The Ashlands

Ruin

A volcanic winter. The air itself is the enemy; cover your face.

At a glance

Kind of world	Ruin
Serum in the arrival Box	3 ampoules
Native Serum stand-in	None: bring spare Serum
Quests	None

Screenshot comingashlands-arrival

Stepping out at the arrival Box: red dusk, ash drifts, basalt columns and a ruined tower in the fog

What happens when you arrive

The sun has just set, and it will never rise. A dim red dusk hangs over everything, ash falls like grey snow, and the ground is buried in drifts of it. The moment you stand under the open sky, the air starts to burn you: one point of damage every three seconds. Get under a roof, or get a mask on your face, fast.

The rule: the air is poison

Danger	What it does	How to deal with it
Ash in the air	1 damage every 3 seconds whenever you are under open sky.	Wear a Filter Mask (it blocks all of it), or stay under cover.
Ash drifts	Slow you down like soul sand.	Walk on roofs, rubble and paths, or dig a trench with a shovel.
Drifters	Masked scavengers with axes, blades or bows. Half of them roam in bands of three, and they shout when they spot you, calling the rest of the band.	Fight them one at a time; back off around a corner when you hear the yell.
Husks and skeletons	Walk the open ground even at "daylight", because it is always dusk.	Same as at home.
Beds	Explode, like in the Nether. Night never ends, so there is nothing to skip.	Don't sleep here.

There are no phantoms and no animals, so bring food.

Get a mask first

The Filter Mask is the whole game here. Wear it in your head slot (or just right-click it) and the ash does nothing. It lasts 200 bites before it falls apart; an anvil mends it with leather.

LLL

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Filter Mask (Crafting Table)

Craft it before you go

The recipe uses Hush Glass and a Phase Salt Crystal from home. If you arrive without one, other masks can be found: in ruin chests (1 in 5), in drifter camps (about 1 in 3), and very occasionally on a drifter you kill.

The same mask also protects you from the spores of Fungal Bloom.

The dead cities

Half-buried in the ash stand the ruins of a city that once ran to the horizon. You will find:

• City blocks: a civic plaza with a toppled statue, a boulevard of gutted shops, a broken high-rise, and tenements around a drifters' camp.
• Lone ruins on the old roads between them: a house shell, a fallen water tower, a radio mast, a tram stop, a camp.
• Weathered Plaques in the squares, still listing the names of people nobody is left to read about.

Screenshot comingashlands-ruins

A ruined city block: broken high-rise, rusted plating and rebar sticking out of the ash

Loot: city chests hold scraps (paper, bones, a few ingots, sometimes a mask). The drifters' camps are richer, because they hold what the drifters took from other travelers, including the odd Serum Ampoule.

What to bring home

Find	Where	Why it's worth it
Ash	Everywhere: break the drifts (a shovel is quickest).	Four make a pane of Ash Glass, dark smoked glass.
Cinder Core	The glowing lining of rare geodes underground.	Burns as long as a block of coal: a great fuel for the Synthesizer. It glows, too.
Ruin blocks	The cities.	Ashen Bricks, Weathered Concrete, Rusted Plating, Charred Planks and Rusted Rebar make moody builds.

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Ash Glass (Crafting Table)

Serum and getting home

• The arrival Box's cache holds 3 Serum Ampoules the first time anyone arrives.
• Drifter camps sometimes hold another.
• The world has no native Serum ingredient, so if you are stranded, raid the camps.

Tips

• Dig into a hillside or duck into a ruin to escape the ash while you get your bearings.
• Use the fog: you can see about 12 to 64 blocks, and so can the drifters' archers.
• A drifter's yell is a warning. Count the voices: three means the band is coming.

Everything this world adds

17 blocks and items (click to open)

Ash Layer

Ash Glass

Cinder Core

Ashen Bricks

Cracked Ashen Bricks

Ashen Brick Stairs

Ashen Brick Slab

Weathered Concrete

Cracked Weathered Concrete

Weathered Concrete Stairs

Weathered Concrete Slab

Rusted Plating

Charred Planks

Rusted Rebar

Weathered Plaque

Ash

Filter Mask

The traveler's tape

Every arrival Box has a chest by its door holding a cassette: the last traveler reading their journal of this world aloud. This is what they say. It gives a lot away.

Read the journal (spoilers)

The dusk never ends here, and the ash never stops falling: it lies in drifts that drag at your boots like soul sand. Under the open sky every breath burns, so I made a mask of leather, hush glass and a crystal of salt, and the burning stopped. There were cities here once. Their towers stand broken in the drifts, scoured thin by the wind, and the plaques in their squares still list names that nobody is left to read. Not everyone is gone. Drifters in gas masks pick through the ruins, alone or three together, and they shout before they charge. Don't let them close the distance. The black columns hide husks, and the geodes underground are lined with cores that burn longer than coal. Four handfuls of ash press into smoked glass, the only thing in this country that was pleasant to look through. When your lungs give out, go back to the weathered Box with the Serum still in you and shut the door.