The Director
The Director is the AI opponent. It does two different things to you:
- Mutations: new rules for the world. The Director writes each one as real code during your run, and it has to pass checks before it can enter play. Mutations land at Gates.
- Moves: short, announced attacks (or gifts) between Gates. The Director picks and tunes them, but doesn’t code them.
Mutations
- Two races per run. The Director races to finish a Mutation before Gate 1, and again before Gate 2. The boss bar shows its stage, plotting → coding → compiling → reviewing → testing → ready (“repairing” can show up too), with a taunt like “Director coding · This part is just typing.”
- No fixed list. Mutations are invented per run, not drawn from a hidden deck, so there’s no list of them to look up.
- They stack. A Mutation from Gate 1 is still live when Gate 2’s lands.
- Fair limits. The Director may attack how you get an Objective, but it never destroys or blocks the Objective item itself.
- Read the rules any time.
/mf mutationsshows each live Mutation’s title, summary and up to three rules./mf mutations detailsshows every rule, trigger and exception./mf directorshows what it’s preparing right now.
Mutation families
With the Director setup used for playtests, each race rolls one family and never repeats it in the same run. You get its hint when the race starts:
| Family | The hint you see |
|---|---|
| Hostile mobs | “The monsters are about to change how they fight. Keep a weapon ready and never trust a quiet night.” |
| Creatures | “The world’s harmless creatures are about to stop being harmless or helpful in the usual way. Watch what wanders near you.” |
| Movement | “The way you move is about to change. Learn your footing again before you trust a long run or a long drop.” |
| Combat | “Fights are about to follow new rules. Every hit you land and take may not do what you expect.” |
| Inventory | “What you carry is about to misbehave. Keep spares of anything you can’t lose.” |
| Blocks | “The blocks around you are about to behave differently. Think before you dig, place or stand still.” |
| Sky | “The sky is about to turn on you. Mind the time of day and the weather.” |
| Fluids & fire | “Water, lava and fire are about to break their rules. Don’t count on them doing what they used to.” |
| Food | “Eating and healing are about to change. Watch your hunger and what you put in your mouth.” |
| Projectiles | “Anything that flies is about to become dangerous or useful in new ways. Watch the air.” |
| Loot | “What things leave behind is about to change. Look at what drops before you grab it.” |
| Places | “Where you stand is about to matter more. Biomes, heights and structures may not be safe.” |
Moves
- Warned, then fired. A Move warns you a few seconds ahead with a sound and action-bar text, then speaks in the Director’s voice. The big ones get a 3-2-1 title countdown.
- Secret until they fire. Each Act’s Moves aren’t shown in advance.
- Bluffs. Any pressure Move might be a bluff: it warns and then does nothing, laughs at you, or leaves a small gift.
- They never kill outright. One Move can deal at most 30–75% of a player’s max health, depending on Chaos. Moves never touch Lives, Artifacts or Objective items, and never run at Gates or in the lobby. Move mobs don’t grief, don’t despawn and don’t burn in daylight.
- You know who it picked. Each Move names its target and why: “everyone”, “picked at random”, “the party leader”, “farthest from the group”, “deepest underground”, “highest up”, “they triggered it” or “chosen by the Director”.
The 13 Moves
| Move | Kind | What it does | Chaos 1 → 5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hunt | pressure | Mobs hunt you for a while. Twists: armoured, fast, invisible until close, mounted, leaping | 2→6 mobs, 45→120 s |
| Ambush | pressure | Mobs lie in wait; fires when you enter an Objective’s biome or a new dimension. Twists: patrol captain, dug in | 3→8 mobs |
| Swarm | pressure | A swarm comes at you (phantoms from Chaos 2, vexes from 4) | 4→12 mobs, 20→60 s |
| Nightfall | pressure | Night falls, with extra monsters (Darkness from Chaos 3) | 60→120 s |
| Storm | pressure | Lightning strikes around you. Twists: walking storm, animal transform, charged creeper (Chaos 4) | 3→12 strikes |
| Jolt | pressure | Shuffles your hotbar, swaps hotbar and inventory rows, or swaps main hand and offhand | 1→4 repeats |
| Mark | pressure | Every mob nearby hunts you for a while | 16→32 blocks |
| Swap | pressure | You swap places with a teammate, the nearest animal, a random mob or the nearest mob | 1→5 swaps |
| Skyfall | either | Items rain down (nice) or blocks fall (not nice: dripstone from Chaos 3, anvils from 4) | 12→60 items, 10→30 s |
| Effect | either | Potion effects. Twists: “it may turn halfway”, “touch someone to pass it on” | 30→90 s |
| Tweak | either | A rule bends for a while: fall damage doubled, hunger twice as fast or half speed, knockback tripled, gravity halved | 45→90 s |
| Bounty | help | Kill the marked mob in time for a reward; the target can have up to 4× health and escorts | — |
| Gift | help | Items in your inventory or dropped nearby. Might be a “mimic” fake-out | — |
In the Nether, Move mobs become wither skeletons or piglins; in the End, endermen.
Chaos
Chaos is a level from 1 to 5, shown on the sidebar as ■■■□□. It sets how many Moves an Act gets (3 → 8), how many of them are harmful (2 → 6) and the minimum gap between them (150 → 60 seconds).
Chaos is worked out like this, then rounded down and kept between 1 and 5:
- the Act number (1, 2 or 3);
- +0.2 for each Artifact the party owns;
- +0.5 for each Wager you accepted (Take the Dare);
- a “mood” swing of −1, 0, 0 or +1 every 5 active minutes;
- +1 once you’re 8 minutes into Act III.
Every change is announced in party chat along with its cause.