"Be back by nightfall."
—The Mayor of Greater Marrow's first ominous warning to The Fisherman
DREDGE is an open world Cosmic Horror fishing game that was out as early access in 2022 and fully released on March 30, 2023 by New Zealand-based Black Salt Games and published by Team17. The game was released on Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
You're a sailor who gets caught in a storm and washes up in the seaside town of Greater Marrow while answering an ad asking for a fisherman. Luckily for you, they need a new fisherman after their last one disappeared, and you just happen to fit the bill. The mayor loans you a boat and urges you to get started feeding the town, but before you begin, he gives you a stern warning — don't stay out on the sea at night.
You get to work, but soon you start catching fish that... aren't quite right. A local collector takes notice of the odd fish, and approaches you with an offer — use your ship's salvaging equipment to help him find relics from shipwrecks that seem to be connected to the grotesque fish, and he'll help you improve your vessel. Sounds like a good deal... Right?
Along the way, you'll explore the strange archipelago, help out the people who live there, upgrade your fishing boat, and try to make a living as a small-town fisherman, all while unraveling the mystery of the eerie fog that rolls in after the sun goes down, and the things it brings with it.
Following the release, Black Salt Games have stated their intention to keep supporting and expanding upon the game, with both some free minor updates and paid DLC. The first expansion, The Pale Reach, released on November 16, 2023, and adds an icy area and the story of how a doomed expedition to the region met its end. The second expansion, The Iron Rig, focused around the somewhat sinister Ironhaven Corporation and their mysterious drilling activities in the area, is anticipated for early 2024.
During the Game Awards 2023, a crossover collaboration DLC between Dave the Diver and DREDGE was announced, which was released
on December 15, 2023.
On April 9th, 2024, a film adaptation of the game was announced to be in development.
Previews: Announcement trailer, Date Reveal trailer, Pre-order trailer, Feature Length animated trailer, Launch trailer.
There are tropes in the deep. Begin dredging?
- Ability Required to Proceed: It is impossible to complete the main story without equipping and using a specialty fishing rod, a fishing net, a crab pot, and the deep-casting lines at least once each.
- And I Must Scream: Many of the aberrant fish mention in their description how the mutations that have overcome them make them act against their will. Others describe unending agony inflicted on the helpless victim, to the point that at least one example (the Consumed Grouper) doesn't resist its capture because it just wants its torment to end. It doesn't matter that they're "just" fish, these are fates no living creature should be forced to endure.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- The timing-based minigames to fish and dredge wrecks can be disabled from the settings menu, the only penalty being that the action takes longer than it would have if you had completed the minigame without error.
- Failing a sidequest (such as by losing an item you were supposed to deliver) still counts as completing it for the purposes of achievements and the like.
- If the monstrous Serpent patrolling the Gale Cliffs damages your boat, it will just keep on swimming past you, even though in context, it would make more sense for it to hang around attacking until you died. This is useful since you can't really fight back and it's possible to have it chase you into a dead end. This doesn't mean it won't come back eventually, however, so it's best not to loiter.
- The Wandering Merchant carries at least one each of refined metal and research parts, which refresh every time the shop is reset. If you're having trouble hunting down upgrade materials, she's a quicker alternative if you're willing to shell out the cash. This is especially true of research parts, which are a rare drop outside of quests, making it unlikely you'll naturally find enough to cover all your research. She'll also sell explosives, bait, and ice blocks at all of her locations once you've unlocked them, so you don't have to sail back to the main source each time you need more.
- An early quest has you retrieve a belt buckle for a grieving father. This buckle counts as a trinket and can be sold as one (if you want to be cruel), but will not be sold automatically with the "Sell All" option, hinting at its importance if you dredge it up before getting the quest.
- Quest items specifically tied to progression in the main plot cannot be lost through damage to the boat.
- Docks can not harm your boat, no matter how hard you hit them. So if you come into port a little too fast on your way to get repairs, you won't kill yourself trying to dock.
