Diving Zones & Gates
Updated 2026-07-18
The descent is the heart of Taro Bay. Six diving zones stack from the surface down to the Dragon Palace, each darker, richer and harder to reach than the one above it. Clearing a zone's entry requirement is the single clearest measure of your progress.
How gates work
Every zone past the first carries an entry requirement — a checklist where all conditions must be met at once. A requirement is one of two things:
- a minimum skill level (always Diving for zones), or
- a piece of equipment of a high enough tier in the right slot (see Equipment & Slots for the tier rule).
Deeper zones combine both — a diving level and the right suit, sometimes a boat too.
The six zones
| # | Zone | Depth | To enter |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tidal Pools | 0 m | Open to everyone |
| 2 | Coastal Waters | −8 m | Diving 10 |
| 3 | Reef | −18 m | Diving 25 + Diving Suit I |
| 4 | Wreck Grounds | −40 m | Diving 40 + Diving Suit II + Coastal Boat |
| 5 | Twilight Zone | −200 m | Diving 60 + Diving Suit III |
| 6 | Ryūgū Depths | −1000 m | Diving 85 + Diving Suit IV + Ryūgū Boat |
Because the gear rule is tier or higher, your best suit satisfies every shallower suit gate and your best boat every shallower boat gate — you only ever need to carry your latest one of each. Two of the deep zones ask for a boat as well as a suit: the Wreck Grounds want a Coastal Boat or better, and the Ryūgū Depths a Ryūgū Boat. The Twilight Zone between them needs no boat at all — a suit alone is a depth key, a boat is an offshore-reach key, and only those two zones sit far enough out to want both.
Working your way down
- Start in the Tidal Pools: warm, open water with no requirement. Everything you need to reach the next band is already down there.
- Bank Diving XP until Coastal Waters open at level 10 — the first pearls appear here.
- From the Reef onward, keep your diving suit upgraded: it is both your speed boost and your key to the next gate.
- The Wreck Grounds and the Ryūgū Depths also ask for a boat — plan your Carpentry (and a fibre supply for the sails) ahead of time.
Each zone has its own resources and its own look; the deeper you go, the darker the water and the richer the haul. The full, always-current requirement for each zone lives on its own page under Zones.
The signature-good ladder
Each band of the descent has one signature good — the prize that only that zone yields, and the material the next band's gear is built around:
| Tier | Signature good | Found in |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pearl | Coastal Waters (and the Reef) |
| 2 | Red Coral | Reef |
| 3 | Porcelain | Wreck Grounds |
| 4 | Glowing Jellyfish | Twilight Zone |
| 5 | Dragon Scale | Ryūgū Depths |
The ladder is deliberately self-supporting: each signature good is the choke material in the gate gear of the tier above it — the diving suit, the boat and that tier's profession tools. Pearls go into the tier-1 suit and the bronze tools; red coral into the tier-2 suit and the Coastal Boat; porcelain into the tier-3 suit and the Deep-Sea Boat; glowing jellyfish into the tier-4 suit and the Ryūgū Boat. Because everything above needs the tier below, a diver who works a zone hard always has a buyer at the market: the deeper crafters upstream never stop needing what you bring up. The top prize, the Dragon Scale, gates nothing further — it is pure trade goods (and one of the goods the village has its eye on; see below).
The diving-suit chain
Your suit is woven, not found — a Weaving job that climbs in step with the descent. Each rung folds in the signature good of the band it lets you reach next, so the suit and the sea grow together:
| Suit | Weaving | Woven from |
|---|---|---|
| Suit I | 25 | Asa yarn + Pearls |
| Suit II | 40 | Cotton yarn + a helmet part + Red Coral |
| Suit III | 60 | Silk thread + helmet parts + Porcelain |
| Suit IV | 85 | Silk thread + helmet parts + Glowing Jellyfish + Deep-Sea Kelp |
The suit is your depth, plain and simple — every rung is another band of water opened. It carries a Diving speed bonus too, but no armour value: see Equipment & Slots for why a suit never shields you in a fight, and for the boat line that opens the two offshore zones.
Marked for the village
Some of what you bring up — the five signature goods above among them — now carries a quiet village-contribution mark on its item page. It changes nothing about how the good is gathered, crafted or sold today; it is simply a note that the village has these goods set aside for something still to come. Keep gathering and trading them exactly as you do now.
For how gathering and processing feed each other on the way down, read Getting Started.