First Pin
 | |
| Region | Drift Network (south wing, capstone) |
|---|---|
| Level range | 70+ |
| Boss | The Unpinned (following The Anchorheld) |
| Entrance | Door in the Drift Network hall, south wing |
| Landblock | 0x0043 |
First Pin is the sixth and final rung of the Drift Network south wing ladder, a single driven descent for characters around level 70 and up. It is the oldest door the Meridian holds. The wing was raised around it.
Overview
Where the rest of the south wing branches into halls, tallies, and warrens, First Pin is one corridor going down: a top landing, two shelves cut into the middle of the dig, and a dig-face chamber at the bottom that doubles as the arena for its two-phase boss. There is no turn-in partway through and no farming loop to pick from. It is a single continuous run from the top landing to the bottom of the dig, escalating the whole way.
The descent is built as a retrospective of the entire ladder: each stretch on the way down echoes one of the five rungs above it, restated at the deeper strength this rung demands.
The descent
| Depth | Echoes | Inhabitant |
|---|---|---|
| Top landing | rung one | Drift-Touched Tusker, sparsest of the descent |
| Upper middle | rung two | Rust-Grown Burun |
| Deep middle | rung three | Doorheld Surveyor, fallen Meridian survey operatives |
| Approach to the dig face | rung four | Drift-Touched Olthoi Reaver |
| Dig face, ringing the boss | rung five | Lattice-Shorn Wisp, densest of the descent |
The crowd thickens the whole way down, from three creatures alive at the top landing to eight ringing the dig face, so the run reads as a single mounting climb rather than five separate fights.
Inhabitants
- Drift-Touched Tusker, Rust-Grown Burun, Doorheld Surveyor, Drift-Touched Olthoi Reaver, Lattice-Shorn Wisp - the descent's trash, one family per stretch, thickening toward the bottom.
- The Anchorheld and The Unpinned - the two-phase boss waiting at the dig face.
Boss
The dig face holds The Anchorheld, the grown, iron-bound thing that formed around the very first anchor the Meridian ever drove. It is slow and enormous and speaks only twice in the whole fight. When it falls, its own death splits it: what it was holding emerges as The Unpinned, fast where the first form was slow, and it is this second form that actually settles the descent. Killing the Anchorheld alone does not finish First Pin - the run isn't over until the thing it was pinning down is put down too.
Access
The entrance is a door in the south wing of the Drift Network hall, kept by Pinwright Ashina Yoi. Each party that steps through gets its own private descent, so a run is never shared with strangers. A return portal named Surface at the bottom of the dig brings you back up to the hall, well clear of the top landing's drop-in point.
Filing a complete survey of the bottom - killing The Unpinned - pays a large, level-scaled experience reward on a repeating cadence and grants the Meridian Keystone once, the first time you finish the descent. The very first time any character ever finishes First Pin, the ledger also enters that character's name in a column the Dispatcher does not explain: it grants one Meridian Commendation, a single-use gem that, once used, grants one Class Ability Point. It is granted exactly once per character no matter how many times the descent is run again afterward. See Pinwright Ashina Yoi for the exact shape of the reward.
See also
- The Anchorheld and The Unpinned - the dig face's two-phase boss.
- Pinwright Ashina Yoi - the Meridian pinwright who sends you down and pays out the survey.
- Drift Network - the hall this dungeon opens off.
- Miscounted Door - the rung below this one.