- Artifact of Doom: Before the game, a salvage team dredged the ocean of a casket that summoned the fog once it was opened. Inside was the Tome of the Deep. Opening the casket summoned the Leviathan, destroying the boat and killing the team, including the Fisherman's wife. The only survivors were the Fisherman, the Old Mayor, and the Lighthouse Keeper. Racked with grief over what he did, the Fisherman used the Tome of the Deep to make him forget it all, creating the Collector. The Old Mayor went mad as a result of witnessing everything, while the Lighthouse Keeper became a hermit.
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- The best engine in the game is the Engine Stack, which provides 67.2kn (11.2 per slot) of speed. That comes at the cost of being a six-slot engine that will be disabled if a single slot suffers hull damage, at which point you'll have to crawl to the nearest shipyard. By comparison, the Jet Drive Engine provides 9.5kn (third best in slot efficiency), only takes a single slot, can be researched immediately after the first engine unlock, and you can stack up to ten of them on a fully-upgraded ship. Hull damage will at worst disable two of them, which won't affect performance significantly, and your top speed will only be slightly lower than an optimal setup. While it's a more costly setup, as a single Jet Drive Engine costs nearly half what you'd pay for the Engine Stack, money is easily earned and the cost is spread out depending on how early you unlock the option.
- The supernatural ability Atrophy allows you to instantly fish up everything available from an active fishing spot, at the cost of destroying it for a very long time (around three in-game weeks). There is no reason besides insanity (and one achievement) to ever use this skill on regular fishing spots, because the cost far outweighs the benefit, even in comparison to other supernatural abilities. However, when combined with Bait, the player can create their own fishing spots without worrying about the local ecosystem, which is also a useful method to catch aberrations because Atrophy has an increased aberrant catch chance.
- Bait-and-Switch: After you deliver the dog to the Researcher, the dog suddenly starts convulsing and vomits, giving the impression that he has been infected like the Aberrant fish. It turns out he actually just swallowed a piece of jewellery, which becomes your reward for the quest.
- Bioluminescence Is Cool:
- The Stellar Basin tropical atoll is full of bioluminescent coral and jellyfish that glow at night. Some of the fish you can catch also bioluminescent. Oh, and so is the giant, aggressive, ecology-destroying tentacle monster lurking in the crater at the atoll's center.
- To a lesser extent, the Twisted Strand also has some interesting-looking glowing mushrooms. That the Mindsuckers glow in the exact same way suggests a connection between the two, though it's possible it's just a form of camouflage.
- Bittersweet Ending: In the Good Ending, the fisherman throws the Tome of the Deep back into the sea, saving the Gray Isles from the fog he had unleashed 20 years ago, but in the process he is killed by the Leviathan that patrols the archipelago swallowing him and his boat.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Leviathan isn't some vicious mindless predator, but a living guardian that protects the seas from an Eldritch God seeking to destroy the entire world. For recovering the Tome of the Deep that can summon the cosmic horror, the sea monster swallows up everyone, including the Fisherman's wife. Only the Fisherman survives. It follows him in the hope he'll dispose of the Tome. Once redeemed the monster swallows him up as well in the good ending.
- Body Horror:
- The grotesque fish you catch have all sorts of bizarre mutations, ranging from extra eyes, flayed bodies, spines bent at unnatural angles, pulsating growths, and more. The descriptions emphasize the sheer wrongness of their mutations, from their jaws extending the length of their body to how their "scales" try to escape the body.
- The Dockworker can be subject to this too if you deliver the packages from the Mayor and the Courier before they spoil. Nothing of note happens after the first one, but after the second one, his eyes become pitch black, he constantly stares out to the ocean with a pained look on his face, his voice becomes nothing but pained gurgling noises, and his skin becomes ash grey with faint red stains on his face and clothes, heavily implied to be blood. He also begins spurting out the same black ooze the packages had from his ear.
- Border Patrol: If you sail too far out into the open sea, the Leviathan will growl at you twice to turn back. Refuse both warnings, and it will instantly devour you and your ship.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: Consciously averted by the devs. The one piece of gameplay-relevant DLC available was only included because the publisher demanded it, and nothing in it provides anything that can't be acquired just by playing the base game.
- Brown Note: The Mind Suckers in the Twisted Strand let out a cry that gradually chips away at the Panic Meter until it's at max and keeps it at max, even in daylight.
