World Beyond

In-game Room Descriptions

The nights are freezing cold in the desert... A thick dust cloud engulfs everything and you can hear mournful groaning all around you. Occasionally you make out an indistinct figure moving in the shadows. let's hope that it's just your imagination...

The desert stretches for as far as the eye can see... How many lives were lost in its vastness ? Who is to say that you won't be next ?

Shifting Sands, Thirst and Dehydration

The World Beyond is pretty much desert, desert, and more desert. As it is, you'd expect to become Thirsty Thirsty while exploring. Save your Water Ration Water Ration for towards the end of the day after you've walked around the desert, because sleeping Thirsty Thirsty without having Refreshed Refreshed yourself at some point in that day means you'll wake up Dehydrated! Dehydrated!

Every 11 zones through which you travel downgrades your level of hydration, from normal to Thirsty Thirsty and from Thirsty Thirsty to Dehydrated! Dehydrated! Travelling another 11 zones while Dehydrated! Dehydrated! will result in death.

The "zones travelled" counter is reset to 0 overnight, and also when you drink a Water Ration Water Ration. Because of this, people may restrict their exploration to a round-trip of 10 zones or less; this way, they do not increase their thirst through travel. Longer expeditions will plan their order of food, drug, and water consumtion to account for this, as well.

Map

The map is your friend. While it doesn't display the people on each square if you are out of town, it does still show rough estimates of zombie numbers in zones explored by your fellow townspeople (by color), special locations (a solid small square within the square), as well as markers laid and expeditions planned by your townspeople. Also, it shows you how to get home.

Exploring and Scavenging

Taking to an adjacent zone in the World Beyond costs 1 . When you're out of , you will be unable to move; however, you can still Search (and autoscavenge) and perform other -free actions -- such as consuming food or water to replenish your ... or posting on the forums to ask a neighbor to bring you the food or water you forgot to pack!

At every sector, even depleted ones, you can Search the area for materials (an -free action). Doing this will put you into autoscavenge mode, where you will be able to search for an item every two hours. Even in a non-depleted zone, some searches will turn up nothing. You can only search a given sector once a day. Consequently, you can only be on autoscavenge mode while you are in the sector and haven't moved. Logging out will not interrupt autoscavenging; every two hours when you would normally get another search, a pending search will accrue, and all pending searches will be resolved when you next log in.

• Losing control of the area to zombies also immediately disrupts autoscavenge - which means you can't search the zone again for the rest of the day.

If your search is unsuccessful:

? something about waste of time (exact text needed)

A line will also appear is the zone's log that (Player)'s search was unsuccessful. (exact text needed)

If your search is successful:

After extensive scavenging, you manage to find the World Beyond something... on the ground...

If the zone is depleted after you find something (regardless of its state before):

This zone is depleted, all that remains to be found here are poor-quality resources...

If your rucksack is already full, or you've found a Heavy item while already carrying something Heavy:

You cannot carry this object for the time being, so you have left it lying on the ground.

Trapped

If there are more zombies than human Control Points (CP) (each Resident generates two CP; the heroic Guardian generates four) you cannot move. You cannot scavenge or autoscavenge the area.

• e.g. There are 3 zombies in your sector, and you are the only human there. You generate 2 CP, the zombies generate 1 each. 3 zombie CP > 2 human CP, and you are trapped.

When trapped, you have two additional options:

• You can Attack the zombies with your bare hands -- this costs 1 and has a very small chance of successfully killing a zombie.
• You can Flee from the zombies -- you automatically become Wounded Wounded and can then move to an adjacent zone as normal.
  • You cannot flee from zombies if you are already Wounded Wounded.

As both of those choices are costly, and potentially fatal, it is much better to use weapons to reduce the number of zombies present, or post on the Town Forums about your situation and then patiently wait for more citizens to come and increase the human CP in the zone (and possibly bringing more weapons from town.)

If you are in the World Beyond when the zombie horde descends upon the town at 23:00 game time, you will automatically die.

Special Locations

Certain locations will allow a second free action aside from searching the area; you will be allowed to search a special structure or building. However, like areas get depleted, buildings will get emptied out. Unlike depleted areas, which still give the chance of a low-quality material being found, emptied structures may yield nothing.

Some structures will be hidden by undergrowth or debris and require clearing before they can be explored. This can be done using or Ness-Quick Weedkiller Ness-Quick Weedkiller; the latter is naturally preferable. The amount of clearing required is indicated by the number of , and can vary from roughly 5 to 20.

Head over to the Special Zones part of this wiki to get an in-depth look at the different possible structures.