Hello Voyagers! Stephanie / Stephiroth here; we are working hard on our next big patch, and we have a lot of exciting changes coming - like explorable sunken ruins, restorable Spirit shrines and teleporters, locked doors with special codes to discover and unlock and more! But today we’re excited to do a deep dive into two of our major features: The Depth mechanic and Sunken Ruins.

We recently had a dev stream featuring some of these updates as well, which you can watch here!

We will be deepening our water mechanics by adding a Depth limit. Depths will be defined around the biomes - each biome will have some shallow areas, some mid-depth areas and some very deep areas. At the beginning of the game, you may be able to just dip your toe into the deeper waters if you prepare with oxygen potions; but as you progress and gain new gear like the Rebreather, you’ll unlock the ability to dive further and explore the deepest depths of Nera. The further you dive, the more you’ll be able to explore new areas, including Sunken Ruins.

Nera was once a region teeming with life and magic. Spirits and magical beings inhabited the world, living peacefully in Sanctuaries and villages across all of Nera - but the Deep gained power, raised the Spires and corruption flooded the world… engulfing much of Nera in deep, dark ocean. Remnants of this lost civilization are all around. Dive deep and explore through these Sunken Ruins, and learn more about what Nera once was.

There will be various types of Sunken Ruins throughout the world. Some may merely be a sunken archway or crumbled pillar, while others may be small villages or crumbled sanctuaries that you can dive and swim through, explore and collect loot. The largest Sunken Ruins will house special resources within them and offer unique challenges that will test your mettle. The Bubble Plants will only get you so far if you’re foolish enough to dive deep without preparing.

The story of Nera has really connected with a lot of players, and we are really excited to share more about the world and the many characters and creatures that live (or lived) within it. Through this major underwater expansion, we hope to show through the environment some glimmers of what Nera once was, as well as share more story directly through more findable lore. Will we learn more about Cassian and his adventures? Will we meet any new Precursors? Only time will tell!

In addition to these Sunken Ruins, we’ll also be adding a new Diver’s Tool to gather underwater resources, more underwater resources, new underwater enemies and making some updates to underwater combat. We aim to make underwater gathering and exploration more integral to the general progression of the game, and provide lots of reasons to dive deep, explore and gather - while throwing some new challenges into the mix. Perhaps some schools of treacherous jellyfish that you’ll have to carefully navigate through, or slippery monsters that will shock you to your core!

We’ll be sharing more info about the Sunken Ruins in future blogs once they’re further along, as well as sharing info about our many upcoming features in this big summer update!

Excited about the update? Let us know in the comments 👇