Phantasmal Rift Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
phantasmods) wrote2018-01-17 12:23 pm
phantasmods) wrote2018-01-17 12:23 pm
DUNGEON FAQ
What are Fissures?
The explorable dungeons of Phantasmal Rift, Fissures are gaps in reality that characters can enter and explore for loot and various other rewards. Fissures often have a theme based on the environment they're found in, but as you proceed deeper into the Fissure, the outside becomes less reliably linked to the inside.
Where do Fissures come from?
No one knows! They started appearing roughly a century before the current time, and back then there were only small tears - many of them not even large enough to send a person into. However, over time, they grew and grew, and now Fissure spaces overtake most of the planet.
What are PC objectives in Fissures?
ICly, the goal of Fissure expeditions is to get deep inside and place magitek reality stabilizers in order to help drive the Fissure space back and make the world livable again. They also provide resources that characters can't otherwise obtain with the world in its current state. OOCly, they're also how new characters enter the game, because people can appear in Fissures just the same as any object or monster.
How often do Fissures appear? How frequent are expeditions?
It's hard to say how often a new Fissure appears at this point - historically, the rate increased until it hit a point at which there was more Fissured reality than stable, at which point keeping track of individual Fissures became pointless. Major Fissure expeditions are currently every six weeks;; characters can speak to Up for more specific details on upcoming expeditions.
What's the difference between expeditions and missions?
Expeditions are the trips to the large Fissures - the ones that require a large number of characters to stabilize. They're the primary events of the game, with sign-ups, the addition of new areas to the world, and a large dungeon log.
Missions are much smaller-scale, and usually involve either patching up unstable patches from previous expeditions, or handling Fissures that are too small for a full group. You can read more about them on the Missions Page.
Do our characters have to go on expeditions?
No, participation in expeditions is not required, though the androids at the station deeply appreciate the help and allow characters to keep most of the loot they find as a form of repayment. Fissure expeditions are always potentially dangerous, and the androids understand that not everyone is willing or able to face such risks.
What are Fissures like?
While all individual Fissures are different, all of them have some degree of common traits. Most notably, space is particularly unstable within a Fissure - paths can shift and change, and characters can exist in the same place without ever being aware of each other. Time can also be unstable within them, resulting in characters appearing to be inside for a different period of time than passes in stable reality, or even appearing to be in two places at once!
Visual senses, in particular, are often unreliable within Fissure spaces, due to the dreamlike shifting colors of bleeding realities mixing together. The further away from you something is, the less reliable the chances are that it actually exists. Sometimes the sensory effects are more severe - a Fissure may cause everything to appear distorted, or rendered completely in black-and-white, or all sounds to be heard as though they're in the opposite direction from their origin point.
Finally, all Fissures are highly magical spaces. While the magic each particular Fissure tends to remain similar throughout, they vary wildly from Fissure to Fissure. One Fissure may be perfectly normal except that gravity is half its usual strength; another may cause all spoken word to be rendered backwards to the listener.
How are Fissures cleared?
When enough stabilizers are placed, they can be activated to solidify reality and force the strange effects of the Fissure back. Technically, this doesn't eliminate the Fissure - it merely forces reality to become more solid in that area, making it safe to travel through.
Are Fissures replayable?
While large repeat expeditions to Fissures are rare, occasionally individual stabilizers malfunction, requiring a small team to enter the unstable area and either repair or replace the stabilizer. These small missions can be volunteered for at any time by talking to Up.
OOCly, these missions can also serve as a hiatus or drop mechanic if players so choose.
What happens if our characters die in a Fissure?
Before expeditions depart, characters have physical and magical data taken as a sort of back-up state. In the event of death in the Fissure - or anywhere else for that matter - these backups can be used to restore characters to life. Recovering a character's body greatly helps this process, but obviously that isn't going to be possible in all situations.
However, the process takes time - exactly how long varies on the amount of characters who met their ends on the expedition. Additionally, there are occasionally side effects (such as malfunctioning abilities or muddled memories) that will need to be straightened out afterward. Finally, characters who die will not remember anything after the most recent backup - they'll have to rely on records and accounts from others to know exactly what happened!
Does the network function in Fissures?
Yes, it does! In fact, communicating with Fissure expeditions was its original purpose. While timestamps may function somewhat oddly, communications within a Fissure are available unless otherwise noted.
Are there monsters?