- Cave Behind The Waterfall: Found in the Gale Cliffs and containing the first freely accessible piece of refined metal to upgrade your hull with, a valuable trinket, and the spawn point for one of the rare fish the Wandering Merchant is after.
- Chest Monster: There are a few giant hermit crabs scattered around the Isles that disguise themselves as shipwrecks or other points of interest. They'll flail at you if you approach but won't chase you.
- Chekhov's Gun: The lighthouse at Greater Marrow. If the Fisherman decides to go against the Collector's instructions and shows the Lighthouse Keeper the Tome of the Deep, she'll use the lighthouse to point the way to where the Fisherman should throw the Tome back into the ocean.
- Cool Boat: The player's fishing boat, sold to the player at the beginning of the game by the mayor of Greater Marrow. It doesn't start as cool, being horribly slow and able to be destroyed in a couple hits, but investing into the boat and appropriate research and artifacts will result in a vessel that moves well over a hundred knots, can raise any type of fish or salvage, can withstand multiple attacks from all but the largest Kaiju, and in The Pale Reach can even become a mini-icebreaker.
- Cool, but Inefficient: Few fish in the sea are more impressive catches than sharks, but all but one of them are huge, have extremely weird shapes, and don't actually sell for all that much. Even a fully upgraded boat can barely fit two big sharks in its hold, three if you're frugal with your equipment. It's much more efficient to go after small to mid-sized fish that are far easier to store while turning a significantly higher profit.
- Cosmic Horror Story: To be expected for a game that wears its Lovecraft influences on its sleeve.
- Crazy-Prepared: There's an achievement for filling every equipment slot on your vessel with the appropriate equipment. This is more involved than it sounds because there are usually additional spaces you won't use, so getting the achievement requires intentionally filling space with parts you're likely going to sell off as superfluous right after.
- Creepy Crows: Should the Fisherman sail during the day while the Panic Meter is maxed out, he can be harassed by a murder of crows with glowing red eyes that will continuously steal fish off of the boat.
- Drone of Dread: An ever-present droning sound emanates from the center of the Stellar Basin atoll. It serves as a decent warning to not approach the darker waters closer to the middle or else your ship's getting wrecked by giant tentacles.
- Easy Level Trick: Fishing and dredging spots respawn completely any time you exit and reload your current game. There are multiple locations on the map where numerous of these spots are close to a dock, making the acquisition of money and upgrade components essentially a non-issue. The only resource you can't repeatedly dredge up is refined metal, but that can be purchased from the Wandering Merchant, and the cash for that can be grinded easily this way.
- Eldritch Ocean Abyss: The main setting of the game, where while you don't ever go beneath the water, some of the... "fish" that can be caught certainly do look like they belong in the abyss. Some of the normal fish caught require equipment that can reach "abyssal" or even "hadal" depths.
- Fetch Quest: Most quests revolve around gathering specific items (usually fish) and bringing them to a specific spot. The fact that fish spoil fairly quickly often makes this a Timed Mission as well, although you usually have enough time to not have to worry about it too much. It might force you to venture out at night, though.
- Fishing Minigame: A case where the fishing is actually a core gameplay mechanic rather than a side minigame. Fishing in this game consists of pressing a button when the cursors are aligned with the highlighted zones of the various shapes on which it roams.
- Foreign Queasine: Rotting conger eels are a delicacy in Ingfell, and one of the locals will pay you if you bring her one. Since they're caught fresh, you have to sleep off a day or two with one in your hold to get it to the right state.
- Foreshadowing:
- The first time the Fisherman meets the Collector, he suddenly appears in a porthole window, or rather, since the Collector is the Fisherman, its reflection.
- Whenever you go to speak with the Collector, his character art has him standing just inside a wooden frame, giving the impression that he's always talking to you from just inside a doorway. Or from inside a mirror.
- If you ask the Dockworker about Blackstone Isle, he'll mention that it doesn't have a shipping address despite the Collector living there. This makes sense once the Collector's true nature as the Fisherman's other self comes to light; why would the Dockworker need to make deliveries to an imaginary person?
