NTE: "Shipwreck Salvage" and the "Drifting Bottle" — Hotta's guide contradicts its own patch notes, and the event closes on September 29 at 9:59 p.m. UTC

Hotta Studio posted, on Friday, August 28 at 8:39 a.m. UTC, on the Steam feed of NTE: Neverness to Everness, the instructions for its new event, under the title "'Shipwreck Salvage' Gameplay Guide". The document is thorough: it details the gameplay loop, the gauge to watch, and how to claim your loot. It has one flaw, and it's a needless one: the guide and the patch notes don't call the same things by the same names.

The event itself is "Shipwreck Salvage" and its currency the "Drifting Bottle", in the guide as in the patch notes. The rewards are where the studio loses the thread.

One event, two names for the same namecard

The patch notes for version 1.3 "Rising from the Moonlit Fog", published on August 18 on that same Steam feed, list the event in their "New Events" section. There the shop pays out the "Full Haul" event avatar frame and the "Treasure Hunt" event namecard. The guide published ten days later, on the same feed, calls that second item "Treasurebound". Same reward, two labels, ten days apart — and only one of them will be searchable in your client.

Worth flagging rather than resolving: we do not know which of the two the in-game shop displays, and we will not invent a third. Hotta's other 1.3 gameplay guides — "Shadow-n-Seek: Gameplay Guide" on July 17, "'Going, Going, Gone!' Gameplay Guide" on July 30 — do match the labels in the patch notes exactly. This one is the exception.

One consolation for anyone reading a translated client: the French localisation is consistent on this point, calling the namecard "Chasse au trésor" in both of Hotta's documents. Elsewhere in 1.3 the studio holds its line — the volleyball event is "Volley Star" and Zankou's outfit "Searing Lavender" in the patch notes, and nothing has contradicted them since.

The window, converted to UTC

Both announcements give the same duration, in Beijing time: August 28, 10:00 → September 30, 05:59 (UTC+8). Subtract eight hours to get UTC.

That places the opening at Friday, August 28 at 2:00 a.m. UTC — the event has therefore been running since yesterday — and the closing at Tuesday, September 29 at 9:59 p.m. UTC. A full month: this is one of the rare 1.3 events you have no reason to rush.

The loop, and the pitfall that costs an entire run

A cargo ship has lost its load at sea. You head out on a jet ski and race against the tide to recover what's floating before it all disappears. Four points from the guide are worth remembering.

• Move away from the edge. The closer you get to the cargo ship, the more likely you are to come across high-value floating cargo. Sweeping the starting area is the surest way to head back with empty pockets.
• The harpoon has a weight limit. You switch to aiming mode to fire it, and any object under that limit can be recovered. The guide recommends slowing down when the targeting drops: it's the jet ski's speed that's the problem, not the reticle.
• Watch your energy. A marker shows the threshold you shouldn't drop below. Below it, there are only two options: head back immediately, or go find an energy reserve crate.
• Nothing is secured until you return. Cargo only converts once you're back at the starting point. Running out of power out at sea means the entire run's haul stays in the water.

One last element: the sea also yields upgrade materials, which level up the jet ski and the harpoon. The guide's screenshots do show numbered tiers, but their labels are rendered in the game's stylized font and remain unreadable: we won't detail them until they've been checked in-game.

What you bring back, and the two figures Hotta doesn't give

The event has only one currency, the Drifting Bottle, to spend at the event shop. The 1.3 notes name what can be found there: the event avatar frame “Full Haul”, the event namecard “Treasure Hunt”, Annulith, Fabricated Dice and Fons.

A telling detail along the way: Hotta's own English isn't stable. That namecard is called “Treasurebound” in the August 28 guide, but “Treasure Hunt” in the 1.3 patch notes — the French localisation, for its part, says “Chasse au trésor” in both places.

On the other hand, neither the conversion rate of cargo into Drifting Bottles, nor the event shop's prices, are published: neither announcement mentions them. It's therefore impossible to say how many trips out to sea separate you from the avatar frame. Those figures can only be read in the in-game shop, and nowhere else — any scale circulating today would be a guess.

Don't apply the same conversion to the two August 31 deadlines

Two other counters move on Monday. “Stamina Recharge” closes on August 31 at 04:59, and “Gold Clash”, which doubles the Fons earned in “Pink Paws Heist”, takes over from August 31 at 05:00 to September 14 at 04:59.

The trap lies in the time unit. These two windows are dated in “server time” in the notes, while “Shipwreck Salvage” is dated in UTC+8. Both reference frames coexist in the same document, just a few lines apart: don't apply the same calculation to them, and rely on the in-game countdown for these two.

“Shipwreck Salvage” isn't the meatiest piece of 1.3, but it's one of the best documented. Remember both names of its namecard so you can find it in the shop, remember to return to your starting point so as not to lose anything along the way, and remember the in-game shop for the only figures that count.