Commencement

Large domain located above the shattered breach of   Petrichor V's moon. It is made up of the shattered remains of four individual sections, emblematic of  and Providence's tools of creation.

**Commencement** is the final stage Environment added in the *1.0* Update, and revised in the Anniversary Update. It is located on the moon of   Petrichor V.

The Artifact of Kin will allow its selected monster to spawn, but not prevent the , , or  from spawning.

## Description

Commencement is a large domain located above the shattered breach of Petrichor V's moon. It is ostensibly the desolated seat of  power.

It is made up of the shattered remains of four individual sections, emblematic of Mithrix and Providence's tools of creation:

* The area where Pillars of Design are found appears to be a workshop of sorts, with the unfinished remains of a Lunar Chimera Golem. The upper half of one remains suspended by large chains as if abandoned in the midst of construction.
* The Pillars of Blood are found within a large circular arena, encircled by tall pillars with raised platforms resembling seating.

Raised high above the rest of the grounds by what appears to be a titanic arm is a massive circular area, where Mithrix himself remains.

The player spawns in an underground area, facing the Rescue Ship and Mithrix's Arena. Outside the Rescue Ship are 5 dead Commandos.

## Interactables

* Lunar Pod
* Shrine of Order
* Glass Frog
* Cauldron (Common to Uncommon)
* Cauldron (Uncommon to Legendary)
* Pillar of Mass
* Pillar of Design
* Pillar of Soul
* Pillar of Blood
* Deep Void Portal (only with SotV)

## Monsters

* (during boss fight)
* (during detonation sequence)

## Releasing the Rescue Ship

Upon entering the main area of the stage, the player will discover a Rescue Ship protected by an unbreakable force field. Their new objective will be to find a way to release the Rescue Ship in order to escape the planet.

Different pillars are scattered around the stage, with a total of 4-7 pillars spawning. The player's objective is to activate and charge (i.e. complete the holdout event) 4 of them in order to activate jump pads that will lead to , the final boss. There are 4 different pillar areas, each having the potential of spawning up to 4 pillars with a radius of 20m and their unique way of charging:

* Pillars of Mass take 60 seconds to charge, and have no special properties.
* Pillars of Design take 30 seconds to charge and release shock waves during the process. These deal no damage, but they push the player away and inflict the  status, reducing their armor by 20 and movement speed by 50%. The shock waves can be avoided by repeatedly jumping.
* Pillars of Soul take 30 seconds to charge, but their charging radius will shrink the more they charge. The pillar's charge also rapidly decreases if all players leave the charging zone by 10% per second.
* Pillars of Blood take 10 seconds to charge, but they absorb the health of the player in the process. The pillar will drain 10% health per second (2.5% per tick, so it can be affected by the Eclipse 8 modifier), for a total of 100% over the charging duration.
	+ For Eclipse 8, having any form of damage reduction (such as a single , or via armor from items like  or playing a character with innate armor such as ) will make the damage taken from the pillar not add curse.

* Pillar of Mass
* Pillar of Design
* Pillar of Soul
* Pillar of Blood

It is not necessary to activate any of the pillars if the player has enough movement items (e.g. , ) or movement abilities to make it to the boss arena and trigger the fight.

Once Mithrix is defeated, the moon will begin a detonation sequence with an on-screen countdown. The players have 3 minutes to get to the Rescue Ship and complete its holdout event in order to escape. The event requires them to 'protect' the ship by staying within the surrounding zone for 1 minute. Walls of blue flames will appear, similar to those created by some of Mithrix's attacks.  and Chimeras will spawn and attack the player, very occasionally entering the protection zone of the rescue ship.

The holdout zone has a radius of 40m and it is not affected by the . Notably, its shape is cylindrical and extends all the way up to the sky. This makes it possible to fly high up to avoid any enemy attack for the duration of the event by utilising, e.g., character movement abilities, the  by jumping on the slope of the ceiling of the rescue ship, the , or the.

* Defend the rescue ship during the detonation sequence

After completing this event, the game is over. An ending cinematic is played during which the ship can be seen flying away from the moon. Shortly thereafter, a purple void sphere grows from the center of the moon before vanishing in a flash of light, taking the moon with it.

There is a loophole to have the character present during the end game report after the ending credits. When the escape zone is charged to 99%, the game will slowly fade to white before showing the ending cutscene. Before transitioning to the cutscene, the game despawns the stage and all objects. If the player has a , or a  and dies while the screen is fading to white, the player will be revived after the game has despawned everything and therefore will evade this process. During the end game report screen the character will now be present, but as there is no ground they will be eternally falling into nothingness. This is most easily achieved by charging the escape zone to 98%, killing a Void Reaver, dipping in the zone to charge it to 99%, and then dying to the Void Reaver's implosion. If the player dies after charging the zone, but they don't have an item to revive themselves, the game will still count it as a win, which means the result is marked the moment the zone is fully charged and not when the screen has completely faded to white. Any deaths occuring during the fade-to-white will also not count towards the final report.

## Cauldrons & Lunar Pods

On the left end side of the stage, near where the Pillars of Design spawn, there will be 5 Cauldrons, randomly selected from 12 Uncommon and 10 Legendary Cauldrons. 0-2 Common Cauldrons will also spawn, which are unique to Commencement and will exchange one red item into three of the displayed item. (This area is colloquially referred to by the community as "Soup Island").

On the right side of the stage, near where the Pillars of Soul spawn, there will be 0-7 Lunar Pods that can be attached to walls and in other unusual places. Internally, the game selects 7 objects from a list of 17 Lunar Pods and 32 other irrelevant objects, so the chance to find any number of Lunar Pods is not uniform. To calculate how many Lunar Pods are likely to spawn, one can use combinatorics:

(

17
k

)

×

(

32

7
−
k

)

(

49
7

)

{\displaystyle \frac{\binom{17}{k}\times\binom{32}{7-k}}{\binom{49}{7}}}

where *k* is the number of Lunar Pods that will spawn. A similar formula can be used to estimate the chance of getting (5, 0), (4, 1), etc, Cauldron pairs.

