Abilities
One resource, three keyed slots — Q shared by every class, W and E carrying each class’s own identity — seated together at Calibration but unsealed in stages, one slot at a time, as your Pilot level climbs. A bar draws every number it fires with: Charge in the rail, cost in the pips, cooldown in the sweep, and how far you’ve levelled each one in the ring around its tile.
01 Charge
Every ability draws from the same cell — Charge, a resource rather than a stat. It fills on its own while you fly and drains only when an ability actually fires; nothing else touches it, and the cell always starts a dive full.
- Glide, or sit parked, and the cell tops up at its fastest — well under a third of full stick is enough to get the fast rate.
- Push the stick to its limit and the fill rate drops to roughly half that resting speed — a smooth gradient between the two, never a hard cliff, so easing off even a little starts paying you back immediately.
- The cell’s ceiling and its refill rate are both ordinary stats, so a part or a Ledger bonus can raise either — see Your Drone.
02 Sealed until Calibration — then unsealed one slot at a time
All three slots are visible from Level 1, and all three sit empty — the bar draws them sealed, not missing, so the promise reads as a tease rather than a gap. Nothing fires on Q, W or E until you reach Level 5 and Calibrate (see Pilot & Classes): the moment you pick Hauler, Scout or Salvager, three whole abilities drop into the rack at once, bolted to the same Q/W/E keys every class shares — so the reach for a key never changes.
Seated is not the same as firing, though. Each slot carries its own unlock level, and a locked tile stays visible and honest about it — dim, with “unlocks at Pilot Level N” printed right on it — rather than pretending the key does nothing:
- Q — unseals the instant you Calibrate, at Level 5.
- W — stays locked until Pilot Level 10.
- E — stays locked until Pilot Level 15.
The gate is your CURRENT Pilot level, not how long ago you Calibrated — a pilot who respecs into a class for the first time at Level 20 finds all three slots already live, and a legacy save already past Level 15 sees nothing locked at all.
Q is not really a choice, though: Boost Surge is a single universal thruster core, identical on every chassis and levelled on its own one shared ladder. Only W and E carry the class’s own identity — one control skill, one utility, and it is those two rows a respec actually replaces.
A respec swaps the fitted W and E wholesale, but nothing already earned is lost: each ability’s own progress is banked separately, so a class you leave and come back to later picks up exactly where you left it — and Boost Surge’s own level never moves at all, since every class shares the same one.
One shared Q, two per class on W and E
Dump the cell into the thrusters. The water tears white behind you and the camera has to catch up.
Vent a bead of ballast oil. It blooms into a dark, drifting slick — a bolting Leviathan, a fleeing Abyssal runner, or (in the Abyssal Arena) the boss's own attack clock stalls the instant it's caught inside. Higher mastery levels widen the cloud and hold the catch longer.
Release a deepwater magnet pulse. Nearby creatures and points of interest flash into view while loose crystals and dropped rewards surge toward the drone.
Throw a charged tether through the water. It bites into an Abyssal runner and locks its muscles long enough for a clean net — the held animal shivers inside a violet hold ring, the same read as a stunned beast in the Trial Grounds.
Fire a prism into the water. It blooms through the dark and returns every nearby creature, cover, crystal, and passage as a clean contact.
Spit a living clump of abyssal algae that splats over a fleeing creature and locks it in place — held prey wears the same violet hold ring as a stunned Trial Grounds beast.
Deploy rotating abyssal shield plates around the drone. Each plate catches part of the next impact before dissolving into the water.
Numbers above are each ability’s base, fitted level — what Level 1 fires with. Every row is blocked the same way once fitted: the tile dims and a coral rim flashes on a refused press, while it’s on cooldown, already running, or the cell can’t pay its price.
* Boost Surge, Electric Lasso, Algae Snare and Ballast Oil don’t grow on the smooth curve the other three do — their duration is a hand-authored ladder instead. Boost holds 3s at Level 1 and steps 5 · 7 · 9 · 11 through Level 5; the three stun skills’ window holds 2s through Level 2, steps to 3s at Levels 3–4, and reaches 5s at Level 5 — the same round beats for every one of them, since that duration is exactly how long a player has to react, whichever class threw it.
03 Reading the bar
Bottom-centre in open water, the bar is drawn, not a row of web buttons — a Charge rail over three glassy tiles, each carrying its own keycap, a row of dots for its price, a radial sweep for its cooldown, and a thin ring for how far you’ve levelled it. Before Calibration the same three tiles are still there, drawn dark and unlit — the rack, not the abilities.
The ability bar, schematically
04 Levelling — drilled, then bought
Every ability runs 1 through 5, and a level is never simply earned by using the key enough times, nor simply bought outright — both have to happen, in order. Flying an ability banks toward a drill quota; once that quota is met, the next level is for sale at the Skill Bench (the Skills tab of the Console, key K — see Pilot & Classes), priced in crystals and one skill material specific to that ability. A rich pilot who has never pressed the key cannot buy their way past level 1.
Skill materials — Crab Plate, Hound Fang, Ray Barb, Lurker Ink — aren’t sold; they drop from fights at the Trial Grounds. Each ability names exactly one material, and the price climbs at every step, never cheapens.
Electric Lasso’s ladder, as one worked example
Fitted at Level 1 for free, its stun window already holds a target for 2s.
| Level | Drill (total uses) | Lurker Ink | Crystals | Stun window |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| +2 | 7 | 2 | 500 | 2s |
| +3 | 14 | 4 | 1,500 | 3s |
| +4 | 21 | 7 | 4,000 | 3s |
| +5 | 28 | 11 | 10,000 | 5s |
Every one of these seven abilities runs the same two-step drill-then-buy shape — its own drill count, its own material, its own climbing crystal price — Electric Lasso is simply the one worth showing in full, and its stun column happens to double as the authored duration ladder called out in Fig. 1.
- A bought level shortens that ability’s cooldown and stretches its duration or magnitude, but only modestly — cooldown can never fall below 60% of its base, so a maxed ability is stronger, never a button you can hold down.
- What actually grows five times over is what it looks like. The numbers move on purpose in small steps; the spectacle on screen at level 5 is the real reward for getting there.