The Last Dome

Ruin

A radioactive waste, and one domed city that held out.

At a glance

Kind of world	Ruin
Serum in the arrival Box	2 ampoules
Native Serum stand-in	None: bring spare Serum
Quests	Yes: see your Traveler's Guide

Screenshot cominglast-dome-arrival

The weathered Box on Route 9 at hazy noon: ash, dead grass, and far to the east a glass dome with a beam of light standing out of its crown

What happens when you arrive

Eighty years after the war, the waste is ash and dead grass under a hazy noon that never moves. A few seconds after you step out, a girl named Wren crackles onto your radio. The open sky here is radioactive: stand under it and it burns you and makes you hungry every few breaths. Far to the east a beam of light stands straight up out of the haze. That is the Lantern of the Mercy Dome, the last city, about 145 blocks east along Route 9. Get there.

The rule: the sky is poison

Danger	What it does	How to deal with it
Radiation	1 damage and a pang of Hunger every 3 seconds while you can see the sky. Difficulty does not soften it. You get 5 seconds' grace on arrival.	Anything solid overhead stops it. So does Dome Glass; ordinary glass does not. A Lead Hood on your head blocks it entirely.
Endless noon	It never gets dark, so there is no night to hide in, and monsters walk the lit waste.	Keep moving.
Beds	Explode.	Don't sleep here.
The mutants	Four kinds hunt the open waste (below). They never come under the dome's glass.	Make for the dome.

There are no phantoms. The waste is the Lead Hood's whole reason for existing: it lasts 300 bites of radiation before it wears out, long enough to cross the waste and get back to the Box.

➜

Lead Hood (Crafting Table)

The mutants of the waste

They spawn only under the open sky. Each one gives you a tell before its big move.

Mutant	Health	What it does	How to deal with it
Ghoul Crawler	11 hearts	Runs on all fours, climbs walls like a spider, comes in packs of 2 to 4. Crouches, then pounces for 6 damage plus the waste's sickness.	Watch for the crouch and sidestep.
Bloater	9 hearts	A swollen, glowing sack of a man. Close in, it swells, then bursts for 5 damage and leaves a poison cloud.	Back off and it deflates. Shoot it from range (it still bursts, but smaller).
Acid Spitter	10 hearts	Keeps its distance and spits acid every 2 seconds after rearing back. Scuttles away if you close in.	Rush it: it has no real bite and dies quickly.
Rad Brute	35 hearts	Three blocks of grafted muscle. Plants itself and bellows, then charges in a straight line for 11 damage and flings you.	Step aside. If it hits a wall instead, it staggers and takes extra damage.

Screenshot cominglast-dome-brute

A Rad Brute bellowing on the ash, about to charge, with the dome glowing behind

Mercy: the city under the glass

The dome is 140 blocks of leaded glass across, home to four thousand people. Its door is an airlock: press the button by the iron door, wait in the decontamination mist ("a cold mist rinses the sky off your skin"), then press the next. Inside it is warm and green: farms in rings around the Lantern's beam, the Lungs that keep the air clean, the Ledger House on the north avenue where they count everything, and a vault beneath it.

Person	Who they are
Wren	Fifteen, a runner who slips out through the old drain. She finds you first, by radio.
Warden Ilse Corran	Head of the Ledger Council. Hard, tired, sure the Walk is all that keeps Mercy breathing.
Tobiah Reyes	Chief glazier. Harness, goggles, rope. "One crack, one city."
Dr. Nell Okafor	Physician and keeper of the Lungs, who measures everything and suspects too much.
Abel Marsh	Ninety-one, with a cane: the last person alive who saw the open sky.
Brother Amos Hale	Preacher of the Clear Sky. The sky healed long ago, he says, and the Council knows it.

Screenshot cominglast-dome-mercy

Inside the dome: ring farms, grow lamps and Mercians around the base of the Lantern's beam

Your quest: The Last Dome

The quest tracker names each chapter and points the way. Some steps play a short cutscene (crouch to skip); nothing can hurt you while one plays.

Chapter	What to do	Reward
Landfall	Follow Route 9 east toward the Lantern's beam, to the dome's airlock. Don't stand still under the sky.
Decon	Press the button by the inner door, wait in the wash, and go through into Mercy. Find Warden Corran, who counts you in and sends you to earn your air.
One Crack	Tobiah gives you Glazing Putty. Climb a tower to the low catwalk and press it into the 3 cracked panes on the north-west.	Lead Hood
Breath	Salvage 4 Sealed Filter Cartridges from the racks in the Waterworks pump house, north-east of the dome, for Dr. Okafor. One good cartridge per rack.	2 Dr. Okafor's Tonic
The Blue House	Find the Faded Photograph in the keepsake chest of the blue house on Alder Street, in the ruins of Old Mercy, and bring it to Abel.
The Walk	Wren steals you the Warden's Ledger Key. Take the ladder in the Ledger House down to the archive and read the Walk Ledger under the blue lantern. Then meet Wren at the Walk Gate, at the end of the east avenue, and tell Abel what you learned.
The Count	The Warden calls the Count, and the city gathers at the Lantern.
Mercy's Fate	Choose one of three people to stand with. The choice is for good, for everyone.