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: Creatures get drawn into Fissures the same way characters or objects do, and many of them are aggressive - sometimes from natural temperament, sometimes because of the effects of the Fissure, sometimes from simple animal "I have no idea what's going on so I'm going to bite everything."
Some Fissures also spawn their own creatures, by-products or twisted fragments of the magic within. Unlike the other sort of monster, true Fissure creatures can't leave the Fissure of their origin - for which we all breathe a sigh of relief, as they're often more dangerous than their misplaced counterparts.
How are encounters handled?
Generally speaking, players are free to handwave encountering whatever they like within the dungeon setting. However, mods will occasionally respond to random threads with monsters or other obstacles that characters must clear in order to proceed - so keep your eyes open!
Boss fight encounters (major group combat near the end of certain dungeons) are handled in a round system - mods will post a top level that players can reply to, and then every twelve hours summarize what happened in a comment to that top-level. That summary comment then serves as the header for the next round, and so on until the fight is complete. New rounds are typically every twelve to sixteen hours.
What kind of loot is there?
Rewards from Fissures are divided into two categories - generic loot and specific loot.
Generic loot is virtually unlimited, and is the basic resource of the dungeon. A dungeon set in a volcano might have fire-element magic crystals and mineral resources, while one set in a forest might offer wood and berries - though Fissures, and their rewards, often take even stranger forms than these. Items harvested from the monsters within a Fissure are also part of this category.
Specific loot, on the other hand, is limited. These are objects that fell into the gaps of reality, and many are unique, limited in amount, or simply don't fit in with the theme of the dungeon. Each character gets at least one piece of specific loot, which will be distributed to their sign-up comment when the dungeon event ends. Additional loot is given based upon character participation in the dungeon log, as well as a reward for tagging newcomers on the test drive.
Where do we sign up? How does this go down OOCly?
Ten days before a dungeon log, a sign-up post with some general info will go up. Sign ups will be open for one week (closing three days before the dungeon log goes live). In addition to sign-ups, the OOC post will have for general plotting if players are so inclined.
Then the dungeon log goes up - IC duration will vary, but OOCly the number of comments will be tallied after ten days stretching from Friday to the Sunday of the next week (unless otherwise noted) to determine what additional rewards, if any, they have earned.
Afterwards, specific loot will be distributed to characters via their sign-up comments.
The explorable dungeons of Phantasmal Rift, Fissures are gaps in reality that characters can enter and explore for loot and various other rewards. Fissures often have a theme based on the environment they're found in, but as you proceed deeper into the Fissure, the outside becomes less reliably linked to the inside.
Where do Fissures come from?
No one knows! They started appearing roughly a century before the current time, and back then there were only small tears - many of them not even large enough to send a person into. However, over time, they grew and grew, and now Fissure spaces overtake most of the planet.
What are PC objectives in Fissures?
ICly, the goal of Fissure expeditions is to get deep inside and place magitek reality stabilizers in order to help drive the Fissure space back and make the world livable again. They also provide resources that characters can't otherwise obtain with the world in its current state. OOCly, they're also how new characters enter the game, because people can appear in Fissures just the same as any object or monster.
How often do Fissures appear? How frequent are expeditions?
It's hard to say how often a new Fissure appears at this point - historically, the rate increased until it hit a point at which there was more Fissured reality than stable, at which point keeping track of individual Fissures became pointless. Major Fissure expeditions are currently every six weeks;; characters can speak to Up for more specific details on upcoming expeditions.
What's the difference between expeditions and missions?
Expeditions are the trips to the large Fissures - the ones that require a large number of characters to stabilize. They're the primary events of the game, with sign-ups, the addition of new areas to the world, and a large dungeon log.
Missions are much smaller-scale, and usually involve either patching up unstable patches from previous expeditions, or handling Fissures that are too small for a full group. You can read more about them on the Missions Page.
Do our characters have to go on expeditions?
No, participation in expeditions is not required, though the androids at the station deeply appreciate the help and allow characters to keep most of the loot they find as a form of repayment. Fissure expeditions are always potentially dangerous, and the androids understand that not everyone is willing or able to face such risks.
What are Fissures like?
While all individual Fissures are different, all of them have some degree of common traits. Most notably, space is particularly unstable within a Fissure - paths can shift and change, and characters can exist in the same place without ever being aware of each other. Time can also be unstable within them, resulting in characters appearing to be inside for a different period of time than passes in stable reality, or even appearing to be in two places at once!
