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Wick the Tinker and trial vaults

Wick, Hild's apprentice, keeps a workshop on Aldhearth's crafters' lane, west of the Grand Plaza: the house marked Wick's workshop, with Wick at the foot of its path. He is young, quick, and a little too fond of anything that goes clank. He sells ember dust and parts, teaches emberwork in three short lessons and a fourth on logic, and makes trial chests: the prize at the end of a puzzle you build on your own Home's land, for anyone to try.

Click him (or walk up and press F) for his menu: Talk, Wick's lessons, Ember dust and parts and Trial vaults (how they work). A ! over his head means he has a lesson for you; a ? means he is waiting to hear how it went.

Wick's wares

His window is Ember dust and parts. He sells a few things a day (a day starts at midnight, Aldhearth time: the clock of every event), always for more than the Trade Post pays, so the seams of the Ember Sea stay the real source of dust: an iron pickaxe gets 2 to 4 dust from every seam.

• Ember dust: 4 for 60 gold, 6 times a day.
• Starter kit: a lever, an ember lamp, a pressure plate and 8 ember dust, for 150 gold, once a day. Everything the first two lessons need.
• Logic kit: a watcher, a tally stone, a hold stone, an hourglass, an ember dial and 8 ember dust, for 260 gold, once a day. Everything the fourth lesson needs, and a door that shuts itself.
• Trial chest: 120 gold, as many as you like. You can also make one at a Workbench: ember dust, an iron bar, ember dust over ember dust, a chest, ember dust.

Wick's lessons

From level 5. Choose Wick's lessons in his menu to start. The Journal (J) has the lessons as a card of their own, with what to do now; Track puts them on the tracker under the map. Each lesson can be done anywhere: on your Home's land, in a cave, out on open ground.

1. A lamp and a lever. Light an ember lamp with a lever you put down yourself: lay ember dust from the lever to the lamp (touching both) and pull. Someone else's lever lighting your lamp does not count, and neither does a plate.
2. A door and a plate. Open a door or an iron gate with a pressure plate's warmth: wire the plate to it (at either half of a door) and stand on the plate (a Home plate counts too). Both the one who put the plate down and the one standing on it have done it. A door or gate opened by a lever is not the lesson, and nor is a lamp lit by a plate. (A door at the rim of a Home's land, its upper half outside it, obeys only wire on its base's ground: see Emberwork.)
3. Three notes. Play three different notes on chimes within 10 seconds: chimes you put down yourself, each set to a note of its own (a right click on a chime gives its next note), played by warmth: a lever, a plate, a heartbeat stone, or relays for a tune instead of a chord. Setting a chime by hand plays its new note, but that is tuning it, not playing it: it does not count.
4. Back to Wick. He pays 200 gold and 10 more for every level you have, a heartbeat stone, and the title the Tinker. Once.

The fourth lesson is for those who have the title the Tinker (everyone who finished the three, before this lesson was taught too): talk to Wick again. It has two halves, both with logic parts:

1. A watcher and a door. Open a door or an iron gate with a watcher of yours: point it at a tile, put its back to the door (or wire it to the door), and make the tile change: put a block there, dig one out, open a door there. Its pulse opens the door. A door opened by a lever is not the lesson.
2. A tally and three plates. Set a tally stone of yours to 3 (a right click), wire a pressure plate (or a Home plate) to its back, and step on the plate three times: the tally counts three and pulses. Three pulls of a lever counted by a tally are not the lesson. (Warmth at a tally's side resets it: keep its sides clear.)
3. Back to Wick. He pays 150 gold and 10 more for every level you have, an hourglass, an ember dial, and the title the Clockwright. Once.

A lesson done while you are away counts too. If someone pulls your lever and your lamp lights, stands on your plate, or your heartbeat stone plays your chimes while you are out of the game, you hear about it when you come back, and you are on the next lesson.

Trial vaults

A trial vault is a puzzle of emberwork with a prize at the end: plates, gates, levers that do the wrong thing, a door that wants a tune. The prize sits in a trial chest.

• A trial chest goes down only on your own Home's land, four on one Home's land at most.
• Open it with a right click, F, or a tap (on a phone, USE says OPEN by it). Its owner opens it from wherever they can reach it. Anyone else has to reach it: stand within 2.5 tiles of it (about two steps), with nothing solid between you and it. Not through a wall, and not from a tunnel dug beside the vault: the reaching is the trial.
• Its owner's window has:
  • The prize: click something in your bag to put it in (a number in How many to move moves that many; empty moves the whole stack), click something in the prize to take it back. Put gold in and Take gold out do the same with gold.
  • One share: how many of each thing one solver takes, and Gold a share. When you put the first thing in, one of it is a share until you say otherwise.
  • Who reached it: the last 50 who took a share, and when.
  • Take the chest down: the chest and everything left in it come back to your bag.
• Only plain things go in a prize: no upgraded, enchanted or worn gear, and nothing that has to stay in your bag (the story's things).
• Anyone else who reaches it (within 2.5 tiles, in plain sight), strangers, friends and guild alike, opens it and sees one share and how many are left, and takes one share with Take your share: once a day for each character, and only while the prize still holds a whole share. You hear it when someone does.
• It cannot be dug or blown up, and nothing moves it. Your land still keeps your walls, so visitors have to get to it your way.
• Visitors pull your levers and cords only in plain sight: one sealed inside your walls is not pulled from outside them (you, and whoever may build there, still reach your own parts through your walls).
• If you let its Home Stone go out, your trial chests come back to you by themselves, with what was in them. If one goes while you are out of the game, it comes back by letter (see Mail).

Visitors lose nothing

• Anyone who falls on a Home's land that is not theirs (not the owner's, not the owner's group or guild, not a friend the owner lets build there) loses nothing: no gold, nothing drops, and a trade pack stays on their back (it counts as made where they wake, so a fall is never a short cut). Nobody is told they defeated them, either.
• That goes for whatever got them: your traps, the Grown, a fall, a fight.
• The owner and those of the Home fall as they would anywhere. So does a stranger who comes onto your land to fight you, if you win.
• An outlaw pays the outlaw's price wherever they fall. A duel keeps its own rules (the loser yields). The arena, events and dungeons are as they always were. And killing a guest who did not choose PvP still makes you an outlaw; lava you pour on your own land (a bucket's, or a spout's of yours) is your Home's own, though: it burns visitors whatever your PvP, and marks nobody.

So be cruel: drop them into spikes, close the gate behind them, make them play the tune backwards. It costs them nothing but the walk back.

A few trials to start with

(Gates and doors that open with warmth, and floors that drop, are the movers' parts: see Emberwork.)

• The plate path. A corridor of pressure plates, only one row of them wired to the gate at the end. Step wrong and nothing opens; step right and the gate swings.
• The wrong lever. Three levers by a gate, a grey latch behind two of them: pull those and the gate shuts. Only one lever opens it.
• The tune lock. Three chimes on three notes by the door; a toggle stone and relays so the gate only opens when they are played in order.
• The dark way. No light in the passage at all, and one ember lamp at the far end on a heartbeat stone: they find the way by its blink.
• The Home plate. A Home plate in front of the chest, wired to a floor that drops into a pit: it fires for strangers only, so you can walk up to your own chest and nobody else can without thinking.