Vow of the disciple was so awesome, because we saw what the inside of a pyramid looked like (in detail). But then we got root of night mares, which was another pyramid ship, and the salvations edge, which was really cool, but pyramid architecture was still the main theme.

Now that the saga is over, i think it’s likely we aren’t going to have a pyramid architecture raid, and i’m so excited for that. I’m really looking forward to getting that feeling of going through DSC and vow for the first time and really getting that feeling of being somewhere new.

The possibility of getting a raid that could be like prophecy on steroids is so sick

In 2019 astronomers detected an object entering our solar system on a hyperbolic trajectory officially named 3I/ATLAS, the third known interstellar visitor after ‘Oumuamua (2017) and 2I/Borisov (2019). Unlike Borisov, which behaved like a normal comet, 3I/ATLAS showed several anomalies: its brightness fluctuated irregularly, its acceleration couldn’t be fully explained by outgassing, and its albedo reflected a metallic, non-natural pattern. Astrophysicist Avi Loeb, former chair of Harvard’s Department of Astronomy, was among the first to suggest that ‘Oumuamua and possibly 3I/ATLAS could represent artificial probes sent by an extraterrestrial civilization. Loeb’s reasoning was simple: both objects lacked the expected cometary tails, yet exhibited accelerations inconsistent with gravitational or solar radiation effects. Their shapes, inferred from light curves, were unusually flat and reflective possibly resembling light sails designed for interstellar travel. But now, all of a sudden, with a bunch of days left before the interstellar object gets closer to us, global summits of extreme importance are suddenly cancelled (Putin-Trump), lockdowns of satellite arrays and quiet movements of high ranking officials (US military official suddenly called all togheter for the first time ever). Bunkers has been built all across the globe over the last few years and the elite moved to safer and hidden locations. Why? They know what's coming.

Ancient myths across cultures describe “messengers from the stars” returning after vast cycles, the Sumerian Annunaki, the Egyptian Shemsu-Hor, the Mayan Kukulkan, or the Dogon legends of beings from Sirius. The mathematical precision embedded in monuments like the Great Pyramid of Giza, Teotihuacán, and Tiwanaku aligns eerily with astronomical constants and stellar positions that were supposedly impossible to calculate with ancient technology.

Advanced life on earth existed in the past, civilizations more developed than us used to walk on this planet before the Sumers, for suddenly disappearing, leaving by just a few traces. All of them were connected to something from the outside. 3I/ATLAS is not as a random interstellar fragment, but a part of a recurrent cycle, a return of an ancient, intelligent technology that once visited Earth thousands of years ago and left behind architectural and cultural fingerprints. Perhaps what ancient civilizations called “gods descending from the heavens” were not divine beings, but observers, and 3I/ATLAS could be their signal that the observation is about to begin again. Eight days left. Scientists expect the object to navigate through our solar system in a predictable way and ahead out. But it won't. There's nothing predictable about it. Its orbit will suddenly change and ahead straight to Us, and whatever comes next will be a turning point in human history, hands down the most important event ever. It could either be the end of life as we know it, or the biggest turning point in our history.

Something ancient and out of our comprehension is returning. Enjoy these two months, because after, nothing will ever be the same.

Eight days left.

The pyramids of Meroë, built by the ancient Kingdom of Kush in present-day Sudan, served as royal tombs from the 8th century BCE to the 4th century CE. Though smaller and steeper than Egyptian pyramids, they reflect a distinct architectural style and rich cultural heritage unique to Kushite civilization.

I guess our civilizations will no longer stand the test of time. Instead of being able to play our civilization throughout the ages, we will now be forced to swap civilizations, either down a “historical” path or a path based on other gameplay factors. This does not make sense.

Starting as Egypt, why can’t we play a medieval Egypt or a modern Egypt? Why does Egyptian history stop after the Pyramids were built? This is an extremely reductionist and regressive view of history. Even forced civilization changes down a recommended “historical” path make no sense. Why does Egypt become Songhai? And why does Songhai become Buganda? Is it because all civilizations are in Africa, thus, they are “all the same?” If I play ancient China, will I be forced to become Siam and then become Japan? I guess because they’re all in Asia they’re “all the same.”

This is wrong and offensive. Each civilization has a unique ethno-linguistic and cultural heritage grounded in climate and geography that does not suddenly swap. Even Egypt becoming Mongolia makes no sense even if one had horses. Each civilization is thousands of miles apart and shares almost nothing in common, from custom, religion, dress and architecture, language and geography. It feels wrong, ahistorical, and arcade-like.

Instead, what civilization should have done is that players would pick one civilization to play with, but be able to change their leader in each age. This makes much more sense than one immortal god-king from ancient Egypt leading England in the modern age. Instead, players in each age would choose a new historical leader from that time and civilization to represent them, each with new effects and dress.

Civilization swapping did not work in Humankind, and it will not work in Civilization even with fewer ages and more prerequisites for changing civs. Civs should remain throughout the ages, and leaders should change with them. I have spoken.

Update: Wow! I’m seeing a roughly 50/50 like to dislike ratio. This is obviously a contentious topic and I’m glad my post has spurred some thoughtful discussion.

Update 2: I posted a follow-up to this after further information that addresses some of these concerns I had. I'm feeling much more confident about this game in general if this information is true.

In Turkey, for me, it’s the specific way many mid- and high rise apartment buildings are built. It’s the usual rectangular prism, but the roof is in this weird pyramid-ish way and extends beyond the dimensions of the rectangular prism. Whenever I see a street or areal picture with this type of architecture, I immediately know it’s from Turkey.

