now, from its own land of the Deep.

Temper

A temper is yours, not your gear's. You have three, one for each place:

• the weapon temper, which works on whatever weapon (or axe) is in your hand,
• the armour temper, which works in whatever body armour you wear,
• the pick temper, which works on whatever pickaxe (or axe) is in your hand.

So a better blade found deep down hits by your weapon temper just as the old one did, and nothing you trade, sell on the Market, send by mail, drop, put in a chest or let a gleaner gather takes a temper with it: an item has no temper of its own. Each tier, up to VII:

A temper works only through something whole: with nothing in your hand (or no body armour on), or with broken gear, that temper does nothing until you hold or wear something whole again. A band's rock still wants an embersteel pickaxe as well (see below): the pick temper makes any pickaxe dig faster, but it does not make a mythril one embersteel.

What it costs: tier t of a temper takes the temper material of band t (tier I the Bone Gardens' own, tier II the Drowned Halls', and so on down; each band's page names it) and gold. Each tier is paid for each place: your weapon temper, your armour temper and your pick temper are raised one at a time, and each costs the whole price below, so taking all three to a tier costs three times as much:

All seven tiers cost 8,290,000 gold for one place, and 24,870,000 for all three. (A band may ask for more or less of its own: the temper window always says what the next tier of each place takes.) A tier is paid for once a place, by the character: it is never paid again for a new weapon, armour or pickaxe.

Tempered gear costs more to mend. The smith works your temper back through what she mends: a weapon (or an axe) is mended at one more time the price for every tier of your weapon temper, and body armour by your armour temper's tier, so with a weapon temper of III a blade costs four times as much to mend. That goes for every weapon and body armour you own, held or not, since the temper is yours. Your pickaxe (it is your way down), helms, boots and everything of a character with no temper mend as they always did. The anvil's repair list shows each price, and the line after a repair says what the temper added.

Where

• Hild at the Master Forge in Aldhearth: ask her to Temper your gear.
• A Deep anvil, on a Home's land. Make one at an anvil from 12 embersteel bars, 8 voidglass shards and 24 deepstone (all from the Upper Deep), and set it down on your own Home's land (it will not stand anywhere else). Right click it (F beside it, or a tap on a phone) to temper there.

A temper is set through what you hold or wear: to raise your weapon temper, hold a weapon (or an axe); your pick temper, a pickaxe (or an axe); your armour temper, wear body armour. The temper window shows your three tempers, what each works on now and what the next tier of each costs. It refuses, and says why, when nothing of that kind is in your hand or on you, when it is broken (repair it first), when you lack the material or the gold, when nobody yet knows the material of the next tier, or at VII.

Your character window shows your three tempers beside your other numbers, and the tooltip of a weapon, body armour or pickaxe says which of yours works on it: Your weapon temper II works on it in your hand: +125% damage.

Between players a temper does not count: a blow from one player to another takes the share of a life it would take untempered, whatever both tempers are. Temper is the ladder against the Grown's Might.

The bands' rock

Each band has its own rock, and the first rows of every band are a seal of it. It gives only to a good enough pickaxe:

Point at a band's rock and it says what it wants, and whether yours will do. The same holds for its ores, for an area pickaxe's sweep and for everything else that breaks or moves rock: a bomb, a blast charge, a powder keg, a spell's bomb or digging bolt and a ram break or move a band's rock (and its ores) only for the one whose pickaxe and pick temper could dig it (a machine's for its owner, even while they are away), and a Grown's blast, a blister bursting or acid never do. A shaft someone else dug through a seal is still a shaft: a hole is a hole.

Raids in the bands

A Home deep in a band is raided by the band's own Grown, with the Might of its depth, and they can claw through the band's rock to reach it, but never through a seal: no raider breaks a tile of a band's first rows. The Wane-amber a raid pays stops growing at the Upper Deep's floor: a band's raid chest pays in that band's own way instead, and a band's great one may lend the chest its trophy.