Mirage Pathway

Mirage Pathway is a crossing you only get to see once. A chasm of identical sandstone stones lies between two terraces, and a hidden path of true stones runs across it. For a moment the path glows. Then it fades, the barrier drops, and everyone runs for the altar on the far side, mostly from memory. A false stone crumbles the instant you're over it.

Five waves

Every round is five waves, each with a new path, and each wave goes the same way:

• The vision. The path lights up and every camera pulls back to show the whole crossing while you wait behind a barrier on the start terrace. It lasts 3.5 seconds in wave 1 and shrinks every wave, to under 2 seconds in wave 5.
• The fade. The glow goes out and your camera comes back to you. About a second later the barrier drops.
• The crossing. 15 seconds in waves 1 to 3, 13 in wave 4 and 12 in wave 5. It ends early once everyone is across or has fallen.

Fall through a false stone or off the side and you're a ghost for the rest of that wave. The next wave puts everyone back on the start terrace, so a fall costs one wave's points, never the round. Each wave the path also turns sideways more often: wave 1 runs mostly straight, wave 5 zig-zags.

Points

Reaching the altar pays by arrival order: 500 for first, then 350, 250, 180, 140, 100, 80, and 60 for everyone after that. Later waves multiply it, up to double in wave 5, so first across in the last wave earns 1,000. The round is ranked on total points, which makes steadiness worth a lot: a solid third place every wave outscores winning the first two waves and falling in the other three.

Nudge and Scout Flare

Both work only during the crossing.

• Q, Nudge (every 1.5 seconds). Pushes a rival within arm's reach straight away from you and stuns them for half a second. Line up so the push sends them onto a stone you suspect, or off the one they were dithering on.
• E, Scout Flare (every 8 seconds). Tests the stone just ahead in the direction you're facing, diagonals included. It's marked cyan on your screen if it's true and red if it's false, for the rest of the wave. Rivals see the spark, not the answer.

As a ghost, Q is a gust every four seconds that blows living players near you directly away from where you float, a little wider and stronger in waves 4 and 5. Hover on the far side of someone mid-crossing and blow them back off their stone.

Getting across

• True stones join straight ahead or sideways. The path never steps diagonally and never doubles back toward the start. Standing on a true stone, the next one is ahead, left or right.
• Walk the middle of each stone. The gaps between stones are a walkable quarter of a metre, but brushing the corner of a false stone drops it, and so does jumping over one. At a turn, step fully onto the next stone before changing direction.
• Jump at both ends. There's a gap of just over a metre between each terrace and the stones, too wide to walk.
• What you learn is yours. Stones you've stood on glow green on your screen only. A rival's fall leaves rubble that everyone can see, so watch who goes in and where. Walking in someone's footsteps is safe too, and guarantees you arrive behind them.
• Flare the stone you're least sure of. You'll get one or two a wave, so don't spend one on a stone you remember.

Bigger lobbies

The chasm is 6 stones wide and 8 deep at up to 4 players. It grows to 8 by 10 with 5 players, and to 12 by 10 with 9 or more. Every four players add another way in along the front row, so a big lobby crosses on several paths that can cross each other. In waves 1 to 4 those entrances are sometimes joined by a run of true stones along the front row. In wave 5 they never are, so pick your entrance during the vision.