walkthrough

listen to pip. it was kal’s robot, and it tells you why the valley needs you: the drones are out on odd jobs, nearly flat, and there’s no show till they’re home and charged.

where the porch of kal’s house, where you start.

follow pip up to the drone base. the floating icon over something is pip’s next suggestion, and nothing makes you take it.

where the base is up by the overlook.

tip if you ever walk into a spot you can’t get out of, the pause screen has get unstuck. it moves you to open ground and you lose nothing.

hold e on each panel covered in pollen to wipe it, and on each drooping one to turn it back to the sun. there are ten round the deck, and most want one or the other.

where the drone base, round the deck.

look at the empty docks. most of the drones are out doing jobs the valley can’t do for itself any more. each squad comes home when you fix whatever it’s standing in for.

tip the base needs full power before the drones can charge: its own panels, all three power lines and five batteries. the pause screen shows how each stands.

talk to wren. she runs the solar farm and the greenhouse, and she asks you to switch the dead solar line back through.

where pip leads you to her, by the greenhouse and the solar farm.

hold e on the grey box to switch the line through. watch the power run along the poles to the base.

where at the far end of the solar line’s poles.

take the tin from the crate. it holds bà nội’s seeds: perilla, rau răm, bitter melon and beans.

where the crate by the greenhouse beds.

sow two beds. choose the seed with q, then use an empty bed.

where the greenhouse beds.

tip beds take a day to come up, some two. low ground keeps its wet; a bed on a rise will want the watering can. sitting on a bench lets the day go by.

talk to ravi, kal’s brother. once the solar line is through he tells you about kal’s turbines on the ridge and their switch.

where his farm. pip points him out.

talk to rosa while you have the tin. she gives you her abuela’s marigolds. sow them soon: the bees will want them later, and a bed takes a day.

where pip points her out.

talk to bram. he built the drones, the helper bots and pip, and three of his bots are stuck about the valley. he also puts pomtajer in your tin.

talk to mira from the city grid office once you’ve heard about the wind line. she tells you about the city line’s relay.

talk to juni, who is up in the valley with ravi for the summer. she sends you up on the airship for its battery, and asks pip for a picture of a frog.

tip the frog picture can wait. pip’s camera shows up when you look at something worth a picture; press it then.

take the scooter out west and up the ridge. hold e on the switch at the foot of the first turbine.

where the wind ridge, west of the valley.

go back to ravi. he gives you chilli seeds from kal’s porch, then asks for a wet stone from the river.

tip you’ll pass kal’s cairn and its chime on the ridge. that matters later. switching this line through is also what starts the ridge’s water puzzle.

ride the tram down to the city and hold e on the relay outside mira’s office.

where the tram stop is down the footpath and over the river. the relay is outside the grid office.

find mira afterwards. she gives you her teta’s thyme.

tip while you’re down there, look at the market. its stall keepers want fresh things from the valley and trade for them. you’ll need the market for the supper.

carry charged batteries to the cabinet at the drone base, one at a time. there is one at each of five places.

where the solar farm’s rack, the airship liner’s deck, the city’s tram station, the wind ridge, and later the wind pump.

for the liner’s battery, board the airship at the port behind the farm and pick the battery up off its deck. tell juni about it when you’re back.

tip the liner moors overnight and flies again in the morning. if you’re aboard after dark, there are benches on the deck to sit it out.

on the way out from the base, look at the old pylon by the footpath. pip takes its first picture for its album.

hold e on each of the three stuck helper bots to mend it. each one frees a squad of drones to go home.

where about the valley. pip leads you to each.

with all three mended, the bots fit your scooter to fly. on the scooter, hold space to climb and c to come down.

tip now you can fly up to kal’s weather station on the tor at the ridge’s crown. mend it, and a forecast board lights up at the drone base with the next three days. rosa also asks for a picture from the top of the old overpass.

talk to bram again after the bots. he wants to build juni a drone of her own, with your hands and his instructions.

fetch the motor from an old car on the highway and the cell from the lamp on the pylon by the path. ask ravi for props.

work on the drone at bram’s bench three times while he talks you through it, then take it to juni. she paints pip on it.

when the drones are nearly ready, bram tells you the show itself is in kal’s notebook.

take the liner up to the high meadow and take the notebook from the table on kal’s porch. catch the liner back down and give it to bram.

where the liner leaves from the port behind the farm and stops right by kal’s hut.

tip you can fetch it any time after you’ve found the base; bram takes it when he asks. while you’re up there, gather the gongura seed in kal’s beds for his drawer in wren’s seed library. if you just miss the liner, sit on the bench by the landing.

pick rosa’s marigolds when they’re ripe and put them by the hives. the bees come back, and the pollinating drones go home.

where the hives by the solar farm.

hold e on the old wind pump to mend it. the water drones go home, and a battery starts charging by the cistern for your cabinet.

where the hamlet.

sow the meadow’s seed as reeds in the marsh, and plant saplings in the new orchard and water each one.

where the marsh, and the east slope for the orchard.

tip seed comes from the dandelion puffs in the meadow. the watering can is by kal’s house; fill it at the pond or the trough by the barn.

free any drone that gets into trouble. pip calls you over: one tangled in kal’s washing line, one blown into an orchard tree (shake the trunk), one gone flat in a field.

tip you can also lend drones to a job you’d rather not do by hand. it costs them charge they’ll need back before the show.

wade into the river for a wet stone and give it to ravi.

where the shallows by the footbridge.

take the marigolds rosa leaves for him on the bench, and give them to ravi too. he says he’ll walk up at first light.

