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Act 0 - Arrival and Core

Act 0 is the opening survival act. The MC arrives alone in the weakest surviving Shielded Zone, waking in a constrained nearby pocket held inside the failing starting anchor's pull radius rather than neatly on the anchor itself. The player learns to read danger through direct play, follows grounded signs before hidden truth has a name, discovers the dormant Nexus/Wardheart chain, and stabilizes it enough to establish the personal Core.

This act does not create the first Settlement. The approved progression keeps the personal Core distinct from the first Settlement-tier foothold.

Authorial note — title discipline: The heading Act 0 - Arrival and Core is a design-reference label used in this doc tree and in the act ladder in gd-canon.md. The player-facing chapter or act label must use spoiler-safe wording that does not name Core, Nexus, Wardheart, or anchor before the player has earned those terms. The internal label is for author alignment only.

This page remains the canonical owner for the Act 0 Act Arc. It is also the Act 0 appearance view for the Quest Threads that surface within that arc. Concrete thread ownership now lives under ../quest-threads/.

Role​

  • Teach queue and task programming through real survival pressure rather than a detached tutorial wrapper.
  • Make Survive the first visible multi-part thread. Its early beats stay grounded in waking, water, shelter, food, lost hours, and the first night instead of early cosmological truth.
  • Teach the first temporary camp routines and the first bundled overnight behavior through grounded needs such as rest, fire, shelter, and watch.
  • Reveal that the world is already demon-held, that the start area is unusually protected, and that the protection is failing. (See lore exposure: lh-game1-world-hooks.md — Ancient Shield row, Afterwar wound-fields row, Afterwar period state row)
  • Let old stones, leyline hum, ruined stonework, and other anchor clues harden from observation into earned leads before they become the identified Nexus/Wardheart of the starting site. (See lore exposure: lh-game1-world-hooks.md — Starting Nexus row, Nexus manifestation row)
  • Establish the Core as the MC's fixed personal anchor while keeping Camp, Settlement, and Realm-scale play locked behind later acts.

Canonical Thread Owners Appearing In Act 0​

Starting State​

  • The MC is alone.
  • The MC wakes in a constrained nearby arrival pocket within the failing anchor's pull radius, not on the anchor ruin itself.
  • The MC has only basic carried items, if any.
  • No settlement-scale production, district, province, or realm management is visible.
  • One current Location is visible and nearby land is mostly unknown.
  • Ancient Shield protection exists but is not yet understood by the player.
  • Demon pressure is present first as signs, weak creatures, black ash, tracks, and a growing danger gradient rather than as full-scale raids.

First Visible Thread - Survive​

Survive is the first visible multi-part thread of Game 1. It belongs to the Act 0 arc and should stay spoiler-safe until the player has earned stronger interpretation.

  • Canonical owner: ../quest-threads/gd-quest-thread-act-0-survive.md

  • Grounded early mission groups are waking, water and shelter, food and fire, lost hours, and the first night.

  • Later names can escalate through observation-earned leads such as The Old Stones and The Ruin Beneath once the player has enough evidence to support them.

  • Early player-facing wording stays close to need, fear, and incomplete understanding. It does not begin by naming hidden anchor truth.

For the authored Act 0 mission-level appearance view, see gd-act-0-mission-spine.md. For the attached gameplay branch, see ../design-branches/gd-design-branch-act-0-lost-hours.md.

Core Loop​

The act's playable rhythm should stay close to the current survival-first shape:

  1. Wake in the nearby pocket, inspect MC state, and read the immediate terrain.
  2. Queue short survival activities such as looking around, gathering fuel, foraging, making fire, and assembling temporary shelter.
  3. Set up the first temporary camp routines and survive the first overnight cycle.
  4. Scout neighbouring Locations and compare water, food, shelter, and danger.
  5. Investigate shield and taint clues such as old stones, leyline hum, ward-stones, ash, and ruined stonework until they become earned leads.
  6. Push the starting ruin chain far enough to identify the dormant Nexus/Wardheart.
  7. Stabilize that anchor enough to establish the personal Core.

What Act 0 Must Establish​

  • The player understands that time, stamina, food, rest, exposure, and travel all matter.
  • The player learns survival pressure through current condition and resolved safety values such as Stamina, Fatigue, rest pressure, and travel risk rather than through generic attributes.
  • The Location model becomes legible through facts, clues, and partial survey knowledge.
  • The player sees both demonic corruption and signs of suppressed danger.
  • The player learns that distance changes safety inside the Zone.
  • The player reads the first visible thread as survival, investigation, and partial memory rather than as an omniscient anchor hunt.
  • The Core appears as a fixed anchor tied to the starting Nexus/Wardheart, not as a generic settlement button that can be used anywhere.
  • Establishing the Core is the completion gate for Act 0.

Ending State​

Act 0 is complete when the player has moved from blind survival into informed anchoring.

  • The MC has survived the first immediate danger cycle.
  • The starting Location and nearby Locations are known well enough to support a real decision instead of random wandering.
  • The player has identified the dormant Nexus/Wardheart and understands that it is the special anchor of the starting site.
  • The Core has been established as a personal base of operations.
  • Establishing the Core has not founded the first Outpost-tier Settlement.

Boundaries Into Act 1​

Act 0 hands off three persistent structures to the next act:

  • The fixed Core at the starting anchor.
  • The travelling Camp as the MC's mobile survival and exploration layer.
  • A partially understood frontier where the first named people can be found and brought under the Core's protection.