She arrives in, not quite a field with a few trees dotted around. There's a large pillar in front of her made from spirals of Granite and Marble. A few moment later two people fall from the sky. They land on their feet as if this is an ordinary occurrence.

One of them is wearing blue jeans, and a green shirt with a rather poofy hairdoo.

The other had mismatched eyes, one blue and one green. A wide poofy wizard hat with a red brim, a dress and matching pants that are pulsating with red magenta and blue and last but certainly not least what appear to be a giant pair of pink butterfly wings.

The man speaks first. "Hello there Traveller. Welcome to Terraria."

She squints blurrily at them from where she's still panting on the ground. Then she has another minor panic over the blurriness, and sits up and rubs her eyes and squints again. No, okay, it's getting better, she's not stranded half-blind in a foreign world for the second fucking time in her life.

She's stranded in a foreign world for the second time in her life, but this time she can see and also no one is trying to rape her. Yet.

...also, wait, was that English?

"Hi, what the fuck?"

The woman addresses the man. "I told you she didn't come the normal way." Then to April, "What exactly are you confused about? I assume several things."

"I am confused about so many things."

Slowly and stiffly, she sits up.

"...if the normal way to get here is not 'fall down a hill and then through a really uncomfortable amount of vacuum', then yeah, I did not get here the normal way."

"Normally people travel here on purpose. This is a world of magic and adventure known far and wide for it's challenge and it's rewards... or it was... it's been a long time since anyone came."

"I did not come here on purpose at all! I came from... I guess you could also call it a world of magic and adventure, but I don't think anybody ever went there hoping for challenge and rewards."

"Oh, what was it like? Did you enjoy your time there?"

...she hesitates for a second, wondering if she wants to tell the truth, wondering what the truth even is.

Then she shrugs and says flippantly, "Well, it beat dying."

"Most things do. That's not high praise though. Hopefully you'll like it better here."

"Speaking of dying if you touch that pillar it will serve as your recovery point. It will heal you and teleport you back here if you would be fatally injured."

"...how's it manage that?"

"It infuses you with the magic of this world enhancing your body and attuning it's recall abilities to your health. You'll also get some magical and physical abilities."

"You can't just leave it there." The woman shakes her head. The top of her hat flops about a bit. "Your body will be enhanced to let you run faster and jump higher. You'll also get an extrasensory awareness of your surroundings, a pocket dimension, and an ability to interact with the various magical objects you'll find around this world."

"See, this sounds nice, but I'm sort of reluctant to trust strange magic I've never heard of with something as important as my mortality. What if something goes wrong?"

"Only people who refused to touch the pillar have ever permanently died on Terraria so I'm not sure what exactly could go wrong."

"...hmm. Well, how many people touched the pillar?"

"Forty-seven thousand five hundred and twenty-six."

"And how many people didn't, and how many of those died?"

"Two thousand two hundred. Of those, one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine perished. One thousand five hundred and nine from various traps, two hundred and six from falling to their deaths and the remaining seventy-four from killing themselves by playing with weapons they found."

"Well, at least I know what to look out for."

She looks around at the trees, and past them at whatever else there is to see from here.

"What happens if you don't die? What's the challenge, what's the reward? Why do people come here?"

The most obvious landmark is the giant tree off in the distance. Otherwise it seems that there are trees scattered in most directions. In the distance in one direction they seem to be replaced by cactus. In the opposite it looks like they might be covered by snow. Calling the cactus direction north there's a much thicker forest almost akin to the north west. To the south are the snow covered trees. To the East are purple trees and to the west are red ones. 

"Oh, the monsters only show up after you touch the pillar. They're pretty dangerous too and you can't really hurt yourself with most of the weapons you find once you've touched the pillars. Just some of the explosives."

"With every challenge you conquer in this world you will grow more capable. By the time you have conquered the last challenge you will be powerful enough to reshape the landscape at your will, and to defeat opponents akin to the gods of ancient tales. Further you will be blessed with the ability to travel to any realm within our reach of which there are a great many with the option to return one day if you wish."

"...that admittedly does sound nice."

She sighs.

"Okay, so if I want to take a look around without touching the pillar, I should avoid picking up strange objects, falling from high places... What's the deal with traps, how do I avoid those?"

"Most traps are triggered by pressure plates like these." The woman pulls a circular disk about 2/3 of a meter in diameter out of thin air and twirls it around. "If you step one one something unpleasant will happen. There are also trapped chests.... probably best not to open any until you can tell the difference or learn to defuse traps. Hmm... what else. Try to avoid the water. Some of it has nasty stuff in it. Lava should also be avoided, you shouldn't really need to worry about that as long as you don't go a few hundred meters underground though. You'll also want to avoid destroying any small beehives you encounter or disturbing the giant rolling cactuses sometimes found in the caves beneath the desert."

"...that's, uh... that's a lot of things. Dare I ask what the deal is with the beehives and the cactuses?"

"If you destroy a beehive it makes the bees angry and they'll try to sting you... I'm not sure whether their poison would be enough to kill you but probably safer not to risk it. The cactuses are really hard to stop once they start rolling and when they do stop they explode."

"...fair enough. Okay, uh..."

What else is important to ask at this juncture?

"...a bunch of people who refused to touch the pillar died, but a bunch didn't. Does that mean they successfully overcame the challenges and whatever without that, or what?"

"Only three overcame the challenge with the equipment and abilities they brought with them. They all had exceptional magics or technologies at their disposal. The remainder left by their own means before completing the challenge."

"So I'm not gonna manage it by myself anytime soon," she sighs. "Figures. ...how long does winning usually take, anyway?"

"The median completion time is two months among those who have completed it which is about two thirds of those who came. The remainder gave up after getting stuck on one challenge or another."

"Huh," she says, mildly surprised. "A couple months doesn't sound too bad, actually. If I decide to go for it." Flippantly but with a certain ironic sincerity, she adds, "It'll probably take me a month just to work up the courage to touch the damn pillar."

"Take as long as you need. Actually, here take this magic mirror." The woman produces a small disk shaped mirror a little bigger than a handspan. "If you get into trouble, or get stuck you can stare into the mirror for a few seconds and it'll bring you back here."

"...huh."

She glances warily at the mirror, hesitates, then takes it and slips it into a pocket.

"Is that standard equipment or what?"

"You can find them in chests underground or crates you fish up. I usually give people recall potions to start but I don't know if those are safe for people without this world's magic."

"...sure, okay, makes sense."

She looks around again, sighs, then heaves herself up off the ground, only staggering a little once she makes it to her feet.

"Log cabin time, I guess," she says, and she heads for the nearest tree.

There are plenty around to choose from. Most of them seem to be pretty bog standard deciduous trees including the closest one.

A lot of unpleasant and bewildering things have happened today, but do you know what is a very simple and satisfying process? Hitting a tree until it falls down.

She's remarkably strong, stronger than any ordinary human of her apparent physique should be; one good punch is enough to make the wood start to crack.

94 small copper coins fall from the branches with the first hit. The tree otherwise behaves as one would expect.

Wait, no, pause, back up, what?!

"Why does the tree give me money when I hit it??"

