The sea

MYTHSEA is played on one round sea split into five zones. Each zone has its own landmark and its own creep, and all of them close in the same order of events every match.

The zones and their schedule

The final zone is chosen anew for each match and is not announced. The two zones farthest from it close first. The times never change:

Time	What happens
0:10	The first pair of zones is marked with hatching
0:20	The first pair closes, and chests surface in the three open zones. The second pair and the final circle are marked
0:30	The second pair closes, along with the water of the last zone outside the circle
0:40	The circle starts to shrink
1:00	The circle reaches nothing

The plate at the top of the screen always shows what comes next: NEXT ZONE IN, ZONE CLOSES IN, CIRCLE SHRINKS IN and finally CIRCLE CLOSING.

Dead water

Closed water is called dead water. A ship inside it smokes, its hull points blink red, and it loses one point every three seconds, so a full hull lasts 15 seconds. Sailing back into live water resets the count.

A closed zone with boiling water on the left, a hatched zone about to close in the centre and the skull and windmill islands — Boiling water on the left is already dead. Hatching over the centre will be dead when the timer runs out.

Chests

Chests surface as the first pair of zones closes, one in each of the three zones still open, inside the creep's lair. Ten seconds earlier, the spot starts to glow on the water and on the minimap.

A damaged ship that sails over a chest is repaired to a full five points. A ship at full hull leaves it where it is. A chest stays until someone takes it or its zone closes, and it does not come back.

The creeps

Creeps cannot be hurt and belong to nobody, so think of them as dangerous terrain with habits. Each attack takes one hull point and is shown in advance in the same way: a bold circle on the water with the creep's silhouette and a clock filling clockwise until the hit. Attacks along a line are shown as dashed corridors instead.

A shark breaching in a white ring near a large whale shadow under the water and a chest in a gold ring — The Mills: a shark breaches inside its ring while the whale's shadow moves below the surface, next to a chest in its gold circle.

The Duel

An octopus and a squid stand behind rocks on opposite sides of a strait and fire heavy balls across it. A ship in the line of fire loses a point, and splinters of rock fall into marked rings. Cross quickly, and never stop in the corridor.

The Mills

Water mills throw currents you cannot sail against, while a whale and a shark take turns breaching inside rings. Everything inside the ring loses a point. Plan your route with the current, and stay out of the circles.

The Crab Battery

A crab walks a long spit of land lighting mortars, and each mortar lands in its own ring a couple of seconds later. Look for the gap between the rings rather than trying to outrun them.

The Derby

Seahorses race along five lanes on the flag of a starter fish, and touching a running horse costs a point. You can only dodge sideways, out of the lane. The flag is your clock: watch it to know when a race is about to start.

The High Dive

Fish leap and dive in rings around an island of frog judges. They are only dangerous at two moments, leaving the water and entering it, so a ring is safe to cross while its fish is in the air.

Landmarks

You can tell where you are without the minimap: each zone has a skull, a windmill, a fort, a galleon on a sandbar or a lighthouse, and a gate tower stands on the island in the centre of the sea. Scattered islands fill the water between them and give cover from cannonballs. The small stones awash in the shallows are only scenery.

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