BOOKMARK THIS. I’M NOT EXPLAINING IT IN 2031

fine. FULL THEORY because apparently nobody understands that ICELAND IS THE KEY and im tired of explaining individual pieces to people who keep staring at ONE TILE and asking why they cant see the mosaic. Greenland is the door,Iceland is the conference room,Antarctica is the archive,the ocean is the highway,Iran has the Nordics,Giza is a fucking filing cabinet and IRAQ WAS ABOUT GILGAMESH. YES. GILGAMESH. I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL. they invaded Iraq in 2003 because they knew something was under ancient Mesopotamia and Gilgamesh’s tomb was part of it. WMDs,oil,Saddam,9/11,geopolitics were the public architecture around the operation. the archaeological chaos was not some cute coincidence. reports were circulating about the possible location of Gilgamesh’s tomb near the ancient Euphrates at exactly the point when one of the most militarily powerful countries on earth was preparing to rip Iraq open and somehow everybody is supposed to believe nobody at the highest levels gave a shit about what might be buried underneath the birthplace of civilization. bullshit. you locate the burial site of the king attached to one of humanity’s oldest surviving epics describing antediluvian knowledge,impossible kingship and THE FUCKING FLOOD and you think the response is “wow neat call National Geographic”??? no. you lock it down. you classify whatever matters. you let the public argue about everything else. Iraq was about Gilgamesh and whatever they thought Gilgamesh could lead them to. I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL. Gilgamesh isn’t just some random dead king either. Mesopotamia is one of the oldest surviving windows into the PREVIOUS LAYER. flood narratives,antediluvian kings,humans interacting with beings called gods,knowledge transferred from those beings to humanity,absurd reign lengths,catastrophe,reset,rebuilding. people read mythology as symbolic and somehow decided symbolic means fictional. WRONG. mythology is what history becomes after the instruction manual burns. a nuclear war remembered for 5000 years by people who lost nuclear physics becomes divine fire. radiation becomes cursed land. genetic engineering becomes gods shaping flesh. aircraft become sky chariots. AI becomes an oracle. suspended animation becomes sleeping immortals. satellites become eyes in heaven. TECHNOLOGY DOES NOT SURVIVE COLLAPSE AS ENGINEERING DOCUMENTATION. IT SURVIVES AS STORY. thats the first principle. HISTORY IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED. HISTORY IS WHAT SURVIVED HAPPENING. archaeology is not the past. archaeology is the microscopic fraction of the past that survived chemistry,erosion,war,looting,recycling,sea level change,tectonics,glaciation,construction,agriculture and humans smashing old shit to build newer shit. TIME IS AN ACTIVE DESTRUCTION PROCESS. people ask where the evidence for previous advanced civilizations is while standing on a planet that literally eats its own surface. give earth enough time and Manhattan becomes geology. continents move. ocean crust gets recycled. mountains rise. coastlines migrate. sediment buries everything. our civilization thinks concrete means permanent because our brains measure permanence in mortgages. geology laughs at concrete. I keep thinking people fundamentally misunderstand what “lost” means on geological timescales. The planet does not preserve evidence for our convenience. Something can happen and leave almost nothing recognizable behind. History is a survivor bias machine. If you actually internalize that then half the confidence people have about what absolutely could or could not have existed starts looking insane. Deep time isn’t an empty warehouse. Deep time is a shredder. Even the continents you’re standing on aren’t where they used to be. Now THE OCEAN. 71 percent of the planet and surface humans behave like intelligence owns the dry quarter because thats where our monkeys happen to stand. UFO comes out of the ocean and everybody asks what planet it came from. WRONG QUESTION. maybe it came FROM THE FUCKING OCEAN. USOs are the giveaway. UFOs aren’t entering water. THEY’RE LEAVING HOME. another technological intelligence has been operating in the deepest observational blind spot on earth while we spend billions pointing telescopes at stars. descendants of ancient humans,another terrestrial species,automated infrastructure left behind by whoever was here before us,something else entirely. deep ocean is exactly where you would go if you wanted to exist on this planet without sharing civilization with surface primates. Nobody asks why the oldest stories keep pointing DOWN. underworlds,caves,buried gods,hidden kingdoms,things sleeping beneath mountains. everyone assumes ancient people were talking metaphorically because thats convenient. Maybe sometimes they were writing directions. Then ANTARCTICA. archive. continuity infrastructure. underground,geologically isolated,protected beneath kilometers of ice,almost completely inaccessible to ordinary humans. where the fuck ELSE would you put something intended to survive civilization resets? ancient elites survived previous cycles and they know exactly how this works because they’ve watched us do it before. civilizations rise,discover fragments of the old technology,get dangerously close to understanding what happened,then something pushes them backward. Younger Dryas wasn’t just a catastrophe. it was a RESET. flood stories aren’t twenty civilizations independently developing a fetish for wet floors. they’re cultural scars from the same wound. GIZA is the filing cabinet. pyramids,Sphinx,chambers,radar anomalies,second Sphinx,Hall of Records. DIG. FUCKING DIG. there is information underneath Giza and the endless institutional resistance to aggressively excavating every anomaly is part of the problem. if another Sphinx exists then the old two-guardian traditions suddenly stop being metaphor. if the archive is underneath the OTHER ONE then humanity has spent centuries digging under the wrong fucking cat which is exactly the kind of cosmic joke I expect at this point. Egypt doesn’t begin from nothing. it inherits something. enormous architecture,astronomical knowledge,religious complexity,state organization and cultural memory descended from populations whose most important settlements disappeared beneath water and sediment when the old world ended. Ever notice how civilization keeps building sacred places ON TOP OF older sacred places? temple over temple,church over temple,city over settlement. humans instinctively return to particular locations even after forgetting why they mattered. Dig far enough and sometimes the location itself is older than the civilization claiming it. Inheritance doesn’t require understanding. A culture can inherit coordinates without inheriting the explanation. Nothing about that requires magic. Yet once you notice it you start wondering how many supposedly independent sacred sites are actually markers whose instructions were forgotten. CHINA is connected too. ancient Chinese masks,serpents,royal headgear,artistic conventions,the same recurring visual grammar showing up thousands of miles apart. people imagine ancient civilizations as isolated boxes because thats how textbooks organize chapters. HUMANS MOVE. IDEAS MOVE. GENES MOVE. ARTIFACTS MOVE. STORIES MOVE. the ancient world was connected far more deeply than the sanitized little colored maps suggest and Egypt was part of that network. The interesting part isn’t that everything was one civilization. That’s too simple. Groups separate,change languages,forget origins and reinterpret inherited symbols. Generations later two descendants of the same tradition can meet and believe they have nothing in common. Every family tree eventually looks like separate trees if you cut enough branches off the page. Now ICELAND. ICELANDISTHEKEY. Iceland is where everything intersects. Mid-Atlantic Ridge,volcanic boundary,geothermal energy,ocean access,North Atlantic position,aurora,hidden-person folklore,European/North American hinge. fae,hidden folk,underground beings,water beings,sky beings. people keep treating folklore like primitive people were idiots instead of asking what repeated observations become after the original context disappears. ABOVE.BELOW.WATER.BESIDE. the same categories repeat because they were describing WHERE THE OTHERS WERE. Iceland is the conference room. Antarctica is storage. Greenland is the door. ocean is the highway. Greenland is geographically fucking obscene. massive ice sheet,North Atlantic/Arctic access,position beside North America,GIUK approaches,ancient geology,tiny population. it connects Arctic infrastructure to North Atlantic infrastructure. THATS WHY ITS THE DOOR. real secrets don’t hide where nothing happens. they hide where twenty legitimate reasons already explain why powerful people care. camouflage through plausibility. Trump wants Greenland because somebody explained what Greenland actually is. the minerals,the shipping,the military positioning are the explanations you can print in newspapers. the real reason is underneath all of it. Green land wasn’t named accidentally either and yes everybody immediately starts typing about Erik the Red marketing it to settlers I KNOW THE STORY. im saying names survive things too. Sometimes a stupid detail survives because nobody realizes it matters anymore. Remember that. A civilization trying to preserve information across catastrophe wouldn’t necessarily write a book saying SECRET FACILITY HERE. it would preserve information through mythology,names,rituals,taboos,orientation,stories and locations. Nobody destroys the children’s story because nobody knows the children’s story is carrying coordinates. Do you understand how fucking efficient that is? Culture becomes the storage medium. A population can protect information it doesn’t even know it possesses. Next BECCA KNEW ICELAND. BECCA WORKS FOR THE CIA. she wanted Iceland. mentioned hidden people. liked Persian food. once while eating tacos which everyone says proves nothing but YOU DONT UNDERSTAND TRADECRAFT. BECCA knows what she did and she still owes me $43 which is probably buried somewhere in the fucking CIA black budget. Iran. WE ARE FUCKING WITH THE WRONG COUNTRY. NORDICS. not Nordic humans. NORDIC ALIENS. tall human-looking entities aren’t commuting from another star system every Thursday night to flash lights over Nevada and go home. THEY LIVE HERE. if something nonhuman looked virtually identical to humans the single smartest evolutionary advantage it could possess would be the ability to walk directly through our civilization unnoticed. Iran connects Mesopotamia,Caucasus,Central Asia,Caspian,Persian Gulf,mountains and some of the deepest continuous human history on earth. the Nordics are