"That happens sometimes. All sorts of things end up in tree branches and a good solid whack is enough to dislodge them."

Okay, nope, we are investigating this mystery before proceeding.

She makes a halfhearted effort to kick the coins into a heap, then punches the tree again to see if a second coin shower ensues.

Nothing unusual happens.

"You won't find more stuff in a tree you've already whacked right away, maybe try another tree or try this one again tomorrow."

"I'm doing science," she explains, if you could call it that, and she strides over to the next-nearest tree and climbs it looking for coins.

Once she reaches the branches and they start shaking a couple acorns fall to the ground. This is probably less exciting. There are no coins to be found among the branches.

Okay but do the acorns fall to the ground because there were actually acorns attached to those branches or were the acorns spontaneously generated, that's also a question she now has—

There in fact appear to be no other acorns in evidence.

Right then.

She drops to the ground, rolls forward on the landing and bounces back to her feet, then turns back to the tree and punches it just like she did with the first one. Coins?

Nothing falls out of the branches.

Curiouser and curiouser...

Next tree, maximum stealth mode, these branches aren't going to so much as quiver if she has any say in the matter. She inspects them carefully. Acorns? Coins? Neither?

The tree has nothing but leaves on its branches.

Drop-roll-turn-punch, with barely a pause this time as she starts to get used to the maneuver.

Several cardinals burst from the branches of the tree and fly off.

Right, okay. It's time to do statistics to this.

Take the nearest, oh, twenty trees. (That she hasn't already mauled.) Carefully climb and inspect ten, then punch them; punch the rest without inspection. Tally the results. Observe trends.

Of the twenty trees eleven just drop leaves. Three drop branches. There's another flock of cardinals, two squirrels with different colors of fur from different trees, one cluster of butterflies and one tree drops an apricot.

...she returns to the guides to ask, "Does either of you have something to write with? I'm doing tree statistics."

"Certainly." The man produces a small leather bound notebook and a pen and hands them over.

"Cool, thanks."

She writes down her results as best she remembers them, noting which of the trees were inspected before punching and which were not. Then she does twenty more, ten with inspection and ten without. In theory she should not be prioritizing this over building a house but if the trees react to being inspected by not having stuff in them she's gotta figure that out.

Of those she inspected she gets four that drop leaves, one that drops a lemon, one that drops acorns, one that drops a branch, one that produces butterflies, one that produces cardinals and one that produces a single golden bird (literally it appears to be a solid gold bird that nevertheless flies away).

Of those she hits without inspection two drop leaves, three drop acorns, two drop strange cracked eggs that smell awful, one drops a branch, one produces butterflies and finally one drops a small carefully carved wand with what seem to be living leaves on the end.

"Please be careful with those eggs, I don't think they'll hurt you if you break them but they aren't pleasant to be hit with."

"Okay," she says. "That's a lot of stuff. Some of which definitely manifested out of the trees without being there beforehand."

That's all she wanted to confirm with the initial round, so she goes back to her very first tree and gives it a solid kick in the same place she was punching it before. Another few blows like that and she should have it down and be able to start in on stripping the bark and branches. After which, she guesses, she'll use the bark to make buckets to put all the weird tree crap in...

The tree obligingly falls.

"Would you like an axe? I'd generally give one to people after they touch the pillar but I can give it to you before if you'd like.... It is infused with this world's magic though so it won't behave like you might expect."

"Why, what's it do?"

She starts methodically snapping branches off the trunk.

"It itemizes the tree into wood. Standardizing it into discrete uniform chunks. You can also reshape those chucks to a degree and place them into the world. It also allows more advanced crafting options using some other things I'll be giving you after you begin the challenge."

"...huh. Useful."

But she keeps working on her tree trunk just the same. Branches go in this pile, bark goes in that pile—somehow she can dig in her fingernails and just pull it off the wood in sheets. Eventually the trunk is properly denuded and she rolls it over to a relatively clear flat space and sits down by the bark to start shaping it into buckets, a process which involves folding and sealing the edges of the material together by pinching them with her fingers like a chef constructing pastries. Somehow this works.

"What does 'place them into the world' mean, exactly? Do they stick in place by magic somehow or if you put a chunk at the top of a hill and kick it down will it fall like any other thing?"

"You have some intriguing magic there. I wonder what you'll be able to do with magical materials when you get them. Placing things in the world in the way I mean magically anchors them in place. They'll stay there even if you dig out their foundations and leave them floating in the air."

"...okay, more anchored than I was expecting. Gonna do science to that as soon as I get my shit together."

Bucket! She sweeps all the coins into the bucket. Another bucket for leaves, another for fruit, another for acorns. That's about as much bucket as she can get out of the biggest pieces of bark; she leaves the eggs and wand where they are— "what is that, anyway?" she asks, gesturing at the wand.

"It's always fun to see people exploring this world  That is a living wood wand. It will let you reshape trees while keeping them alive or convert itemized wood into living wood structures."

"...neat. Huh. Is it dangerous to play with? Is it possible to play with before I touch the pillar?"

"It doesn't take any mana to use so it should work. The only danger would be if you reshaped a tree in a way that intersected with your body."

"Hopefully I can avoid that one. It'd be really embarrassing."

She picks up the wand. Does it have a user interface of some kind, or is she flying blind here?

She gets a general sense of where wood is around her. There's also a nagging sense that something is empty. If she feels at the wood around her there's a sense of having almost an additional limb that she can use to reshape it.

The nagging sense that something is empty is mildly concerning.

Okay, so, two questions here: can she successfully reshape wood using her imaginary wand limb, and, if she does that, can she craft the wood the way she's been crafting the bark? The second thing is harder to test, and honestly not that big a deal unless the imaginary wand limb has a really significant range advantage compared to her regular flesh hands.

She can successfully reshape the wood. There's a sense that the magic limb is too abstract to work with her crafting magic, which is a shame since the magic wand limb works anywhere within 4 meters of her body.

Yeah, figures. Handcrafting is very, well, hands-on. Abstract magical limbs aren't gonna cut it.

How limited is she by the original size, shape, and position of a tree? Can she kind of shuffle a bunch of her punched trees over closer to each other and assemble a cabin that way?

When she starts to move her punched trees they begin spontaneously regrowing their bark spreading from wherever her abstract limb is touching them. Otherwise she is entirely capable of moving them any way she likes. The size doesn't appear to matter but the total volume remains the same. The rest of the wood gets kinda dragged along with whatever part she's manipulating if she doesn't actively prevent that.

This is fun. (And she knows someone who'd love it but she's not thinking about that.)

Like this, assembling a cabin is much easier. (Can the magic deal with her original log or is it too dead now?) (Actually, she should test pulling bark off trees and then regrowing it with this thing. Infinite bark hack!)

Her original log is not too dead. And apparently there is an infinite bark hack. Conservation of mass seems to be more a suggestion than a hard and fast rule here.

What a good wand this is. She loves her wand.

Okay, with just the forty-odd trees she has already punched, she can make a very cozy little cabin indeed. It doesn't have... a door... but it has an incredibly weird-looking roof with leafy branches growing out of it all over the place, and she thinks it looks charming.

