Welcome to Elderfield Mall and Sewers: Entrances and the Lake Shortcut

The sewer entrance is not in the sewers. It is on the ground in town.

There is a round grey manhole south of the shop door. Stand on it and the outer rim turns white, and that is when interacting takes you down. There is a second entrance northeast at the playground. The two connect once you unlock the shortcut. From the shop side you can then reach the lake directly, where the fishing rod is, with only one fight on the way.

Both entrances and the lake shortcut

The entry method comes from a Steam discussion thread whose answer was marked by the developer:

In the main portion of the town (where your house is), head towards the southwest towards the market/convenience store. Right outside of the door, and south, is a grey circular porthole/manhole. When your character is standing over it, the outer edge will turn white. Interact with it and you will be taken to the sewer. There is also a manhole in the northeast in the playground.

The important bit is that interaction cue. The manhole looks inert until you stand on it and the rim lights up. Plenty of players run laps around town without ever landing on the right tile.

The shortcut is the more practical find. The same community answer says the rod is at the lake. Going through the playground side means “you need to fight two monsters three if you take the wrong way”, while unlocking the shortcut connects the shop manhole to the lake for a single fight. Early on, when your armour is thin, that decides what every fishing trip costs you.

The mall’s layout

From the official wiki contents, the mall breaks down like this:

Two details are worth remembering. The mall contains its own mine, Mall Mines, so you can shop and mine in the same trip. And the Offices are not on the main floor - they sit in the hallway - which is why some tasks tell you to go deeper in.

Why people die in the mall

The episode embedded above opens with I died at the mall. The streamer died there in the previous episode.

Three things stack up.

The mall is a dense combat zone not far from the farm, and it holds the shops, the mine and several tasks, so you are pushed through it repeatedly.

It spawns Shoppers, which look close to ordinary customers. In the other playthrough series, the streamer’s first reaction is to assume it is staff before correcting himself: Oh, no, he's a shopper.

Losing the fight sends you straight home. That trip is wasted. If it happens near the end of your day, the cost is worse.

So the community order makes sense: open the sewers, get the fishing rod, shore up early tools, then come back to the mall. The mall is not hard on its own. Being pushed in by a quest before your armour exists is.

TV news is not a mystery

This episode opens with a TV broadcast: a jogging club member found a set of skeletal remains behind a bush just off the jogging trail, cause of death unconfirmed.

That kind of news event does not count as a mystery in this game. Mysteries are only the interactable objects that prompt investigate further?. Mixing the two up is one of the most common post-launch blockers, and the mechanical difference is laid out in the mysteries guide.

How far this episode gets

Part 2 runs 3h31m. The order runs like this. Listen to the TV news, then return to the mall for fights and tasks. Replant crops, including the head-growing kind you have to chop with an axe. Wrap up around 5.5 hours of total play, and preview a mine trip next.

Put simply, this is the episode that clears the mall. The next one goes into the mines.

Still unconfirmed

The sewer entrances and shortcut come from a developer-marked community answer, not official documentation.

The mall’s full room list is incomplete; the wiki contents currently list area names only.

Some Steam threads date from the demo period, so positions may have changed.

This video has no public comments or live chat log, so player feedback here comes from Steam forums.

The video

Embedded above: Welcome to Elderfield (Part 2) by Tattooed Nadia.

Facts checked 2026-09-16. Map and entrance positions can change with patches - trust the in-game interaction prompt.