Scavenging (Scavenger Ship) & Floating Debris

Your first Scavenger Ship opens at player level 3 and costs 30 Wood and 30 Plastic. Tap the finished ship and press Scavenge. Copies 2, 3 and 4 open at levels 9, 18 and 22. A run plays the same from any copy, but the number of ships you own decides how far your Scavenging Level can go (see below).

Drag anywhere on the screen to steer. When debris passes close to the boat, the crewman swims out, grabs one piece and brings it back, one piece at a time. The Scavenging Gains panel counts your Wood, Plastic and Cloth Scraps, and the bar shows how much of your capacity is used.

Debris comes in patches. The sea is cut into square areas, and the boat always has its own area and the eight around it stocked, each with 10 to 29 pieces. Sail into a new area and the patches ahead fill up, while the ones you left behind are cleared. You never run out, so sail on instead of hunting stragglers.

Each area holds only one material. When an area is stocked, the game first picks Plastic, Wood or Cloth Scraps with equal odds (1 in 3 each), then fills the whole area with that material. A Plank, a Log and a Wooden Table are just different looks for 1 Wood. If you need Cloth Scraps, look for a cloth patch and skip the rest.

When the hold is full, the count shows (Full) and a Return button appears. You can also leave early with the back button. Either way, everything you picked up is handed in when you leave. If a material reaches your storage limit, it is marked Storage Full in the gains list and the crewman stops picking it up. Anything that does not fit when you hand in is reported as [item] storage full.

Bonus pickups

Each pickup has a chance to be multiplied by your level's Bonus Multiplier: ×2 at Level 1, rising by 2 a level to ×16 at Level 8. The upgrade window lists this as a percentage, so ×2 reads 200%. A bonus can't go past your capacity. Whatever doesn't fit is cut off.

Example. At Level 8 with 790 of 800 loaded, the next pickup comes up as a bonus. It is worth 16, but only 10 fit, so you get 10 and the hold is full.

The odds of a bonus (Bonus Chance) are set server-side and not published. See Notes.

The Lv. button on the scavenging screen opens Scavenging Level. It unlocks at player level 7. Each press of Enhance costs Gold and fills the progress bar. When the bar is full the button becomes Upgrade, which needs a set number of Scavenger Ships built. Only the number of ships counts, not their building level.

Every level from 4 on needs only the fourth ship, so after player level 22 the rest is Gold. How many Enhance presses fill the bar is not published.

Auto unlocks at Scavenging Level 2. That needs two Scavenger Ships, so player level 9 is the earliest. With Auto on, the boat steers itself toward debris, and when the hold fills it hands in the haul and starts a new run by itself. It keeps looping until you turn Auto off or leave. Auto stays switched on the next time you scavenge.

Auto is slower than steering by hand. Its top speed is 300, against 900 when you steer yourself (600 on Auto with the Lucky Raft). You can steer at any time while Auto is on, and it takes over again when you let go. When fish or a shark hit the boat, Auto escapes at full speed for 3 seconds (fish) or 5 seconds (shark).

From player level 4, some runs bring a shark or a school of swordfish. It shows up 6 to 9 seconds into the run. Which run gets what is fixed for your first twelve runs after reaching level 4, then random:

• School of fish: 40 fish in four schools. Each time they hit the boat, it shakes and one piece you already picked up falls back into the sea close by. You can pick it up again. The schools start leaving after 5 seconds, one every 5 seconds, and are gone after about 25 seconds.
• Shark: a single shark that chases the boat. Each hit throws the boat into the air, and the third hit ends the run: your crewman flees and can't pick anything else up. It starts leaving after 10 seconds and is gone after 15.

After a third shark hit you keep the haul. Steering by hand, you tap Return to hand it in. On Auto, the game hands it in and starts the next run. The Beware of Sharks button, which explains all this, only shows for players at levels 4–14, but sharks keep coming after level 15.

Junk also washes up in the water around your base, in clumps of 3–7 pieces within 10 tiles of a building or 20 tiles of a road. The game server decides when new debris arrives and what it is.

Tap a piece and your residents collect it plus every piece on the eight tiles around it. Each piece goes to whichever resident, idle or already out collecting, has the shortest total trip, so one resident may collect several in a row. The goods count once the resident is back on a road. If nobody is free you get No idle workers! How many residents walk around depends on your population, from 3 to 20. See Buildings, Population & Construction.

Deep-sea chests

Glowing chests sometimes sit among the debris. Tap one and press Salvage. You need player level 10 and a Diving Dock, whose first copy also opens at level 10. Until then the button only tells you to build one. The nearest idle resident goes out. A resident already collecting debris won't be picked. They vanish for 10 seconds while salvaging, then carry the chest home.

The game data pairs each chest with one Collection Fragment: 12 kinds of Rare fragments (for example Pocket Pixel Fragment) and 32 kinds of Epic fragments (for example Champion Cup Fragment). Fragments go toward Collections. The reward you actually get is sent by the server.

• The Lucky Raft's "2x Scavenging Speed" does not make the boat faster when you steer. The skin doubles your capacity, doubles your crewman's swimming speed and doubles Auto's top speed (300 → 600). Your own top speed stays 900. The Lucky Raft is one of the 1st Top-up rewards, and the Scavenging Level window has an Activate Skin button that opens that offer.
• A bonus pickup knocked loose by fish comes back as a plain piece. The full bonus amount is taken off your count, but the piece that floats back is worth 1 (and rolls for a bonus again when picked up).
• Metal, Glass and Seaweed are in the game data but can't be scavenged. Junk pieces for them exist (Canned Box, Car Door, Glass Bottle and others), but all have a weight of 0 on the scavenging list. Metal and Glass come from Diving Docks; see Fishing & Diving.
• Shark and fish runs are counted on your device. The count only starts once you reach player level 4, and Auto's automatic restarts count as runs too. They go by player level, not Scavenging Level.
• Ignore the 1% in the upgrade window. The game data lists a 1% Bonus Chance for every level, but the window's current value is the server's number, and the 1% only appears as a "next level" preview.
• The boats that sail out from your Scavenger Ships on the base map are decoration. They leave and return every 30 seconds and bring nothing back.
• Not part of scavenging: the World map's Salvage Resources event and the Stranded Freighter belong to the World (see World & Fleets). Relic Repair is an event feature and isn't covered here.
• Unconfirmed: Bonus Chance at each level, and whether it rises at all. The server sends it.
• Unconfirmed: how many Enhance presses each level takes. The bar holds 10, but how much one press adds is decided by the server.
• Unconfirmed: a daily limit on runs. The game itself neither counts runs nor shows a limit, but every run is approved server-side.
• Unconfirmed: which materials wash up around the base. Debris pieces exist for all six materials, Plastic, Wood, Cloth Scraps, Scrap Metal, Glass and Seaweed, but the server decides which ones appear.