She pauses, surveying her creation, and then turns back to the guides.

"...dare I ask, what's the toilet situation around here? Do I need to poke the pillar to get access to plumbing?"

"Toilets are among the things you can craft using this world's magic."

"Since you're our first visitor in a while I can bend the rules and give you one." She considers a moment and then produces a miniature toilet made out of the same living material as April's wand makes the wood into. "Furniture like this needs to be placed on a flat surface and it won't anchor in place so if you break the floor it will itemize."

"...thanks, I appreciate it."

She can give her cabin a little outhouse and make the floor very flat and... put... the magic toilet on it? How do magic toilets work??

She can see a kind of preview of what it will look like when placed and she can place it in the same range as she can use her wand. The magic toilet has a seat made of very soft leaves and no apparent tank behind the seat. It fills with a small amount of water from no discernable source after being placed. Instead of being flushed the water glows and purifies itself. It also grows leaves to work as toilet paper.

Somehow these answers only leave her with more questions.

Still, all in all, she'll take it. Better than no toilet at all.

She spends some time making use of her infinite bark hack and then some more time handcrafting the bark into a reasonably bed-like format.

Nothing and no one will interrupt her.

Well, good.

Okay, she has secured shelter and amenities. Food and water is probably next - should probably have been first, really. Technically she could punch trees for fruit but probably if you eat nothing but lemons for two months you die unless you're really badass about it. (Technically she doesn't have to worry about that but how can she be sure? She can't, not until something happens.) (How about instead of this she thinks about food.)

She emerges from her cabin and asks the weird people, "So, food. What is the deal with food here."

"There's a lot of ways to get food, the most reliable is probably fishing but you could also catch birds or squirrels and eat those. Food is unusually filling and nutritious here."

"And that all works without the pillar?"

"After you touch the pillar you could eat five fruits a day and never go hungry or have any issues. The food won't work quite that well before touching but it should still work pretty well."

"Useful."

She sighs. She stares grumpily at the pillar.

The spirit of magic or whatever will not approve if she takes a real literal month to work up the courage to touch it. The spirit of magic or whatever is going to think she should go adventuring Right Now and to hell with her survival instincts. And if she listens to the spirit of magic or whatever, it'll keep her alive as long as she stays ahead of its expectations. There's tricks she can pull, in theory, but it's not like she's had much of a chance to test them. Probably the safest bet is in fact recklessly adventuring.

...she'll go scouting once, she thinks. Maybe twice. Get to know her immediate surroundings, maybe get started on a map. Then it's adventure time.

She picks a direction at semi-random—turns out to be snow—and starts hiking, keeping an eye out for hazards and landmarks.

The forest gives way to a field and then a pond. A bit after the pond is a cave entrance if she wants to venture underground. Otherwise if she keeps walking she'll reach hard packed snow. It's able to support her weight without issue.

Let's not go caving alone in a strange and hazardous land where the environment is the most lethal thing currently around. How about just Not That.

...man, the sound of snow under her boots is unexpectedly nostalgic.

There is an awful lot of snow to be nostalgic about. There are also snow covered trees dotting the landscape apparently growing out of the snow. Oh and there's another pond. The water is an unusual light blue color. It doesn't show any signs of freezing over despite the cold temperature.

After passing a few trees, it occurs to her that she could be punching them for goodies, so she loops back and does that.

The light blue water is interesting, but she decides that to be on the safe side she probably shouldn't touch it, in case it is antifreeze and she falls in and gets poisoned and/or hypothermic and dies.

The first tree drops more of the stinky egg things. It's probably for the best that she avoids the water.

She does not want to pick up the stinky egg things, but in not wanting to pick up the stinky egg things, she notices that if she'd wanted to she would have had trouble due to not having anything to carry them in. She pulls some bark off the tree and makes herself a little basket and keeps walking, punching trees as she passes them but not going out of her way to hit every tree in sight.

She gets some more acorns leaves and branches, the wood on these trees seems a little different than in the trees in the forest. She also gets a cherry about the size of an apple.

It's honestly unsettling how all trees drop acorns and seemingly random fruits regardless of species.

Anyway! Exploring. The cherry looks tasty but she's not trying it until she gets home.

As she continues walking she'll glimpse a building made of pinkish purple brick. It's about 6 stories high with a massive staircase and pillars. It looks like some strange hybrid of a temple and a castle.

That looks amazing but also suspicious. She writes it down in her notebook to ask the weird people about and keeps walking.

As she gets closer, she can see that there's an old man in a deep red coat standing in the entrance.

"Hey you!" she calls from a significant distance away. "What's up!"

"Hello adventurer. You are not yet strong enough to challenge my master and free me from my curse. Until you do to enter the dungeon is certain death."

...

Welp.

"Good to know! Bye!"

Let's explore somewhere else.

After a while longer the frozen wastes give way to a warm beech with palm trees. The temperature change is palpable and immediate upon crossing the boundary.

Weird.

Hmm, how about she punches like ten palm trees to get a good sense of whether they're interestingly different from other trees...

She gets acorns, leaves, eggs, a banana and 55 silver coins. The coins all come from the same tree.

And here she was starting to think the coins the first time were some kind of one-off! Okay, neat. She records the data, collects the loot, and heads back the way she came, since she doesn't fancy a swim in the adventure ocean.

Nothing bothers her on the way back. The woman greets her when she returns. "Did you have a nice walk?"

"It was interesting. What's up with 'you're too weak to confront my master' guy?"

"During the night he can perform a ritual to transform into a giant flying partial skeleton monster if you ask him to. Defeating the monster grants you access to the dungeon and some special items. The old guy will also come around and sell you clothes and give fashion advice if you want it. If you try to sneak into the dungeon without defeating the monster a much more dangerous skeleton monster appears."

"...cool, I will... not do that until after I touch the pillar, then. —oh, but the monsters wouldn't happen yet, right? But there'd probably still be traps and stuff, if I tried to go in?"

"Spike traps, fake floors and dart traps."

"Makes sense! I'll avoid it."

Okay, she could wander in another direction at random, she could... see if they'll just give her a map, why don't we try that...

"Are there maps of this place? Or any easier way to get one than making it myself?"

The woman thinks for a moment. Then produces a small bracelet made of what looks like canvas. "This will make a map of places you've been. Exploring is part of the fun and challenge though. Once you get far enough there's a way to upgrade it to be comprehensive and include places you've never been."

She takes the bracelet. "I'm not opposed to exploring, it's just the most boring part of cartography is the part where you measure everything and then write it down."

"It sounds like you're in luck then. You can activate the bracelet with a tap or with a mental control similar to your wand. It should have the places you've already explored included."

Boop?

A 3D map appears hovering over the bracelet. It shows a fairly wide swath around where she's been and is detailed enough to include individual trees. She can also see herself and the woman and the two men. It seems to be updating in real time.

"...neat." Does it have zoom controls? Or panning, panning also works.

The hologram is slightly tangible like holding your hand in a slight breeze and responds to pinch and pan gestures.

"This is my new favourite object," she says, hugging the bracelet against her chest.

The woman smiles broadly. "I'm glad you like it. I hope you find more things to love about this place and what you find here."