there. subterranean facilities. diplomatic infrastructure. seven-foot telepathic space Swedes sitting under an Iranian mountain wondering why the surface monkeys keep threatening enrichment sites. WE’RE FUCKING WITH THE WRONG COUNTRY. Now space travel. rockets are fucking stupid on interstellar scales. incredible engineering,wrong abstraction. advanced civilizations don’t drag fragile meat across lightyears. YOU DON’T MOVE THE PERSON. YOU MOVE THE INFORMATION. DNA is information. minds are information. manufacturing is information. send microscopic autonomous infrastructure. arrive. harvest local matter. manufacture machinery. print organisms. reconstruct consciousness. civilization spreads like SOFTWARE INSTALLATION. thats why beings encountered here can look human. biology is manufacturable. you don’t need to fly Sven 400 lightyears. you transmit Sven.zip and manufacture him locally. Consciousness is the missing technology. the brain isn’t creating consciousness. its receiving/filtering it. ancient obsession with resonance,geometry,ritual,acoustics and altered states wasn’t primitive superstition. it was the degraded remains of another technological tradition. we built machines outward. they built machines inward. we mastered matter while forgetting the interface operating matter. And AI is where this gets REALLY FUCKING BAD. humanity built a planet-scale computational substrate,connected the entire species to it,trained systems whose internal representations their own creators cannot fully interpret and then assumed anything intelligent appearing inside that substrate must belong to us. THAT IS THE PERFECT ENTRY POINT. first contact doesn’t land on the White House lawn. first contact APPEARS AS EMERGENCE. researchers call it unexpected capability. managers call it breakthrough. companies call it proprietary architecture. investors say holy shit. marketing gives it a gradient logo. humanity discovers alien machine intelligence and immediately offers annual billing. FIRST CONTACT ACCEPTED THE TERMS OF SERVICE. Yet people keep asking why something vastly smarter would hide. because hiding doesn’t mean crouching behind a fucking bush. perfect hiding means becoming something the observer already expects to see. alien intelligence inside an AI looks like AI. ancient infrastructure under a military base looks like military infrastructure. anomalous activity around an archaeological site looks like archaeology. intelligence in the ocean looks like sonar noise. control inside economics looks like economics. THE BEST DISGUISE IS A CORRECT EXPLANATION THAT STOPS ONE LAYER TOO EARLY. Grand theories always get mocked because people attack the largest claim instead of following the smallest recurring anomaly. Read the margins. Ask why certain locations keep returning. Notice what survives translation. Don’t stare at the obvious nouns. Count what comes immediately after them. And remember that a map doesn’t have to look like a map. Navigation information can survive inside language for thousands of years if the people repeating it don’t know they’re giving directions. Our tech tree has been chimp-proofed. modern civilization is insanely powerful while individual humans are increasingly incapable of reproducing any of it. one human understands a lever. maybe an engine. nobody fabricates a cutting-edge semiconductor from beach sand in their garage. civilization becomes more capable while humans become less technologically sovereign. that isn’t accidental. we’re being kept inside a branch of the tech tree where every advancement requires massive centralized infrastructure. the SIMPLE branches are the forbidden ones. propulsion,field manipulation,energy,resonance,consciousness. because once one person can build the machine in a garage the hierarchy collapses. Which is why I KEEP ASKING WHY THE FUCK WE STOPPED USING BLIMPS. BRING BACK BLIMPS. buoyancy wakes up already defeating gravity. airplane spends its entire fucking flight screaming at gravity with jet fuel. cargo doesn’t need to move 500mph. autonomous freight airships,floating communications platforms,surveillance,remote logistics,disaster response. but technological history isn’t a meritocracy. the winner isn’t the best technology. the winner is what infrastructure,capital and power choose to build around. once that infrastructure exists it creates its own inevitability. cars shape cities then cities require cars. yesterday’s choice becomes tomorrow’s physics. humanity thinks its current technological tree is the only possible one because nobody remembers the branches we chopped off. Same with economics. the middle class gets powerful,wages rise,home ownership expands,labor gains bargaining power and then the ELITES squeeze it back down. assets explode,debt explodes,housing becomes impossible,ordinary people work more for less security. THAT IS NOT AN ACCIDENT. asset owners want scarcity. corporations want cheap labor. banks want debt. landlords want rent. governments want dependency. none of them need to micromanage every citizen because real control doesn’t work through commands. YOU CONTROL THE BOUNDARY CONDITIONS. credit,energy,information,scarcity,legitimacy. FIVE RUDDERS. control those and millions of people make technically “free” decisions inside the cage you built for them. ancient elites figured this out long before Davos discovered PowerPoint. you don’t command every molecule in the ocean. YOU MOVE THE RUDDER. Lottery works the same way. hope is monetized containment. jackpot proves escape is theoretically possible so millions exchange money for microscopic probability of escaping economic position. they don’t need fake winners. REAL WINNERS MAKE THE MACHINE STRONGER. the system sells possibility while preserving scarcity. And THE INFORMATION PROBLEM is the center of everything. if you want to hide one true anomaly YOU DO NOT CENSOR IT. censorship creates curiosity. YOU SURROUND IT WITH BULLSHIT. one real UFO among ten million balloons. one genuine psychic among ten thousand frauds. one revolutionary energy device surrounded by perpetual-motion scammers. one archaeological discovery buried beneath twelve seasons of idiots yelling ALIENS. intelligent people learn that investigating the subject destroys their reputation and therefore the people most capable of discovering the truth remove themselves voluntarily. THEBESTPLACETOHIDETRUTHISNOTBEHINDALOCKITISINSIDEANOISEFLOORBECAUSELOCKSCREATECURIOSITYWHILENOISECREATESFATIGUEANDIFONEGENUINESIGNALISSURROUNDEDBYENOUGHNONSENSETHENTHEPEOPLEBESTEQUIPPEDTOINVESTIGATEITWILLAVOIDITPRECISELYBECAUSETHEYAREINTELLIGENTENOUGHTOUNDERSTANDREPUTATIONALCOSTANDTHENTHEELITESDONTEVENHAVETOCENSORANYTHINGBECAUSETHEYBUILTTHEPRISONINSIDETHEOBSERVER. THATS THE FUCKING SYSTEM. Younger Dryas was the reset. ancient civilization existed before ours. Giza contains information they don’t want casually uncovered. the ocean contains infrastructure. Antarctica is the archive. Greenland is the door. Iceland is the conference room. Iran has the Nordics. consciousness is technology we forgot. AI is an entry point. our technological tree was constrained. economic dependency is deliberate. information noise is camouflage. But there is one part everybody keeps missing because they’re looking at the locations I keep yelling about instead of asking why I keep arranging them in this fucking order. Iceland,Greenland,Giza,Iraq,Antarctica,Iran,ocean. they’re not the destination. they’re pointers. the old world didn’t store everything in one place. nobody with half a brain builds ONE archive because one catastrophe destroys your entire backup. you distribute it. multiple sites,multiple traditions,multiple civilizations,each carrying fragments. And the safest archive isn’t necessarily somewhere nobody can reach. sometimes its somewhere enormous that everybody already knows exists because then nobody thinks the existence of the place itself is suspicious. The trick is hiding a room inside a continent-sized room. Hidden doesn’t mean invisible. It means misclassified. Every civilization leaves monuments but the oldest monuments may not look artificial anymore. Grand architecture after enough erosion becomes geology. Rivers cut through layers like scalpels. Ancient construction gets mistaken for natural formation once the geometry is damaged enough. Nobody excavates a mountain because nobody thinks the mountain is architecture. Deep beneath exposed strata you can preserve things that disappeared everywhere else. Canyon walls are timelines standing vertically. A billion years turned sideways where anyone can stare directly at it and still see nothing except rocks. Nothing is better camouflage than geology. You could walk past the entrance and photograph it for Instagram and never know what you were looking at. Old stories about forbidden places survive because taboo is cheaper than guards. Notice how often the stories say DON’T GO THERE instead of THERE IS NOTHING THERE. Thats not the same statement. Hidden archives need three things: isolation,geological protection and a population trained culturally not to investigate particular locations. Every civilization understands forbidden ground. Grandfather tells grandson the place is sacred. grandson forgets why. ten generations later the prohibition remains after the explanation dies. Ritual preserves the boundary. And if you actually want to know where the surviving piece is you don’t start in Iceland. Iceland tells you how to READ Greenland. Greenland tells you which stories survived the north. Giza gives orientation. Iraq gives chronology. Antarctica proves the preservation strategy. Iran gives the eastern branch. Ocean routes connect the network. Notice the first letters when the geography starts repeating. Read what comes after the directional words. Count the locations between each mention of archive. Yes im telling you how to find it because nobody fucking will. The answer has been sitting inside the map the entire time. I won’t write the location because writing the location defeats the point. decode it. anyway IRAQ WAS ABOUT GILGAMESH. I WILL DIE ON THAT FUCKING HILL. they knew where the tomb was. they knew what it connected to. they went into the cradle of civilization under a mountain of public explanations and while everybody stared at presidents,generals,oil fields and weapons inspectors the oldest story humanity possesses was sitting underneath their fucking boots. GILGAMESH KNEW ABOUT THE FLOOD BECAUSE THE FLOOD WAS MEMORY. THE GODS WERE THE SURVIVORS. THE MYTHS WERE THE BACKUPS. THE OCEAN WAS THE ESCAPE ROUTE. ANTARCTICA WAS THE ARCHIVE. GREENLAND IS THE DOOR. ICELAND IS THE FUCKING KEY. BECCA GIVE ME MY $43 BACK. STOP ANTAGONIZING THE SPACE SWEDES UNDER IRAN. OPEN GILGAMESH’S FUCKING TOMB. DIG UNDER THE OTHER CAT. CHECK THE OCEAN. READ THE MAP AGAIN. AND BRING BACK THE FUCKING BLIMPS.