Visual senses, in particular, are often unreliable within Fissure spaces, due to the dreamlike shifting colors of bleeding realities mixing together. The further away from you something is, the less reliable the chances are that it actually exists. Sometimes the sensory effects are more severe - a Fissure may cause everything to appear distorted, or rendered completely in black-and-white, or all sounds to be heard as though they're in the opposite direction from their origin point.
Finally, all Fissures are highly magical spaces. While the magic each particular Fissure tends to remain similar throughout, they vary wildly from Fissure to Fissure. One Fissure may be perfectly normal except that gravity is half its usual strength; another may cause all spoken word to be rendered backwards to the listener.
How are Fissures cleared?
When enough stabilizers are placed, they can be activated to solidify reality and force the strange effects of the Fissure back. Technically, this doesn't eliminate the Fissure - it merely forces reality to become more solid in that area, making it safe to travel through.
Are Fissures replayable?
While large repeat expeditions to Fissures are rare, occasionally individual stabilizers malfunction, requiring a small team to enter the unstable area and either repair or replace the stabilizer. These small missions can be volunteered for at any time by talking to Up.
OOCly, these missions can also serve as a hiatus or drop mechanic if players so choose.
What happens if our characters die in a Fissure?
Before expeditions depart, characters have physical and magical data taken as a sort of back-up state. In the event of death in the Fissure - or anywhere else for that matter - these backups can be used to restore characters to life. Recovering a character's body greatly helps this process, but obviously that isn't going to be possible in all situations.
However, the process takes time - exactly how long varies on the amount of characters who met their ends on the expedition. Additionally, there are occasionally side effects (such as malfunctioning abilities or muddled memories) that will need to be straightened out afterward. Finally, characters who die will not remember anything after the most recent backup - they'll have to rely on records and accounts from others to know exactly what happened!
Does the network function in Fissures?
Yes, it does! In fact, communicating with Fissure expeditions was its original purpose. While timestamps may function somewhat oddly, communications within a Fissure are available unless otherwise noted.
Are there monsters?
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: Creatures get drawn into Fissures the same way characters or objects do, and many of them are aggressive - sometimes from natural temperament, sometimes because of the effects of the Fissure, sometimes from simple animal "I have no idea what's going on so I'm going to bite everything."
Some Fissures also spawn their own creatures, by-products or twisted fragments of the magic within. Unlike the other sort of monster, true Fissure creatures can't leave the Fissure of their origin - for which we all breathe a sigh of relief, as they're often more dangerous than their misplaced counterparts.
How are encounters handled?
Generally speaking, players are free to handwave encountering whatever they like within the dungeon setting. However, mods will occasionally respond to random threads with monsters or other obstacles that characters must clear in order to proceed - so keep your eyes open!
Boss fight encounters (major group combat near the end of certain dungeons) are handled in a round system - mods will post a top level that players can reply to, and then every twelve hours summarize what happened in a comment to that top-level. That summary comment then serves as the header for the next round, and so on until the fight is complete. New rounds are typically every twelve to sixteen hours.
What kind of loot is there?
Rewards from Fissures are divided into two categories - generic loot and specific loot.
Generic loot is virtually unlimited, and is the basic resource of the dungeon. A dungeon set in a volcano might have fire-element magic crystals and mineral resources, while one set in a forest might offer wood and berries - though Fissures, and their rewards, often take even stranger forms than these. Items harvested from the monsters within a Fissure are also part of this category.
Specific loot, on the other hand, is limited. These are objects that fell into the gaps of reality, and many are unique, limited in amount, or simply don't fit in with the theme of the dungeon. Each character gets at least one piece of specific loot, which will be distributed to their sign-up comment when the dungeon event ends. Additional loot is given based upon character participation in the dungeon log, as well as a reward for tagging newcomers on the test drive.
Where do we sign up? How does this go down OOCly?
Ten days before a dungeon log, a sign-up post with some general info will go up. Sign ups will be open for one week (closing three days before the dungeon log goes live). In addition to sign-ups, the OOC post will have for general plotting if players are so inclined.
Then the dungeon log goes up - IC duration will vary, but OOCly the number of comments will be tallied after ten days stretching from Friday to the Sunday of the next week (unless otherwise noted) to determine what additional rewards, if any, they have earned.
Afterwards, specific loot will be distributed to characters via their sign-up comments.