Open Cut

Open Cut

Region	Drift Network (south wing, Assay Row)
Level range	40+
Entrance	Open Cut portal, Assay Row alcove (west wall), Drift Network hall
Landblock	0x1AB0

Open Cut is Assay Row's third bay, a daylight surface dig in open country rather than a carved-out dungeon, where a Gear Knight extraction crew works six tourmaline seams under guard.

Overview

Open Cut is the one bay on the Row that is not underground at all. The portal opens onto a stretch of open country where a Gear Knight extraction crew has set up over the tourmaline, wildlife and all still going about its business around them. The site is worked in two parallel rows of three harvest points, "Row A" nearer the entry and "Row B" further in, each with its own trooper guard, watched over from the corners by armored perimeter guardians and commanded from the center by a pair of Lesser Lords. The whole layout reads as a structured extraction operation, not a monster nest: many workers, a few armed watchers, one command pair.

Inhabitants

The dig is held by a three-tier Gear Knight crew:

• Verdelite Gear Trooper - rank-and-file, posted at every seam row and flanking the approach from the entry portal.
• Rubellite Gear Guardian - perimeter watch, one at each corner of the dig.
• Siberite Gear Lesser Lord - command, held at the site's center.

The local wildlife is untouched and still roams alongside the dig.

Harvest

Edgewright Kenji Ashida hands over an Assay Pick before sending a player through; the pick is a bonded, non-wieldable tool made for working a seam in place, not a weapon. Used on a Tourmaline Seam formation, every swing pries loose one piece of Raw Tourmaline, and each swing also carries roughly a 1 in 3 chance of exhausting the seam - so a seam typically yields a small handful of pieces across three or four picks before it gives out.

When a seam is destroyed, its site goes on a five-minute cooldown and the very next thing that site produces is an ambush: three Gear Knights (two Verdelite Gear Troopers and one Rubellite Gear Guardian) spawn on top of the now-empty seam. Once that ambush squad is cleared, the site itself goes on its own five-minute cooldown before the seam re-forms and can be mined again. Six seam sites are worked in parallel across the dig, so a party rarely has to wait on any single one.

Access

The entry portal, Open Cut, stands in Assay Row's west-wall alcove of the Drift Network hall, in front of Edgewright Kenji Ashida. It requires level 40 and does not open at all until the previous bay's craftsperson has finished teaching their own material. A return portal named Drift Network - renamed from the arc's usual "Surface" label, since this bay is already outdoors - stands a short walk from the drop point and leads back to the hall. Kenji Ashida keeps the bench at this bay: he supplies the pick, sets the tourmaline task, and teaches Tourmaline once ten pieces of Raw Tourmaline are turned in.

See also

• Edgewright Kenji Ashida - the edgewright who arms and teaches at this bay.
• Verdelite Gear Trooper, Rubellite Gear Guardian, Siberite Gear Lesser Lord - the extraction crew holding the dig.
• Drift Network - the hall this bay opens off.