The World
One vertical column of water, not separate levels — everything is reached by descending from the same spot, plus one side map reached through a passage you have to find. Rarity is depth here: the further down you go, the rarer what you find.
01 The vertical section
Four zones are charted today, back to back from the surface: the Sunlit Reef, the Twilight Zone, the Midnight Zone and The Lower Dark, bottoming out at the seafloor, 2,790 m down. Every one of them is wider than it used to be — the Reef alone now runs about ten kilometres from end to end, and the deep zones run wider still — so crossing one on your own thrust is a real trip, not a hop. Planting a Survey Beacon buys you a way back; see Beacons & Travel.
Depth cross-section
02 The four zones
Every zone carries its own ambient life and scenery — kelp stands, bone fields, drifting motes, the rust-glow of a vent — placed the same way every time you dive it. It marks a zone as itself in a single glance, dark lamps or not, well before you’ve caught sight of a single catalogued creature in it.
Kelp stalks and coral heads under real sun shafts. A single crystal field seeded through the shallows, worth the least per crystal of anywhere in the water — the trade for never needing a lamp.
No creature has been catalogued here yet. The Reef's job is teaching you to read the water before it can hurt you.
Basalt columns and kelp curtains where the light gives out. A pair of drifting jellies live here, one that pulses like a slow heartbeat and one that never once turns toward a lamp — plus quicksilver wisps that bolt the moment they notice you, and a couple of half-buried shapes worth swimming close enough to see for yourself.
The first zone where your own lights start to matter more than the sun. Somewhere in this water sits a slot in the rock the weed has grown a curtain across — see the Kelp Forest, below.
Bone fields, wreck debris and the slow rust-glow of hydrothermal chimneys. One anglerfish is catalogued down here so far, and its lure is warmer and kinder-looking than anything that means you well should be. Pearl-pale glowmotes drift too, but only if you don't come at them fast.
Full darkness. Down here, the only reliable light in the water is the one bolted to your own hull.
A phosphor haze hangs in the water down here, and it scatters your own lamp — the cone shortens and blooms hazy instead of throwing a clean beam. A couple of ruined, clearly built shapes sit half-buried in the floor: something was down here before you, and left in a hurry or not at all.
Past roughly 2,400 m, water deeper than your hull is rated for starts working on the shell — a strain meter fills, and push it too far and a relief valve blows: no death, just a shove back up to water you're actually rated for and the descent lost. The whole column bottoms out at 2,790 m.
03 A second map: the Kelp Forest
Not every zone sits in the column. Somewhere in the Twilight Zone the rock carries a slot the weed has grown a curtain across — sonar can tell you something is there, swimming close enough is the only way to actually find it. Pass through and the water goes green: you’ve left the descent entirely and arrived on the Kelp Forest, a map of its own with its own ceiling and floor, not one more band of the same dive.
Dense stands of kelp stand tall enough to block a straight line of sight in any direction, and the weed hides what’s close the same way the dark zones hide what’s far — you won’t spot most of it until you’re nearly on top of it. Its own handful of species live only here, filed into their own chapter of the Ledger.
Unlike the column, it never goes fully dark — sunlight is dappled rather than shut out, so shafts of it still reach the floor even where your own lamp doesn’t.
Exactly where the passage sits, and what else the weed is hiding, are left for your own light to find.
04Darkness & light
The Reef needs nothing from you — it’s lit by the sun. The Twilight Zone is the first place your own lamps start doing real work, and the Midnight Zone is fully dark: whatever your hull throws is the only light there is.
- Your stock lamps reach roughly 190 m of clear light around the drone. Better lamps, ledger bonuses and gear all add to that same radius — see Your Drone.
- Darkness hides two different things from you: fixed places built into the water itself, and loose skill pickups that drift and startle — one section each, below.
Nothing about this page is a spoiler map. Exact spots, names and lore for what the dark is hiding are left for you to find with your own light — that discovery is most of the point.
05 Landmarks
The dark zones hold a handful of fixed shapes that were clearly put there, or clearly left behind, by something that wasn’t you — half-buried, carved, or simply wrong for the water around them. Like the fauna, they stay genuinely invisible until your own light very nearly reaches them, then fade in.
- A landmark is recorded once, the instant it fades all the way in — no click, no confirmation, the same proximity rule that discovers a creature.
- They fill a second, quieter counter on your HUD next to the creature tally — Places — so you always know there’s more of them out there without being told where.
- Before you’ve stood in front of one, sonar can only tell you something is out there — a pale question mark on the scope, never a fix. See Sonar & Chart.
Where each one sits, what it looks like, and what it’s called are left for your own lamps to answer.
06 Skill pickups
Two more things drift loose in the dark water and aren’t creatures at all — no Ledger page, no lore plate, just a crystal payout worth chasing and, sometimes, a Part. Each teaches a different piece of piloting.
A wisp bolts the instant it notices you and holds a fixed top speed of its own — you cannot walk into one. Out-run it, or cut the corner of the patch of water it’s tied to. Speed matters here more than anywhere else in the game: every real upgrade to your drone’s own top speed buys you wisps in a way nothing else does.
A glowmote never runs — it startles and blinks out of reach for a while if you close on it moving fast. Ease off the thruster before you’re near and it lets you take it. Watch it on approach and the tell is right there on screen: it pulses faster the closer, and more alarmed, you get.
Exact catch ranges and speed thresholds aren’t printed here — a wisp’s dart pattern and a glowmote’s pulse are both readable in a try or two, and that’s the intended way to learn them.