The Berth

01 Coming home

Open the Chart (M) and choose the Berth card at the top of the water column, or fly straight into the passage mouth yourself — the slowly turning pale spiral in the water — and press T the moment you’re close. Either way drops you on the dock. Docked, your HUD cards run warm amber instead of cold teal: the game’s own way of telling you that you’re home.

Nothing is collected, sighted or recorded while you’re standing on the dock — standing at the Berth is exactly as idle as standing anywhere else in the water. Any field you’ve already charted keeps feeding Fleet Dispatch the whole time, but Dispatch only pays out once you’ve armed it and actually left; nothing credits your wallet live while you’re playing, docked or not, covered in The Economy. Four named keepers stand here, each running one real service.

02Quartermaster Bell — Stores & Exchange

Get close and press T to talk. Bell keeps a physical balance on the counter, not a form — and it strikes exactly one deal now: crystals stamped into Nauts, nothing bought or sold in any other direction.

The counter has changed twice. Buying Parts outright with crystals was retired first — it let crystals quietly stand in for depth a pilot hadn’t actually reached. Selling Parts back for crystals went next, retired the same pass Nauts arrived as their own account-wide currency: Bell’s balance only stamps crystals into Nauts now, at a flat rate. Load the tray with the stepper, or jump straight to Max, and watch the beam tip toward the crystal side as the trade grows — then pull the lever to strike the deal. The confirm control really is a lever, with a knob that slides down the moment the trade goes through.

Impatient for Nauts? The counter isn’t the only way to get them — see The Economy for the Nauts Shop, which sells packs directly for real money, no crystal-stamping required.

03Cartographer Wren — Charts & Passage

Talk to Wren for the same trips the Chart screen itself offers — no fee, no currency involved, just a destination. Instead of a plain list, Wren keeps an illustrated depth strip laid out on the counter: three painted cards, each a small slice of the water it will actually drop you into.

The first two cards are real destinations: pick one, then pull the lever marked “Take the passage” — a small spinning spiral sits in its slot, the same spiral drawn on the passage mouth itself. The third card is deliberately dead. It never selects, and it never goes anywhere; it’s drawn as a jammed signal on purpose, so the strip already shows the shape of a service that isn’t built yet without pretending it works today.

“One day there will be beacons strung the whole way down, and you will step between them like rooms. Bring me the depths first,” as Wren puts it — for now the passage only knows two real marks: the top, and how far down you’ve already been.

For the sonar-scope shortcut to the Chart and how travel reads on the vertical section, see Sonar & Chart.

04 The Beastkeeper — the Abyssal Arena

Talk to the Beastkeeper and a chosen fight opens on its own dedicated arena screen, off the dock rather than out in the water — a drawn pit with its own flora and stone shelves, eight beasts on the roster today, and every one of them fought with your actual drone and the actual ability bar, not a stand-in.

The gate here is honesty, not permission. Every beast’s summon card shows a strength gauge comparing your own fit against the fight’s recommended power, and the Keeper will still open the pit on an outmatched fight if that’s what you choose; nothing here blocks a swing, it only tells you the odds first. Win, and the beast drops its own crafting or skill materials plus Pilot XP; lose, and you’re pulled back to the dock with nothing lost — no confiscation, no repair bill.

Full mechanics — the summon card rail, piloting the arena, every boss’s own signature attack, and the interruptible Second Wind heal — are covered in The Abyssal Arena.

05 Stowmaster Quill — the Warehouse

Walk to the far LEFT end of the Berth deck and Quill stands at his own counter, same as Bell and the Beastkeeper — keeper of everything you own but aren’t carrying out to sea. Get close and press T (or tap his ring on a touch device) and the Warehouse slides in from the LEFT — a second, bigger cargo board beside your own Inventory. The Berth is the only place it opens; unlike the Inventory, the Warehouse carries no key of its own.

On desktop, both panels can stand open together — Warehouse on the left, Inventory on the right — so you can compare the two boards and move items straight between them. Quill’s counter carries three actions of its own: a one-press Unload that stows everything from the Inventory into the Warehouse in one press, Tidy both bays, which auto-sorts what you already own on either board, and Bolt in another row, the crystal-priced way the Warehouse grows.

Full board mechanics — squares, footprints, the hull ladder that grows your Inventory, and the real cost of every Warehouse row — are covered in Inventory & Warehouse.