She puts on the bracelet, leaves her loot bucket with the rest, makes another bucket via Infinite Bark Hack, and heads off with a bounce in her step to keep exploring. It'll be so easy to cover ground efficiently with the map showing her exactly which bits of the world it's successfully recorded! She should get parallel to her initial line, follow it to the beach, do a circuit, and then start filling inward from there.

...also, if the sun goes down while she's out, she should go back to her cabin and sleep, and not pull a cartographic all-nighter.

Upon putting on the bracelet there's a small feeling a bit like her wand that if she focuses she can turn on the map.

Her exploration goes fairly similarly. There are some more hills and more ponds and more cave entrances. The beaches when she reaches them have some scattered sea shells and dried out starfish on them. Does she go clockwise or counterclockwise around the island?

She was walking with the original line of mapped territory on her right, so the efficient move is to turn left when she reaches the shore and go counterclockwise. She does that.

After some internal debate, she collects seashells in her basket. The dried out starfish might potentially be alive in some fashion, so she leaves those alone.

For a while there's more snow paralleling the beach but then it gives way to a deep red environment. The grass and the leaves on the trees are the color of blood and there are nasty looking brambles on the underbrush.

Spooky!

She punches ten trees at the edge of the red zone, to see if they drop anything novel.

There's an odd sense of wrongness setting foot in this place but nothing apparent seems to happen.

Whether because it's luck or something about these trees eight of the ten yield naught but leaves the remaining two yield acorns and a Rambutan.

That is a weird enough fruit that she's not even sure it's a fruit. She leaves it alone and goes back to her circuit of the shoreline.

After a while longer the area shifts back to a forest with the same kind of trees as the center.

And a little while after that the forest gives way to a desert. Cactus replace palm trees dotting the inner sands.

...welp, it's time to... no. It is not time to punch a cactus. It is time to kick a cactus—ten cacti, for a baseline—because her feet have shoes and her hands do not.

That's probably a good idea. The cactuses have some sharp looking spines. Nothing shakes loose when she kicks them. One of them has a pink pricky pear on it if she wants to try to cut it off.

She can grab a pear, sure. Non-randomized fruit!

It looks like there might be an oasis a ways off. There's also maybe something else but it's hard to tell almost blending into the sand.

She squints suspiciously at it and walks a little closer. Not very close. Paying careful attention to her footing.

It looks to be a pyramid, though it's either rather small or most of it is buried.

Cool, good to have on her map, not going anywhere near it. Resume circuit of island.

After some more walking the desert gives way to jungle. The sun is also starting to get lower in the sky. It's not quite evening but it will be soon.

If she checks the map, how much of the island's edge has she covered and how much is left to go?

The island as she's explored so far seems to be a circle and if that pattern holds she's almost exactly halfway around.

Right then, probably time to head back toward the middle. She could use the suspicious artifact that's supposed to get her home instantly but, actually, she thinks she would really rather walk.

The jungle seems oddly quiet as jungles go lacking any evident fauna. The water here when she passes it seems an odd blue-green color. It also has what seems to be bamboo growing out of it occasionally. The bamboo never grows on the land just in the water.

She writes down 'ask about bamboo' in her notes.

There are rather a lot of rivers and ponds to avoid, but eventually she'll get back to familiar forest and after some of that arrive back at her house in the early evening.

"Did you have fun?"

"You could say that, I guess." Now what-all questions did she accumulate on her journey... "What's with the red place, why are cactuses the only thing that makes non-randomized fruit, what's up with bamboo?"

"The red place is called the Crimson. It's likely the most dangerous biome because you won't heal over time there like you will in the other biomes. It's also home to some unpleasant monsters. As for the other questions I don't know. Guide?"

"Only trees with leaves spawn randomized items creatures and monsters when shaken. Cactuses are almost trees but they definitely don't have leaves. Bamboo grows on underwater grass in the jungle. You can use it to make houses and furniture."

"And pine needles count as leaves for this purpose? Fair enough, I guess."

"They do, the true rule is that it only happens places you can't see."

"Then why can't cactuses spit random fruits out their far sides?"

He looks surprised. "You know nobody's ever asked that before. I don't really know. For whatever it's worth the cactuses growing pears came first. Trees doing things when shaken came later. If you really push I'd say it's about plausibility. Different types of trees drop different things and people don't usually think about cactuses dropping fruit or having animals hiding inside."

"Sure, I guess that's as good a reason as any."

"Do you have any other questions?"

"Not that my brain or my notes can rememb...oh right the pyramid! The pyramid: what."

"Oddly enough, unlike most structures Pyramids are quite safe. They have treasure inside though the usefulness varies. They're also a good way to get fairly deep underground without much danger."

"Oh cool! ...define 'much'."

"Right now there's a slight danger of the sand flowing in behind you if the entrance is buried but it's pretty low, after you touch the pillars there's a chance a monster will spawn near one of the entrances and come into the pyramid."

"I'll keep it in mind for after I touch the pillar, then, maybe. For now I'm gonna go to sleep and keep exploring in the morning. Don't, like, wander creepily into my house while I'm sleeping or anything. —I can build you guys a house too if you want."

"We'll be fine, though we can also put up houses for ourselves if you tell us where to put them."

"Who am I to tell you where to put your house? Anywhere nearbyish seems fine to me."

"We'll build while you're out exploring then. A nice spacious place with room for at least one more person. Never know when someone new will show up if there's free housing around."

"...'kay. Anyway I should sleep. Good, uh, night. ...do you want beds or... are you good."

"We only sleep occasionally. Thank you for asking though."

"Great, see you tomorrow." Off she goes to her bark nest.

Nothing bothers her during the night. Depending on her senses and how well she sleeps she'll either be woken by the dawning light or by the smell of food.

Ooh, food. She investigates.

The two people she met yesterday are sitting around a table with bacon, eggs, fruit juices, sashimi and pumpkin pie. There's an extra chair set out for her. 

Who could say no to free food?

"Good morning!"

...somehow, of all things, it's the sashimi and pumpkin pie that she finds massively disorienting. They both look just about like what she might've found at—home. At home, on Earth. There were a lot of broadly familiar foods in the other place—bread, cheese, et cetera—but not pumpkin pie specifically, and not, of all things, sashimi. God, what she wouldn't give to go to a sushi restaurant right now.

She sits down and takes a moment to collect herself. Wouldn't do to get her feelings all over everything.

"Good morning!" she smiles broadly "Did you sleep well?"

"Yep! Gonna do some more exploring today, get my map filled in a little better." But first, food. She avoids the sashimi because it would be deeply awkward if she took one bite and burst into tears, but she samples everything else.

"A noble goal. There's a lot to discover even just on the surface. Just make sure to watch your step around the purple areas... there are some pretty deep ravines."

If they notice her food choices they don't comment

"Thanks, I'll keep an eye out."

Once she finishes breakfast, she does indeed head out to resume her trek around the circumference of the island. What wonders await?

To get back to where she was she'll need to walk through some more of the jungle, it's pretty much like the jungle she walked through last night. If she's feeling brave she could poke into caves but otherwise, after she gets to the beach she can continue her circuit until she reaches another desert.

