I'm seeing a lot of small sections this time around. I'm not complaining. It's just been weird when last time was a bit more varied in length. I'm getting a lot of sea floors. Is this normal?

On the flip side, this time around has been very scale focused. So I'm getting quite the stash of scales.

Yep, that's completely normal. And I'm jealous of all the scales you're getting.

I'm in a Coral Garden right now, then a Shipwreck, Sea Floor, Mermouse Den, and another 500m Sea Floor. Stinkin' sea floors. I don't think I'll skip this one though because at this point I do need to start conserving scales and if nothing else, scales do drop in the sea floor areas, just not in great quantities.

ETA: A whole lotta DHU going on here. That 500m Sea Floor I mentioned above? Yeah, lets try 750m. Grrr... So I did burn through 500m of it with a charm and am just about done with it. Of course, now what I have in front of me is another Coral Garden (which I don't need cause I'm overloaded with coral) followed by another 500m Sea Floor. Arrrg! They had better make it up to me after this!

ETA 2: I see a new area ahead thanks to Inspect Element feature. The Murky Depths. Of course... that sounds like the upgraded Sea Floor. Guess I'll find out tomorrow.

I've gotten quite the amount of scales at this point. Due to the tourney, I bought a water jet charm so I could get to the pearl patch for the start. It's tiny, so I'm going to do empowered anchor charms for that.

I went ahead and crafted 98 FF and so I'm out of coral for the moment. I still have: 288 scales and 83 barnacles. I'm down to 5170m in depth and I have 181 o2 to go, so who knows where I'll end up with my numbers by the end of it.

I started my dive last night with 813 Oxygen (after diving), so if I have a decent catch rate, I should be able to make it to at least 10km. Currently, I'm facing a lot of shallow shoals and a couple of coral reefs.

I'm up to ~450 oxygen. I've got over 200 pieces of Fishy Fromage left. I should be in pretty good shape by the time I end up diving (probably early next week)

I have arrived! 10km at last! I did it with 315 oxygen + 6 water jet charms. So Stwin, I don't think you'll have any trouble. I have 343 oxygen to use here so I am a happy camper. Not super happy about starting off with 1,000m of Murky Depths with a Haunted Shipwreck in the middle, but hey, what are you gonna do?

I'm at 5850m and 135 o2 to go. I've done quite well on the scales side of things, but not so great on the coral at the moment. I'm hoping it'll balance out as I've not yet reached 200 FF.

I'm down to 140 Fishy Fromage. I was aiming for having 700 oxygen by the time I dove, and as I've already managed to get up to 573 oxygen, I think I'll make (if not exceed!) my goal.

With three aqua jet charms to help me, I shall hopefully crack the elusive 10,000 meter mark.

FK, would you recommend using the aqua jet charms early to skip the 500 meter shallow shoals, or would you wait until later when the mice get a little tougher, but drop better loot?

Shallow Shoals: Easy to move through quickly, but no loot
Sea Floor: Move through more slowly than shoals, but moderate loot

I definitely recommend the Shallow Shoals and its big brother areas. I even used one on a 750m Murky Depths. Whether that was wise or not, I don't know, but I did it cause even at that level the loot is pretty poor by comparison. I saw another random person just bust out 4 water jet charms immediately after diving in to skip the entire first level area. If that's more your style, it's certainly an option.

I realized just how unlucky I've been with my areas when I was watching FBF this morning. Jacob asked how everyone was doing, and the people who had hunted for about the same amount of time as me, already have their Tidal Bases with about 100 Sand Dollars to spare. At least the past 24 hours I've had two 250m Sunken Treasure areas, so that's definitely helped with all of my supplies. I currently have 219 Sand Dollars, so I still have a ways to go for my Tidal Base.

And speaking of FBF, the office has the plague again so Jacob did another impromptu Art FBF where he finished up what stwin believes is the Rift Monster Mouse.

I've been pretty absent for the last few days (been on vacation). I ended up diving early this week with about 260ish Oxygen? I don't even remember. Anyway, that netted me over 300 FF with two Pearl Patches. I ended up bailing at just under 5000km with about 40 O2 left because I was in a massive Sea Floor or whatever "nothing" is at that level that I wasn't going to make it out of by the time I ran out of O2. Now I'm back to farming and hoping to get enough O2 to make a stab at 10km but we'll see.

