Wiki World The Depth

The Depth

The endless staircase of floors behind the Shroud: creatures 25% stronger on every floor, 12% more reward. Free-for-all, Wreck rule applies; if you die you return to X-1.

The Depth is an endless staircase of floors going down behind the Shroud: Depth 1, Depth 2, Depth 3… Each floor comes with creatures that are 25% stronger than the one before, but it pays 12% more. So grinding at the bottom gives you no easy money; it only gets more dangerous. As you get stronger, there is always a next floor.

What is down there?

The radio line at Kefen does not end above ground. The Command Relays are a chain; the Exiles hold its visible end and sealed the relays below it and left. The Depth is those sealed stops: unmapped, without the Treaty, without witnesses.

The deeper the line goes, the older it gets and the closer to the Ring. Each relay is guarded with the wrecks of the one above: what the dead leave behind goes into the next keeper's armor. So every floor is harder than the last. Ring shards are denser below, and wrecks yield more Silicite. But the difficulty grows faster than the pay.

No one has seen the bottom of the line. The Depth is counted, never measured.

How to get in

The Seam: At Kefen's west edge, an old relay gate torn out of the shroud's seam. It is not on the Treaty's chart; the Exiles go down through it, and few come back up.
Go up to the Seam gate at the west end of the Shroud; the Depth button (J) appears. In the window that opens, pick a floor with − / + and press Enter. The window also opens with the D key, but the first time you need to be next to the gate.
No key, no entry fee, no level requirement: you enter whichever floor you like. The only obstacle is the creatures' Power.
For me / Last visited / Deepest: three shortcuts take you to the right floor. The window shows the creatures' Power next to yours, with color and words: Easy, Even or Dangerous. On a Dangerous floor you have to press Enter one more time.
Inside a floor: the gate in the west goes up one floor (on floor 1, to the Shroud), the gate in the east goes down one. You can also jump to any floor from the window. Every floor is as large as the Shroud (9,000 × 9,000) and holds 50 creatures and 15 crates.
Channel: at most 40 pilots share a floor; when it is full, a new channel opens. Your party goes into the same channel.

Rules

Free-for-all, Wreck rule: like the Shroud. Your own unit can shoot you too. The Treaty does not hold here, and there are no Wardens. The PvP rules apply as they are.
If you die: after 5 s you wake up at your unit's X-1 station. You pay the repair cost and 50% of your cargo stays in the wreck. The way back is long; carry accordingly.
No escape in combat: if you were hit in the last 10 s you cannot change floors or leave from the window. If you shot a pilot or were shot by one, the gate stays locked for 8 s.
No Power cap: like the Shroud, you can enter with any ship.
AI Commander works on every floor, but it burns more Antimatter per hour the deeper the floor is (the last column of the table; Vessarion Plus only). The cost grows at the same rate as the reward, so time does not get cheaper deep down. See the AI Commander page.
An empty floor closes: a floor with nobody on it closes after a while, and a new world opens when you enter again. A very busy floor gives a "too busy" warning at the door; try the floor above or below.

Floors and numbers

The creature is the Shroud's Wreck Commander; on every floor its armor, shield and damage grow ×1.25 (Power grows at the same rate). The reward grows ×1.12, materials ×1.08 and the amount of Antimatter ×1.04; the chance of rare loot (Beam Cores, RK-4, KJ-4, HJ-4) grows ×1.08 like materials: on Depth 10 it is 2.16 times the Shroud's. The chance of a single kill still never goes above 5%, and the Trail meter works as it is. The numbers below are for the Standard rank; the Elite and Paragon roll is the same as in the Shroud.

Floor	Creature Power	Health (shield included)	Damage/s	Reward	Credit value	Silicite	XP	AI Commander burns
The Shroud (baseline)	119.06 K	1.26 M	11.25 K	×1	44,800	128	26,000	860 Antimatter/h
1	148.82 K	1.57 M	14.06 K	×1.12	50,176	143	29,120	633 Antimatter/h
2	186.03 K	1.97 M	17.58 K	×1.25	56,197	161	32,614	709 Antimatter/h
3	232.54 K	2.46 M	21.97 K	×1.4	62,941	180	36,528	794 Antimatter/h
5	363.34 K	3.85 M	34.33 K	×1.76	78,953	226	45,821	996 Antimatter/h
8	709.65 K	7.51 M	67.06 K	×2.48	110,923	317	64,375	1,399 Antimatter/h
10	1.11 M	11.73 M	104.77 K	×3.11	139,142	398	80,752	1,755 Antimatter/h
15	3.38 M	35.81 M	319.74 K	×5.47	245,216	701	142,313	3,093 Antimatter/h
20	10.33 M	109.29 M	975.78 K	×9.65	432,154	1,235	250,804	5,450 Antimatter/h
30	96.18 M	1.02 B	9.09 M	×29.96	1,342,205	3,835	778,958	16,927 Antimatter/h

Layers and creatures

The deeper you go down the line, the more the setting changes. Every layer is five floors. Below the twentieth floor the families begin again, but everything is one age older. After floor 21 the creatures take the prefix Elder (like Ancient Scrap Dreadnought). For now every floor spawns the Wreck Commander; the hulls below are planned for those layers, and until they exist only the ground color shows the layer.

Floors	Layer	Creature	Who are they?
1–5	The Rotten Fleet	Scrap Ironclad	Armored hulls the Exile scrappers left on the line. Their captains never came back; the hulls grew thick with scrap plate, and still fire.
6–10	The Quiet Line	Empty Shift	Pilotless defense hulls. Each knows one order: keep the watch. Empty capsules, cold seats; they do not tire and they do not quit.
11–15	The Crystal Corridor	Shelled	Ring-shard crystal grown over a wreck; the hull is only a shell now and no one knows what is inside. It hits hard and sheds light as it breaks.
16–20	The Empty House	Ring Steward	The Ringwrights left; the one who keeps the house stayed. It does not speak, bargain or rust: no one knows its age, and its hull shines like new.

Modifiers (not live yet)

From floor 6 on, floors are meant to get modifiers: rules that do not make the numbers bigger but change how a floor plays. You will see which ones a floor has in the window before you enter. Each one raises the reward a little. The first three (Armored Shell, Crowded, Swarm Grudge) come first.

Modifier	What it does
Armored Shell	While the shield is full a quarter of damage is lost; it refills twice as fast.
Crowded	The floor holds 30% more creatures.
Swarm Grudge	Hit one and every creature nearby turns on you.
Fast Hunters	Creatures are 25% faster and notice you from 25% farther.
Wrath Surge	A creature with half its armor left hits one and a half times harder.
Mending Net	Nearby creatures mend each other 2% a second; split the crowd.
Long Reach	Creature range is 25% longer; you have to close in.
Breaker Round	30% of the damage skips the shield and hits the hull.
Fogged Line	Sight shrinks by 40%: you and the creatures are seen late.
Rich Wreck	Creatures carry 50% more cargo but have 40% more health.

Tips

Use the For me shortcut first; entering the red (Dangerous) is the shortest way to lose your cargo to damage you cannot handle.
Do not go deep with a full hold: if you die, 50% of your cargo stays in the wreck and a pilot can take it. Sell at the station, then go down.
There are few pilots on the upper floors, but whoever is there is among the strongest. Go in with a party if you can.

For the creatures, see Enemies; for the map, the Shroud page.