The Grid

Civilization

The computer won. Its programs built a city of light in the dark, and they still tell stories about the Users who made them. Then one arrives.

At a glance

Kind of world	Civilization
Serum in the arrival Box	2 ampoules
Native Serum stand-in	Raw Energy
Quests	Yes: see your Traveler's Guide

Screenshot comingthe-grid-arrival

Landing on the black glass plain at midnight, Grid City's towers of light ahead and a Sentinel's searchlight sweeping the ground

What happens when you arrive

The Box goes white, your hands come apart into little glowing cubes, and you fall up a column of light. You land on a plain of black glass that runs to the edge of the world. Ahead of you stands Grid City: towers of black glass edged in cyan light, with the round Arena at its heart. It is always midnight here, and the only light is the light things make. High above, a patrol ship sweeps the ground with a searchlight, and the moment it finds you, you are no longer a secret. The programs here have a word for what you are: User.

Your first arrival plays the whole digitization as a short scene. After it, a few hints appear one at a time above your hotbar.

The rules: you are a program now

What changes	How it works
Energy, not food	Your hunger bar is now Energy, drawn as cells of light. It drains like hunger, but food does nothing. Drink at an Energy Fountain's pool (fills 4 shanks) or drink a bottle of Raw Energy (fills 3).
The Outlands are dry	Out past the city, Energy drains a little faster (about one extra point every two minutes) and fountains are rare.
Everything derezzes	Anything that dies here, you included, bursts into cubes of its own light.
Backup Terminals	Touch one and, if you derez, you rez back in beside it. Your real home spawn point is kept and put back when you leave by any way but death.
Root Access	As a User you can rewrite code. Touch a Code Block to wake the dormant code around it: unfinished bridges build themselves, sector seals dissolve. Each rewrite costs 25 of your 100 Root Access, which refills by one point every 1.5 seconds.
No sleep	Beds don't work: programs don't sleep, and there is no morning.

Bottle it

Use a glass bottle on a fountain's pool to fill a Raw Energy to carry with you. Bring empty bottles: you will want several before you head into the Outlands.

Who lives here

Who	What they do
Programs	The city's people, in suits with glowing seams. Never hostile. The first time one sees you it kneels in awe, flees in fear, or (greedy for PRIME's favour) runs to the nearest Enforcer and reports you.
Enforcers	PRIME's soldiers: faceless red-visored helmets, patrolling in squads of three. They leave you alone until the alarm goes up or you hit one. Then they throw their discs from range and close in.
Sentinels	Thirty-block patrol ships looping high over the city and the plain. Stand in a searchlight's spot in the open for one second and the horn sounds, the light turns red, and two or three Enforcers drop next to you on lines of light. You cannot hurt a Sentinel.
Corrupted Programs	Glitching, colour-cycling programs in the Outlands. They skip across the ground and lunge without warning. Hostile.
Grid Bugs	Tiny six-legged crawlers in the Outlands and under the city's bridges. They chew bridge blocks into dormant code. They run from you and bite only if you corner or hit them.

The alarm: a report, a searchlight or a blow against an Enforcer makes you hunted for 30 seconds, and the hunt keeps renewing as long as any Enforcer still has you in its sights. Break line of sight and get away.

Rewriting code with Enforcers within about 32 blocks also brings them running.

Screenshot comingthe-grid-sentinel

A Sentinel's searchlight turning red as it locks on to the player in a city plaza

Places

• Grid City. Streets on a regular grid, with a light-rail loop round the middle. Four plazas on the diagonals and the Gate Plaza on the south avenue each have an Energy Fountain and a Backup Terminal. Three sealed sectors (walled archives with a Code Block by the gate) and three broken skywalks (bridges to terrace gardens you can reach only by rewriting the span) reward a User who uses Root Access.
• The Arena. A bowl ninety-six blocks across with eleven tiers of seats and five floating disc courts above the field.
• The Buffer. Silken's nightclub, high in its own city block, reached by a lift shaft: step in to ride up, sneak to ride down.
• The Core Tower. PRIME's tower, to the north at the end of the main avenue.
• The Outlands. Static-clouded badlands past the plain's broken edge: five chasms, each crossed by one bridge of dormant code with a Code Block at its near end, and the hulls of things derezzed long ago.
• Ada's hideout, cut into a mesa to the south-east, with a fountain hanging from its ceiling.
• The I/O Tower, far to the south: the one way out.

