“The first thing you see is a tired yellow, and the next is a hum that never goes away.”
Level 0 is where every wanderer begins. It is an endless office building: damp carpet, dull yellow walls, fluorescent ceiling lights and a faint fog of the same color. There is no one and no usable window, only the electric hum, which never quite goes quiet.
It is the only level with populations and the only way into the world, because the wanderer always appears here and the beds where you wake after dying can only be set up here. The other levels are reached by falling, by going down, or by crossing doors that should not exist.
Description
Office rooms and corridors. Each zone has its own character, and some turn up more often than others:
| Zone | Frequency |
|---|---|
| Normal | 34 % |
| Dense | 13 % |
| Open | 13 % |
| Low | 10 % |
| High | 10 % |
| Blackout | 12 % |
| Empty | 8 % |
The ceiling is 3.7 m high over a little more than 70 % of the terrain. Elsewhere it varies between 3.5 and 4.0 m, so it almost never looks like the same corridor twice, even when it is similar.
Structural variations
Avenues
Wide corridors with wallpaper and a dark baseboard.
Cubicles
Partitions and desks with a phone and a notepad.
Hypostyle halls
Rooms of columns where your sight gets lost among the pillars.
Noises
The background ambience is an office hum. On top of it works the fluorescent hum from eight sources spread across the terrain, and now and then something sounds in the distance: a piece of furniture being dragged, a door.
Anomalies
About six per square kilometer: 2.5 m ceilings in wide offices, ceilings that drop in 10 cm steps, repeated rooms with copied furniture, and doors to nowhere. Details in Level 0 Anomalies.
Set dressing and signs
Office nameplates at 1.60 m, exit signs at 2.20 m, corkboards and stopped calendars. No real brand text. More in Signs and set dressing and Diegetic texts.
Entrances and exits
- Entrance: the place where the wanderer wakes. It is the only one.
- Pit: a one-meter hole with no railing. The fall leads to Level 1. See Pits.
- Service staircase: goes down through the building toward the basements.
- Door to nowhere: leads to Level 2.
- Sublevels: layers of the same level, not separate levels. They are 0.0, the Vestibule, 0.1 and 0.01.
How to survive
The Watchers, the Skinstealers, the Children, the Smiler, and the Prowler and the Grille live here. They can share a single chunk, so don’t stand still listening.
Beds and shelters can only be set up here. Any chunk can be stabilized, as Stabilization by tiers and Beds and Shelters explain. What falls down a pit does not come back, so don’t throw away what you want to keep. To build, see The Space Above the Drop Ceiling and Breaking Walls and Floors.
What people say
In some zones the ceiling rises to five and a half meters, and others shrink until your head brushes the tiles. People also talk about a damask rest room with dim orange light where the tension eases, which they call the Manila Room. Nobody agrees on how to get there.
Case file images
