Rundown 004

Rundown 004: Contact was released on October 22nd, 2020 at 11 AM UTC // 1 PM CET.

Rundown 004: Contact://**Extended** was released on December 16th, 2020 at 12 PM UTC // 1:00 PM CET

## Summary

The overarching goal of Rundown 004 is mostly unknown, unlike previous Rundowns. Most tasks are simply to gather information, gather construction equipment, scientific equipment or do maintenance work on the facility. All for a purpose that is vaguely referred to by the Warden as "further progress" or "next phase".

In R4A levels, prisoners are sent to gather Items like hard drives and cryo cases. In R4B levels, prisoners are tasked with establishing the local power grid by distributing powercells and activating a generator cluster. In R4C levels, the prisoners must salvage nFrame information with a data sphere and collect congeners in the form of GLP canisters. In R4D levels, the prisoners bring the facility's power back online and explore D2, to find and survey the threat level of an unknown hostile biomass. Throughout the levels, the terminals in this Rundown have a malfunction with their audio speakers, causing them to create loud noises. This makes prisoners aware that audio logs are present in these terminals and can be opened by reading their log file.

Prisoners will also discover that some security zones are locked behind a bulkhead door. To complete the main objective, one bulkhead door must be opened to continue completing the objectives. While smart prisoners stay on the main objective, more daring prisoners may agree to discover what the other bulkhead doors hold behind them. Opening extra bulkhead doors locked with more danger involved lead to optional objectives. Optional objectives carry various risks with them, with the worst ones able to affect the main objectives in different ways. Completing these additional objectives unlocks some higher tier expeditions.

In R4D2, the prisoners have gathered an audio log of a person stuck in the Complex. This character calls himself Schaeffer, it's one of the few things he could remember. Schaeffer explains that he used to be with three other prisoners, similar to the 4 man teams players play with. The 3 unnamed prisoners are all dead, except for Schaeffer. He is the only one left of his team and managed to survive deep in the Complex for unknown reasons. He explains that more prisoners came to the complex, prior to the characters the players play as and Schaeffer supports this with smelling and seeing fresh blood. He came up with the idea to leave the audio log and challenges the prisoners to go deeper.

2 months after initial release, Rundown 004 gets four new expeditions after the Warden discovers unexplored sections of the complex. Thus starting Contact://Extended with R4A3, where prisoners are sent down once again to clear a path for 'maintenance work'. Generally, the Warden's true goal with path clearing was to distract biomass to the A3 section of the complex with a long lasting alarm at the final bulkhead door. However, there is no specific reason for distracting the biomass. R4B3's objective is to establish uplinks in the sector. What the ultimate purpose for setting up these uplinks is unknown. R4C3 has a valuable asset hiding somewhere. It is up to the prisoners to locate the asset and extract it out of the sector. It is once again unknown if this objective is building up to something much bigger. Finally, prisoners go deep down into R4E1 to lift a lockdown caused by malfunctioning air filters. The prisoners lift this lockdown by starting up a generator cluster. While moving to the generator, the fog mysteriously moves up and down depending on the progress of the prisoners.

In the second audiolog located in the 2 month later released R4E1, Schaeffer confirms that he hears the characters progressing through run E1. He has a better plan for the prisoners and offers his help in return for the prisoners' help. The audiolog is abruptly cut by sleepers attempting to attack Schaeffer.

All the levels in Rundown 4 the objectives are done for "further progress". With this in mind, Rundown 004's level objectives do not make it clear what Rundown 005 will be all about. Unlike in Rundown 002 and Rundown 003 where they are connected to the retrieval and collection of a Neonate HSU. However, the audio logs recovered in R4D2 and R4E1 reveal that Schaeffer is a surviving member of a prisoner group. Living deep in the complex avoiding the sleepers. This may propose the idea that Rundown 005 is centered around meeting Schaeffer.

## Logs

**Rundown 4 Logs can be found here: Rundown 004 Logs**

## Gallery

* First Look at Datacenter Environment
* Another Leak for R4
* The final leak of the Datacenter environment
* R4 Promotional GIF
* R4D2 Ending
* R4 Extended