- Relics recovered for the Collector appear extraordinarily large when drawn up from the water, yet look more normal-sized once the Fisherman hands them over at Blackstone Manor. This may hint that the items in question were in the keeping of something much larger than the deceased wife - maybe the Leviathan, maybe the God of the Deep - during their sojourn undersea, and had been supernaturally enlarged to suit that being.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: In the opening cutscene, you'll find in the boat cabin alongside the want ad the Tome of the Deep and the Collector's glasses.
- Gotta Catch 'Em All: As of The Pale Reach, there's a total of 171 different marine species to catch, about half of which are aberrant variations of otherwise normal real-life species. Achievements are awarded for catching every aberration and every species in general, respectively. Thankfully, the game provides a comprehensive encyclopedia to keep track of your progress and help you hunt down specific targets you still need to bag, and the achievements for catching everything in the main game and The Pale Reach are separate.
- Grim Up North: Inverted. The Pale Reach part of the game takes place in the frigid and cold far southern part of the game map.
- Guide Dang It!:
- Some of the secret achievements are obscure enough that some players might never unlock them without a guide, depending on their playstyle. Examples include the one for spotting one fishing spot of each fish category through your telescope, banishing ten threats at night, or honking your horn at a Miasma.
- Unlocking the numerous pieces of arcane equipment, some of which are the best of their respective category, may require some outside help to figure out which fish they want delivered.
- Nowhere was it ever mentioned that the series of Fetch Quests given by the Hooded Figures used to have hidden timers. This led to a couple of unpleasant surprises if players put them off for too long, but at least the game was gracious enough to still count the quest as completed. Thankfully, these timers were eventually patched out due to player pushback.
- Hallucinations:
- Throughout the game you can spot things in the distance at night including other boats, crashed ships, even an entire island complete with lit buildings, all of which will fade and vanish when you get close.
- When you're at high panic, there's the rocks, which may or may not be this. Move carelessly at night and you'll find yourself running aground on stones that weren't there in the daytime and aren't visible until you're right on top of them. They always appear in the same places though, so spend enough time dodging them and you can learn the safe routes.
- A Head at Each End: You might fish out a two-headed eel, the second head on the tail.
- Human Resources: The secret fishing equipment is heavily implied to be fashioned from human remains. The only exception is the Mouth of the Deep, a unique fishing pot created through the sacrifice of a bunch of large crabs.
- Infinity +1 Sword:
- The Mouth of the Deep is the best crab pot in the game, being slightly larger than any other crab pot and longer-lasting than all but the best normal crab pot. It also has the best aberration catch chance. The only trade-off is that it has the worst catch rate of any pot, only catching two a day at best when all other pots catch at least two as a standard with better pots able to catch three. It can be obtained as soon as you reach Ingfell, as long as you have a basic crab pot, and can carry you through most of the game despite its flaws.
- The Flame of the Sky is the most powerful light in the game, marginally stronger than the best purchasable option and one slot smaller, but with only half the range. It can be obtained by dredging up three pieces of a tablet in Devil's Spine, well before the final light is available for purchase.
- The Pale Reach adds the Radiant Trawl Net, the reward for completing the DLC. It trawls as fast as the best normal net, has more space than nets of comparable size, and has an aberration bonus to help catch those trawl-specific aberrations.
- Inventory Management Puzzle:
- Your inventory is handled as a grid where your catches, supplies, and equipment all take up a set amount of space, and equipment can only be put on specific regions of the grid. Upgrading your ship is often based on increasing the amount of squares on the grid and modifying the grid squares to allow better equipment, which takes up more space. Taking damage causes grid squares to become damaged, preventing those spots from being used until repaired. An additional challenge is posed by most items and fish having weird, rotatable shapes similar to Tetris, which usually forces a fair bit of fiddling to fit as much as possible into your hold, to the point that completely filling your inventory awards an achievement.
- The shrines don't precisely tell you what is required, but you can gather based on the carvings and the inventory grid what you need to catch and how many. This is particularly true of the shrine near Stellar Basin, which requires four unique sharks.
- Jungles Sound Like Kookaburras: The Stellar Basin is rife with the distinct laughter of kookaburras. Although the islands don't directly respond to any real world locations, they still seem quite far from Australia or New Guinea.
- Kaiju: The monster/god/Cthulhu you free in the bad ending is enormous. Its head alone appears to out-mass any of the islands in the archipelago.