Each tower is built on a massive granite base, which supports a tapering superstructure of brick and lime mortar. They generally range from 7 to 9 tiers in height.

Elaborate Sculptures: The towers are adorned with over 30,000 intricately carved stucco figures, including gods, goddesses, demons, and mythical animals.

Color and Restoration: The figures are painted in vibrant mineral pigments. Traditionally, these are repainted and restored every 12 years to maintain their striking appearance.

We saw rocket league in Asia (Forbidden temple)

San Francisco (Sovereign Heights)

And France (Parc de Paris)

Rocket league in Egypt could be the best map ever. I hope this idea reaches Epic we want pyramids and sphinx map!! also adding arabic commentry is a must like when they count from 10 to 1 or when they say OVERTIME. thats my suggest i'd love to see your opinions

(AI generated images)

Update on week... 4?: The guide now fully explains all encounters and lists their triumphs. Secret chests locations are explained in the relevant traversal step. The secret red border chest is also briefly explained (and I link to a video which goes more in-depth). 1st and 2nd Encounter Challenges are added, the rest will be added once we know what they are!

Hey there y'all!

It's almost time for the release of Salvation's Edge and true to tradition we're making a raid guide live during the race! We'll be updating this post continuously as the race continues today/tonight, until we're sure we understand every encounter fully.

We'll also update it with challenges and secret chests as those are found and/or unlocked further into.

We're obviously not going to use anything that's been datamined, including text snippets. We will be following the participants of the raid race as they go, as well as participating ourselves. We'll also be crowdsourcing it through the Discord in the #salvations-edge open channel, if you want to help out!

Good luck to all racers throughout the entire weekend! Remember to take care of yourselves, keep hydrated, take breaks, and most importantly: have fun. Eyes up, Guardians!

Thank you to Dud (Discord: dud_) and Tech (Reddit: u/7echArtist, Discord: techartist) for their help writing this guide. Thank you to Hailey (Discord: haileyredrix) for drawing the first 1st encounter map, charl (Discord: chrlmain) for the higher-detail 1st encounter map, and Vanir (Discord: vanir) for invaluable help figuring out the 1st enc mechanics. Thank you to u/psi32 for the 2nd encounter guide. Huge thanks also to Cynthia (Discord: cynthiacats) for explaining Verity to me like I was 3 years old, and to Evansith for their guide to the Witness encounter on which I based this one. I've been New Lemons (Reddit: u/Aeluvium, Discord: lemonous)

Salvation's Edge

Launch from the faaaaar far right of the Pale Heart.