Yeah, no getting distracted by caves today. Straight to the beach, then continuing along the shoreline.

Well, then she gets to see another desert.

And after another normal forest she also gets to see the promised purple biome. Complete with purple grass and purple trees.

Vaguely concerning, but also kind of pretty? Stepping carefully in memory of the helpful stranger's warning, she examines some of the trees to see if they behave like normal trees in terms of what can be shaken from their branches.

Immediately upon stepping into the purple biome everything gets darker it's as if it's just after sunset instead of the bright sunny morning it was moments before.

...bizarre. She steps in and out a few more times to confirm that the effect is localized and it hasn't just advanced the time of day by an alarming number of hours, then resumes examining trees.

Yep, it's completely localized. As for the trees she gets the usual mix of leaves branches and acorns along with two new fruit a blackcurrant and a bunch of elderberries. On her last tree she gets three gold coins.

That's a lot of gold coins! Well, okay, it's not an objectively high number, but considering they're gold coins, still a lot.

She strips some bark to make a shoulder bag and packs away all the goodies, then keeps walking.

As she walks she'll find strange craggly rocks that are thematically purple bordering the promised deep ravines. It definitely looks like it would be a bad idea to fall in. There are also thorny bushes around which look like they might hurt if you tried to walk through them.

She steers clear of the ravines, and pauses next to a thornbush to see how easily she can break off a branch and handcraft it. If they're as malleable as bark, she might use them as a starting source for makeshift weapons.

The thorn bushes as it turns out are extremely brittle and come apart in a mass of splinters with even relatively gentle force.

Bugger. She spends a minute or so trying to piece the splinters back together into something more craftable, then gives up and keeps walking, occasionally raiding trees as she passes them. What's next along the shoreline?

Trees yield the usual acorns branches and leaves for the most part, the odd part is the sudden swarm of monarch butterflies that appears from one tree.

And then it's back to the generic forest biome. There is an unusual pink tree in this patch of the forest though.

Ooh, pink tree. What's up with the pink tree? What does it yield when shaken? Any interesting properties in the bark if she strips some?

It's bark is more textured and maybe a little more durable than that of the other trees. When shaken it drops a pink sapling.

Neat! Is the sapling portable, can she take it home in her bark bag? Or in a bigger, pinker bark bag if this one won't do?

The sapling is very portable it's like the toilet, a miniature version of itself, and it gives her the sense she could magically plant it in the ground near her.

The sapling is totally coming home with her. All right, onward along the shore.

There's a bunch more forest, for some reason there's a lot more forest than any other biome. If she's looking carefully she might notice a yellow tree a ways inland while walking but it would be easy to miss.

Ooh, new tree! She heads inland to rustle it.

Perhaps coincidentally the yellow tree drops a lemon.

Are lemon trees yellow on normal planets? She doesn't actually know but she sort of suspects not? Oh well. The lemon can come home too.

Eventually, she'll come back to the snowy biome with it's weird water and it's chilly temperatures.

She moves faster through this one, but does take the time to stop and rustle some trees along the way.

Her shaking is rewarded with acorns, more stinky eggs and a single bunch of cherries.

Acorns and cherries can go in her bag and stinky eggs can stay right where they are. Onward!

After a bit more walking she completes her loop at the far north of the island.

She hesitates, then turns toward home. Any further cartographic adventures at this point would be... not not stalling.

When she arrives there are two small buildings near her house. One looks a bit like a log cabin with a thatch roof, the other is built into a sizable tree that definitely wasn't there when she left. The treehouse is painted in pastel colors.

...she knocks on the treehouse door.

The woman opens the door promptly "Hello, did you enjoy your trip?"

"It was all right. This is a pretty sweet treehouse, how'd you put it together so fast? Where'd the tree come from?"

"You can build quite quickly with this world's magic. And I've lived here long enough to pick up a lot of tricks. I built the tree to put the house in."

"...guess that makes as much sense as anything, okay."

She sighs.

"Can you tell me all about the pillar again? I'm trying to get myself to touch it."

"Sure, the most important part is that the pillar will create a small safe zone and pull you back to that safe zone if you're about to die and heal you after doing so. It will also allow monsters to begin spawning in the world. The pillar will also enhance your physical abilities and give you several useful types of magic. Finally, I'll give you a starting set of tools and weapons after you do. Do you want more detail about any of those?"

"Yes, please. How does it... do things... to people? What does it enhance, what's the magic?"

"The magic is a little like a set of clothes but it's not physical and it isn't just outside your body it also stretches through it. It's designed to stay with you but it's also designed not to hurt you as it's removed if you go to some other world and meet someone or something that can take it from you. Obviously, that's not a guarantee and ideally you won't run into anyone like that but it's a contingency that was planned for. It's also possible for the pillar to remove the magic if you decide you don't want it but it'll never do that unless you specifically want that.

As for what the magic does there's several parts to it. The enhancements will improve your body so you can move faster, exert more force and be physically active for longer stretches without tiring. It also primes your body to interact with certain magical foods and potions and talismans that will further enhance you either temporarily or permanently.

The sensory package gives something like a second sense of sight it'll let you see things all around you regardless of what direction you're facing and in some cases you'll be able to see through walls if the area behind them is lit. You'll be able to turn that on and off so if it's overwhelming you can ease yourself into it.

The pocket dimension is able to store about a hundred different slots worth of items. You can find ways to improve it's capacity though. Most items stack pretty high but talismans and weapons don't stack. You'll also have 10 slots of quick access that let you materialize items in your hands with only a thought. The full pocket dimension takes longer to access.

Finally, the well is a pool of mana you can use to power certain magical weapons and tools you find in this world. You might be able to use it for other purposes if you have magic from elsewhere but I can't make any guarantees."

"...could be worse, I guess," she says grudgingly. "Thanks. Damn, a pocket dimension, really? That'll sure be convenient..."

She still doesn't wanna. But if she wants to maintain her ability to handcraft things as casually as she does, she needs to not be a coward about this.

There's cowardice and then there's prudence, though. "Anything else you can tell me?"

"About the magic? Not really. I could tell you about specific things you can find out there but there's literally thousands of specific items and monsters you can find. We could talk about them all day and we wouldn't be done and it would be hard to remember them all. If you have more specific questions I can try to answer them."

"I'm mostly just trying to... not end up being surprised by anything that happens because I touched the pillar, you know?"

"That's quite reasonable. I'd recommend touching it during the daytime. Most monsters only appear at night or underground. And it's not a windy day at the moment so you won't get those. Though the southern biomes will all spawn monsters even during the day. They'll generally stay there unless you get close though."

"...windy day? And—man, maybe I should map the whole island ahead of time, if the biomes have different moster-related behaviours. Right now all I have is the shore and a line through the middle."

"On windy days you get angry dandelions and slimes attached to balloons. As for mapping the whole island, you could but most of the danger is underground. I will admit that mapping the surface first would probably be less stressful but I don't think it's actually safer. You could still trip and fall off a cliff or something like that while mapping and you wouldn't have a safety net."

"I guess that's fair. I'll think about it."

