The old Trial Grounds fired its skills from fixed-position CSS gradients standing in for a drone that was never actually there. That's gone. The arena is a dedicated canvas scene now, painted in the same visual language as the open water — sunken ruin pillars and stone shelves, drifting caustic light, ambient flora scattered along the floor and shelf edges, never two identical neighbours. Your own rig flies into it: your fitted loadout, your palette, your lamp, banking with velocity the same way it does in the ocean.
Piloting is the real thing too. Movement is the same water-feel glide the maps already use, not a top-down tank, and Boost Surge is what makes the drone lunge — the old separate "turbo" button is retired. The ability bar stays mounted over the pit with the same keys and the same cooldown rings: Electric Lasso and Algae Snare land as real stuns on the boss, Abyssal Bulwark raises the same shield dome the ocean already knows, and a skill with no meaning down here — Cargo Surge, Prism Beacon, a Hauler's Abyssal Magnet — still fires for real, spends its charge, and says why it landed on nothing the first time you try it.
Every one of the eight beasts on the roster now carries a signature move, content-driven and repeatable: the Silt Crab burrows and vents a floor-hugging wave you have to climb over, the Reef Hound strings three lunges into a current that drags you sideways, the Bloom Anemone seeds shootable spore mines, the Twilight Ray fades to a shimmer and reappears mid-charge, the Midnight Eel discharges a pair of expanding rings, the Murk Lurker blacks out a third of the arena and hunts you inside it, the Abyssal Warden slams the floor for a shockwave and falling debris, and the Leviathan Spawn splits into mirror echoes that swap every eight seconds. Every one of them is telegraphed and drawn — nothing in the pit hits you from nowhere.
New too: Second Wind. Every boss disengages once its hull drops to around 40% and channels a visible heal for a few seconds — the crab burrows under a glowing sand mound, the anemone folds shut, the eel coils around itself. Left alone it claws back real hull. Land a burst of damage or a stun while the amber bar reads "SECOND WIND — BREAK IT" and the channel cancels outright, with a stagger as the reward. Midnight-tier and above get a second chance at it, later in the fight, and never more than that.
The summon screen is a real card rail now instead of a list that said nothing: a circular badge portrait per beast, its signature named on the card with what to watch for, drops read straight off its table as the full total the contract pays, and a strength gauge comparing your own fit to what the fight recommends — green reads ready, amber reads close, coral reads outmatched, and the Keeper still opens the pit either way. Fights run longer too, tier by tier: a Coastal beast is a sharp 45-second scrap, a Leviathan Spawn is a real endurance fight with room for multiple heal cycles. Losing still costs nothing but a trip back to the dock — no repair bill, no confiscated drops. Each contract tier — ×1, ×3, ×5 — is a weekly clear now too: win it once and that tier locks on the card until Monday, but a defeat or a walked-away fight spends nothing, so a rough attempt costs you no shot at trying again.