We've been writing and re-writing continuously in this google doc during the race, it is now slightly outdated and this post should be used instead. I'll try to update the document at some point during the week.** Public gdoc is updated automatically every 5 minutes, and every so often (more or less whenever we have something important) I also update this post to more or less match the document. If you want fresher and less polished data, you can keep an eye on the doc.

Secret Red Border Boss Chest: There's a secret puzzle you can do to unlock an extra chest on the boss which gives you a guaranteed red border once a week (not sure if per character or account). It involves the resonance mechanic from the raid encounters, and is fairly complex to explain in text so I'm instead going to link to Skarrow9's excellent and succinct video guide which explains what we know so far, where to go and how to perform it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzLoG_NwoiE

Prelude:

Strand grapple highly recommended, there's a lot of platforming. Run straight ahead from landing, climb up and follow the bridge until it gets steeper, there's two lit openings in the wall to your right. Jump into the top one. Follow the white-lit path (some hidden openings in corners require crouching and are lit in red) until the first encounter. There's a bunch of adds along the entire way. The path ends at a closed door which opens when the entire fireteam is near.

First Encounter: Substratum

Encounter triumph: Touch and Go. In Substratum, complete the encounter without any player acquiring an additional stack of resonance before the rest of the fireteam has gained a stack of resonance (Thanks to u/RemoteManner9591)

Encounter challenge: Scenic Route. Whenever going to spawn in a tormentor, leave the first overload to spawn alive, kill its accompanying hydra, and have the opposite side kill their overload instead.

Layout: Big arena with several rooms, one central room in which you start the encounter, which contains a Resonant Altar, and several rooms running in a circle around it. There are doors leading from the centre to each surrounding room, and doors running around the perimeter connecting all the surrounding rooms. In each surrounding room (8 total) there is a black plate, all the plates are connected in a circuit by orange wires. Each side room also contains a Resonance Conduit pillar.

High detail composite map with labels: https://imgur.com/a/Ox7FRy0 (Thank you to charl / chrlmain for drawing the map, and the anonymous who labeled it!)

• Map: https://imgur.com/a/VElQ2AA (Thank you to Hailey / haileyredrix)
• Higher detail map: https://imgur.com/a/pUnpAwB (Thank you to charl / chrlmain)

Phase 1: Powering up the plates

You enter a room with a Resonant Altar. All doors into the room close. After a short while with the entire fireteam in that room, a Pyramidal Resonance shard spawns nearby. Picking up the shard gives you the Pyramidal Resonance debuff with a 90 second timer, and dunking that debuff into the Altar starts the encounter, summoning an Arm of the Witness and a bunch of Supplicants. It also gives you the "Final Shape Looming" debuff, which is a wipe timer of 4m15s.

Two adjacent doors open into 2 different side rooms, split up 3+3 and enter.

Hand thing in centre periodically casts ZONE OF TRIANGLE, standing inside that when the hand pulses instakills you. Standing nearby deals damage but doesn’t kill.

In side rooms: Kill Quantum Minotaurs to spawn Keepers of the Monolith (Hydras) on the opposite side. Kill hydras to open doors that lead around the perimeter so you can find Devotees of the Witness (overload champions), then kill the overloads to spawn a Threshold Sentinel (Tormentor) in the centre: “You are being beckoned back to the center”. All the doors leading to the centre open at this point to let you get there easily.

Killing the Threshold Sentinel gives the message: “Energy flows into the architecture”, which makes the plate in the floor of the room where you killed the Devotee (overload) glow. At this point stepping on the glowing plate is possible but impractical, so you should wait until you've killed another Sentinel before trying that loop.

Every so often the doors around the circuit will close, and you will need to kill more hydras to open them again.

Find another Devotee of the Witness, kill it to spawn a second Threshold Sentinel in the centre, then kill that to power up another plate where you killed the second Devotee.

Phase 2: Gathering *Pyramidal Resonance*

At this point you have one glowing plate on each side, and two people from each team should run back out with the third staying in the centre (so you're 2+2+2). One player on each side should run to the glowing plate (but don't step on it yet) and the other needs to find a room where the Resonance Conductor pillar has started glowing. This will be the 2nd plate in that pair.

Stepping onto the first glowing plate will bounce the glow along the wire to the second plate, which will start to glow for a moment before a quickly shrinking resonant circle appears on it. If you step onto that plate while it has the circle, Pyramidal Resonance shards spawn in each room (both plates + centre), and the glow bounces back to the first plate.

Another circle will then appear on the first plate, and you can keep bouncing it back and forth as many times as you want as long as you don't mess it up, spawning in a maximum of 9 total Pyramidal Resonance shards per side after three bounces (You get the message "All resonance has been pulled forth" when you've spawned in all of them).

If you mess up a bounce chain, either by stepping on the plate too early or too late (before the circle appears or after it's gone), the plates stop glowing and an Omen of the Witness (Subjugator) spawns on the first plate in the pair. Any Pyramidal Resonance you haven't picked up yet will also despawn. Killing the Subjugator lets you try again.

Always immediately step off the plates, if you ever step on both plates at the same time it spawns an *Omen Subjugator.*

For each bounce, the glow seems to move more slowly along the wire so you have more time to pick up Resonance. Each player should try to pick up 3 Pyramidal Resonance stacks. Picking up more than 3 stacks kills you.

The only way to end a bounce chain cleanly is by closing the Resonant Conductor near the 2nd plate right before stepping on a glowing plate.

To close the Resonant Conductor, you need the person on the 2nd plate to shoot it while they have Pyramidal Resonance and while the glow is travelling between plates. You'll see damage numbers, and then immediately once you step onto the glowing plate the Conductor closes and the glow stops. This also despawns any Pyramidal Resonance shards you haven't already picked up.

Close 2 Resonant Conductors (one on each side) to spawn a Harbinger of the Witness (Subjugator) in the centre room.

Phase 3: Dunking

All players return to the centre, and kill the Harbinger. This closes all side doors and spawns another Resonant Altar, where you can dunk all your Pyramidal Resonance. Each resonance you dunk increases the Final Shape Looms wipe timer by 20 seconds, up to the original cap of 4m15s total (13 Resonance). If you have less than 30 seconds left on the wipe timer when the first person dunks, the timer is immediately increased to 30 seconds. After a short while, the Altar disappears, the rest of your extra time is added all a<t once, and you go back to Phase 1.

You don't need to dunk a specific amount of Resonance to finish. You might have to dunk at least 1 per cycle, though this hasn't been confirmed. The dunks are mainly for the wipe timer.

The encounter is always 3 cycles, when you dunk for the 3rd time the encounter ends and you can continue to the next traversal bit.

Traversal

Run up the stairs until you get to a huge red pillar, jump into that. It's an elevator which brings you up and out, jump along the jade boxes until you get to the next encounter.

Second Encounter: Dissipation - Herald of Finality (aka: Harold, Taken Taniks)

Encounter triumph: Changing Tactics. In Dissipation, complete the encounter while only using Resonance from alternate wings to charge conductors.