While she's thinking about it, she stress-architects, trying to figure out if she can build up the bark from her Infinite Bark Hack into something solid enough to make walls out of. She's going to have such stories to tell, if she... no. Let's be real. She's never going home. She's never going back to either of her homes.

Stress-architecture will continue until morale improves. (Or until somebody serves lunch.)

It will take a lot of bark to make something thick enough to  build with but she can do it. Eventually the woman comes around, "Would you like to eat?"

"That'd be great, thanks."

She leads April back to the treehouse and to table set with fruit juice, tea, cooked duck, soup and pizza. The guide is already sitting at the table.

Okay cool there's—

Pizza.

That's a pizza.

She is going to take a deep breath, refrain from bursting into tears, and ask with an admirable attempt at nonchalance, "Where'd that come from?"

"Hoplites and Medusas drop slices when the die sometimes. Same sort of thing as the fruit dropping from trees. As for why, I think the beings that created the world decided to put foods they enjoyed into the world."

"... What do you know about the beings that created the world? Where were they from? What was it like there?"

"They were people, extravagantly powerful people but people. To them this whole world was a game, a game they put a lot of effort into but a game... We weren't as aware back then, we grew over time. As for where they came from it was a civilization that stretched between worlds... we don't know whether it's still out there but we haven't had any visitors in a long time so either some disaster befell them or we were forgotten."

Does she say it?

She's gonna say it.

"...some of the food is familiar. And like, weirdly familiar. Familiar in ways that seem like they wouldn't happen by coincidence."

"It's possible that it's related to your world somehow, some of our visitors spoke of patterns. They said that natural worlds often has strange similarities that were hard to explain. Some were apparently reflections of earlier times on another world."

"...that's less of an explanation than I was hoping for, but thanks."

"I'm sorry I don't know more."

"It's not your fault. I assume."

"Indeed it isn't. I noticed you've been using bark for a lot of things. Is there a reason for that?"

"It's easy to get a bunch of in a hurry and I'm not gonna run out, I can just keep peeling it off trees and growing it back forever. Why?"

"Trees grow pretty quickly around here. Or well they grow to full size quickly and then stop."

"...huh. Should I be planting a bunch? How?"

"If you stick acorns in the ground they'll sprout into saplings in a few minutes and grow to full size in a day or two."

"How 'bout that."

She finishes her lunch and then digs through her assorted bags of tree goodies to collect up all her acorns, whereupon she finds a flat space nearish home base and plants them all in a more or less tidy grid (accounting for the occasional interruption by a preexisting tree).

...then she sighs, because that was definitely her stalling to avoid thinking about the pillar, and comes back to home base and sits on the ground and stares at it. Stupid inanimate object with mysterious powers which she will have to either trust or not trust. Doesn't it know she hates trusting things?

The saplings pop up exactly as she was told they would.

...she wants to sleep on it, and finish mapping all the parts of the island she can reach without falling off a cliff. But is that a good idea, or is it just more stalling? Is she going to learn anything actually useful out there? Is she going to encounter anything that will change her mind about whether she can trust these people, or anything she can use to verify their story? If they are in fact lying to her somehow, they've had time to build a world that backs them up in every particular she's seen so far. More stalling is unlikely to make a difference there.

Fine then. Best get it over with.

She touches the pillar.

Immediately she feels a rush of energy, she feels stronger and somehow healthier. She has as promised a new sense and she can somehow see in all directions within a bubble she can see through trees and rocks to what's behind them outside that bubble this new sight is blocked like normal sight. There's also two new interfaces in her mind a bit like the map bracelet one feels like a number of spaces without anything in them and the other is like a well of energy which is small but full.

...well. Okay. She did it. She sure did do the thing.

"My next ambition is to beat up a monster. Any advice?"

"You might want your starting equipment... or at least the sword. I can hold onto the rest if you want. Otherwise, the first monsters you'll run into are slimes and my main advice there is don't let them jump on you. They cover you in gunk that takes about ten seconds to fall off and makes it harder to move."

"Sure, I'll take my starting equipment."

"Alright there's kinda a lot of it. Have you figured out your personal storage? It's probably the easiest way to keep track of it. I can also just stick it all directly into your storage if you'd like."

"I have no idea how my personal storage works but I should probably learn!"

"Here," she hands over a copper short sword, "You should feel the ability to put this into one of your quick access slots. If you focus on those you should be able to feel your storage and equipment slots."

A little dubiously, she tries it.

The sword vanishes from her hand and she can feel it in a slot. She can call it to either hand with a thought. If she focuses on the slots themselves suddenly there's a lot more of them it's hard to focus on anything else though. The storage slots are clearly in a cluster and there are a hundred of those. The quick access slots are also there and there's ten of those and then there's a fuzzy number of slots which must be the equipment slots. Those contain everything she's wearing including the map bracelet. She can move things from one slot to another.

Bizarre. Useful, though.

She swaps the sword back and forth from hand to hand a few times and then says, "Okay, I think I'm getting the hang of this."

"The other part of this system is stacked items. Here's an example." She hands over what seems to be a torch but when April holds it she knows immediately that it's actually a hundred torches. She also feels the ability to place torches anywhere within three meters. If she wanted to she could divide the stack.

"...whoa. How do I make things do that?"

"You should be able to do that for any stackable items if you're holding more than one. It would work with the coins you found as an example. Stackable items will also clump together if they're near each other on the ground."

"Let's see."

She goes through her collection and tries to stack all the things.

Fruit stacks when it's the same fruit. For some reason a clump of cherries stacks with a giant cherry. Weird smelly eggs stack. Coins stack. Leaves.... do not stack. Branches spontaneously turn into orderly wood planks upon being stacked. She planted all her acorns so she can't test those. Bark also doesn't stack.

If she separates the cherries again does she get clumps or giants or both or what?

One of each.

Weird.

Okay, enough dicking around, time to take this sword and go fight a slime.

Slimes are very findable. If she walks (or runs) a short ways in just about any direction she'll find on in short order. Like that blue one right there. It seems to notice her and start bouncing toward her.

Sword, meet slime. May your relationship be short and to the point.

This sword appears to be not the best it'll take a good five stabs for the slime to die. Once it does it drops a stack of two globs of slime and another stack with 8 of some orange material.

She picks it all up to bring back home and ask about.

"That was fast, how was your first fight with the local monsters? Oh and do you want the rest of your starting equipment?"

"It was short. Yes please. And what's this stuff?"

"That looks like Copper ore and slime. The Guide is the expert at what you can use things to craft but I know slime is mostly used to make torches and copper ore is mostly used to make copper bars."

"Fair enough. So what's the rest of the starting equipment?"

"Well we were just talking about crafting so here's the external storage and crafting system." She hands over three small cubes each of which will be a 2/3 of a meter on a side when placed. One is a stack of 25. "The one you have a bunch of is storage, those are upgradable, each can hold forty slots of stuff at the moment. The green one is an interface that lets your take things in and out and the blue one is the crafting system. It has special slots for crafting stations."

"... Okay, so, how do they all work, what are they for, what do I do with them?"

