Tidegate ​

A seaside town that rises and falls with the tide. At low tide the mudflats, a shipwreck and the drain culvert come out of the water; at high tide they go under again, and the ferry only calls at high water. The town's tide gate has been shut for years, the lagoon keeps rising, and the savings bank sits underneath it. It is one map, but the tide is different every time you go in, and so are the routes and the loot within reach.

Setting out ​

• At base, with no mode running, Awen couriers a soaked parcel that drifted in from Tidegate into your storage. Inside is Old Zha's Letter.
• Read the letter from your backpack to see Old Zha's illustrated letter and open the raft route in the bunker sewer. The letter is never used up, so you can read it again whenever you like. It can't be sold; if you lose it before reading it, Awen sends another one a day later.
• Head north along the west walkway in the bunker sewer toward the water tanks. Old Zha stands beside the south end of the lantern-lit raft. Walk a couple of steps past him and choose "Go to Tidegate".
• Leaving and coming back work like any other map: the loading screen stops at "Click to continue", and extracting shows the usual extraction summary before you return to base. Finish any running mode first; you cannot go while on a Sky Islands trip.

Tides ​

• The tide follows the game clock. One cycle takes about 4.5 game hours (about four and a half minutes at normal speed): ebb, low tide, flood, high tide. When you arrive decides where the water is.
• The small line on the card in the top right shows the current phase and water level. Carry the Tide Pocket Watch and it also shows how long until the next turn of the tide. The card's objective line tells you what to do next (turn the valves, get into the vault, take the watch home).
• Every turn of the tide comes with a message: a tide alarm sounds 15 seconds before the flood and again when it starts, and near the end of high tide you are told the ferry is about to leave.
• Water deeper than half a metre counts as deep. Submerged crates cannot be searched; walk up to one and you'll be prompted to wait for low tide. Enemies spawn outside deep water, but diggers already on the flats can get caught by the rising water.

Swimming and load ​

• You can swim in Tidegate, but only light: you float only while your total load is 14 kg or less, and carrying a Dry Bag adds 6 kg to that. The card shows "Load x/14 · can swim" or "will sink".
• Overloaded, you sink in deep water, and once your head goes under you run out of air and take damage. Caught on the flats by the flood? Drop your heaviest item first, then swim.
• Carrying Duck Flippers makes you swim faster.
• While you swim, enemies spot you at half the usual distance; the card says "swimming, harder to spot".
• You cannot roll in the water: the dodge key does nothing while swimming, and a roll that carries you into deep water stops at once.
• Swimming only works in Tidegate; you do not take it back to base.

Extraction ​

Press M to see the town with north at the top and east on the right. The four exits show their current state: for example, "Outlet submerged", "Catch the line" or "Boat inbound". Open exits turn green and have a ring on the ground. The shoreline fades into the background; When you walk into a building, its roof and upper walls lift away, leaving the low walls, floor and furniture. Buildings you are not inside stay whole, and everything returns when you step out.

• Highway Checkpoint (upper left on the map): always open, 10 seconds.
• Ferry Pier: at high tide the boat docks and will take any load. During the ebb or flood, go to the end of the pier and catch the line yourself. Stay in the ring for 5 seconds to board; stepping away or putting on too much weight lets go. The limit is 14 kg, or 20 kg with a Dry Bag. You cannot catch a new line at low tide, but you can finish boarding if you already caught one.
• Drain Culvert: open only while the outlet is above water (after the ebb), 6 seconds.
• Lighthouse Jetty: a boat arrives 45 seconds after you light the lighthouse, 5 seconds.

The countdown is the same one the regular extraction points use: it pauses while your backpack or the pause menu is open and resets if you step out of the ring.

Three valves, one gate, and the sunken vault ​

• The tide gate has three valves: the Waterworks No. 3 pump house, the town pump station and the tide gauge station. Each takes 3 seconds to turn.
• The sand gang pulled the tide gauge handwheel off and dumped it in the locker in the sand dredger's cabin (Valve Handwheel). The dredger's gangway sits low and floods at high tide, so go while the water is out. The valve's interaction prompt shows the required wheel. Carry it yourself to start turning the valve; once fitted, it stays there.
• With all three open the gate lifts: the lagoon starts draining, and once it is empty it rises and falls with the sea. About 4 seconds later a squad of the sand gang comes over the seawall, heading for the vault.
• At low tide the savings bank comes out of the water. The vault boxes are among the underwater jackpot candidates, and the manager's safe always has a Tide Pocket Watch (unless you are already carrying one).

The lighthouse ​

• Light the lighthouse on the cape (2 seconds) to call a boat. The horn sounds at the tower; enemies who hear it can investigate that location. Hold the tower or slip towards the jetty while they look. Press M for 40 seconds of enemy positions; the boat docks after 45 seconds. Gunfire and being seen can still give you away.

Loot and enemies ​

Two industrial hazards are lethal:

• Never swim into an open sluice. On your first approach to a working intake you have 2.5 seconds to read the current and see the warning. After that, four consecutive seconds in the red core will pull you under. Swim sideways out of the ring to reset the timer, or cross on the dam.

• Keep clear of the suspended load. The first cycle tests the crane brakes: the load stops overhead. Use the bell and the yellow box to find a safe spot. Subsequent loads hit the ground and will kill anyone directly underneath. The nearby fish basket is safe from outside the lines.

• For a quick start, visit the clinic or hardware store. Fish baskets hold 1–3 stacks, home drawers 1–4, shipping crates 1–5 and tool or medical cabinets 2–5. A tool cabinet usually pairs a tool with a pack of parts, a fish basket a small fish with bait, and a medical cabinet medicine with an injector or a drink; within one raid, no two boxes of the same kind open with the same item. Occasionally a work kit hides a valuable item. Deep vault cabinets still hold 3–6 stacks.

