The Treasure Hunt

"Nine pieces of a ship are only driftwood. Nine pieces of a map are an invitation."

— From the Guild's notes, before the silence

TL;DR: The sea occasionally washes salt-crusted fragments onto your shore. Nine pieces form a map. A map leads to a salvage.

- Fragments appear rarely and by chance while beachcombing

- Four rarities exist — the rarest only once in a lifetime

- The harbour's black market lets you swap fragments

- A complete collection unseals a treasure island

- Salvage takes hours and costs a real fleet

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How it begins #

When you collect on the shore, a lone map fragment may occasionally sit among the usual driftwood. It is not guaranteed — the sea decides.

Each fragment bears one of four rarities. The rarer the piece, the larger the reward for a full map. Every rarity has nine slots.

The Treasure Map #

A new entry appears in your navigation: Treasure Map. There you will find:

• Collection — Which slots you own and which you still lack
• Black Market — A harbour where fragments change hands between governors
• Chronicle — Your completed salvages
• Legend — The Hall of Treasure Finders: the names of those who broke the Seal of the First Admiral

Trading on the Black Market #

Have duplicates, or need just one missing piece? The black market is not an official merchant — it is a meeting point. Offers expire after seven days. You can post them publicly or direct them at a specific governor.

The Salvage #

Once you own all nine slots of a rarity, you unseal a map. An uninhabited island appears in the ocean — visible only to you. Send a fleet with at least one trade ship and one warship; travel takes as long as your fleet needs to cover the distance. The on-site dig takes several hours, depending on rarity.

Unsealing also starts the salvage deadline: within that window you must send the salvage fleet off — travel and digging are free to finish afterwards. The rarer the map, the longer that window — roughly three days for the most common maps, up to a week for the rarest one. Let the deadline pass without dispatching the fleet, and the map sinks back, with the nine fragments spent: they are collected at the moment of unsealing and do not come back. You can watch the countdown on your treasure hunt page.

The reward is frozen at the moment of unsealing. Your empire score (points) scales it, capped at a maximum — the higher your score, the larger the reward, up to that cap.

The salvage as an event #

Every salvage is an event for the whole server — the same for every rarity; only the treasure grows with the map. At the unsealing, at the start of the dig and at the lifting of the treasure the server learns only the ocean and the rarity; your name is spoken only once the fleet is back home. Until then nobody reveals coordinates, arrival times or the size of your fleet.

While you dig, fleets sail from the ruins of the Old Empires in every ocean and press your salvage fleet in several waves — it holds, there is nothing you need to do. The waves are a story: no battle, no losses, no report, no alarm. The page of your treasure hunt shows which wave has been repelled and how many Old Empire islands came from which ocean; the logbook records every wave.

Since the guild made salvages public, the Chronicle also carries two boards every governor can see: Salvages under way -- each open map in four steps (Seal broken · The spades are ringing · The treasure is raised · Homecoming), with ocean and rarity only; the finder's name falls only at the homecoming -- and the Treasure Hunters' Log, where every completed salvage is entered: name, rarity, date, the latest first. The Hall of Treasure Finders stays reserved for the Seal of the First Admiral.

What a treasure brought home carries with it, you will only learn once you hold it — the Old Empires reveal nothing in advance.

Things to remember #

• Fragments are rare. A weekly world-wide budget limits their appearance. Be patient.
• Only one salvage at a time. Finish the current one before starting another.
• Salvage fleets are protected. They cannot be recalled, but other players cannot attack them either.
• Offers on spent fragments cancel automatically. Unsealing a map cancels any open black-market offers on the nine fragments it consumes.
• The black market doesn't remember you. Cancel an offer in time, or it will expire or be accepted.

"Some maps end at an X. Others end at a coast no chart ever shows."