Friday night in Rift Breaker began the way all our best evenings do: with optimism, mild planning, and Craig being immediately told no.
With Craig back on deck, we made the executive decision to restrict his metal usage by politely informing him that he was not allowed to build any more fences, because—hypothetically—we wanted that metal for research. This was received with the enthusiasm of a toddler being told the crayon buffet was closed.
After a brief but heartfelt hissy fit, Craig stormed off, refusing to speak to any of us, and began laying what can only be described as the world’s largest digital minefield, entirely contained inside his walls. It was less “defensive perimeter” and more “angry Morse code, but with explosives.”
Zaph, meanwhile, was bored. And when Zaph gets bored, things start beeping.
He wandered off and casually popped a few of the noisy rocks—the ones that attract every monster in earshot, neighbouring time zones included. The monsters, displaying an unexpected level of tactical awareness, avoided Craig’s minefield entirely. Craig, taking this personally, rearranged his mines to spell out ZAPH, just in case anyone was unclear about his emotional state.
We then did a few side quests to find different types of metal. This involved travelling to new locations, scanning for minerals, and trying to maintain a veneer of professionalism while Zaph continued to deliberately trip every monster attractor on the map. Craig, for his part, laid mines everywhere in the hope that the game would eventually reward him with an achievement simply titled “Please Stop.”
On the lava plains, we discovered how to build a magma power plant, which is objectively very cool and subjectively very hot. This involved piping lava around our base and trusting—against all available evidence—that Craig would not incinerate us all. It was a bold strategy.
You can also randomly scan the planet for new locations to explore, so naturally we did that for fun and to set up a second carbonite mining zone. Because nothing says responsible expedition like expanding infrastructure while under constant attack.
On one map, the required mineral could only be found in plants. Plants that needed encouragement. So we built special machinery to accelerate plant growth and harvest it. This, of course, required copious amounts of water and power, which led us to deploy some new tech that was just lying around. We extracted water, purified it, compressed it, and sent it via dimensional travel to the extractor feeding the growth machine.
This saved us from running pipes across the map—because monsters think pipes are the bees’ knees for snacks—and was a triumph of engineering, logistics, and not wanting to rebuild things repeatedly.
Naturally, all of this had to be defended while harvesting, so we let Craig off the leash. He immediately and merrily built fences like it was his last supper. There were fences. Behind fences. Guarding fences. Emotional support fences.
Meanwhile, Dave was trying to work out how to connect the liquid decompressor to the liquid compressor.
“Have you read the manual?” asked Myles.
“I may have burnt the manuals to start the campfire to cook dinner,” said Dave.
Eventually—through perseverance, intuition, and what may have been divine intervention—Dave figured it out. Open the console on the decompressor, select from the list of available compressors.
Easy. When you know how. And when the documentation is no longer ashes.
A couple of monster hordes and several total rebuilds later, we had all the tazenite we needed to attach a whatsit to our gateway back to Earth, which we were building at our main base with the confidence of people who absolutely do not understand half the technology involved.
With new technology unlocked, we suddenly needed supercoolant and flux capacitors, so Dave built a fusion plant. This was fed with water from the geothermal power plant, plus a sprawling nightmare of other plants, refineries, and storage units churning out new materials at an alarming rate.
And of course, five layers of walls and a comprehensive defence system—because nobody wants a fusion power plant going critical next to their base. Especially not with Craig nearby.
As an apology to Craig, Dave researched nuclear mines.
This may have been a mistake.
The night ended as a resounding success: research completed, incomprehensible technology constructed, and vague progress made toward getting back to Earth one day. Next session, we can start connecting it all together and pretending this was the plan all along.
Achievement Summary
Dave (1) achieved No water? No Problem – transfer 5000 of any liquid via the compressor/decompressor.
Myles achieved No water? No Problem and Not enough space (scan for a new location on Galatea 37).
Craig achieved Kaboom! (place a nuclear mine) and No water? No Problem.
Zaph achieved No water? No Problem.
Everyone achieved survival, which frankly feels like the real win.
