New players kept losing the first hour before it started: an empty hold, a screen full of controls, and no sense of what to do with any of it. That's fixed from both ends. Every fresh pilot now launches with a stocked expedition kit — nets for 30%, 50% and 80% catches, 30 Signal Rockets and 10,000 crystals — so there is something to throw, fire and spend before a single crystal has been earned.
Alongside the kit, a guided first dive walks the water itself: fly into a glowing cluster and watch the hold fill, fire a rocket at a rock and see what breaks loose, throw a net and learn to read the aim ring — dead centre for a clean hold, the edge for a graze, outside the window for nothing at all — then meet the idea that a net only holds what it's rated for, open the Expedition Ledger, and restock at the Berth. The skip sits right on the first card, so it's gone in one tap if you'd rather find your own way, and it's sitting in Setup afterward if you ever want to run it again.
Also in this update: the Collection chip in the HUD used to be the one control on screen that did nothing when pressed — tap it now and it opens the Ledger's own explainer, right there. And the empty-hold refusal card — "you're out, nothing in the hold at all" — no longer greets a brand-new pilot at second zero; it waits until you've actually finished something first, the way a coaching line should.