- Kraken and Leviathan:
- Stellar Basin is home to a massive kraken that is holed up in the center. If you idle too long over the center, such as when attempting to fish, it will lash out with a tentacle that will wreck all but the strongest ships, though it can be dodged if you get moving quickly. The Reseacher's quest provides a way to suppress it temporarily.
- A leviathan, meanwhile, patrols the edges of the map and will eat you if you attempt to leave. It's targeting you, specifically, for your possession of the Tome of Eldritch Lore, and in the good ending swallows you and the book to protect everyone else.
- Last Lousy Point: There's an achievement for catching all the aberrant variants of fish species. This can be extremely tedious for the large species with low-volume spawns like sailfish, requiring you to scour the map for fishing spots hoping the one or two you drag up is the right one, especially since they'll rarely get aberrant catch bonuses. Even worse are the trawl-specific catches, which are down to random chance. Crab aberrations, while not required for the achievement, also suffer from random chance and the added problem that crab pots can only hold so much. For the larger crabs, if the aberrant variant isn't caught first, you'll have clean the pots daily just to have a chance of getting one.
- Lighthouse Point: The lighthouse on the cliff north of Greater Marrow is visible from almost everywhere on the map, making it an excellent visual indicator for navigation.
- Lovecraft Country: The Greater Marrow and Ingfell areas are based on the kinds of New England fishing and whaling towns common in H. P. Lovecraft's works.
- Lovecraft Lite: The game has Lovecraftian elements with sea monsters, a Tome of Eldritch Lore, and hints of greater evils, but it's ultimately more of a fishing game than a horror game. The monsters can't be defeated (for the most part), but they can be evaded with some good engines, to the point that by the end of the game (and likely well before) the player can drive around in the dead of night at max panic with little to fear.
- Luring in Prey:
- One of the things lurking in the fog is a huge angler fish that uses its lure to disguise itself as another fishing boat.
- You can do this yourself once you've unlocked the ability to use mixed bait. It works by creating a temporary fishing spot at your location that can spawn any combination of fish native to the biome you're currently in, regardless of the time of day. Some extremely rare fish like the moonfish can be easier to find through this method than tracking down their (extremely limited) natural spawn locations.
- Message in a Bottle: Several are scattered throughout the world, and the messages inside provide some background on the relics you're seeking out. It is implied that there may be something supernatural about them; the Researcher at Stellar Basin mentions finding similar letters written by her deceased sister. She doesn't remember bringing them with her to her new outpost and she keeps finding them in unlikely places, such as inside her sampling equipment.
- Money Grinding: Cash is tight only in the early game, so anyone looking to upgrade their ship as quickly as possible can make use of the Easy Level Trick mentioned above to accumulate loads of money and upgrade resources in no time. After that you can get by easily with what you earn just by playing the game normally.
- Monster in the Ice: In the Pale Reach DLC you can find an enormous Narwhal frozen in the glacier.
- Multiple Endings: Two possible, one bad and one good.
- Good Ending: The fisherman follows the Lightkeeper's advice on throwing the Tome of Eldritch Lore back into the sea at the specific point she directs the spotlight at, and sadly gets swallowed by the Leviathan that's been warned about. The result is that Greater Marrow is safe.
- Bad Ending: The fisherman can follow the Collector's instructions on bringing back his love from where she had drowned, and in turn unleash a Cthulhu-like giant squid from the depths. This results in Greater Marrow's burning destruction.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Most of the game is just fishing and dredging... in an ocean haunted by eldritch horrors of the deep.
- Nameless Narrative: None of the characters are given names, instead being referred to by their occupation. Asking the Fishmonger what his name is and he'll reply that it's not worth knowing.Fishmonger: There's no sense getting familiar. You'll be on your way like the rest of them soon, no doubt.
- Necromantic: The end goal of the Collector/Fisherman is to use the eldritch powers of the book and artifacts to bring the Fisherman's dead wife back to life. And for what it's worth, it does appear to work... along with ending the world.
- Noodle Incident: One of the collectable messages is the cargo manifest from a shipwreck that was carrying mysterious artifacts. One of the items on it is a seemingly normal tea set, with the warning "DO NOT USE."
