3-4: Dark Horse Prospect

Pressing further east from the Border Zone waystation, the gang arrives in a region called Skinner's Roam.

Yet more desert, initial prospecting reveals land not much better than what Outlaw Hana's been finding in the Border Zone. Perhaps it's unsurprising that there isn't much water here considering it's hot enough here the air ripples when one looks into the distance. Still, that's no cause to stop looking. Skinner's Roam is a stretch of land that runs from north to south so continuing eastward soon finds the gang in Shem (yet more desert) where they try again. They end up with equally unsatisfying results.

Perhaps the problem is that they've been travelling across highlands so far. Valleys would be a more likely place to find aquifers to draw from and good soil for planting.

Thinking of prospecting in a valley and not having much in mind beyond that, the gang veers north, ending up in a lowland of black muck, where a glance to the north reveals spider bots and ancient ruins like in the Floodlands, the horizon obscured within a dense black haze.

This place seems obviously desolate. Outlaw Hana prospects it almost as a joke.

Well I'll be damned. Through a little quirk of the system, this would actually be a decent place to build.

I'll explain what I mean. The black mud, the ancient ruins, the broken spider bots; these are all hallmarks of the region called the Deadlands, a region the gang will be in if they take but fifty paces north. In fact, when they do just that...

It's not showing up visually in the above screenshot, but the Deadlands are blanketed in constant acid rain, corrosive to humans and shek. Prospecting there reveals an environment type of Dead with no water, no fertility, no stone, and paltry iron and copper. The little corner Outlaw Hana just prospected is technically part of Shem, though, so while it visually looks like Deadlands, it doesn't use Deadlands numbers. It uses Shem numbers. These are far more favourable.

I said I would talk more about prospecting when the gang found a location worth considering so let's get into it. Outlaw Hana's prospecting found this location to have 62 Water, 100 Fertility, 55 Stone, 49 Iron and 13 Copper. Those numbers don't seem all that great about first blush but they don't tell the whole story. To get a better idea of what they mean, we have to interpret the little maps they come with.

The above screenshot shows the water map, a green Y shape on a black background. The brighter the green, the more lush the resource, so we should be able to draw a decent amount of water if we build anywhere in the Y. The white triangle in the middle of the map shows the camera's current location and facing, so a little bit behind the camera should be the best place to draw water. We can get a more concrete number by going into the build menu and seeing what happens if we try to build a well.

Mousing around the area, the game updates in real time how efficient a well would be in the precise location we're pointing to. The best we get is 70%, indeed in the middle of the mud flats just south of where the camera was in that prospecting screenshot. 70% is great news, just about the best case scenario for a well on arid land.

We can try the same thing for farming and quarrying structures. The fertility map is about the same as the water map but in brighter green. As such, if we were going to place crop fields next to that nice well spot, we'd get similarly good results.

That spot has 100% fertility! Fantastic! The wheat would be stuck at a crop yield of 60%, though, because it's on arid land. It's a bummer but there's nothing the gang can do about it if they want to build here. They'll just have to overcome. Arid land is pretty poor for growing across the board; with the environment being 100% arid and 10% green, the gang would get 100% cactus crop yield but would be stuck with 60% wheat, 50% hemp, and rice, greenfruit, and cotton would be completely out of the question. Cotton is completely irrelevant if you can grow hemp but rice and greenfruit would be missed.

Rice is much nicer to grow than wheat if you can—you have to turn wheat into flour and then bread before you can do anything with it but rice is pretty much ready to go as is. I like growing rice but this area is pretty tempting so the gang may be in for a riceless future. We'll see.

The map for stone works the same way as the water and fertility maps, though with a different distribution; using the same trick as the well and the farms, the gang discovers that they can place a quarry on the little raised patch just west of the good farming mudflat and get 100% efficiency out of it. This is what I mean when I say the prospecting numbers can be deceptive. The window displaying a mere 55 for stone despite there being a perfect stone spot here because the window is taking an average of the whole area surveyed. A fair amount of the land in this patch has no stone at all. The nice farming spot has pretty crappy stone. But it doesn't matter how good the stone is overall. You don't need to quarry the whole thing. You just need to quarry one spot.

The iron and copper maps similarly understate how good a spot actually is for mining but they display a bit differently.

Unlike the other resources, which you exploit via certain structures, characters mine iron and copper by hand from nodes jutting from the ground. The iron and copper maps accordingly just have little dots where the nodes are, brighter green representing greater mineral purity. Far from what the overall number of 49 might suggest, this map represents a surfeit of iron. There are tons of nodes and they're all very good. Similarly, despite being rated at a mere 13, the copper here is more than sufficient.

The gang is not ready to start building right now but this unlikely little corner on the borders of Shem, Skinner's Roam and the Deadlands shows promise. It's right in the centre of the continent too, very convenient for a group that plans to travel the world entire.

The gang does their best to commit this little spot to memory. Fortunately, there's a handy little place nearby they can use as a landmark. Back up the hill into Shem, nearly directly south of this spot, is a little place called Smuggler's Bar. In fact, as the gang thinks about it, hitting up a bar would be quite nice after all this prospecting.

The Smugglers Bar stands alone in the middle of the badlands, no other settlement as far as the eye can see. The gang hurries inside—beak things roam here so it's best not to linger out in the open overlong. Inside, it looks pretty much like any other bar, albeit a large one. It seems to be run by some group called the Grayflayers. This lends a bit of an air of mystery—the gang has never met a Grayflayer before and none of the ones here seem to be in the mood for talking. The place does seem to attract chatty drifters, though. Jam catches the eye of a slender hive prince coming down the stairs.

Silvershade is somehow the first other hiver Jam has recruited and a prince at that. Princes have an easy time learning all sorts of skills, enjoying xp gain bonuses to Lockpicking, Perception, Toughness, Dexterity, Athletics, Stealth, Thievery, Field Medic, and Science. They suffer penalties only to Labouring and Strength, a pretty sweet deal for all those bonuses. Their more significant disadvantage is being incredibly fragile—they only have 80 HP in each body part compared to a human's 100.

The character creator describes hive princes as follows:

Well, the bit about “nobody” ever having seen an actual Queen isn't exactly accurate, but I'll give the game a pass for being a bit behind on the gang's adventures.

True to their word, Silvershade has a smattering of various stats. They have 10 points in most melee weapon skills, a bit of Stealth and Thievery, and uniquely among the gang thus far, they have a few points in Perception. The Perception stat is key for using turrets and crossbows, which might just end up being a skill Silvershade builds on. It's certainly one the gang is currently lacking.

They don't have any crossbows on them at the moment, though. Silvershade satisfies themself for the time being with grabbing the most decent sword the gang managed to loot on the way here, a two-handed topper katana that matches Riddly's. With blade in hand and all outstanding debts paid, it's time to roll on out.