The Ledger
Discovery is never a purchase. Every entry pays a permanent bonus, a completed chapter pays more on top, and one of the book’s six chapters is built to wait — on purpose. Every catalogued species also has its own page — see the Journal for real rarity, habitat and field notes on all 81.
01 Sighted, then captured
Collection is two stages, and only the second one inks the plate. Pilot the drone close enough to a creature — a little over a hundred metres — and it is sighted: identified, no click, no menu, its book entry turning from “???” to a grey silhouette with a name attached. A sighting pays out a single Part on the spot. It does not pay the entry’s permanent bonus, and it does not remove the animal from the water.
That bonus, and the finished plate, wait for a capture— a net, actually thrown and actually held. Only a capture inks the entry for real, pays the stat bonus printed on it, and counts toward its chapter’s completion. A first ink also pays a one-time parcel of the creature’s own tier’s craft materials — the deeper the animal, the richer the parcel — so filling the book physically funds the forge. A repeat catch pays crystals or XP, never materials again.
- Both stages are piloted only. A charted crystal field feeds Fleet Dispatch for crystals while you’re away, but Dispatch can never sight or catch anything — only a hand on the stick fills the book.
- A capture is a sighting too — net something you never flew close enough to properly identify first, and the book still names it correctly.
- A quieter, second layer of the book records places rather than creatures — see The World for how landmarks are found and recorded.
02 Nets, and the aim that beats the odds
Press C near a sighted creature to aim, and again to throw. A net flies, closes on the animal, and either holds — or doesn’t. Three tiers exist, bought at the Quartermaster’s counter (see The Berth), and a stronger net both holds a wider range of rarities and rolls a better base chance.
The three net tiers
| Net | Listed chance | Holds |
|---|---|---|
| Fine Mesh Net | 30% | up to Twilight |
| Braided Net | 50% | up to Midnight |
| Heavy-Gauge Net | 80% | up to Leviathan |
A net rated below a creature’s own rarity never holds it, no matter how well you throw — the right tier is a real requirement, not just better odds.
The listed chance is a floor, not the whole story. An aiming arc sweeps as you line the throw up, and where you catch it genuinely moves the number: a dead-centre hit gets a second roll against the same chance, while a wide graze — or a creature startled by a hot approach — weakens it. Skill at the arc beats the number on the net every time it matters.
No net, no throw and no combination of the two is ever a guaranteed hold. The ceiling sits just under certain, on purpose.
Line up on something in reach with your selected tier already empty and the game says so honestly rather than letting the throw quietly do nothing: it names which tiers you’re actually holding that could take this creature, with a one-tap switch to each, and — carrying nothing that fits at all — a straight route to buy more, at the Workbench (see The Part Catalogue & Workbench) as well as the Berth.
03 The water is alive
Nothing in the ocean waits for you any more. Every animal swims — its own patch, its own pace — and every species has one fixed temperament it keeps on every dive and every save, so an animal that watched you last time watches you this time. You can read all five by watching, and reading them is most of what catching well actually is.
Five ways an animal answers you
| Temperament | What you see | What it asks of you |
|---|---|---|
| Goes about its business | Wanders its own patch, barely registers you | Nothing — the easiest plate in the book |
| Keeps its distance | Turns to face you and holds a standoff, then bolts if you close hard | Ease off the thruster before the last stretch |
| Quick and unpredictable | Flicks between headings; once alarmed it flickers away in no straight line | Lead the throw — where it is going, not where it is |
| A fixed round | Swims the same loop through its own patch, whatever you do | Watch one lap, then be where it will be |
| Comes to look at you | Leaves its own business and closes on a calm drone, nose to nose | Hold still and let it arrive |
Which species carries which temperament isn’t printed here. Watch the water — it is the same answer every time you come back to that animal.
The deeper the water an animal belongs to, the warier and faster the temperaments run: shallow reef life is mostly indifferent to a drone, and abyssal life mostly is not.
An animal that is actively bolting cannot be netted at all. Not a worse chance — no throw. The bright ring around it goes out the instant it breaks, and the net refuses to aim until it settles, so you can see the shot leave the table rather than discovering it by wasting a net. Back off and it calms down; every startled animal does.
How far off you are read as a threat is a stat like any other: Startle range on the pilot sheet. A Hauler runs loud — a third further out than stock — and a Scout runs quiet, closer to a third nearer, which is the whole reason those two classes fly differently around the same animal (see Pilot & Classes). What actually keeps an approach calm is speed, plain and simple: hold your velocity under a little less than half your top speed and the water reads you as calm regardless of what skill you’re flying; open the throttle past that and you read as a threat the moment you’re close enough to matter.