sit on a bench to let the night go by, then meet ravi at kal’s cairn in the morning. be there that morning: he goes up at first light and waits at the cairn for you.

where kal’s cairn, on the wind ridge.

each thing you mend brings a household home to the lane, on the next liner or tram. meet them where they step off.

the six households: selam comes for the bees, haru when the pump fills the marsh, aram for the young orchard, pema when the wind line runs, dae when the city line runs, and mae and tomas for the reeds and the frogs.

tip the show doesn’t fly till every cottage is lived in. the pause screen shows who is home and who is on the way.

ask the cooks what they’re making. the show needs any eight of the eleven dishes on the table.

grow what the dishes want and bring it to each cook. apples and peaches come off the orchard trees: shake them. cacao, citrus and flour come only from the city market, in trade for what its keepers want.

tip the cheapest dishes are the ones from your own beds: wren’s needs bitter melon and perilla, ravi’s chillies, dae’s perilla, selam’s and haru’s beans. the notice board lists what each dish still wants.

once every drone is home and full, every cottage is lived in and the dishes are ready, pip tells you supper is at the overlook this evening.

go up to the overlook in the evening, eat with everyone, and sit on the bench. the show starts after dark.

where the overlook, beside the drone base.

tip if you miss it, nothing is lost: it flies the next evening, after supper. press n, or sit on a bench, to wait for the evening.

the pause screen keeps a list of good deeds alongside the show’s needs. none of them hold the first show up. the ones that aren’t on the main path:

• the hens fed: seed from the dandelion puffs.
• seeds saved in the library: bring a little seed of each kind you’ve grown back to wren’s seed library by the greenhouse beds.
• the pantry stocked, and a bed fed from the heap: an armful of harvest to the cookhouse shelf, spent stalks to the compost heap, a turn of it, then compost dug into a bed.
• the cistern’s gutter: hang it back up behind the hamlet’s cottages and every shower fills the tank.
• a lesson sat in on: sit on the log at the school corner during a morning lesson.
• bram’s needle threaded: of a morning at his bench, hold e to thread it for him.
• a rail by rosa and bram’s door: talk to rosa on her good side, then put up the rail bram cut.
• the firebreak on the ridge raked: when the fire watch’s flag is up, rake the overgrown break below the lookout.
• a slope of thirsty beds watered from one flag: plant the water flag uphill of a row of dry beds and the carriers bring the pond to it.
• city stalls stocked and the families’ wishes: bring people what their bubbles and the notice board ask for.
• kal’s weather station, juni’s drone and a stone for kal’s cairn, from the chapters above.
• the ridge’s water running: see below.

switch the wind line through (above). mira’s card goes up on the notice board.

where the notice board, where the footpath forks for the greenhouse.

wait for the next morning. overnight, while you’re away from the ridge, bram’s bots set a micro-turbine pod into the stream bed, with a grown pipe up the slope to two flower-shaped mouths, a low one and a high one, and a rack of folded flow gates beside it.

where the ridge’s shoulder below the wind box, out west.

tip the stream splits on the shoulder and most of it goes down the low side, so the pod only turns a little. leading more water to the high mouth is what gives power.

take a gate from the rack and carry it up the shoulder. a square shows on the ground where it would go. set it, and the stream finds its way round it.

tip there are three gates and one sluice. hold e on the sluice to drop or lift its board. any gate you set can be taken up again and set somewhere else, so nothing can go wrong.

watch pip. after each gate it hovers by the high mouth, turns toward where the water went, and says what it sees.

bring the pod up through its three tiers of power. the glass band round its runner glows brighter as the power rises. a tier counts once it has held for a moment, and only drops if the water falls well short for a while.

tip if you’re stuck: a single gate in the wrong cell dams the high branch and sends everything down the low side. three gates in a short diagonal line across the shoulder, above the split, turn the stream along the hill to the high mouth.

the top tier is the good deed.

the morning after the ridge first runs at night, ravi walks up to kal’s cairn. meet him there. later that morning, mae has a word about the marsh if you pass her.

where kal’s cairn on the wind ridge, then mae by the marsh.

look at the notice board at dusk. tonight’s power card has a bar for each source the valley has, sun, wind and water, and names the ones making something tonight. a calm night leaves the turbines out.

tip the drone base’s cabinet shows the same three as lit strips while you wait for the show.

the ridge’s water also fills tonight’s reserve, measured at dusk. the more it delivers, the longer each picture in the show is held, up to two fifths longer, and the more its lights shimmer. it never adds or takes away a picture, never holds the show up, and counts for every show, the first one included.

the power lines now run on slim ceramic masts, one fine cable through a glass bud at each tip. a live line’s buds glow, and brighten with the dark into a soft halo, so after dusk you can see which lines are through.

the valley’s machines have been restyled in ceramic, living timber and glass: the junction boxes are grey ceramic nodes with a light ring, the batteries are cell pods lit while docked, the wind pump stands on a grown mast with glass petals, the cistern is a white tank with a light-ring gauge, and the signposts glow at their edges at dusk.

tip the forecast board at the drone base, lit once kal’s weather station is mended, is now a glass pane in a timber frame with the next three days painted on it in moving light.

the watering can is glazed ceramic with a glass window. its water line drops as you pour.

the fire watch has a new fire horn: a clean two-tone rising call when there’s smoke on the ridge, and an amber beacon on the lookout till the fire is out. go up with water, or take a beater from the rack.

tip a raked firebreak stops a fire where it reaches the break.