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The First Room
On ZFRR, the First Room of Voyage of Despair is the Forecastle, the open deck at the bow of the Titanic where every game begins. The players land on it just as the ship strikes the iceberg: the wall of ice slides past the railing and chunks of it lie scattered over the planks. Each player starts with 500 points and the weapon, equipment and special weapon chosen in the loadout.
The Forecastle is wide and open, framed by the white superstructure of the ship at its back. The ways out are marked by blue seals: in the recorded games, a door for 750 points in the wall of the superstructure, and piles of debris for 500 and 750 points on the stairs that climb towards the Bridge. In a First Room game they all stay shut, so the Sentinel Artifact at the stern is never reached.
Strife
500 points, a semi-automatic pistol, on a wall of the Forecastle. Its outline is drawn in blue on the crates at the foot of the superstructure.
Essex Model 07
500 points, a lever-action rifle, on the white wall of the superstructure.
Those are the only two wall buys of the Forecastle. On the Purist board, they are also the only starting weapons allowed besides the Welling revolver.
The Danu altar
A green statue of the goddess by the railing, to the right of the spawn, and the only perk of the First Room. It serves the perk the player placed there in the loadout, at the price of that perk: Quick Revive for 2000 points in one recorded game, Dying Wish for 4000 in another.
No Mystery Box
None of the eight spots of the box is on the Forecastle, so a First Room game is played with the two walls and the power-ups.
No Pack-a-Punch
The four pedestals only appear once the Sentinel Artifact of the Poop Deck is activated, at the other end of the ship.
Special enemies
They all come onto the Forecastle. The Catalysts appear from around round 8, the Stokers climb in through the barriers like the zombies, and the Blightfathers join them from round 15.
A training ground
With its open deck, the Forecastle is one of the two places, with the Poop Deck, where players say they run the horde in circles. The Gauntlet mode even has a round about it: Fore!, defend the Forecastle without special weapons.
The Voyage of Despair leaderboard keeps separate boards for solo and for two, three and four players. Its reference category is Purist, played on Hardcore. Its rules:
Doors closed
Reach the highest round you can without opening any door or clearing any debris.
Hardcore
The game is played on Hardcore difficulty, and custom mutations are not allowed.
No elixirs or talismans
None may be used. The rules still name the elixir loadout to equip: Aftertaste, Point Drops, Anti Entrapment, Newtonian Negation, Quacknarok and Arsenal Accelerator for the Classics, and Conflagration Liquidation, Who’s Keeping Score, Extra Credit and Dividend Yield for the Megas.
Weapons
The starting weapon is the Welling, the Strife or the Essex Model 07. Only frag grenades and Acid Bombs may be used, and no special weapon.
Full rounds
Every round must be played in full, and glitches and exploits are not allowed.
Black Ops 4 rules
No bots, though split-screen is allowed; nothing injected into the game but fast restarts; no duplicated weapons, no going down on purpose to refill ammunition or charge a special weapon, and no killing hordes with repeated shield explosions.
Video
The whole game must be recorded, with the pregame lobby and every player’s loadout shown. The health, the points, the round counter and the top right of the screen must never be covered.
Where to post it
A Twitch video must be saved as a highlight, since past broadcasts are not accepted; a YouTube video must be public or unlisted.
Besides Purist, the leaderboard has seven other categories: No Elixirs, Classic Elixirs and All Elixirs on Normal difficulty, then Classic and All Elixirs on Hardcore and on Realistic.