04 Six chapters, eighty-one entries
The book is organised the same way the water is: one chapter per zone, shallow to deep — plus one for the Kelp Forest, reached through its own hidden passage rather than a straight descent — each with its own completion bonus on top of every entry’s own. Eighty-one species are filed across the six today — seventy-seven of them in water you can already dive, and four sealed inside the Breachstone’s own grotto, one per stone in its rotation.
The six chapters
| Chapter | Species | Complete | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reef NaturalistSunlit Reef | 16 | +20 Fleet Haul | Open |
| Twilight NaturalistTwilight Zone | 18 | +8% yield | Open |
| Notes from the Kelp ForestThe Kelp Forest | 8 | +14 pickup radius | Open |
| Midnight NaturalistMidnight Zone | 20 | +20 light radius | Open |
| Notes from the Lower DarkThe Lower Dark | 15 | +40 speed | Open |
| The Sealed GrottoThe Sealed Grotto | 4 | +25% yield | Sealed |
A chapter’s bonus applies the instant every entry on it is recorded — it stacks with every entry bonus already flowing through the drone’s stats, on top of everything parts and gear already add.
05 The index spread
Open the book and the very first pages, before any creature’s own plate, are an index — every entry as a small mini-plate, inked once you’ve found it and a dark silhouette with a cryptic hint drawn from its own field note until then. They’re grouped chapter by chapter, each with a live progress bar, and clicking any plate turns the book straight to that creature’s own two-page spread — no hunting through eighty-one pages by hand.
A chapter with no diveable water yet — the one sealed chapter above — doesn’t get a grid of plates nobody can click their way into. It renders as one locked card instead: the chapter’s name, “uncharted waters,” and how many species are noted for it, with none of them surveyed. That count is real — it’s the same number in the table above — the book simply doesn’t pretend the chapter is emptier than it is.
06Silhouettes & hints
Turn to a creature you haven’t found yet — from the index or by paging through — and its plate shows what an unrecorded entry always shows: no name, no latin, no personal sighting, and its recorded length redacted. What it doesn’t hide is its rarity tier, its habitat, and the exact bonus it’ll pay once you find it — the book teases what’s worth chasing without spoiling the chase itself.
Beyond all eighty-one entries sits one more page, sealed shut and marked only “The Trench,” habitat “unsurveyed.” It won’t open until a dive passes 6,000 m — real content already sitting in the book today, waiting on water that hasn’t been built yet.
07 Why some entries are hard to find
Most of the bestiary is simply there — pilot into the right zone, get close enough, and it’s recorded. A real minority follow a stricter rule, and every one of those rules is something you can learn by watching the water, not by reading a wiki:
- Slow approach. A handful of species only tolerate a drone moving well under its own top speed. Ease off the throttle as you close and they hold their ground; come in hot and they’re gone before you arrive.
- Deep and dark. A few live only below a certain depth, and only in a zone with no sunlight at all — both conditions have to be true on the same dive.
- Near a smoker. Some cluster within a fixed distance of a hydrothermal vent, wherever the game has placed one — swim past without lingering and you’ll miss them entirely.
- Seeded day. A small number aren’t in the water on any given day at all. They’re tied to a rotating local calendar the game computes on its own, present roughly one day in a handful and gone again the next — back on some later day that isn’t predictable from here.
None of this flickers once you’re actually near it, either. A rule like slow approach decides whether an animal is in the water at all the moment you arrive — not something that blinks it in and out while you sit beside it. Get close while its condition holds and the animal stays put; gunning the thruster afterward doesn’t make it vanish. What it does is spook it: a wary animal will break and run, and while it runs there is no throw at all (§03), while a graze at speed weakens the chance rather than the animal’s presence (§02).
Which species carries which rule, and the exact numbers behind each one, aren’t printed in this manual. Figuring out why a creature you can see won’t let you close is most of what makes finding it worth the plate it fills.
08 A capture leaves the world
The instant a net holds, the animal is gone from the water — not hiding, not respawned nearby, actually removed. What happens next depends entirely on its rarity:
- Coastal and Twilight species repopulate. A new individual returns to the water 48 hours after the capture — a slow gift, never a farm.
- Everything Midnight or deeper never comes back. One specimen, page complete, and the world remembers it that way for good.
A sighting alone never removes anything — only a held net does. You can identify a rare creature, decide the throw isn’t worth it yet, and it’s still there the next time you come back for it.
09 Pacing, honestly
Seventy-seven species live in charted water today, filed across five open chapters — big enough that a single good dive won’t clear one, let alone all five. The seeded-day rule above is the pacing made literal: some entries are only a chapter you can finish if you keep coming back.
The Sealed Grotto is real content, not a promise — the last of six chapters, already written, waiting on a door nobody has found how to move yet. This manual will say so honestly until it does.
Want to know what a chapter is worth chasing? Every entry and set bonus already granted shows up live on the Status tab of your Rig.