Encounter Data
Reconstructed from steinea's completionist route (PS5, posted to the Steam discussions and mirrored as a guide) and cross-checked against the achievement list. This is one player's path, not a decompiled manifest — optional stops that route skipped will be missing, and the fight count is a floor, not a total. See Sources.
Chapter table
| # | Chapter | Fights | Party / branch events | Notable pickups |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sunrise Over the Wasteland | Bald Guy; Mark | Recruit Mark (optional) | Basketball (pays off ch. 7); The Uninhabitable Earth |
| 2 | Brutalist Playgrounds | Butcher | George joins | Camera batteries; Odyssey; Wedding Cake |
| 3 | Rat Kebab | Two Insurgents | — | — |
| 4 | Rat Kebab Continued | Two Insurgents | — | Powder Bar; Betonburg Beans; optional fight ("Chess Puzzle") |
| 5 | Across the Tracks | Three Train Squatters; Train Gang | Train Teen | Fishing Rod; Green Bean Painkillers; Theo's Ouzo |
| 6 | Alphaville Petroleum | Alphavillians | — | Powder Bar |
| 7 | Hightower | — | Hub chapter; deliver the basketball | 5 newspapers, 3 books; Supermale |
| 8 | Third World Organic | Alphavillians vs Insurgents | Faction choice — decides who is friendly in ch. 19 | — |
| 9 | Chakra Island | Insurgent; Bears + Insurgents | — | Pristine AK47 |
| 10 | Share the Spoils | — | Negotiate with Walter; Josephine joins; second pass on ch. 7 collectibles | Mini Crossbow |
| 11 | Defend the Generator | Vikings | — | — (objective: all generators undamaged) |
| 12 | The Blind Bard | — | — | Group photo |
| 13 | Humboldt Botanical Gardens | Frogs; Alphavillians ×2; Alphavillians + Plants; Alphavillians + Plants + Frogs | Dog: pet or ignore | Nail Gun; Faak; Das Speed Stimulant Tabletten; 4 books |
| 14 | The Peggy Utopian Museum | Insurgents + Robots vs Scavenger; Alphavillians | Museum fight skippable via film trivia | Shiv; Off-brand Steroid Gummies |
| 15 | St. Luke's Hospital | Alphavillians + Robots; Doctor + Alphavillians; Alphavillians + Robots; Doctor + Alphavillians + Robots; Alphavillians + Robots | Pigman, then Maya and Lin join | Crutch; Ibuproper; Salinas Max; Supermale |
| 16 | Digidopamine | — | — | 3 photos; "Hope" mission newspaper; Vitaboost; Algae Schnapps |
| 17 | Alphaville Ark | — | No interaction at all | — |
| 18 | Alphaville Sewers | Rats (endless — objective is to reach the north end) | — | Alpha Cans; final book |
| 19 | Alphaville | Robots; Alphavillians; Riot ×2; Boss | Terms-of-service gag; civilians must survive | MeteorFe+ (final booster) |
Derived counts
| Metric | Value | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| Chapters | 19 | High |
| Combat encounters on this route | ~30 | Medium — route-dependent |
| Chapters with zero combat | 3 (12, 16, 17) | Medium |
| Heaviest combat chapters | 13 and 15, five fights each | Medium |
| Named weapons found | 6 (Fishing Rod, AK47, Mini Crossbow, Nail Gun, Shiv, Crutch) + starting oar, plus battlefield pickups (riot shield, car door) | Medium |
| Named boosters | 15 | Medium |
| Recruitable characters named | 9 | Medium |
| Verified branching decisions | 2 (ch. 8 faction choice; ch. 14 trivia skip) | High |
Reading the shape
Plotting fights per chapter gives a flat line at 1–2 for chapters 1–12, then a spike to 5 in chapters 13 and 15, with 16 and 17 empty. The tactical game is effectively front-loaded as tutorialisation and back-loaded as content — everything between is narrative and traversal. That is a road-movie curve, not a tactics-game curve, and it explains why reviewers who came for the tactics found the first half slow and the ones who came for the world found the second half relentless (Player Journey).
Note also that all six named weapons arrive in chapters 5–15, i.e. the acquisition curve keeps pace with the combat density, but since weapons neither scale nor upgrade, a weapon found in chapter 15 is only different, not better (Equipment & Boosters).
Related
World & Chapter Structure · Enemies & Encounter Design · Party & Characters