World
The wasteland is a grid of hexagonal locations. Each one has a terrain type, a safety level, and whatever happens to be standing on it: resource nodes, hostile NPCs, friendly characters and other players.
Long press a hex to select it and see the available actions. Press the location icon to open the Location screen, where everything at that hex is listed.
Terrain
Plains, desert, urban ruins, forest, hills, mountains, marsh, rivers, open water and raider camps.
Terrain decides how fast you travel and also matters in a fight. Each type favors a different kind of weapon, forests and ruins give you cover, and raider camps weaken every weapon you bring.
Safety
Every location has a safety level, shown as a color.
Green: safe. Other players cannot attack you here.
Yellow: players can hunt each other here. Anyone who lies in ambush is marked as an Outlaw.
Red: the most dangerous ground in the wasteland. You can't go in until you've earned access. See Red zones below.
Red zones
Red zones are where the wasteland stops forgiving mistakes. Dying there costs you what you were carrying.
You cannot enter a red location, or travel through one, until you have earned access. It takes preparation, and the people who live near the edge know more about it. Access is permanent and covers every character on your account.
Other players can ambush you there, as they can in yellow zones. Red zones are lawless: nobody is marked as an Outlaw there, and a kill brings no reputation or Off the Grid.
Killed by an enemy: everything in your inventory is destroyed.
Killed by another player: half of your inventory is destroyed. The rest goes to your killer in a loot crate. If they have no free slot for it, that half is destroyed too.
Equipped gear, including your belt, and items bound to you (quest items, titles, frames and legendary skins) always stay with you. Crates and elite escalation items you are carrying are always destroyed.
Carry only what you can afford to lose. Leave everything else in storage before you cross over.
Settlements
There are some settlements on the map.
Aniid Kin, Twin Rocks and Prosperity are full-service: workshop, smith, leatherwork, kitchen, lab, library, storage, infirmary and a post office.
The Frontier is an outpost with only the basics: storage, infirmary and a post office.
Smaller camps and landmarks are scattered across the map. They have no buildings, but they are worth finding.
Facilities
Facilities are buildings you have to be standing in to use:
- Workshop: crafts most weapons, armor, ammo and tools, and runs deconstruction
- Smith: smelting ore into metal, and heavier equipment
- Leatherwork: tanning hides, and leather armor
- Kitchen: cooking, and extracting ingredients
- Lab: chemistry and medications
- Library: writing books, and invention
- Storage: holds items you are not carrying
- Infirmary: heals you to full health
- Post Office: send items and messages to other players
Facilities have levels. Advanced recipes may need a higher-level building, so not every settlement can make everything.
Resource nodes
Locations hold resource nodes: ore veins, trees, plant patches and piles of pre-war garbage.
Every node holds a limited amount. As people work it, it is marked as running low, and then as depleted.
A depleted node still gives resources, but you work it at half speed. Move to a fresh one if you can find it.
Nodes refill on a fixed schedule several times a day, everywhere on the map at once.
Enemies
Hostile NPCs live at locations: beasts, mutants, robots, swarms, aerial creatures, anomalies and hostile humans. Their kind and difficulty vary by region.
You cannot attack an enemy directly: you have to track it first.
Enemy spawns deplete the same way resource nodes do. Hunt a spawn out and tracking there takes twice as long until it refills.
Death
When you die you wake up at your home location with full health.
If you die in a green or yellow zone, you keep the items you were carrying.
Die in a red zone and you lose what you were carrying. See Red zones above.
The action you were interrupted doing is gone, but your action queue survives. Your character picks up the next order in the queue and walks back across the map if it has to.
Home location
Your home is where you respawn. New characters call Dawn's Rest home.
To move it, stand in one of the settlements and set your home there.