• One of two red tool chests in the Old Town hardware store holds a shift key. Take it to the foreman's cabinet in dock warehouse 2; once you have it, your objective and a gold circle on M point there. It stays in the lock and cannot be taken home. Buried caches become visible when the tide recedes to the mud.

• For better loot, watch the tide. The waterworks control-room safe has one quality 4–5 item, and the dredger's locker has one at quality 4–6.

• Underwater containers (buried caches, the wreck, the bank vault and the wreck captain's safe) hold quality 4 finds. In about eight raids out of ten, one of them also hides a single quality 5–6 jackpot; some raids have none, and the container changes every time. The Tide Watch in the manager's safe is always there and does not count as the jackpot.

• Higher grades depend on what's in the game's item catalogue. Other slots still roll normally; the wheel and watch are separate. Homes and street safes have no such guarantee.

• An ordinary container may have a shipping manifest under its lid. Check M to see which two offers are in town: medical supplies at the pier, guarded maintenance parts at the waterworks, or valuables on the flats as the water recedes. The first marked container you open secures that shipment. The other shipment sails, but its ordinary loot stays. Finding a seal by chance works the same way. Both the destinations and the individual containers can change next raid.

• Everyone in town has a name above their health bar: Assault Troopers and an Assault Captain hold the streets, Dock Prowlers work the harbour, Reed Ambushers hide in the reeds, Waterworks Guards, a Waterworks Marksman, Lighthouse Guards and a Cape Scout hold the two strongpoints, and Dredge Gang Hands and a Dredge Grenadier follow the Sand Boss. Patrol Hounds are the wolves that walk with the squads. Each post has its own helmet, armour, beak and feathers, so you can tell them apart at a distance.

• Up to ten enemies cover the town streets and seven cover the docks. Lookouts patrol with partners; one follower in each district can be a wolf. The Assault Captain is tougher than the rest. The waterworks has up to four guards. The lookout outside the control building can carry an SV98: the crosswalk is exposed, but the machinery to the north breaks his sightline. The reeds have up to two scavengers, and the cape has two guards and a scavenger.

• Enemies here are tougher than their counterparts on other maps: about 1.5× health (about 1.8× for guards and the Assault Captain) and 1.25× damage, and they react faster and shoot straighter once they spot you. The Waterworks Marksman only gets the extra health; his firing rhythm is unchanged.

• Up to four diggers accompany the Sand Boss at the dredger. One can throw ordinary grenades: when a warning ring appears, move out of it. The marked spot stays put. Scavengers in town, at the docks and in the reeds are hostile to the guards and the sand gang, so a firefight can give you a way through. Up to 30 regular enemies plus the Sand Boss appear per raid, with no endless respawns. Opening the gate brings three additional reinforcements.

• Leadline, the Dredge Boss is a size larger than his crew, has 1500 health and works the flats at ebb. When he calls a hook sweep, step outside the orange ring at his feet. On the dredger at flood tide, the winch drops its weight on a fixed red mark: sidestep or take cover. Search his body for the Dredger's Sounding Lead; if you already carry one, his body holds a dredger's spare (quality 5–6) instead. Use it in Tidegate and check M for a blue-green circle marking the nearest unsearched buried cache for 25 seconds. If it's underwater, wait for the ebb.

• The sand gang follows the tide: they dig the flats at low tide and head back to the dredger just before the flood. Any of them still standing in deep water when the tide comes in gets swept away.

Gatekeeper's logs and the pocket watch ​

• Why did the manager give away the money but lock up Old Zha's watch? Start at either the waterworks control room safe or the town pump station duty desk. Each of the four Gatekeeper's Log pages points towards another cabinet. Read the illustrated entries in your notes codex in any order. You can open the gate, return the watch and extract without collecting all four.
• Bring the Tide Pocket Watch back to the bunker and scroll to "Hand over" at the raft. The prompt shows the watch, and it can be inside a container you carry. Old Zha takes it, gives you a Dry Bag, and the handover option disappears.
• You can also keep the watch: carried into Tidegate, it tells you exactly when the tide turns.
• The letter, four log pages and the ending each have their own cel-shaded illustration. Returning the watch reveals the sixth picture; you can revisit any entry you have unlocked in the notes codex.

Old Zha ​

• Old Zha stands by his raft in the sewer. Like the other resident NPCs you can chat with him and give him gifts, and at affinity 3, 5, 8 and 10 he tells stories from his years at the waterworks.
• From affinity 1, "Old Zha's Waterproof Goods" sells the Dry Bag; from affinity 4 it also sells Duck Flippers.

Items ​

• Old Zha's Letter (500115): delivered by Awen. Reading it opens the raft route, and you can read it again.

• Valve Handwheel (500111): in the dredger cabin locker, one per run; used up at the tide gauge valve.

• Tide Pocket Watch (500112): in the manager's safe, one per run (none if you are already carrying one); give it to Old Zha, or keep it to read the tide.

• Dry Bag (500113): Old Zha's thanks and his shop; carry it to swim with 6 kg more load.

• Duck Flippers (500114): now and then in the buried caches, and in Old Zha's shop; carry them to swim faster in Tidegate.

• Dredger's Sounding Lead (500116): search Leadline's body for it (a quality 5–6 spare instead if you already carry one). Use in Tidegate to mark the nearest unsearched buried cache on the map for 25 seconds. Reusable.

None of these six come from random loot pools.