System mechanic — not covered elsewhere

The Meltwater Still

The only thing in the game that takes Lunar Ice — and it stands on a fake Moon on Earth, not the real one

A derelict, lander-shaped rig on splayed legs with a melt pan underneath, standing on the Cheese Rock — an Earth region dressed up to look like the Moon. Reached on foot or by aircraft like any ordinary landmark, no rocket required. It exists to solve a genuine dead end: the Oxygen Tank module produces Lunar Ice, but for a long stretch of the game's history the only thing that ever consumed Lunar Ice was that same Oxygen Tank's own relay line — the one material the base made was also the only thing that ever spent it, a closed circle with no exit.

Why the fix isn't on the Moon

The game's own reasoning is explicit about this: three separate development cycles had already gone into deepening the Moon by that point, and adding a fourth lunar station would only make the Moon itself deeper without solving the actual problem — which was never that the Moon lacked content, but that nothing on Earth had ever wanted anything the Moon produces, beyond the supply pod itself. So rather than building a fourth thing on the real Moon, this joins the real Moon to the cheap one — the Cheese Rock — that a player can simply walk to.

Building and running it

1. Commission the still, once per character, for 8 Moon Rock, 2 Flag Cloth and 4 Iron Bars — the first use either Moon Rock or Flag Cloth had ever had anywhere in the game.
2. Seat a Catch Basin, up to three, each for 10 Lunar Dust and 4 Lunar Ice — permanent for that character, and Lunar Dust's first use in the game too. Each basin lowers the Lunar Ice cost of a single thaw: 6, then 5, then 4, then 3 with all three seated.
3. Bank the firebox with a Cinder Core, up to three — a surplus sink for cores that previously had nowhere to go once the Cindergate's own capacity was full. Each banked core adds 2 more Fuel Cells to every thaw, up to 8 total with all three banked.
4. Thaw. Lunar Ice cracks into Fuel Cells — the actual real-world reason anyone would care about ice on a moon in the first place. If the Lunar Relay is already lit and you aren't already carrying one, the same thaw also charges a Downlink Beacon on the spot, with no trip back up to the antenna required.

Closing the loop

The last step is the actual point of the whole system. Fuel Cells are one of the widest sinks in the game — burned by the mining drill, every aircraft, bombs, and the Mk2 rocket — and a Downlink Beacon is the one item the entire Moon supply chain exists to hand a player in the first place. The Oxygen Tank's own relay line already rains Lunar Ice down for free; the Still is what finally lets that ice buy the next beacon, which calls down the next supply pod, which brings more ice. The circle the Oxygen Tank was previously stuck inside finally has a way out.

Version history

• The Meltwater Still added, following a direct audit of the item table: Lunar Ice was written by exactly two things and read by exactly one, and that one reader was also the thing that produced it. Moon Rock, Lunar Dust and Flag Cloth — the Cheese Rock's own signature drops — audited out exactly the same way, with no recipe, station, price, contract or quest ever reading any of them. This system gave all four materials their first genuine use at once.

Trivia

• Every cost and cap on this page is a local constant kept entirely inside the Still's own code — deliberately never appended to any shared registry — so building or running it can never move a Trophy Room denominator or any other completion count elsewhere in the game.
• A character saved before this system existed simply loads with an uncommissioned rig standing on the Cheese Rock and loses nothing at all.
• Part of the same "cast, seat, then draw" family of stations as The Pauper's Pyre, The Ashfall Kiln on Vulcanis, and The Cindergate at the floor of Hell, each solving a materials dead-end local to wherever it stands.