## Shrine of Order

A Shrine of Order will always spawn on a floating rock behind the area where Pillars of Mass spawn (left of the map when starting from the Rescue Ship, see the Overview section).

* Guaranteed Shrine of Order location.

## Glass Frog

A glass frog can be found during the escape sequence. It can be found by returning to the Teleporter ring at the start of the level after defeating . Interacting with the frog costs  **1**. If the Survivors of the Void DLC is enabled, petting the frog 10 times (thus using  **10**) will spawn a .

This Easter egg was requested on the official Discord. The  log refers to "glass frogs", implying that the frog could be more than an Easter egg.

* Glass Frog

## Logbook Entry

Like the Hidden Realms, Commencement's Logbook Entry is obtained through picking up an Environment Log. Said Environment Log is located within the central hole underneath the boss's arena. It will disappear 5 minutes after entering the level.

* Environment Log location, underneath the Boss' Arena.
* Environment Log location, inside the crater.

## Lore

```
Have you forgotten – that those gates are my design?

You would not know, because you do not look up. You bend knees only for ants and vermin. But I have been working on a grander design. A greater gate – to travel greater seas.

What if I met you, on one of these extinct planets? What if I caused the calamities you strive to avoid? What if I reaped destruction? What would you do then?

I know the planet you trail – of water and dirt. You fear their stability. That they will consume themselves. Maybe I will go there first.
```

## Version History

PC Patch v1.1.1.4
* Bug Fixes
	+ Fixed some of Commencement’s navigation/spawn nodes being placed underground, potentially causing a softlock loop

PC Patch v1.1.1.2
* Quality of Life
	+ Update the rescue ship’s charging zone to be infinitely tall, i.e you can charge it while floating above
	+ Update escape portals from the final boss arena to be more portal-looking
* Bug Fixes
	+ Fixed stray nodes causing lockboxes to spawn midair on the final stage

Anniversary Update
* Gameplay Changes
	+ Final Stage
		- 🌧 The final stage has been redone entirely, with unique objectives and a new, large arena to play in. We won’t spoil it. Please let us know how you feel!
* Bug Fixes
	+ Fixed the ending sequence explosions missing an authority check, causing it to fire additional projectiles for every client in the game

PC Patch v1.0.1.1 (Build ID No.5440050)
* Bug Fixes
	+ Fix the fog on the last stage being entirely opaque if soft particles are disabled
	+ Fix missing out-of-bound floor under the starting room for the final stage
	+ Fix a gap in the final boss arena causing you to get stuck
	+ Fix the ceiling in the final boss arena not being solid for projectiles and

Early Access Content Update 5
* Major Content
	+ Added New Final Stage: ???
	+ Added New Stage Lore Entry: ???

## Trivia

* The implosion of the Moon in the ending cinematic is reminiscent of the death implosion of a , albeit on a planetary-sized scale. It could be assumed that the Moon was not actually destroyed, but rather 'detained' in the same way that something caught within the Void Reaver's implosion is described as.
	+ The Simulacrum version of Commencement is located in its boss arena, possibly suggesting the events of Simulacrum take place after the Moon's detainment.

* The Pillars in this stage are all based on the 4 elements of the universe Mithrix found. What they are, how they function, and how they look are all taken from the Bulwark's Ambry log.
	+ "...Round, with no features. No orientation. It is mass. Almost everything here is mass. Mass is boring, but required." The Pillar of Mass is the blandest in design, and has no effects. Featureless and boring.
	+ "...Features, angles, and intent. Look at the planarity of the surfaces. This is design. I love design." The Pillar of Design has a clear design unlike most of the other pillars, and has a distinct feature - its twisted design.
	+ "...a volatile one - a lifeline. Blood. Sharp, yet radiant. Blood is heat. This is my blood, but there is plenty of blood in this universe." The Pillar of Blood is literally a pillar made of blood. Perhaps made of Mithrix's blood given the log, and how desolate the moon seems to be.
		- Prior to the map's redesign, a Pillar of Blood could be found near the Cauldrons as decoration.
	+ "Now be gentle. Look closely here. Do you see it? Almost invisible, a thin film. Frail. It’s not in this reality, but an adjacent one. I’ve heard you discuss this - something you innately understood. What you describe as soul. Don’t you love soul?" The Pillar of Soul is nearly invisible, and it being the frailest of the elements, it requires the most amount of attention when charging.

* Where the Pillars of Soul are located, a stone carving resembling Providence's head can be found in a secluded corner.
* The Pillars as holdout zones are unique in that their charging time isn't affected by the number of players in the zone. This means in multiplayer it is more efficient to split and charge multiple Pillars at the same time, albeit at the risk of fighting stronger enemies individually.
* The Simulacrum version of Commencement contains various silhouettes and constellations in the void surrounding the arena. These figures are rarely seen during normal gameplay due to their distance from the arena and the fog of the Simulacrum. Some of the figures depicted include...
	+ Large constellations of  and Providence
	+ and
	+ 2D Sketches similar to the ones found in the game's credits, depicting...
		- Providence's Head
		- Scavenger
		- The line “I know the planet you trail – of water and dirt. You fear their stability. That they will consume themselves.” In the Logbook could be a reference to Earth, as it is of “Water and Dirt”, and the planet is unstable (climate change). Providence may have been worried that humans would end up killing themselves and the planet and planned to transport them to Petrichor V

* The literal Glass Frog