Dr. Okafor's Tonic cures Hunger and Poison and gives Regeneration for 30 seconds and Speed for a minute. It is exactly what the waste does to you, so save it for the walk back.

The first time you go out for the cartridges, a cutscene in the airlock shows off the four mutants, with Okafor naming them over the radio.

What the Walk is, and the three endings (spoilers)

Every Count, the Council reads out a list of names, and those people are sent out the Walk Gate toward "the clear sky in the east" with a day's water each. Abel is on this year's list. The Ledger's last page says, in the Warden's own hand: "The east is not clear. It never was. We send them out so the rest can breathe." Past the Walk Gate a worn path leads to the Hollows, a bowl in the waste full of cairns and bones round a ring of lanterns.

Path	Go to	What happens
Break the Dome	Brother Hale, at the chapel. Take his charge, climb the ladder inside the Lantern's spire to the landing under the crown, and set it against the glass.	The dome bursts from the top, ring after ring of glass raining on the city. The radiation reaches every street, the people walk out into the waste, and the mutants move in under the broken glass.
Give Hale Up	Warden Corran, at the Ledger House.	Hale walks out the Walk Gate in Abel's place and is never seen again. Mercy breathes on, and the Count will come again.
Read the Ledger Aloud	Dr. Okafor, at the clinic.	She reads the Walk Ledger to the whole city over the Lantern. The Walk ends, the rations are cut honestly, and Tobiah cuts a clear pane in the crown where Abel sits every afternoon watching the sky.

What to bring home

Find	Where	Why it's worth it
Lead Hood	Tobiah's reward, the vault, or about 1 ruin chest in 12.	The only way to walk the waste without hiding.
Dome Glass	Craft it.	Glass that keeps out radiation, here and anywhere else with a sky that hurts.
Lead Plate and more	The vault under the Ledger House: 3 to 5 stacks drawn from lead plate, bread, iron, Hush Glass and the odd golden apple, always a Lead Hood, and a Serum Ampoule half the time.	The best chest in the world.
Scraps	Old Mercy's houses and the Waterworks: iron nuggets, string, paper, bones, the odd lead plate.	Not much: scavengers got there first.
Dome blocks	The city.	Dome Frame, Rusted Plate, Grow Lamps, Scrubber Filters and Mercy's props.

➜8

Dome Glass (Crafting Table)

Serum and getting home

• The arrival Box's cache holds 2 Serum Ampoules.
• The vault under the Ledger House holds another half the time.
• There is no native Serum stand-in here.
• The Box stands out in the waste, so the walk back is under the open sky. Wear the hood or drink a tonic first.

Tips

• Craft a Lead Hood before you come. Lead Plate and Hush Glass are all it takes.
• No hood? Hop from ruin to ruin and duck under anything with a roof. Old Mercy and the broken highway along Route 9 give you cover.
• The dome is a total refuge: mutants never spawn under the glass.
• Fight the Rad Brute with a wall behind you, then step aside as it charges.
• Think hard before Mercy's Fate. The first player to choose decides it for everyone, forever.

Birds

Birds you can photograph for your bird log here. Open one to turn it round, watch it move and hear its call.

• Geiger Wren: common
• Two-Headed Buzzard: rare, dangerous

Everything this world adds

8 blocks and items (click to open)

Dome Glass

Lead Hood

Glazing Putty

Sealed Filter Cartridge

Faded Photograph

Ledger Key

Dr. Okafor's Tonic

Brother Hale's Charge

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)

Do not stand under the open sky here: it makes you sick and hungry every few breaths, and it never gets dark enough to hide. Anything solid over your head keeps it off, and so does their leaded glass; ordinary glass does not. The road east of the weathered Box runs through a dead town, under a broken highway, and on to a dome a hundred and forty paces across with a beam of light standing out of its crown. The things that hunt the waste never come under the glass. The dome's door is an airlock: press the button by the iron door, wait in the wash, press the next. Inside they farm in rings round the beam, count everything in a hall on the north avenue, and keep a vault beneath it. A hood of lead plate around a hush glass visor turns the sky away until it wears through, which is long enough to walk back to the Box with the Serum still in you.