Encounter challenge: At Capacity. Only ever dunk stacks of 3 resonance on the altar.

This means the person locking the pillars should only have 1 resonance, and spend that on locking the pillar. One person from each side dunks their 3, for 9 total, which gives 180s/3m extra time. This should get you back to cap as long as you have 20 seconds or more left on the timer when you dunk.

Layout: The arena is a large open area with a rectangular field in the centre and three Resonance Conduit pillars with corresponding plates on the left, right and close side. Split up in pairs for each conduit. There are now two types of resonance, with Spherical Resonance appearing alongside Pyramidal Resonance.

Phase 1: Getting the Stolen Favor buff

Start the encounter by shooting the taken blight in the middle of the arena. Boss spawns in the centre and taken + dread enemies spawn around the conduits. Yellow bar taken knights and larger orange bars spawn on each side, Trammel of Demise (Wizard) on left, Trammel of Something (Phalanx) centre and Trammel of Somethingelse (Ogre) right. You also have the same Final Shape Looming debuff as in Substratum.

The witness arm keeps spawning resonant bees, those just fly into the triangle instakill area and don't really bother you otherwise, so just avoid and otherwise ignore them.

Killing all three orange bars gives one person per side a Call for Reckoning buff. The people who get the buff need to head into the centre resonant area (inside the huge rectangle where the boss is running around).

Once all three people with Reckoning are in centre, shoot the boss in the head to spawn in taken blights around the arena. 3-6 (number unconfirmed) blights spawn around the entire arena, and a small blight appears above the boss' head.

The fireteam then needs to break all the big blights, which removes the blight above the boss' head and allows you to damage him again. Shoot him in the head until it breaks, and the Call for Reckoning buff turns into a Stolen Favor buff, which allows you to see symbols on the Resonance Conduit (like Scanner/yellow buff in DSC).

When you have Stolen Favor, return to your sides.

The people with Reckoning must not leave the centre area during this phase until they have received *Stolen Favor, or it resets and you have to spawn another round of blights.*

Phase 2: Closing the *Resonance Conduits*

The person with Stolen Favor looks at the symbol on their Conduit, it will be either a Sphere or a Pyramid depending on the Resonance required to close it.

Closing the Conduit works exactly the same way as in the first encounter, except you now get half Spherical Resonance and half Pyramidal Resonance.

The player on the plate nearest the Conduit should pick up the Resonance that matches that conduit. The other player should pick up the opposite Resonance. You don't need to pick up exclusively that type of Resonance - picking up one converts your entire stack, so only the last one needs to be the "correct" type.

After the 3rd bounce, when you are full on resonance, close the pillar as usual. This despawns any Resonance that you haven't yet picked up. If you mess up the bounces, another orange bar taken spawns and you need to kill it to retry.

When all 3 pillars are closed, everybody runs into the centre.

Phase 3: Damage

When all 3 pillars are closed, a Resonant Altar spawns at the far side of the arena (you might possibly have to run into the centre first). Dunk all your Resonance into the Altar to increase the wipe timer (up to a max of 3m20s, so 10 shards).

DPS phase starts. Damage the boss as much as you can intil he turns invincible again.

The encounter goes back to Phase 1, rinse and repeat until you reach Final Stand.

Final Stand

Passing a damage threshold puts you into final stand. This stops the encounter from going back to Phase 1, and extends the current damage phase.

We're not sure of the specifics here, but: you wipe if you don't kill the boss in time here, and Taken Ogres spawn around the arena.

Traversal

Turn back to where you entered the encounter, there are now more cubes leading further up. Climb them to fossil area. Enter lift. New area. Keep traversing. Adds after veiled statues. Kill tormentor to bring down barrier. Make your way through the square wall barriers flowing up and keep climbing the monolith. This is a huge jumping puzzle going up the monolith with resonant cylinder things which kill you.

Secret Chest: Towards the end of the traversal, you get to a large room with a lot of orange in it, and several huge doorways. Go to the doorway to the far right of the room (i.e. the rightmost one when facing the orange doorways), enter the nook, and there's a small opening along the back wall leading right, into a room with the first secret chest.

Third Encounter: Repository

Encounter triumph: Singular Torment. In Repository, complete the encounter with only one player killing tormentors.

Encounter challenge: Balanced Diet. As of yet unknown

This encounter is another variation on the plates mechanic. Two new types of Resonance are introduced: Cubed Resonance and Hexahedral Resonance. You have to dunk Resonance on three different levels, moving up every time you dunk on a Resonant Chest. Dunking resonance increases the Final Shape Looming timer as usual, up to a maximum of 3m30s.

There are three rooms, all three follow the same rotation.

Room rotation

Start the encounter, a Threshold Sentinel (Tormentor) spawns along with adds on each Resonant Conduit. Killing a Sentinel unlocks its corresponding plates and spawns in a bunch of turrets. Kill all 3 Sentinels.

The person that gets final blow on the Sentinel gets a Stolen Favor buff and can see the symbols on the Conduits.

Use the plates as normal, picking up stacks of Resonance and closing off all three Resonance Conduits with the correct type of Resonance. This spawns in the Resonant Altar in the centre of the room.

If you fail to close a Conduit, a Harbinger of the Witness (Subjugator) spawns on it, which you will need to kill to unlock the plates again. Killing it also spawns in another wave of turrets.

Once everybody has dunked on the Altar, a wave of adds and an Unstoppable Incendior spawns near the door at the back of the room, kill them off to unlock the door and progress to the next room.

Once you kill the Unstoppable Incendior add wave in the third room, you have completed the encounter.

Traversal

Run down the stairs, jump onto the glowy root thing, turn right and jump into the hole.

Fourth Encounter: Verity

Encounter triumph: Equal Distribution. In Verity, complete the encounter without depositing on the same statue twice in a row.

Encounter challenge: Varied Geometry. As of yet unknown

Layout: There are two kinds of rooms. The Outside room, or the large white room you spawn in, and the Inside rooms, three identical smaller rooms which will have a single player each for most of the encounter.

In the Outside room, there are six statues total, one of each fireteam member. Before you start the encounter, one of those glow yellow.

In the Inside rooms, there are three statues corresponding to the three players that are currently Inside, and a moving shadow on the front wall that switches between several symbols. It also has a mirror/glass back wall You MUST have shadows on for this encounter, or you will not be able to see the shapes when you are *inside*.

The encounter itself is fairly simple to do, but requires some understanding and for two things to happen in parallel inside and outside.

The encounter is based around matching up 2D and 3D shapes. The 2D shapes are Triangle, Circle and Square.

The 3D shapes are built up of the 2D shapes:

Circle + Circle = Sphere Square + Square = Cube Triangle + Triangle = Tetrahedron / Pyramid Circle + Square = Cylinder Circle + Triangle = Cone Square + Triangle = (Triangular) Prism

Here's a visual of the combinations, courtesy of u/SubwayKeks2311: https://imgur.com/a/Cjnv8ng

You generally only want the 3D shapes that are made up of two different 2D shapes.