"Well, you'll get a whole bunch of stuff exploring this world and you'll want a bunch of it to craft stuff later so you need a place to put it all. As for how it works, you can access the interface or crafter by touching them after you place them down. You'll need to place them all touching each other for them to connect."

"...okay..." How about she tries this and see if it makes any more sense once she has an example to go on.

It's easy enough to find room to put down the cubes. When she touches the green cube she can see all her slots and also a lot more and she could move between the two sets of slots. When she touches the blue cube she can feel a list of things she could make and how much they would cost. For now it looks like she could make several styles of crafting benches, several styles of wooden platforms, torches and she could also convert a coin into 100 of the next less valuable coin (gold to silver to copper)

...can coins be converted back, a hundred packed into one, or will she be drowning in copper forever if she follows the impulse to convert them all down?

Coins can be converted back.

In that case she follows the impulse to convert them all up, and consolidates them into a minimal number of coins, which she stores in the... storage... thing.

Okay then. "Anything else?"

"Lots more, these are your starting tools." She hands over an axe and pickaxe each of which have an unlabelled mental switch. A hammer which feels magical in some undefined way and a giant butterfly net big enough to catch a person in.

"...I'm gonna need explanations for these. What are they for, what do they do?"

"The axe is for chopping down trees, the pickaxe is for breaking just about everything else. They each can either be used with or without stacking mode. Stacking mode means that whatever they break becomes a stackable item but it also means that things without stackable forms are just destroyed. Most things do have a stackable mode though so you'll probably to use the stacking mode most of the time. The hammer can be used as a physical hammer but you can also use it to reshape items. That makes it easier to make slopes or curves when you're building. The bug net is for catching non-hostile creatures or people. You can carry them around and put them back down or you can use them as crafting ingredients."

"...people can be crafting ingredients??"

"Yeah it's a bit more convenient for us then being killed repeatedly in the hopes we drop certain things. We'll show back up in new bodies later on either way."

"...................okay..."

"Everyone you meet here is a part of this world. Well, unless we have another visitor but currently you're the only one. We won't hold any grudges for the things the world asks you to do."

"...I'm still not really comfortable using people as crafting ingredients."

"Fair enough, you're not the first person with that objection so you can buy the relevant items instead."

"Oh good."

"It's nice you're concerned for us. There are a couple of occasions when the path involves killing one of us but there are always other options. Those are all a ways in the future. The first one is that if you venture into the underworld some demons carry voodoo dolls. If one of those falls into lava it summons a dangerous monster and the guide's current body dies. You can convert the voodoo doll into an ethical summoner instead though."

"...why are there voodoo dolls???"

"I really don't have a good answer for you. There's actually voodoo dolls you can find or make for three of us though you haven't met the other two yet. I really don't know why some challenges are supposed to start that way. We're pretty sure the creators didn't really expect us to become as aware as we are and they didn't really explain the rules they built into the world."

"...I want to say 'fair enough I guess' but I think if there was the possibility you might be people and they didn't account for it and built things in a way that kind of screws you over a bunch now that you're people, that's not actually very fair of them."

"Yeah, I can't disagree. If it makes you feel any better we don't feel pain so the worst we experience is a bit of inconvenience. I also don't know if it's entirely accurate to call us people. Or at least the plural might be inaccurate. We're all tied into the world so we all know what the world knows. The bodies you see are all characters that the world is playing to a degree."

"Still uncomfortable with murdering you! ...also confused now 'cause you said you weren't the person to ask about exact crafting recipes, but if you all know the same things...? Or is that a character thing, like, something like it's uncomfortable to put the knowledge where it doesn't belong even though you technically have it?"

"It's mostly an affectation. It is a little more comfortable to stick to the roles that the creators laid down but it also provides a better experience for most guests if they imagine us as distinct people with our own specialities and personality quirks. We think it feels less isolating to have a dozen people around than just one."

"Makes sense. Okay. ...is there any more starting equipment or is this it?"

"There's a few more things." She hands over two stacks of four candies each, a bottle with blue liquid in it that t she can feel has 15 doses, a pair of blue socks, a small bottle with a tiny puff of smoke floating in it, and a grappling hook. "The blue candies will expand your mana pool. The Red candies will increase how much you can survive before being pulled back here and also effect which events can spawn. The recall potion will take you back to the pillar every time you take a sip. The socks let you run faster, the bottle let's you jump in midair, and the grappling hook makes it easier to get around. That last one is probably the most complicated."

"...okay..." Can she shuffle the equippable stuff around using her mental equip menu? She tries it. And stuffs everything else in her inventory.

The grappling hook, the socks and the bottle are equippable. She has a feeling that the socks and the bottle are using up part of a limited space. When she equips the grappling hook she has a feeling that she could launch it in any direction whenever she wanted.

"So how exactly do I use this thing?"

"You aim it in a direction and it'll fire out for a ways. If it hits something solid it will anchor into that surface and then pull you towards it. You can release the hook and reel it back in whenever you want."

"Hmm. Okay. ...if I ask you why there's different tools for trees and for everything else will you even have an answer?"

"The closest I have is that the axe will chop down the entire tree at once instead of a cube like the pickaxe does. Though the pickaxe also does a whole piece of furniture at a time even when the furniture is big. Later on there are tools that can do both."

"...oh? How do I get 'em?"

"Tools that combine an axe and a hammer are fairly common but the first one is made from meteorite and none of those have fallen yet. Tools that function as a pickaxe and an axe are pretty rare and they're only available after you've defeated the mechanical terrors. You have a long way to go before you can even challenge those. Well... in theory you could do it quickly but it's much harder if you do things out of order."

"...fair enough. What's an appropriate challenge for where I'm at, then?"

"The truth is that your current sword isn't sufficient to beat any of the challenges unless you're already extremely skilled at combat. I'd recommend searching for better equipment before proceeding. You probably want armor, a better weapon and some talismans before summoning a challenge. Metal is what you probably need the most of. Gold and Platinum are the best metals available to you at present. Though pumpkin armor is potentially worthwhile if you can avoid being hit."

"...pumpkin," she echoes. "I, uh. How? Why, but also, how?"

"While wearing pumpkin armor you deal 10% more damage than you would otherwise. It's a significant boost. As to how? There are pumpkin patches in the forest. Harvest enough and you can craft armor out of them."

"...all right, that sounds like a good idea to start with. I'll keep an eye out for pumpkin patches next time I go mapping."

"If you're going out I'd also eat at least one of the Red candies. That allows the nurse to come. If you find a bomb the demolitionist might come, and if you pick up a strange plant the dye trader will show up. If enough people show up then the painter wil arrive and he sells the paintball gun which is a very useful early weapon since it has infinite ammo. We'll build some more housing so that they have somewhere to live if they come. Or we can hold off if you want to do your own architecture."

"Feel free to build houses, you know what you like better than I do." She pops the candies out of her inventory and, after only a moment's hesitation, tries one.

It tastes like cherry and as it melts in her mouth there's a rush of energy and she feels somehow healthier it's a little like the rush from touching the pillar but more focused on wellness than raw strength. "Good luck in your travels."

...all right, that sure didn't suck. "Where would I get more of these?"

