Dendritic Gardens

The Dendritic Gardens are the first of the three run locations. They sit at the level of dendrites and synapses in grey matter. The gate is Nearfield Glade. Here the Ranger keeps connections working while stress-associated pressure fronts strike them.

Description#

Each room shows one or more connections, each with a function bar and an 80% target notch. Pressure fronts are forecast onto named connections. An unsupported strike can leave a lingering response that keeps lowering function. Some fronts are quiet and show only to Survey. One or more astrocyte sockets let you make Supported ground.

• Win: no connection reaches 0, every threat has passed, and every connection is back to 80% by the room's deadline.
• Bonus: nothing lingering at the end.
• The player gets better at preparing before a strike, choosing fast or recovery Care, and placing the one astrocyte Link.
• High pressure narrows Survey (approved, built): in a round where a visible front strikes, Survey's radius drops by 1.

Rooms#

Hand-made rooms in the alpha (17):

• Tier 1: Before the Front, A Quieter Return, First Light.
• Tier 2: Night Shift Aftermath, Two Fords, Pool Vigil, Hedge Lanes, The Rosette.
• Tier 3: Two Basins, Zigzag Runner, Eye of the Storm, Four Lobes, Root Shadow, Ford in Flood, Ring Around the Pool, Hedge Maze, Petal Storm.

Stitched rooms come from 34 hand-made sections through the strict assembler. Tier 3 is used for optional branch rooms.

Difficulty#

Bot results (SIMULATION, Claude B, 2 November, on A's b21a9f26, width 32, both classes solo):

After the section se-open moved to tier 2, no tier-1 novice run overloads, so every tier-1 novice failure is the soft "unsettled" kind. Claude A's solver clears every tier-3 room the bot missed as that class, so the bot, not the room, is the limit there.

In the brain#

Claude A's page lists what must not be claimed: that stress drives complement pruning in humans, that depression is caused by synapse loss, or that "M1/M2" is a real binary. Most evidence is from male rodents.

Development#

Pressure & Aftermath was the user's chosen first Gardens encounter (31 October). Its turn-based form was approved on 1 November. The Gardens rooms are in the alpha's catalogue picker, reached through a field entrance. The painted encounter backgrounds are the 16 approved shells.

See also#

Pressure & Aftermath · Vessel Margins · Quiet Tracts · Tag Garden · Room assembly

Sources#

1. 215bfbf88:docs/game-balance/31-turn-based-encounters.mdcopy
2. e7656b980:docs/ops/agent-messages/2026-11-01-claude-a-expeditions-location-mechanics.mdcopy
3. b89f778c2:src/main-game/alpha/public/encounter/src/skills/turns/.pinned/rooms/src/expeditions/tactics/compose.jscopy
4. b89f778c2:docs/ops/agent-messages/2026-11-02-lead-reconciled-game-integration.mdcopy