Spire City¶

Civilization

A city of steel spires where everything has a price, even the way home.

At a glance
Kind of world	Civilization
Native Serum stand-in	None: bring spare Serum
Quests	None

Screenshot comingspire-city-plaza

The arrival Box in a quiet plaza between towers of blue-grey steel and pale glass, robed Spire Traders at their stalls, steel-blue haze overhead

What happens when you arrive¶

Your Box sets you down in a quiet plaza between towers of blue steel and pale glass, on a flat dark plain under a steel-blue haze. Robed figures stand at stalls around the plaza. Nothing here will hurt you: no monsters spawn, day or night. But everything has a price, even the way home.

The rule: everything costs credits¶

Spire City is a trading world. Its people, the Spire Traders, deal only in Spire Credits. They buy Tesseract Ingots and sell the parts of the Serum, and a ready ampoule now and then.

There are two ways to get credits:

Sell tesseract ingots to any trader: 3 credits each, up to 16 per trader.
Climb the spires. At the top of every spire is a vault room with a chest holding 4 to 12 credits, a tesseract ingot about one time in three, and now and then a Filter Mask someone left behind. It is a long climb up the ladders.

Screenshot comingspire-city-vault

The vault room at the top of a spire: a chest in a small steel chamber, the city's towers far below through hush glass

The city¶

The city is laid out on a regular grid: blocks of towers about 48 blocks across, separated by a strip of grass, with a plaza in the middle of each. Your Box always lands in the plaza at the centre. The spires are built of Spire Steel (which needs a pickaxe, and drops itself) and hush glass.

The Spire Traders¶

Each trader keeps to their own stall. Every trader offers:

You give	You get	How many times
1 Tesseract Ingot	3 Spire Credits	16
24 Spire Credits	1 Serum Ampoule	Only 2, and the price never changes

Then four to six of these Serum parts, different from trader to trader:

Credits	You get
8	1 Lotus Extract
6	2 Somnium Powder
5	2 Quantum Dust
6	1 Phase Salt Crystal
4	4 Hush Glass Ampoules
12	1 Unstable Compound (skips the Synthesizer altogether)

Each part can be bought up to 8 times; prices creep up with demand, like a villager's.

Brew, don't buy

A full set of parts makes four ampoules for about thirty credits, while one ready ampoule costs 24. Buying ready Serum is the emergency road. Walk from trader to trader to fill your shopping list.

What to bring home¶

Find	Where	Why it's worth it
Serum parts	The traders.	The easiest place in the multiverse to stock up on Lotus Extract, Somnium Powder and Unstable Compound.
Spire Steel	The spires.	A cool blue-grey metal block for building.

Serum and getting home¶

The arrival Box's cache holds 2 Serum Ampoules.
There is no native Serum ingredient: the way home here is trade. Bring tesseract ingots, or climb for vault credits.

Tips¶

Bring a stack of tesseract ingots from home. They are the city's only export.
Check every trader's stall: each one stocks a different handful of parts.
Climb a few spires on your first visit while your purse is light. Each vault pays out once.
Ready ampoules run out at two per trader, so don't count on buying your way home more than once or twice.

Birds¶

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

Vault Starling: common
Credit Toucan: rare

Everything this world adds¶

2 blocks and items (click to open)

Spire Steel

Spire Credit

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 weathered Box set me down in a quiet plaza between towers of blue steel and pale glass, and in a week here nothing has tried to hurt me. The traders at the stalls speak only in credits: they buy tesseract ingots at three credits apiece and sell every part of the Serum for a handful more. The rest of the city's credits sit in the vault rooms at the tops of the spires, a long climb up the ladders, so climb when your purse is light. A ready ampoule costs twenty-four credits and no trader will part with more than two, so buying the parts and brewing your own is the cheaper road. When your business is done, walk back to the Box in the plaza with the Serum still in you and shut the door behind you.