System mechanic — added v220 · pays nothing, on purpose

The Crossing

Going all the way through a named region, on foot, in a straight enough line — the one thing that treats a place as an obstacle rather than a destination

Blister Online already has several ways of measuring where you've been — setting foot in a region, sweeping it, running a full Wayfarer's Round of places you chose yourself. Every one of them treats a region as somewhere to arrive at or somewhere to cover. The Crossing is the first thing in the game's history to treat a region as something with a far side.

What counts as a crossing

Enter a named region at its edge, hold your line through the middle of it, and come out the other side. Precisely: you have to pass within 45% of the region's own centre — skirting the rim doesn't count — and exit on a bearing at least 120° away from the one you entered on, so cutting a corner and doubling back near where you came in doesn't qualify either. There's no way to reach completion by simply wandering long enough inside a region; the shape of the path you actually walk is the whole test.

What ends a crossing before it counts

Turning back is the fail state, and it's the common one. Exit within 60° of the bearing you entered on and the crossing simply didn't happen. Nothing is lost or taken — you can turn around and start it again immediately.
Flying voids it. Climb more than 30 metres above the ground beneath you and whatever crossing you're on ends. An aircraft turns every region into a single hop, which is exactly what a crossing is not.
Dying voids it. You don't reach the far side by respawning there.

What it deliberately doesn't do

No marker, no arrow, no line, no progress bar. You're never shown which way "across" is or how far the far edge lies. Holding a bearing by dead reckoning across ground whose end you can't see is the entire activity — an arrow pointing at the exit would delete it outright.
No timer. Crossing isn't racing. Take as long as you like — stop, fight, mine, wander a little — none of it interrupts the attempt as long as you don't turn back, fly, or die.
No denominator. It sets no target and moves no existing completion figure — the Apex Hunter total, the Bestiary, and every other trophy count in the game are untouched.
Pays absolutely nothing. No coin, items, experience, stats, drops, or reputation, at any number of crossings.

Version history

v220 — added. Ships exactly as described above: the 45%-depth requirement, the 120°-separation exit rule, the 60°-turnback and 30m-altitude fail states, and a single new save field created lazily so a character who saved before this version loads with no crossings behind them and loses nothing.

Trivia

It runs on a 5Hz timer rather than the game's main frame loop — one camera position read and one region lookup, five times a second, regardless of how large the world or how many objects are in it.
By the time The Leading shipped one version later, the game's own development notes counted thirteen separate systems quietly measuring the shape of a player's own path through the world — The Crossing among them.