Once you have found the hideout, the transit pads open: stand still on the pad on the plain before the city's south gate, or the one outside Ada's mesa, and a line of light carries you to the other.

Your quest: The Way Out

Nobody gives you this quest: the city does. It starts the moment you land, and the quest tracker shows each objective with a waypoint. A party shares its progress.

Step	Objective	What happens
1	Report to the Games: find the Arena	Unregistered programs must compete. Walk into the Arena.
2	Win the disc match	The Arena gives you a Data Disc. Win three duels on a floating court.
3	Survive the light cycle race	The Arena hands you a Light Cycle Baton. Outlast Static's riders.
4	Hold on to Vex	An orange cycle tears through the Arena wall. Vex grabs you and rides for it.
5	Ride across the Outlands to the hideout in the mesa, then talk to Ada Marrow	Ping, a little floating shape that answers only yes or no, attaches itself to you on the way.
6	Climb the Buffer and find Silken	Silken offers a route into the Core Tower. Then fight your way out of the Buffer.
7	Face Static in the Arena, then decide what to do with Static	A rematch on a collapsing court.
8	Talk to Tessel in the Arena, free Ping from the Core Tower, and get Ping clear	Steal a Sentinel and break into PRIME's tower.
9	Tell Ada you are ready, then climb the beam of the I/O Tower	The final ride, and PRIME.
10	Decide the fate of the Grid	Ada offers three endings.

The disc match

Three rounds, one challenger at a time. A challenger calls its throw before it lets go: move out of the line, or sneak and hold use to raise your disc as a guard that turns discs aside. Take three hits in a round and you are out of it. Fall off the court and the Arena simply beams you back. Lose the match and the Arena calls you again a little later.

Your Data Disc ricochets off up to three walls and comes back to your hand.

Screenshot comingthe-grid-disc-duel

A disc duel on a floating court of light high above the Arena, a challenger mid-throw

The light cycle race

Every cycle in the race runs at the same governed speed. Red walls are the only thing that can crash you. Survive 35 seconds, or box all three of Static's riders in, and you win.

Static, and a choice

Static, the Arena's masked champion, waits on the high court. Every ten seconds the outer ring of the floor flashes red for two seconds and falls away, until you are fighting on a 5x5 island. Falling only gets you beamed back up. He throws two discs, dashes and glitch-blinks, faster as he weakens. At a tenth of his health he kneels and waits for your word:

• "No. Get up, Tessel." spares him.
• "Break the mask." shatters the visor.

Either way, the man under the mask remembers his name, Tessel, Ada's first program, and that he knows the way into the Core Tower.

The Core heist

Tessel whistles down one of PRIME's own Sentinels. You steer it by looking left or right while two of PRIME's ships give chase. The Core Tower's seal and Ping's cage are both code, so only your hand opens them, and the moment Ping is out the tower screams. Run back to the Sentinel and ride home to Ada.

Screenshot comingthe-grid-heist

Riding the stolen Sentinel over Grid City toward the red-lit Core Tower

The Buffer, the I/O Tower and the endings (spoilers)

The Buffer: Silken sells you the route for "a copy of your disc's backup". He sold you to PRIME first. The roof fills with Enforcers, Ping is lost in the chaos, and when they have you, you wake up on Static's court in the Arena.

The I/O Tower: Ada's word sets off a ride with an army at your back. At the foot of the tower, step into the beam: it lifts you 150 blocks to a platform of light where PRIME waits, wearing Ada's younger face. It lashes with ribbons of light, lays arcs of red light walls round you and calls down Enforcers, over three phases. If you fall, the beam catches you. When PRIME falls, Ada and Vex come up the beam and Ada asks you to choose. Sneak at the middle of the platform to ride the beam back down.

The three endings (one per server, chosen once, for everyone):

Ending	What happens	What you keep
Reboot	Ada merges with PRIME and both are gone. A gold wave runs out of the Core Tower, the red drains out of the city, every Enforcer and Sentinel disappears for good, and gold riders race in the Arena for fun.	A free city.
Exit	You go home through the I/O Tower a few seconds later, and take Vex with you. The Grid stays PRIME's; it waits in its tower's lobby, no longer a boss.	Vex's Terminal: place it somewhere with a view of the sky and Vex appears above it as a hologram, asking about the world. Show her a sunrise.
Root	You take PRIME's place as Admin. Root Access never runs out, no alarm is ever raised on you, and programs kneel when they see you.	The Root Key: in the Grid, it lets you fly, and has two modes (sneak and use at the air to switch): Derez removes any block you use it on, Compile builds a copy of the last block you sampled (sneak and use on a block to sample it). Anywhere else, it does nothing.