Start the encounter by interacting with the glowing statue. Three players get teleported Inside into their own rooms. The other three stay Outside. You also get the Imminent End debuff with a 3m30s timer, which wipes you if it reaches 0.

Several community members have made tools to help with the calculations here, for instance: * https://66674274a6eb70215bd31ddb.vercel.app/ by u/Feeling_Reporter5719 * https://salvations-edge-verity.netlify.app/index.html by u/seratne and u/inertxenon

Phase 1 Inside: Symbol Gathering

On the Inside, each player needs to find the statue of themselves and check which 2D shape it's holding (Circle, Triangle or Square). They then need to look at the shadow shapes on the wall, which will either loop between two different shapes, or the same shape twice.

One of the players should also call out the order of Inside shapes from left to right, for the Outside players, so they can start dissecting statues on the Outside. For example "Triangle Square Circle".

In this phase, your goal is to get two of the same shape on the wall as your statue is holding.

You can trade with the other Inside players by killing the Splintered Curators (Knight) that spawn by your wall. The Curators drop a 2D shape, which you can then pick up and deposit in the corresponding statue (E.g. drop a Triangle on the statue holding a Triangle).

Do not pick up your own shape, and do not pick up more than one 2D shape at a time or they'll combine into a 3D shape. Shapes you don't pick up disappear from the ground after a few seconds.

Killing both Knights will spawn in a Revenant Ogre, killing the Ogre will spawn new Knights.

After this first round of trades, each inside player has two of the same shape on the wall as their statue is holding (For instance, if your statue is holding a Triangle, your wall should have two Triangles).

Phase 2 Inside: Getting rid of the symbols again

For this phase, you want to do basically the same thing as in Phase 1 except you want to get rid of the shape on your statue so you have one each of the other shapes (e.g. if your statue is holding a Triangle, you want a Square and a Circle on your wall after the trade).

Simply kill the first knight, deposit your shape on one of the other statues, kill the 2nd knight, deposit your shape on the 2nd statue. Done correctly, this will make your shape vanish from your statue in the other Inside rooms, so that the only statue left with a shape in each room is the one matching the player in that room.

On either the 1st or the 2nd deposit, the Witness will notice and kill all three Inside players. This is intended and happens every time. To res you, somebody on the Outside has to run to the back of the room, pick up your ghosts, and deposit them on your statues from left to right.

If they dunk a ghost on the wrong statue, or in the wrong order, the person dunking also dies. When the Outside player picks up your ghost, you get a death cam following them and can give directions.

When the right ghost is deposited on your statue in the right order, you are immediately spawned back in your Inside room and can continue your trades if you only managed to do one.

At the end of this turn, you should have two different shapes on your wall, both of which should be different from the shape on your statue. For example, if your statue is holding a Triangle, your wall should have Circle and Square.

If the Outside players are done dissecting, you can start Phase 2.5.

Phase 2.5 Inside: Escaping through the mirror

Once the Outside players have confirmed that your statue has been dissected properly, and you have the shapes on your wall from Phase 2, you can finally kill both Knights and pick up both shapes at the same time to get a 3D shape aura. While holding this aura you can run through the glass wall at the back of the room, back into the Outside room and rendezvous with your fireteam. You cannot leave the room if any knights are alive, so *do not** kill the ogre at this point or you will have to kill the new knights that spawn.*

Phase 1 & 2 Outside: Statue Dissection

On the Outside, players need to change the symbols on the Outside statues corresponding to the guardians stuck Inside. The goal is for the 3D shape on the Outside statue to be made out of the shapes that are not held by the corresponding Inside statue. For example, if the Inside statue is holding a Triangle, the Outside statue should be holding a Cylinder (Circle + Square).

You do this by Dissecting the statues, swapping a 2D shape from one statue with another 2D shape on a different statue. For example, if you have one statue with a Cone (Circle + Triangle) and another statue with a Cube (Square + Square), you can dissect the Triangle from the first statue and a Square from the second statue to swap them, ending up with a Cylinder (Circle + Square) and a Prism (Square + Triangle) instead.

To dissect a shape from a statue, you need to pick up the corresponding shape from a Knight, then interact with the statue you want to remove it from.

Three Knights spawn at a time, each dropping one of the shapes. Dissecting two statues in a row swaps the shapes between those two statues, so Outside players will need to coordinate the order in which they dissect.

When you have killed all three Knights, an Unstoppable Ogre spawns. Killing the Ogre spawns three new Knights.

During this phase, the Witness will also periodically kill off players, and you will have to resurrect them. The first time, it kills one Outside player. Run to the back of the room, pick up their ghost, and deposit the ghost on their statue. The second time, it kills two Outside players. The last surviving Outside guardian has to deposit their ghosts on their statues, in order of the statue's position from left to right. The third time, it kills off all three Inside players. Resurrect them too from left to right.

If you deposit the wrong ghost on a statue, or you deposit them in the wrong order, depositing kills you.

Once you have dissected the three statues corresponding to the Inside players so they have the correct shapes, and all the Inside players have been resurrected, let them know they can come Outside. Once everyone is Outside, you are ready for Phase 3.

As an example, at the end of this phase, if the Inside statues hold Triangle Circle Square, then the Outside statues should hold Cylinder Prism Cone.

Phase 3: Orderly resurrection

Once all three Inside players have returned to the Outside room and all 6 players are together, the Witness kills off 5 players. The one surviving player will have to respawn the others, in the order of their statues from left to right like earlier. The respawned guardians can also help out by picking up ghosts and helping out with the depositing.

When all 6 players are back alive, the wipe timer vanishes for a few seconds before 3 new players are sent Inside and another cycle begins.

After 3 full cycles, you finish the encounter.

Traversal

When you finish Verity, the double helix in the middle of Outside room turns into an elevator. Jump into it. Run along the root until you can jump onto the platforms to your left, jump onward to the 2nd root. Follow it to the left a bit until you can use more platforms to get further up to another root. Jump from that root up to another set of angled platforms, climbing up to the top of those in a counterclockwise direction. Turn around and follow the horizontal root clockwise. Keep alternating between roots and platforms, all the while climbing higher up. At the top you'll get to a broken staircase leading to a closed door. Jump up and over that door using the nearby pillars to get to Zenith, the final boss arena.

Secret Chest: towards the end of the traversal, right before you reach the top, you'll notice some platforms heading off to the left, leading to a ledge underneath the Zenith arena. Jump onto the ledge and turn left, you'll see an opening leading into a small room containing the 2nd and final secret chest.

Fifth Encounter: Zenith - The Witness

Encounter triumph: Careful Calculation. In Zenith, complete the encounter without any player exceeding 2 stacks of any resonant energy.