- Notice This: Things like bottles and certain dredging points have a orange glow that pierces through the fog and makes them easy to see.
- Ominous Fog: Every night, a fog rolls in that almost completely takes away any visibility. With the fog come dangerous beings that can attack at any time, constantly driving the Fisherman mad with panic.
- Ominous Music Box Tune: Part of the ritual that leads to the bad ending involves winding up the music box you dredged out of the Gale Cliffs, and the soundtrack is replaced by its simple, mournful tune as your wife returns to you from beyond death... and the God of the Deep rises from below the waves.
- Organic Technology: Diligent players can unlock up to five creepy pieces of fishing equipment linked to the monsters in the deep. They're all made from various organic components like tendons, sinew and bone, with the occasional hunk of stone thrown in for flavor. They vary in usefulness, from the best crab pot in the game to fishing lines that work as intermediary options between the starter and best researched equipment.
- Patchwork Map: The five main island groups that make up the Gray Isles are rocky New England islands, sheer cliffs, a tropical coral atoll, a mangrove swamp, and a volcanic ridge. The Pale Reach adds a glacier.
- Power at a Price: As you progress the story, the Collector will grant certain abilities that are obviously useful, like the option for a speed boost. The "price" is increasing your panic (even during the day), and in the speed boost's case, using it too long will overheat the engine(s) into requiring repairs.
- Random Event: With a high Panic level, strange things will start to happen to you out on the water. This can range from relatively harmless stuff like the lights on your boat conking out and you having to restart them to all manner of Sea Monsters attacking you in various ways.
- Rare Candy: Two examples: research parts and refined metal.
- Research parts are mostly acquired through quests, but can also rarely be dredged from wrecks, and are crucial for advancing your Tech Tree. They can also be purchased from the Travelling Merchant if you find yourself lacking, which is likely to happen near the end of the game once you've exhausted the static supplies. Any surplus can be sold to the shipwright for a very healthy sum.
- Refined metal is an extremely rare resource that's required for upgrading your ship's hull. It can be found in well-hidden spots around the game world, and occasionally as quest rewards. There are two more in the world than are necessary to pay for every upgrade. Alternatively, they can purchased from the Travelling Merchant for a whopping $500 apiece if you don't feel like waiting. Strangely, selling the stuff pays out less than the research parts do despite being more expensive to buy.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: The lone Researcher studying Stellar Basin believes this was done to her, as the game is set in the 1940s and few people were willing to take a woman scientist seriously.
- Sanity Meter: Once the sun sets, or in certain dangerous locations, the player character begins to panic, represented by an eyeball at the top of the screen rapidly looking around. The longer you stay out, the more things appear to hunt you down. Certain abilities can also increase panic, even during the daytime. Panic can be reduced quickly by sleeping at a dock, but it also slowly goes down once day breaks.
- Save Point: Resting at the docks, which also protects you from being targeted by any monsters or hazards.
- Scenery Porn: The graphics may be fairly simple, but the world is still gorgeous, especially Stellar Basin.
- Sea Monster: Most of them come out at night, though there are a few that come out during the day, such as the giant serpent in the rivers cutting through the Gale Cliffs.
- Shop Fodder: To be expected of a game where a primary focus is catching and selling fish. If you fish and sell regularly, you'll be rolling in cash by the end of the game, especially with the relatively small number of things to spend it on. You can also dredge up trinkets that can be sold to the trader in Little Marrow.
- Shout-Out:
- One of the books you can read is called "Getting Over It with Mind and Body".
- The mutant form of the Giant Amphipod, the Ruptured Vessel, seems to take some inspiration from Hollow Knight: it's named similarly to the Broken Vessel, one of the bosses, and its design as a white arthropod with its body broken open by distended orange sacs is very reminiscent of Radiance infection in that game. And its flavour text, "Willing host, or sacrificial receptacle?", relates to the general fates of Vessels like the Knight, the Hollow Knight, or indeed the Broken Vessel boss: binding the Radiance inside them as Sealed Evil in a Can.
- Subsystem Damage: Whenever your boat takes damage, a random square in your inventory grid is rendered unusable until you get it repaired. If there's an item in that spot, it's ejected from the ship, which can happen to certain quest items. If that square happens to intersect with a piece of equipment, that equipment is disabled until repairs are made. Losing your engine in this manner can leave you crawling back to the nearest shipyard at a snail's pace, unless you have more than one.
