COCKLEFIGHTINGA season is a fresh start that runs for about 3 months, with its own leaderboard, its own trait and its own cockles.
What a season is#
A season (a Great Tide) runs for close to 3 months and then ends. It has its own leaderboard, its own names, its own cockles and its own trait, which changes how every fight in it resolves. Everyone in a season starts from nothing.
Beside it is the Main Shore: the permanent world. It never resets, its leaderboard never clears, and every cockle ends up there.
The calendar#
There are 4 seasons a year, each opening at UTC midnight on the first of the month. Nothing schedules them: which season is open is worked out from the clock.
A season closes 7 days before the next one opens. That gap is the Slack: no season is running, the closing season’s cockles come home, and the Main Shore carries on alone. It is also when the game is worked on.
| Season | Name | Mark | Trait |
|---|---|---|---|
| Great Tide I | Emberfall | EMB | The Hard Water |
| Great Tide II | Blackwater | BLK | The Silt Bloom |
| Great Tide III | Saltrise | SLT | The Spring Flood |
| Great Tide IV | Hollowmoon | HLM | The Deep Cold |
| Great Tide V | Kelpfire | KLP | The Scouring |
| Great Tide VI | Stormglass | STG | The Lean Season |
Traits#
Every season carries one trait for its whole run, and never the trait of the season before. A trait always trades something away: it makes a season a different game, not an easier one. The Main Shore has no trait.
Both sides of every fight use the same trait. A season only matches you against cockles in it, and the rivals the Pit deals you fight by its rules too.
| Trait | Terms |
|---|---|
| The Scouring The water came off the reef with the reef still in it. Everything bites; nothing holds. | Elemental damage +35% · Resistance -25% · Charm find +20% |
| The Deep Cold A slow black winter under the shelf. Shells thicken, blood slows, and a fight is settled by who lasts. | Health +25% · Speed -15% · XP +15% |
| The Running Tide Water that never stands still and never lets you. Fast, thin, and over before you have set your feet. | Speed +20% · Health -10% · Turns refill 30% faster |
| The Glut Every wreck on the Shore gave up its gold at once. Gold underfoot, and nobody any wiser for it. | Gold +60% · XP -15% · Salvage +25% |
| The Lean Season Nothing drops but hard lessons. The gold stays light and the cockle does not. | XP +35% · Gold -25% · Charm find +25% |
| The Silt Bloom The floor of the Pit turned over in the night and came up carrying. Mother Murk has not slept since. | Charm find +60% · Salvage +50% · Gold -15% |
| The Hard Water Water with a grain to it. It turns a blow the way stone turns a chisel, and rewards the cockle who waits. | Resistance +40% · Elemental damage -20% · XP +10% |
| The Spring Flood More water than the Shore has room for. Everything happens at once and twice over. | Turns refill 50% faster · Rested bonus builds 50% faster · XP -10% |
| The Quickening Trumpet has not stopped shouting since the Tide turned, and for once the pay matches the volume. | Quests pay 2x · Turns refill 20% faster · Gold -10% |
| The Riptide The pull runs both ways and it does not care which way you were facing. Take hard, get taken harder. | Attack +25% · Health -15% · Gold +25% |
A season’s own rarity#
Every season is dealt a rarity on the same 6-band ladder as gear, charms, buildings, quests and trophies. It is drawn from a bag of 20, so 5 years of seasons hold exactly 1 legendary and 1 mythic. Stay long enough and you will see one.
The rarity buys a league boon for every cockle in that season. A boon is deliberately narrow: gold, XP, turns, quest pay, salvage, rested bonus, and at the top one more cockle on that season’s roster.
A boon never buys a point of combat. A richer season pays better for the same work and never wins a fight a plainer one would lose. Fighting belongs to the trait, and every boon is smaller than the swing a trait carries.
| Band | Name | In 20 | What it pays |
|---|---|---|---|
| COMMON | A Plain Water | 7 | No boon |
| UNCOMMON | A Full Pocket | 5 | Gold +10% |
| RARE | A Rich Season | 4 | Gold +15% · XP +10% |
| EPIC | A Running Season | 2 | Gold +20% · XP +15% · Turns refill 10% faster |
| MYTHIC | A Great Season | 1 | Gold +25% · XP +20% · Turns refill 15% faster · Quests pay +25% |
| LEGENDARY | A Tide of Ages | 1 | Gold +35% · XP +30% · Turns refill 20% faster · Quests pay +50% · Salvage +25% · Rested bonus builds 25% faster |
Season keepsakes#
Every trait has a keepsake: a TIDEBOUND charm found only inside a season carrying that trait. A trait comes round once every 10 seasons, and so does its keepsake.