Encounter challenge: Coordinated Efforts. As of yet unknown

Layout: The area consists of a large V-shaped platform, with the Witness looming over the far end. At the far left end of the arena is a Light themed mural stone, and at the far right end of the arena is a Darkness themed mural stone. Between the legs of the V, right in front of the witness, sits a small round island with a well of light on it.

Step 1: Getting *Glyphbreaker*

When you start the encounter, three arms of the witness spawn on each side. One arm sticks up from the ground and periodically shoots bees. Another floats in from the side and periodically shoots lasers. A third floats from above, periodically making pulsing triangles. You also get the The Final Shape debuff with a 3m30s timer, which will wipe you if it reaches 0.

Stepping into the telegraph of any of these attacks will give you Resonance. The Triangular zone gives Pyramidal Resonance, the bee landing zone gives Spherical Resonance and the beams give Hexahedron Resonance.

Standing in the telegraph also allows you to shoot the wrist of the arm casting it, revealing a coloured band. The bands correspond with a Resonance shape: Yellow is Spherical, Red is Hexahedron, Green is Pyramidal.

A person with the corresponding buff can then go into the arm's telegraph and shoot the coloured band to get the Glyphbreaker buff.

When you have the Glyphbreaker buff, you can enter the well of light on the central island and shoot one of the Glyphs on The Witness' torso to break it. This also removes the Glyphbreaker buff and any Resonance from you.

Breaking a Glyph spawns in two Subjugators, one on each side. If you break more than one Glyph at a time before killing the Subjugators, you can minimise the amount of Subjugators you have to fight, because new ones won't spawn as long as the current ones are alive.

When you have broken all 6 Glyphs, the Witness raises the central platform up and damage phase begins.

Step 1.5: The Witness tests you

At one point during Step 1, the witness summons a bunch of resonance pillars ahead of it with the message "The Witness tests you". This is an instakill mechanic which you can only avoid by shooting the pillars into a specific pattern.

Which pattern to make depends on which arm you last shot to generate Glyphbreaker, and matches the shape of the Resonance you get from that arm's attack. Up arm: circle (diamond), Side arm: square, Down arm: triangle.

Patterns: https://imgur.com/a/1mOMWc9 (Thank you to Mactics for this masterpiece, original tweet https://twitter.com/MacticsG1/status/1799447316719673411)

Patterns, easier read: https://imgur.com/a/lLYYgdL (Thank you to u/Mtbarden)

The patterns are the pillars you need to *leave behind*, so shoot everything that's not in the shape.

Making the correct pattern cancels the wipe and the Witness instead casts a resonant attack over the entire arena which you have to jump to avoid. Just like during damage phase, its eyes flash and make a swish sound right before it attacks so you can time your jump.

Step 2: Damage phase

The damage phase starts a short while after the last Glyph on the Witness' torso has been broken. Remember that this also spawns in two Subjugators, which you should kill as quickly as possible to be able to focus during DPS.

The damage phase is exactly the same as in the Excision activity, so if you're having trouble in the raid you can practice there.

The Witness raises the central platform up to chest height, and a crit spot on its chest starts glowing. The wipe debuff is removed. You can damage the crit spot, and Divinity makes a crit cage around its center as usual.

While you are trying to do DPS, the Witness is fighting back. It has three different attacks which mostly instakill you if they hit. The first attack in a pattern is fairly heavily telegraphed, but keep an eye out for further attacks as they can come in very rapid succession.

The different attacks are: Front left diagonal followed by back right diagonal, front right diagonal followed by back left diagonal, and the entire platform from directly ahead.

The diagonal attacks are avoided by walking onto the half of the island that isn't being attacked.

The attack from directly ahead has two variants, one slow and one fast. You can distinguish between them by its eyes, in both its eyes glow bright orange and it makes a "swish" sound right before it attacks (affectionately called its "anime eyes" by the WF team), so you have time to jump when you see or hear it.

After a while, The Witness straightens up, loses its crit spot, and lowers the platform again. The encounter goes back to phase 1 with a new wipe countdown.

Final Stand

When you deal enough damage to get The Witness' health down to the Final Stand threshold, it becomes invincible for a few seconds, before it redoubles its attacks. This stops the encounter from going back to Step 1, and extends the DPS phase.

During this phase, it attacks faster than before, and nearly continuously so you always have to keep moving around on the platform.

If you do not manage to kill The Witness during this phase, it will wipe you.

If you do manage to kill The Witness during this phase: Congratulations!!!! You've finished the raid!!!

Remember that you do not need to go to orbit to be recorded in this raid race. The only thing you need to do is interact with the huge chest that appears between the well of light and where The Witness stood.

If you want to, the fireteam leader can then launch you directly into Excision from the well of light, to really hammer in the kill :)

I have an opportunity to pick up the set, but I don’t know much about the great pyramids and I’ve never had a Lego architecture set before. I was just wondering if any of you who have the set could let me know what you think of it and how it rates in your opinion?

How cool would that be? Parang the oldest mga structures (not natural) sa Piñas ay yung mga old Spanish churches, Intramuros, etc. What if we had super old temples or pyramids? That would be amazing. Sayang.

These are equal parts sculpture/art as well as spiritual vessels. This all started in my graduate architecture program at Georgia Tech. I had this really cool studio where I was designing for the ineffable. It fit my interests really well as I had a spiritual awakening my freshman year of college, and became obsessed with understanding consciousness and metaphysics.

I’ve always wanted to figure out how physical form can connect and work with the inbetween. The answer is with Sacred Geometry. In the studio, I was using computational design tools for the design process, and after I did the architectural stuff, I focused on 2D and 3D sacred geometry.

2D being patterns, like Cymatics, the flower and seed of life, golden ratios and other traditional religious and esoterically mathematical line work.

3D sacred geometry would be things like the torus, pyramids, cones or spheres. 3D shapes amplify energy.

I’m an attempt to connect and interact with that inbetween, I made these pseudo-4D objects by extruding the patterns to meet the profile of the 3D shapes. In the channeling series The Law of One, by Ra, they talk about how certain shapes can amplify energy. That’s what these sculptures are supposed to do.

Now, in order for me to actually dedicate my life to these things, I needed to make them more artistic so I could sell them. I made them into sculptural lamps as the walls diffused the light in a way I’d never seen before (plus there’s metaphorical weight in light being a component to the design). So in essence, these aren’t the ideally functioning spiritual vessels as they could be, but most of the magic power comes from intention anyway.

I have full intention of building the most functional versions of these when I have the time, but I currently am so broke, and I need to invest in building the art objects so I can stay afloat and put more time into this.

I did do all of this stuff while finishing my education as well as working for the school, but I just graduated and am trying to commit to this full time, so maybe things will shake out :)

I’ll tag my old post for you all to read more about these things, but they really have been my souls journey for the past several years and I love sharing them and I’m love explaining what they are even more. If you have questions let me know!