074 — PALINODE

SS danger · 1,250 credits · Version 0.2.0 — The Drowned Observatory

A city waits beneath an inverted ocean. Its observatory measures a tide that falls through living things. The main entrance is close. Getting the salvage back is another matter.

A rebuilt exterior

• A roughly 460 m square ground footprint, bounded by seawalls around a 430 m district.
• Central observatory with a monumental circular instrument, carved colonnades, detailed paving and amber refuges.
• Western two-tier aqueduct and pump halls; eastern freight quay with warehouses, cranes and cargo; a northern cloister and southern residential ruins.
• Walk-in building shells and connected roads. These outdoor structures are part of the moon, independent of the selected dungeon.
• Textured masonry, tiled streets, oxidised metal, drainage channels, kerbs, salt gardens and broken paving.
• Suspended buildings and moving rings beneath an inverted sea.
• Original Lethal Company main-entrance and fire-exit meshes and materials, loaded from your game at runtime.

Close entrances, dangerous extraction

The main entrance is about 25 m ahead of the ship's ramp marker. The fire exit is about 15 m to the right. Both use standard dungeon entrance IDs. Their visual assemblies, interaction colliders and arrival points share the same placement.

Negative tides start after the first 30% of the day. A bell and HUD warning give eight seconds to reach an amber-bordered refuge or the ship. Each cycle has 48 quiet seconds, eight warning seconds and 16 active seconds. Exposure has a short grace period, then deals 20 damage per second, rising to 25 late in the day.

The dungeon and ship interior are protected. Refuges stop tide damage but do not stop enemies. Dogs and giants provide additional outdoor danger. Architecture gives sightline breaks; keep listening when carrying scrap.

Loot and interiors

PALINODE requests 26–32 scrap pieces and applies a 2.5× scrap-value multiplier during generation, using Titan's pool with increased weighting for valuable items. Other mods, interior spawn points and game multipliers can change actual counts and values. No custom scrap is included.

Random_Interiors remains in control of dungeon selection. Enable PALINODE in its moon configuration if your settings exclude newly added moons. Interiors must provide a standard main entrance and fire exit. PALINODE adds a separate terminal destination; Experimentation remains available.

Installation and updating

Install the Thunderstore package with your mod manager and its dependencies. When replacing the earlier local ZIP, remove the old PALINODE copy first so only one Palinode.dll is loaded. All players need the same version. Restart the game, then route using palinode.

Manual installation: put Palinode.dll in BepInEx/plugins/Palinode/.

Dependencies: BepInExPack 5.4.2305 and LethalLevelLoader 1.7.13, plus the loader's dependencies. Built against Lethal Company v81. No Unity editor is needed to play.

Compatibility

This release is locally tested, not multiplayer-certified. Full multiplayer sessions and every custom interior/modpack combination remain unverified. Mods replacing Experimentation's exterior scene can conflict with the vanilla scene infrastructure used by PALINODE. Visual quality depends on the game's lighting and graphics settings.

The package contains no game assemblies, copied game assets or test harness. Vanilla door assets are referenced at runtime.

Removal

Route to another moon and save before removing PALINODE. Keep its dependencies if other installed mods need them.

Changelog

0.3.0

• Added three new fire exits across the aqueduct, freight quay and north cloister, for four fire exits in total, with matched dungeon exit IDs and a relay for multiplayer entry through the additional exterior doors.
• Added distinct exit pavilions, a landing compass and directory, route signs and inlaid markers, facade tracery, service pipes, railings, furnished halls, promenade lanterns, salt gardens, mechanical wheels, votives and drifting sea phosphor.
• Added the original 2:08 ambient soundtrack "Under the Inverted Sea," with indoor fades, tide-warning ducking and configurable volume.
• Share repeated surface textures and release temporary construction meshes after batching to reduce memory overhead.
• Refined the exterior sky and ambient lighting for readable stonework and cooler shadows; removed inherited exterior navigation so it cannot overlap the replacement district.
• Keep deterministic exterior door placement local on clients while retaining the original scene doors' networking.
• Retained early loading, plentiful scrap with normal values, tide protection and the interior spectating fix.

0.2.2

• Spread loot across more pieces: request 104–128 scrap instead of 26–32 before game/mod spawn modifiers.
• Removed the blanket 2.5× scrap-value multiplier; retain normal per-item value ranges and occasional valuable finds.
• Removed the additional 3× rarity weighting for expensive items, restoring Titan's ordinary mix.
• Begin exterior construction during level generation, spread geometry and mesh batches across frames, and bake outdoor navigation asynchronously instead of building everything at touchdown.
• Preserve the tide's landing grace period and cancel pending navigation jobs when the exterior is destroyed.
• Retained the 0.2.1 interior spectating fix.

0.2.1

• Fixed black interiors when a dead player spectates someone inside the dungeon.
• Update outdoor atmosphere and lights after the spectator target is resolved, using the watched player's interior state.
• Restore exterior lighting when the target exits or spectating switches to someone outdoors; retain local-player tide damage and normal game-over camera behavior.

0.2.0

• Rebuilt the exterior as the Drowned Observatory district.
• Expanded the ground footprint from 230 m to 460 m across.
• Added aqueducts, walk-in halls, freight quay, cloister, residential ruins and a seawall perimeter.
• Added masonry and ground textures with normal maps, paving, drainage and architectural details.
• Replaced custom door panels with the game's original main-entrance and fire-exit visuals.
• Explicitly aligned each door's interaction collider and return point.
• Added navmesh obstacles for substantial structures and connected outdoor routes.
• Retained SS danger, outdoor tides, valuable loot and Random_Interiors selection.

0.1.0

• Initial experimental procedural moon.