Light Cycles

The Light Cycle Baton calls your own Light Cycle out of its Garage, or sends it home. Losing the baton loses nothing: the cycle lives in the Garage, and you can craft another baton.

Control	Does
W / S	Throttle (about Elytra speed on the flat) / brake and slow reverse
A / D	Turn
Space	Hop
Sneak	Get off
Mode key (see Controls)	Switch Snap (dead 90 degree turns on the grid) and Carve (lean toward where you look)

The cycle lays a wall of light behind it. A wall lasts 5 seconds and hits anything that touches it for 6 damage (you only hurt other players where PvP is on). Riding into a wall, or into a solid wall at speed, crashes you, and the cycle derezzes back to the Garage. It climbs one block at most.

The cycle runs on its Energy Cell. Refill it by right-clicking a Grid Charger with the baton, or park on a Grid Charger or powered redstone.

Screenshot comingthe-grid-light-cycle

A Light Cycle cornering in Snap mode across the Arena floor, laying a cyan wall

What to bring home

Programs, Enforcers and Corrupted drop 0 to 2 Code Fragments when they derez (more with Looting). Every Grid block you can break drops itself, except the code blocks, seals and the I/O Core.

BSBSBSBSBSBSBSBS

➜8

Grid Glass (Crafting Table)

➜

Data Disc (Crafting Table)

RRR

➜

Energy Cell (Crafting Table)

CNII

➜

Light Cycle Baton (Crafting Table)

CNCNBO

➜

Grid Charger (Crafting Table)

Building blocks, all shapeless:

Makes	From
1 Void Panel	1 Grid Glass
4 Circuit Floor	4 Grid Glass + 1 Code Fragment
4 Arena Floor	4 Circuit Floor + 1 Cyan Dye
4 Core Glass	4 Grid Glass + 1 Red Dye
3 Light Rail	Grid Glass, Code Fragment, Grid Glass in a row
1 Data Cube	Grid Glass + Code Fragment + Glowstone Dust
4 Light Cube	4 Glass + Code Fragment + Glowstone Dust
4 Neon Edge of any colour	4 Grid Glass + Glowstone Dust + a dye

Serum and getting home

• The arrival Box's cache holds 2 Serum Ampoules.
• Native stand-in: Raw Energy. Bottle it at any fountain's pool. It goes into the Synthesizer in place of Somnium Powder (you get the bottle back).
• Food does nothing here, so you can't eat your way through a long stay: plan around the fountains.

Tips

• Touch the Backup Terminal in the Gate Plaza before anything else.
• Keep out of the searchlight's spot. One second in the open is all it takes.
• Don't hit an Enforcer unless you mean it: the whole squad answers, and the hunt only ends once you truly get away.
• Save Root Access for when you need it. A rewrite costs a quarter of your bar and takes about 40 seconds to earn back.
• Ask Ping questions. It always answers yes or no, and it is always right.

Everything this world adds

30 blocks and items (click to open)

Circuit Floor

Grid Glass

Void Panel

Arena Floor

Core Glass

Light Rail

Data Cube

Light Cube

Outland Rock

Static Rock

Derezzed Wreckage

Code Block

Dormant Code

Sector Seal

Energy Pool

Energy Fountain

Backup Terminal

I/O Core

Grid Charger

Raw Energy

Code Fragment

PSProgram Spawn Egg

ESEnforcer Spawn Egg

SSSentinel Spawn Egg

CPCorrupted Program Spawn Egg

GBGrid Bug Spawn Egg

Light Cycle Baton

Energy Cell

Data Disc

Ping Signal

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)

I'm writing this on a wall that hums. The Box went white and my hands came apart into little glowing cubes, and I fell up a column of light and landed on black glass that runs to the edge of the world. There's a city out there made of light and nothing else. Food does nothing here; you drink light from the fountains, and it runs up the lines on your skin. They called me User, and some of them cried. Some of them ran to tell the guards. If you see a red light sweeping the ground, get out from under it. A program with a bright voice asked me what rain feels like and I couldn't explain it. I keep thinking about that more than the guards. When you have seen enough, step back into the Box with the Serum still in you and shut the door.