Spoilers

Souring pressure and the deep

A pressure shared by the world

The Souring is a shared world pressure in ordinary full-game Adventure. It is not a personal status effect. The Wilds and demo reset it. The five bands begin at 0, 20, 40, 60 and 80 pressure, with a maximum of 100. The game teaches it through discoveries, changes in conversation and the deep frontier rather than a pressure bar.

Time raises the pressure

A fresh Adventure starts at 0 pressure, anchored to its actual starting turn. Each 2,000 world turns adds 1 pressure, stopping at 100. Whole missed intervals catch up when the world is checked again. Returning to a save with no stored Souring state uses the original Adventure epoch, so an older save can catch up pressure that a fresh game does not receive.

Actions that add pressure

Completing a vampire feed adds 1 pressure. Recording a vampire hunter’s death adds 2, including a hunter killed by a mortal. A Shadow Incursion event adds 3. These are separate from the slow drift. Drinking bottled blood is not the feeding-completion route. Pressure and its event gains are shared, even when one party member causes them.

Listen for warnings

Talk can add warnings about the lower galleries from 20 pressure. From 40, more lines mention lost messengers and blight, and scholars can point towards buried books. From 60, scholars, priests and cheesemakers have further warnings. At 80, talk can mention turning milk and Festival fires kept through the night. These are possible lines in a wider conversation pool. Some faction greetings return before that pool and give no Souring warning. Their wording does not create a separate pressure-driven crop failure or milk-spoilage rule.

The deep frontier grows harder

At 40 pressure, Souring adds 1 to the effective danger of places whose base danger is at least 4. At 80 it adds 2, with a final cap of 5. A base-4 place therefore becomes danger 5, while a base-5 place remains at 5. Souring alone does not raise base-1 to base-3 country. War and settlement relief have separate rules, and the original homeland can still override spawn danger. Effective danger feeds new creature strength and spawn pacing.

New Undermaw floors read the pressure

Generating an Undermaw floor adds 1 to its entrance’s dungeon level from 40 pressure and 2 from 80. The ordinary increase with floor depth still applies. A floor already stored in your save loads its stored state. A pressure change does not itself rebuild that floor or reroll its creatures.

Lattice geodes can draw soured rewards

Above 40 pressure, a rare, epic or legendary geode roll can substitute a soured reward pool. The chance is the pressure above 40 divided by 120. It is zero at exactly 40, one in six at 60, one in three at 80 and one in two at 100. Common and uncommon rolls do not use this substitution. The geode harvest reads pressure when it is opened. This rule changes the eligible reward pool, rather than guaranteeing a cursed item or changing every geode’s rarity.

Pressure can open a road at the crystal

At 80 pressure, the high-pressure route can unlock The Soured’s Road at the Undermaw crystal. You still need an accepted sealing instrument to open the ending choices. Lattice investment, Settled Vein or the authored Soured questline can open this same road at lower pressure. High pressure does not by itself satisfy the other ending requirements.

Holding the seal and curing the Souring

A stabilising ending lowers pressure to at most 10 and restarts its drift clock. If the Rindstone makes it a true seal, the pressure becomes 0, but can rise again. Harmony instead sets pressure to 0 and prevents later drift or event spikes. A catastrophic ending adds 100 pressure, reaching the cap. The outcome is applied when the ceremony commits, before the choice to continue or retire.