Patchwork Gravity

Strange physics

Every shard of earth in this sky keeps its own down.

At a glance

Kind of world	Strange physics
Serum in the arrival Box	2 ampoules
Native Serum stand-in	Gravity Core
Quests	None

Screenshot comingpatchwork-gravity-shards

A violet sky full of floating shards of earth, grassy tops and mossy undersides, a player standing upside down under one of them

What happens when you arrive

The ground here comes in pieces. You arrive on a broad home shard of grass and stone hanging in a violet sky, and all around you, above and below, float hundreds more shards of earth. Each one keeps its own down. Stand above a shard's middle and you fall onto its grass. Drop below it and you fall up against the moss on its underside, with your boots on the ceiling of the world. Below everything is the void.

The rule: every shard has its own gravity

Where you are	What gravity does
Above a shard's center	Normal gravity pulls you down onto its grassy top.
Below a shard's center	Gravity flips: you fall up onto its mossy underside and walk around on it.
Walking off the rim of an underside	The shard lifts you round its edge and onto its top.
In open sky between shards	Almost weightless: you drift gently downward until the next shard's pull takes hold.
Falls	You can fall four times as far as at home before you take damage.

A shard's pull reaches two and a half times its radius from its center, so a good jump from one rim often lands you in the next shard's field. A bad one drifts you down to the void.

Shards are 6 to 14 blocks in radius, spread out in five layers. The home shard, where the Box stands, is the biggest, with a radius of 18. Mobs follow the same gravity as you.

Screenshot comingpatchwork-gravity-underside

Looking "up" from a shard's mossy underside at the grassy top of the shard below, the void far off

What lives here

Sheep, rabbits and goats graze the shard tops. At night, zombies, skeletons and spiders. No creepers and no phantoms. Beds work.

What to bring home

Find	Where	Why it's worth it
Gravity Core	The very center of every shard. Dig in with a pickaxe.	A cold, humming violet stone that glows. It runs the Cryo Stabilizer without ice.
Coal and iron	Scattered through each shard's stone.	Ordinary ores.
Wood	Trees on the shard tops.	Oak, as at home.

Serum and getting home

• The arrival Box's cache holds 2 Serum Ampoules.
• Native stand-in: Gravity Core. Right-click it into the Cryo Stabilizer and it keeps the Stabilizer cold in place of ice. Every shard has one, so you can mine as many as you like.

Tips

• Practise on the home shard first: walk off its edge, fall onto its underside, then walk off the underside's rim to come back up.
• Jump between shards from the rim, toward a shard close by. If you miss, you drift slowly, so you have time to aim for another one.
• Carry blocks. A quick bridge between two shards saves a lot of nervous jumping.
• Digging to a core from the top or the bottom both work; just remember which way is down when you break through.
• Don't fight on a rim at night. A skeleton's knockback into open sky is a long way down.

Birds

Birds you can photograph for your bird log here. Open one to turn it round, watch it move and hear its call.

• Tumbler Pigeon: common
• Satellite Shrike: rare, dangerous

Everything this world adds

1 blocks and items (click to open)

Gravity Core

The traveler's tape

Every arrival Box has a chest by its door holding a cassette: the last traveler reading their journal of this world aloud. This is what they say. It gives a lot away.

Read the journal (spoilers)

The ground here comes in pieces, each one hanging in the sky, and each piece decides for itself which way is down. Stand above a shard's middle and you fall onto its grass; drop below it and you fall up against the moss on its underside, with your boots on the ceiling of the world. Between the shards there is almost no weight at all, so a good jump from one rim carries you into the pull of the next, and a bad one carries you down to the void. At the heart of every shard is a cold violet stone that hums against your teeth; the Cryo Stabilizer takes it in place of ice. The weathered Box sits on the broad shard where you arrived; go back to it with the Serum still in you and shut the door.