We construct the initial-value space of a $q$-discrete first Painleve equation explicitly and describe the behaviours of its solutions $w(n)$ in this space as $ntoinfty$, with particular attention paid to neighbourhoods of exceptional lines and irreducible components of the anti-canonical divisor. These results show that trajectories starting in domains bounded away from the origin in initial value space are repelled away from such singular lines. However, the dynamical behaviours in neighbourhoods containing the origin are complicated by the merger of two simple base points at the origin in the limit. We show that these lead to a saddle-point-type behaviour in a punctured neighbourhood of the origin.
