Loot and treasure

What drops, where it drops, and how a treasure map works

Two things fall off a dead body, and they are not the same kind of thing. Loose coin banks itself the moment you touch it. A cut stone is cargo: it lies on the ground until you pick it up, it costs you a bag slot, and it is worth nothing until you find somebody to buy it.

Where a drop comes from

Every place runs its own odds, and they climb with depth — how dangerous and how far out an island patch is, how far into a cave network you have walked, how deep a dungeon run has gone. The two figures below are the chance at the surface and the chance once that place's depth has topped out.

The stones

Worth is what a stone is actually valued at. A general counter pays only 35% of it — they are not in the trade. A gem buyer pays the full worth or better, which is the whole reason to carry a pouch somewhere specific. Stones stack to 20 to a slot.

What each place yields

Once a gem roll lands, this is what it turns into. A stone missing from a place's table cannot be found there at all — which is why a diamond means something: no amount of clearing a beach will produce one.

Island wilds

Caves

Dungeons

Open sea

Sunken ships

Treasure hunting

Noticeboards carry hand-written quests forever, and underneath them 4 pieces of paid work that change every day. There is no time limit — tomorrow's board is the pressure. You may only hold one job at a time from any one poster: finish it or give it back before they will hand you another.

Treasure maps

The poster is almost never the person who buried anything. They came by a map — bought, inherited, won at cards — and could not find the place themselves. Take the posting and the cache becomes real: it stands on actual ground for as long as you hold the map, and it goes away again if you give the map back.

What is buried is listed on the notice, and it is real loot. So at the hole you have a genuine choice. Dig it up and keep it — the stones are yours, sell them to whoever pays best, and hand the map back unfinished. Or carry the haul to the board it came from, give it up, and take the poster's price. Any coin in the hole is simply yours either way.

Finding a wreck

Sunken ships lie in deep water well off any coast, and they are the richest thing in the sea — a galleon carries the best boxes in the game. Two things give one away. Birds. A hulk makes the water around her rich, so the gulls work over her exactly as they work over a shoal: see a flock standing over open water and there is something under it. A mast. The smaller classes lie shallow enough that a spar still breaks the surface, and nothing else in open water looks like a leaning pole. The great ones lie too deep for that, so the birds are all you get.

She is where she is. A wreck does not move and does not respawn while you are at sea, so one you found and could not finish is one you can sail back to.

Bounties and culls

A bounty names one animal and it is waiting near you when you take the sheet. A cull asks for a number of a kind — 3 to 8 — and any of them count, so it is work you finish while doing something else. Both pay gold.