"The red ones you can find underground they're in the core of giant red hearts. The blue ones are made from fallen stars. They fall during the night and disappear at sunrise."

"Anything I should be worried about if I start digging around underground looking for giant red hearts to plunder?"

"If you stay in the underground under the forest it's pretty safe. Watch out for pressure plates and giant worms. If you go swimming be careful about jellyfish and sharks. If you get deep enough you might run into harder foes. Bats are a pain, skeletons explode when they die, salamanders can turn invisible and if you run into a skeleton wearing a wizard hat or a nymph you should probably just run."

"...what do nymphs look like?"

"They look like lost women with damaged clothing until you get close and then they drop that illusion and show their teeth claws and armor when you get close or attack them."

"...yikes."

"It is a cruel design in many ways. A trap for the compassionate. We try to warn people before they encounter them it tends to upset them otherwise."

"No kidding! Wow. How far down do I have to go to find them, can I just avoid them by staying high?"

"They start showing up 100 meters below sea level we're at 10 above sea level right now. If you're staying up that high you probably won't run into mushroom biomes and definitely won't run into spider nests but those are both pretty dangerous you might want to steer clear. There are also Marble and Granite caves those have their unique challenges."

"...how do I recognize those from far enough off to avoid them?"

"Spider nests are filled with with spiderwebs. You will find cobwebs elsewhere but the ones in their nests are clean. Spiders aren't particularly fast so you should be fine as long as you don't stay in a nest. As for mushroom biomes they glow blue so you should be able to see them even through walls when you get close. And you've seen marble and granite on the pillar."

"Wow, okay. At least that's straightforward."

"Most things are once you get used to them. If you explore particularly far underground you might run into one of the other biome's underground versions. Those mostly look like their surface versions and they tend to have more dangerous enemies too. I'd recommend acclimating to their surfaces before trying to go beneath."

"Fair enough. ...is there a way to tell how deep I'm getting besides squinting at my map and counting blocks?"

"There is a vibe you might notice. You could also see a monster that only spawns in the caverns layer, or you could kill bats until you got a depth meter either underground or in the surface jungle."

"Bats give depth meters, sure why not."

"They also have a chance to drop rabies shots and giant bats shaped like bat wings."

"...rabies shots? Is rabies a concern???"

"Not exactly but if a bat bites or scratches you then you'll be inflicted with a condition called feral bite for a minute. That makes your attacks stronger and makes you heal slower but it can also inflict other conditions at random Rabies shots can cure it early. Since I expect you'll ask there are six things it can inflict. Darkness you've already experienced in the Corruption, the purple biome, slowness makes you move slower, confusion throws off your balance and makes it harder to dodge, cursed makes it impossible to use weapons or grappling hooks, weakness makes you more vulnerable, slower and makes it harder to use weapons that depend on your strength, and silenced makes you unable to use items that depend on your mana well."

"...thanks. Good to know."

"You're welcome. I know that there's a lot to keep track of."

"There really, really is. But it sounds like as long as I stay high up enough underground, and only under the safer biomes, I'll be more or less okay."

So let's see, what was the first order of business... right, finding a pumpkin patch.

Pumpkin patches are reasonably easy to find. On her way there will be slimes, rabbits, birds and squirrels wandering around. Some of the slimes have giant bows on them. She might also note the bright yellow flowers that seem to stand out for some reason or the large vibrantly purple bush.

She has a sword now! She can poke suspicious objects with it, and also slay slimes!

The bush does not deign to respond to her sword. The flowers they each yield a flower and a seed. Slimes yield more slime, more coins, and a bottle of some yellow liquid with one dose of something in it.

Huh. Does the bush respond to any of her other tools?

It responds to her pickaxe. It also turns into a stackable item allowing her to place the bush wherever she wants.

Neat. She harvests a bunch of pumpkins and heads home to figure out crafting them.

She has 85 pumpkin worth of pumpkin according to the stack. This is enough to craft a full set of armor if she has a workbench in her crafting cube.

Well, does she have a workbench in her crafting cube, and/or can she make one?

She can easily make one. She has enough wood from shaking trees.

Then she shall have pumpkin armour. As bizarre as that is.

There isn't any clear way to put it on or take it off but if she puts it in her equipment slots then it fits snugly over her other clothes without constricting her movement. Where it touches exposed skin it's soft and slightly fuzzy.

...weeeeeird.

Actually, hmm, that reminds her.

She finds the Deviant again and asks, "Is there anything to stop me from making my own armour that's not, like, part of the system, and wearing that under, uh," she gestures with a pumpkin-clad arm, "this stuff? Will doing that help?"

"The local armor is designed to fit over normal clothing, custom armor might be too thick to be compatible. It also won't have the indestructibility that the armor from around here will have, that said local armor only reduces the damage you take it doesn't take hits for you. Especially early on your custom armor might be better. I can't say for sure though."

"Sounds pretty worth it, then. I think I can make it fit."

She does indeed manage to produce something that fits under her pumpkin gear, by coaxing bark into behaving more like leather. It looks weird but, in her opinion, weird in kind of a cool way. The pumpkin on top lends the whole thing a slightly farcical air, however.

...and by that point she needs to sleep. Further explorations can wait until tomorrow.

Nothing disturbs her sleep. When she wakes there are several more small buildings around. There's a small clinic looking building, another log cabin, what looks like a general store and an art studio with a studio apartment on top.

She investigates the new buildings to see if there's anyone inside.

The second log cabin is home to a man dressed to fit the stereotype of a lumberjack the only oddity is that he has bright yellow eyes. "Hello there, I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay I sleep all night and I work all day. Seriously though, I can sell you wood and some related items if you don't want to go chopping down trees yourself. I'll also give you some for free every day if you ask."

"...that's a song. That's a song that I know. What the fuck. —sure, I'll take free wood."

"It is a song, I can sing the whole thing if you'd like. And here you go: wood and a little something extra." He hands over a stack of 50 wood and a stack of five blue jays."

She stands there blinking for a moment.

"—right. Creatures... can be inventory-stacked. Uh. Thanks. What do I... do... with blue jays?"

"You could cook them up and eat them, or make a cage and use them as decorations. There's also a talisman you could use to control them and make them attack your foes."

"...thanks."

She'll put them in storage for now. Doing any of the other things would weird her out.

Okay, time to go digging. In her nice safe forest, without getting too deep. Maybe she'll start at the pumpkin patch she harvested yesterday.

Digging yields nice orderly cubes of dirt and then later stone as she gets deeper. After a short while she finds a patch of something shiny.

She digs out the shiny stuff.

She now has 30 of something she might recognize as iron. A short while later she finds herself in a cave system.

And what does this cave system have to say for itself? Anything interesting down here? She proceeds with cautious interest.

The cave system is very dark. She'll likely want to hold or place torches unless she can see in the dark. If she's careful she'll notice the pressure plate nearby. She also might be lucky enough not to step on it... Otherwise there are for some reason more slimes in the cave. These ones are yellow and black instead of the blue and green she's seen on the surface. In the cave there's also less room to move around and more uneven ground so it might be harder to dodge.

The black ones are a little hard to see in the low light.