PLAY ADA'S TRAIL Ada's Trail

THE GARAGE

THE GARAGE is the first venue of the campaign, and it ends on its own terms.

The run calls the things here TROUBLE: 0 kinds of them, from the rank and file up to whatever is guarding the far end.

It is a home rather than a mission: nothing here ends, and its doors are the way out — THE CAR to GOODCO HQ; THE ROCKET to THE MOON and MARS; THE RIFT SEAM to THE RIFT and BOOT HILL.

The car is the one you leave in rather than through: the road runs down the far edge of the lot, and the trip is not booked until the wheels are on it.

The place

  • SIZE512 by 280 world units — about 1 phone screens across.
  • GRAVITY800 — a jump here comes back down about when you expect it to.
  • SUITThe hero arrives in plain clothes — the air here is breathable, so the suit stays stowed.
  • KNOWN GROUNDNo fog of war here — the whole floor is lit from the first step, because you know your own home by heart.
  • BREATHING ROOM1 pocket where nothing spawns and the wandering horde is pushed back out — a genuine rest, not just a quiet corner.
  • DEAD AREAS1 stretch the ambient horde never spawns into. Authored content still lives there, which is the reward for going off the line.
  • LOCKED1 door that will not open until the right key is in the bag.

What it fields

The mob levels here are authored per rung rather than scaled off your own, so the place is exactly as hard as it was tuned to be. COMES AT is the hero level the rung expects you to arrive at; LEAVES AT is where a single clear is reckoned to put you. RELICS FROM is the level this venue's own named relics start dropping at — below it they never do, which is why they are farmed on a return trip rather than found on the way through.

JESUS is the one rung that scales to the hero rather than to an authored number, so it has no fixed figure to state and is left out.
DIFFICULTYMOB LEVELCOMES ATLEAVES ATRELICS FROM
EASY1–763434
MEDIUM1–763734
HARD3–1083934
NIGHTMARE42–45425854

What it pays

Weapons it introduces

The bases this venue brings into the campaign. Each starts dropping once the monster killing for you is at least its level — and each carries its exceptional and elite versions along with it, so the pool keeps paying out here long after you have out-levelled the plain form.

Gear it introduces

The armor, jewellery, trinkets and bags on this venue's own table, gated the same way.

Powers it hands out

The campaign introduces two new powers per venue and every venue keeps what came before, so the vocabulary grows the whole way down. These are the 15 this one can drop.

The trader

A wandering merchant works this venue too: sell him what you will never wear, buy what you will. He dresses for the place.

Who is not fighting you

One person stands on this map with something other than a fight to offer, and between them 3 errands: THE RECEIPT, THE DENT and THE SCALE. Nothing can hurt them, and every one of those errands is taken and finished on a single visit.

The place itself

The whole venue at once, covered — a map is a spoiler in the same way a plot is.

A top-down view of the whole of THE GARAGE, drawn in the game's own pixel art
The place as you actually see it, drawn from the game's own sprites at the game's own coordinates and shrunk to fit — the ground, the walls, the buildings and the landmarks. The scattered rocks and rubble are rolled fresh every run, so treat those as a likeness rather than a plan; everything built stays exactly where it is.

What he says

Spoilers for this mission, covered until you ask for them.

On arriving

THE HERO

HOME. THE LAWN IS DEAD, THE BENCH IS A MESS, AND THE SHIP IS ONE PART FROM PERFECT.

The whole of what happens here — the scenes on the way in, every arrival speech, the last words and the found lore — is this venue's chapter of the story, covered the same way.