Well rested, and the Undercliff

Two things this time. One is small and comfy, the other is a long way down. They go together better than you’d think: one gets you ready for the other.

The seats you make at the workbench have always been nice to sit on. They bring your run energy back faster than standing, from twice as fast in a folding chair to five times in the gilded armchair. Now they do more than that.

Sit on one for half a minute and you’re Well rested. It works like a good potion: your Strength goes up, and from the beanbag up your Attack too, and from the recliner up your Defense as well. The better the seat, the bigger the boost, and it’s worked out from your own level, so the higher you are, the more you get. You also get stamina: run energy drains 70% slower for a few minutes after you get up, longer the better the seat.

The boost stays full for as long as you’re sitting. Once you get up, it wears off a level a minute, so the trick is to sit down as close as you can to whatever you’re about to fight. You can set your seat down almost anywhere, and that’s the point. A seat only fills you back up once every ten minutes, though, so you can’t keep hopping in and out of it. Stamina doesn’t wait: any half minute in the seat tops it up.

The loveseat seats two and the picnic blanket seats six, and you can let your friends sit on them, or anyone at all. Everyone who sits gets the boost, so one blanket sets up the whole group. Your seat packs itself back up if you wander too far from it, so it comes with you. The seats are a members thing to make and set down, but sitting on someone else’s is free for anyone they let on. The benches round town are still good for a breather, but they don’t give you a boost.

You can see all of it on screen. Under your health and run bars there’s a little moon for Well rested, an arrow for the boost and a brown boot for stamina, and hovering one tells you what it’s doing and how long it has left. While you sit they glow gold, to show they’re being held. Your boosted levels show up green in the Skills tab, and while stamina lasts your run bar turns brown. Die and you lose the boost, but logging out keeps it.

And if you have a stone fireplace in your room, the seats round it bring your hitpoints back four times as fast, and your run energy faster still. That one’s mostly for being cozy.

Last time I mentioned the sea cave at the back of Smugglers’ Cove. Now you can go in. The Undercliff is Gildrook’s first proper dungeon: a big tide cave on two floors, and it goes back a lot further than the smugglers would like you to know. Getting there is half the fun. The smugglers on the beach still don’t like visitors, so mind them on your way to the mouth.

Just inside is the Landing, where the crates come in. It’s the one safe spot on the top floor. Past it are the Rat Runs, a tangle of old tide tunnels full of giant rats. They’re easy, and they won’t start anything. There’s the Stash off to one side, where the smugglers keep their stock, and the Wash at the north end, a flooded run the sea still comes into, which you’ll have to wade through.

The Webbed Galleries to the east are another matter. Cave spiders live there in nests, and they’re small, but they never come alone. Pick a fight with one and the whole nest joins in, and it doesn’t matter how high your level is. The galleries are a multi-way area, so they really can all get you at once.

At the far end is the Drop, a ledge with a rope ladder going down. It goes down to Penhale’s Hold. There’s a bigger nest down there, with giant spiders this time, and in the middle of the floor is a ship. The Patience was carried in by a high tide a long time before anyone in the cove was born, and her crew never left. They’re brine skeletons now, bones gone sea-green, and they still keep the ship, and the Salt Caves all round her. They’re level 25, and they’ll come for you if you get close. They drop bones, often a few coins, and once in a while a piece of armor or a sword.

Past the wreck are the Counting Rooms, which is where everything the smugglers land ends up. I’m not going to tell you who’s counting. Bring friends, bring food, and sit down for a minute before you go in.