Well I have now visited every area that is known in the Dive and have snagged almost all of the mice with a few exceptions.
Never encountered the Turret Guard.
Got lucky on the Ancient of the Deep (which is an EXTREMELY cool design) and snagged him on my first shot.
I'm 0/2 on the Tritus, but I know he's SUPER difficult so I'll be thrilled if I get him before I run out of O2. I still have 138 O2 left to go.

I spent a lot of time yesterday reading through forum posts to see if it's better to throw everything at a Monster Trench in the hopes you get the hard mice, but move forward 30m with every catch. OR do you use EACs so your catch rate is lower, but you also have a lot more chances. It didn't look like there was enough data yet to have a definite answer so I'm going with a GTB and UPC setup.

ETA: Oh yeah, I used up all of my Unstable Charms and the best charm I got was an Ultimate Power Charm. I liked all the Super Rotten and Rotten Charms. Worst charms were the Elub and Nerg Power Charms. Meh...
So yeah, I'll probably get another handful from Ronza in the future. They were kind of fun.

My last dive ended at just over 8000m. I picked up over 500 ff. In the last 36 hrs, I've netted around 800k in gold thanks to three pearl patches. Still a long way to go though. We shall see where this amount of ff gets me in o2.

So after a lot of DHU at the beginning of my dive, I've ended with a lot of DLU. I got my Tritus... couldn't believe it. Though I did not get any trap parts to drop. For the first Monster Trench I went through, I used the GTB + UPC and got 0/3 Trituses, for the second, I used the Rift + ULC and got 1/3 Trituses. I don't think that proves anything other than I've always been luckier with lucky setups.

Anyways, I've got two Sunken Treasure areas in front of me, one of which is 500m. I've stockpiled a lot of FF already so my next priority is the Base. Hoping for lots and lots of Sand Dollars.

ETA, the next morning: The Tidal Base is completely feasible! If I can get 40 treasure mice to drop 3 sand dollars each, I'll have it. I have 61 chances to go before I run out of o2 (and treasure area). If I don't get it this dive, I will likely get it very early on in the next dive, though that's going to be a ways off cause I have so much FF cheese.

In other news, my husband just dove in with 1105 o2 (minus 10).

I dove this morning with over 850 oxygen canisters. I started out with a 250 meter shallow shoals followed by a 250 meter carnivore area. That was a perfect opportunity to use a water jet charm It shot me forward to a coral garden, after which came a sand dollar sea bar, another shallow shoal, another sand dollar sea bar and now a school of mice. I've got a shipwreck, sea floor and mermaid's den coming up. Hoping for some more treasure areas. I'd LOVE to get my tidal base by the end of this (or sometime within the near future). I've only got 133 sand dollars. I have no idea how some people already have it. . .

I've been having a lot of DHU today. For some reason, I've had attraction issues. I switched from the rift base to the gold tournie base for the 10% attraction bonus, and then added some attraction charms for an additional 5% and I'm still not getting as good an attraction rate as I am used to. I'm wondering if they tweaked things a bit. . .

I currently have 822 oxygen and am at a distance of 1,720 meters.

Areas on this dive: (For my own reference)
Shallow Shoals
Feeding Grounds
Coral Garden
Sand Dollar Sea Bar
Shallow Shoal
Sand Dollar Sea Bar
School of Mice

I think that both you and stwin will likely get the base before me, just because both of you were ahead of me in Sand Dollars on your previous dives, and now you're both getting started with loads of O2.

I came up 2 Sand Dollars short. Maybe the devs will release another couple dollars on their FB page. Or maybe in FBF this week, though that's a ways off. I have 440 something O2 crafted and ready to go through, and by my rough calculations, that'll take me through this whole week. Of course at the end of that I will be able to go on quite a dive myself. Depending on how much O2 I end up with, I may do more cause it seems like people are saying 1,000 O2 is the magic number. We'll see. My impatience may win out.

Things I learned from this run...
~None of the mice are THAT hard to catch. Even Tritus (though I think he's about 1/10 or so?).
~The difficulty of this area is going to be farming all the necessary Sand Dollars and Predatory Processors. Everything else is cake. I have so many extra coral, scales, and barnacles already it's not even funny.
~I do not believe gold will be an issue here. Especially when I got to the 10km areas, I was making a fair profit.