Category:The Tesseract

You have stepped into a bizarre realm of twisting perspectives and flickering lights, where the horizon cannot be fixed upon by the eye, and each room seems like a confining cell and a limitless plane at the same time. Only a series of liquid silver mirrors provide consistency, otherwise each "room" is like a different face, or shard, of a giant prism - one might be made of some strange liquid, another of buffeting gas, one of solid stone or molten metal, or of nothing at all. And those silver portals connecting it all, with no escape save death...

The Tesseract visits madness upon wizards and sages who ponder the secrets of the universe too singlemindedly. Traces of its influence may linger where that madness took hold.

Level Range: 51-51

Builder: Xochitl

This area was part of an area-building contest in 2018.
This area was added in 2019.
This area was updated and moved to a permanent home in August of 2023.

Directions

Walking route from Aelmon: ?.

Portaling point(s) suggested: Butler Higgins.

Connections

• Laboratory Of Chalmus

Navigation

Players need to be in a group of at least two to enter the first portal. Talk with the mob Physical Change in the entrance room.

The main part of this area is just eight single rooms with no normal exits. Half are water rooms, and these have an invisible fountain which can be quaffed to be taken to Floating In A Fog Of Death (also where your corpse is moved if you die), a safe room above the entrance. The third and largest mob in each room will spawn a portal (a large mirror of liquid silver) on death, which will last for a short time until the initial mob re-spawns and then disappear. Each player entering one of these portals is randomly sent to one of the eight "shard" rooms. This means each group member should be prepared to be alone in a room. The larger a group is the better the chances of more than one in a room together. Also, killing faster will get you the next portal more quickly, and a chance to join a groupie. There is no exit from the area aside from death, teleporting out, or quaffing one of the hidden fountains in a water room.

Comments

Each of the main eight rooms contains a different series of three mobs (of levels 65(slight)-75(average)-85(extreme)), each spawned on death of the previous one. These mobs are named after physical and chemical properties like Length, Volume, Mass, Malleability, Luster. The initial/smallest mobs (Slight) cannot see sneak/mh. These mobs are of a very wide variety of races, classes and (some quite nasty) abilities. In general they are quite tough and have both shields (some charged, both flame and lightning) and weapons. There is also an invis (non-aggie) mob that drifts among the eight main rooms (Transitory Transmutation).

Gear wise, at least two mobs carry poison (delicate ceramic/delicate glass sphere, venom), another a gun and some exploding bullets (a Rainbow Gun on Slight Length in "Swinging Through An Electromagnetic Field"), and the boss drops a wand with level 51 Ultrablast (bent rod of rusted iron). There is also a psi mob that carries an ethereal blasting weapon (a flickering splinter of sulfuric acid).

When the mob Extreme Length is killed the area boss spawns, Corrosion of Metals (level 95). There is an insignia quest (Master of The Tesseract) which involves being in the group/room for the deaths of all eight Extreme mobs as well as the area boss. The entrance mob can let you know which you are missing. Restarting the area with a new group resets the quest.

All in all this is a very tough area. Given that several mobs have abilities that can damage your gear it's worth noting that the initial mob Physical Change is a smith.

Since this is a contest area it may not have finalized gear as far as bonuses and so on, and it could be removed altogether or moved to another part of the Avatar world at some point.