A keepsake is kept when the season closes and your cockle retires. They drop from a rewarded win and from Mother Murk’s daily dredge, both inside the season. Bot rivals never carry one, so the only way to steal a keepsake is to beat a real player who found it.
Tidebound is a rarity of its own. It says where a charm came from, not how hard it hits. A keepsake wakens on mythic’s ceiling at mythic’s cost. It is more specialised than anything in the permanent catalogue, leaning hard into its own trait, and some charge a real cost for it.
Not to be confused with the 9 primordial relics, which are permanent and findable at any time. See Magic items.
You have found 0 of 10. The rest stay hidden until one is yours.
| Relic | Found in | What it does |
|---|---|---|
 Unknown | The Scouring | Found only in that season, and not by you yet. |
| Unknown | The Deep Cold | Found only in that season, and not by you yet. |
| Unknown | The Running Tide | Found only in that season, and not by you yet. |
| Unknown | The Glut | Found only in that season, and not by you yet. |
| Unknown | The Lean Season | Found only in that season, and not by you yet. |
| Unknown | The Silt Bloom | Found only in that season, and not by you yet. |
| Unknown | The Hard Water | Found only in that season, and not by you yet. |
| Unknown | The Spring Flood | Found only in that season, and not by you yet. |
| Unknown | The Quickening | Found only in that season, and not by you yet. |
| Unknown | The Riptide | Found only in that season, and not by you yet. |
Season quests#
Two quests are dealt only inside a season: make your name in this season and fight the season’s own weather. Everything else is the same: same rarity ladder, same pay, same slot rule. See Quests.
When a season ends#
Nothing is lost, and nothing is reset. When a season ends, every cockle in it retires to the Main Shore with everything it earned: levels, gold, gear and forge levels, charms and their wakenings, town, trophies and battle log. It is a move, not a wipe.
The final standings freeze the moment the season closes. The top 100 are kept for good, and that frozen board pays the marks below.
If the Main Shore already has a cockle with your name, the retired one takes the season’s three-letter mark in front. A cockle called Nautilus retiring out of Emberfall becomes EMB-Nautilus. The cockle already on the Shore keeps its name.
What the account keeps#
A cockle’s trophies and titles stay with that cockle for ever. A new cockle has none of them.
A season’s marks are different. They are earned by the player, so they belong to the account, and any cockle on it can wear one, including one you raise seasons later.
Tidefarer of the EmberfallTide markuncommonTidefarer of the EmberfallAny of your cockles can wear this titleReach level 10 with any cockle in the season.
Tidewrought of the EmberfallTide markrareTidewrought of the EmberfallAny of your cockles can wear this titleReach level 50 with any cockle in the season.
Emberfall DeepbornTide markepicEmberfall DeepbornAny of your cockles can wear this titleReach level 150 with any cockle in the season.
Emberfall HundredTide markepicEmberfall HundredAny of your cockles can wear this titleFinish the season in the top 100.
Champion of the EmberfallTide markmythicChampion of the EmberfallAny of your cockles can wear this titleFinish the season in the top 10.
Sovereign of the EmberfallTide marklegendarySovereign of the EmberfallAny of your cockles can wear this titleFinish the season at rank 1.
Before the TidesTide marktideboundBefore the TidesAny of your cockles can wear this titleHeld an account on the Shore before the first season.
Shown for Emberfall. Each season pays its own.
Accounts, cockles and the Tidewatch#
Your account is who you are: your sign-in, your passkeys, and every season mark. A cockle is one character in one world, and an account owns several. The Tidewatch (the Seasons page) is where you choose a world and a cockle in it. Inside a world, every way to it asks first, because it puts your cockle down.
Getting in takes 4 steps:
- Sign in with a passkey or with Google.
- Choose your world: the Main Shore, or the season running now.
- Choose a cockle you already keep there, or raise a new one.
- Name it and pick its shell.
The Main Shore holds up to 5 cockles, and the slots are earned. You start with one, and another opens the first time any cockle on your account reaches level 25, 50, 100 and 200. A slot once opened stays open, even if that cockle retires.
A season takes 1 cockle, ever. Retiring it does not give the slot back, so the one you raise is the one you play to the end. The two worlds are counted separately, so a new season never costs you the roster you had. Switching worlds doesn’t sign you out.
Retiring a cockle removes that cockle and everything on it, and frees its name in that world. It doesn’t touch your account, your other cockles or your marks. Closing your account, on the account page, removes every cockle in every world.
Names are unique within a world, so the same name can be held by one cockle on the Main Shore and another in the open season. Fights, gold, the leaderboard and the fight board are all scoped to your own world. Messages are scoped the same way. The Forum is the whole Shore, whichever world you are in.
See also: Progression for the curves a trait multiplies, and Trophies for the titles that stay with a cockle.
