Floor guides
Four floors of a hundred are authored end to end and open. Each has a written quest line, its own enemies and a boss, and each is trying to teach you something before the next one assumes you know it.
On this page
The tutorial
Short, and it teaches the four things every floor above assumes you already know: how gear is identified, how attributes are spent, how quests point you, and what the Tower claims to be. The Watcher helps you through it, and then goes quiet for a long time.
Floor 1: the Forest
A quiet wood with one cottage and one old man in it. Four quests plus a side thread, eight monsters, and a boss. Its real job is teaching, and every reward is a lesson rather than a prize: an unidentified helmet teaches identifying, a harvester's hoe teaches that tools have jobs, and your first attribute point teaches that attributes are spent rather than earned.
| Quest | About |
|---|---|
| The Hermit | Meeting the only permanent resident of the floor |
| A Bare Larder | His cupboard is empty and you are the first person to come by in a long time |
| More Food | It was not enough food |
| The Forest's Master | The Troll Leader. The floor's boss |
| Onward and Upward | Earning the way down into the caves |
| A Curious Crystal | Side quest. He has no idea what these are, and neither do you yet |
Floor 2: the Mines
The cave system under the forest, and the first place the Tower stops being pleasant. The corruption has arrived, the work has stopped, and the people still down here are sheltering at a fire instead of digging. Six quests, a side thread, seven monsters, the game's first boss and its only loot crate. It is also where you meet Elias and Rowan, the two characters who matter most to the early campaign.
| Quest | About |
|---|---|
| Into the Dark | Arriving in the mines |
| A Strange Glow | Your first contact with the purple |
| The Campsite | The miners who stopped mining |
| Elias | A young climber with more determination than talent |
| Eight Legs | The cave spiders |
| The Corrupt | What the glow is doing to the things down here |
| The Thing Below | Rocky. The first fight that will genuinely kill you |
| Onward and Deeper | The way up |
| A Lost Apprentice | Side quest |
Floor 3: the Corrupted Savanna
A savanna that rotted. The water crystallised, the wells were sealed, the animals were replaced by the corrupted, and everyone who lived here left. Except one person. Twelve quests, eighteen monsters, the game's only dungeon and its second boss. This is the first floor you change rather than clear, and it ends with clean water welling up out of the ground.
| Quest | About |
|---|---|
| The Corrupted Savanna | Arriving on a floor that has already lost |
| A Familiar Face | Somebody you have met before is here |
| Nia's Offer | The one person who stayed |
| Tainted Waters | What happened to the pond |
| Ease the Night | Thinning the walkers |
| Broken Springs | The sealed wells |
| Into the Valley | Following the water upstream |
| The Main Water Pump | The floor's central problem |
| The Throat | Reporting back |
| A Way In | Opening the dungeon |
| The Source | The dungeon itself, and the Necromancer |
| The Water Returns | The floor, fixed |
Floor 4: Hearth Ranch
House Hearth's floating farmland: six islands above the clouds, worked by ranch hands, feeding the whole Tower. Eight quests, seventeen monsters, a personal farm plot and an airship. The pastoral bit does not last. This is the first floor where you are not an adventurer but an employee, and the first where somebody with entirely legitimate authority uses it against you.
The manager controls the waypoint to Floor 5. It sits on his ground, and he decides who uses it. You work, you earn passage. Debt first, freedom later.
| Quest | About |
|---|---|
| Hearth Ranch | Arriving, and being put to work |
| Paying the Debt | The terms of your employment |
| Those Damn Gnomes | The crops are being eaten |
| Earn Your Keep | The hoe, and the job it comes with |
| A Plot of My Own | Your own farmland |
| Sticky Fingers | Multi-stage. Something is going missing from the warehouse |
| Dead Crossing | Multi-stage. The cult, and what they left behind |
| Reclaimed Stock | Multi-stage. Getting it back |
| The Way Up | The finale, and the waypoint |
| Kin in the Cage | Side quest. Rocky, again, and not by choice |
What comes next
Floor 5, Lowerhaven, is built and populated but its story is still being written. It is the city the refugees from every floor below ended up in: the miners who lost their living on Floor 2, the families the savanna drove out on Floor 3. It was granted to House Midrill as a wish, and they have stopped caring.
Floor 6, the Gaps in the Tower, is a built skeleton. Floors 5, 6 and 7 are one story rather than three neighbouring levels: it starts in Lowerhaven, turns on Floor 7, and finishes back where it began.
More on the setting: the Tower, its Houses and its Guilds.