- Supernatural Light: Multiple examples of this crop up, especially in the dead of night:
- In the beginning, a conspicuous red Pillar of Light can be seen a little ways to the west of the Greater Marrow. Both the Fishmonger and the Shipwright will comment on it. Once you've acquired Dredging equipment from the Collector, the Lighthouse Keeper can mark the spot on the map for you after talking to her, though she'll recommend you actually stay away. The glowing red pillar is revealed to indicate the locations of the artifacts that the Collector seeks to acquire. Collecting the first artifact by the Greater Marrow will have the local merchants notice how the eerie red light at night has disappeared and how things seem somewhat more peaceful.
- Patches of Disturbed Water for fishing may sometimes have a glowing blue aura filled with rising sparks above them, even during the day. This means that there's a much higher chance of Aberrations being caught when fishing in that spot.
- At night, you may notice an ominous shifting cloud of light hovering over the seas. These "miasmas" are a type of enemy that will literally Turn Red if you have your lights on. Get too close with your lights on and they will envelop your boat and cause your Panic to skyrocket while eerie whispering can be heard. You can keep your lights off to keep the miasmas docile but that will also make it harder to safely navigate through the dense night fog. Also for some reason, they sometimes make industrial noises comparable to a busy dock filled with shifting cranes and clanging noises like a distant hammer striking metal in a large room.
- Tentacled Terror: One of the things that can appear at night are tentacles rising from the sea that sink your boat if you get too close. One living in the middle of Stellar Basin can also attack you in broad daylight.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: Every major location has a curious formation of basaltic black rock that the Fisherman can interact with, though nothing happens... unless the Fisherman's Panic Meter is sufficiently elevated, in which case the black rocks appear to be covered in glowing red runes, and touching them grants a vision describing whatever Eldritch Horror menaces the local area.
- Timed Mission: A few missions have invisible timers attached to them; namely, the delivery missions to the dock worker in Little Marrow (the packages will spoil if you take too long). More broadly speaking, if a mission requires a fish delivery, you're generally expected to deliver them in reasonable condition, not spoiled.
- Tomato in the Mirror: The Collector is the fisherman's suppressed grief, trauma, and guilt over the incident 20 years ago that killed his wife and cursed the Isles with the eldritch fog, speaking to him through his reflection.
- Tome of Eldritch Lore: What the red book with silver ribbons - the Tome of the Deep - used by the Collector is implied to be, given by the player character's reactions to it whenever the book is mentioned or something read from it by the Collector. It is a Tome of Eldritch Lore, given how the silver ribbons react as if trying to cling to the fisherman when you choose to throw it back into the ocean in the Good Ending.
- Upsetting the Balance: It later becomes apparent something massive is following the player in the open seas, punishing him for overuse of powers, and prevents him from charting a course out to unexplored waters. For falling under the spell of the Tome of the Deep that can summon an Eldritch god, who'll bring about the end of the world, the Leviathan is pursuing the Fisherman in the hope he'll dispose of the book. The beast swallows him up in the good ending.
- Video Game Caring Potential:
- At least four sidequests act as an escort for someone to either give them a better life or to bring them to safety. One of these even has you rescue a stray dog in the Stellar Basin which you can bring to the Researcher to give her some company.
- One sidequest has you dredge the shipwrecks behind Little Marrow for a belt buckle belonging to the deceased son of the Grieving Father.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: That belt buckle mentioned above? You can also sell it off to the trinket merchant for a paltry sum, leaving the Grieving Father even more heartbroken for no good reason other than you being a dick. Thankfully, the game will treat it as distinct from ordinary trinkets in the "Sell All" option, so you won't accidentally sell it if you happen upon it before the quest.
- Wham Line: "Don't you remember? You were there."
- Wham Shot: After collecting the relics required to reach the end of the game, the fisherman can confront the Collector about the book and the purpose behind the relics. The Collector's cagey responses annoy the fisherman to the point you have the option to slug him in the face, only for the next shot to show the fisherman punching a mirror while holding the book while his reflection stares back, also holding the book.
