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Bressnath · Wiki

Before the Dark

A ruin-cache dug before the second night: Dig crew 8 by hand with the autopilot off, then the autopilot.

Before the Dark achievement emblem

Before the Dark
Excavate a ruin-cache, at most 1 nights survived, 2400 ticks endured.

Read it as: a ruin-cache dug before the second night is over, and the run still going at tick 2,400. Nights are counted at dawn, so the count is 0 until tick 2,400 and 1 until tick 4,800. It cannot unlock before 6:40 on the clock however early you dig, and the chance ends at 13:20.

Why the autopilot alone misses it

Idle villagers dig ruin-caches by themselves, up to Orders → Dig crew at once. The autopilot keeps Dig crew at 2 and rewrites every order each tick, and its people are busy building, so its first cache usually comes too late. So dig first, by hand, and hand over after.

The run, in order

  1. New Game, seed 75 (the recorded fen; on another seed the first cache may lie farther out), Begin. Press 3 for speed ×8, and leave the autopilot off.
  2. Press O and click Dig crew's + button until it reads 8; press O again. Build nothing, so the villagers not taken by the Holdfast's own jobs stay idle and walk out to dig.
  3. Wait for Grave-Delver I (a ruin-cache opened). In the recorded run it came at 3:05 (tick 1,112).
  4. Press F1 at once: the first wave comes at 3:20, and an unbuilt holding does not survive the first waves. The autopilot builds the defence from there.
  5. Before the Dark unlocks at 6:40 (tick 2,401), the first moment it can.
The Orders panel with Dig crew raised to 8, autopilot off
Dig crew at 8, with the autopilot off ("You have the wheel").
Grave-Delver I announced at tick 1142 with the autopilot now on
The first cache is open, and the autopilot has the wheel.

The recorded run

One game on seed 75 from a fresh profile, at the game's ×8 speed: Dig crew 8 by hand with the autopilot off, then the autopilot (F1) from the moment the first cache opened. The run is left from the pause menu once the achievement is announced, and the video ends on the in-game Achievements screen. The badge on every frame says who played; the game's own music, no commentary.

The Achievements screen, The Fen tab: Before the Dark, Grave-Delver II and Grave-Delver I lit
The same profile's Achievements screen, The Fen tab: Before the Dark lit, with both Grave-Delver rungs from the same run.

What goes wrong