Lurking in the Dark

"Explore the vast, dark, deep ocean and the extremely weird animals that manage to call this hostile environment home." ― Information Tab

Lurking in the Dark
Exploration Stats
Episode	7
Theme	Deep Sea Life
First Start	March 9th, 2023 (beta) April 19th, 2023 (production)
Chronology
Previous	A Coevolution Love Story
Next	A Journey of Serenity

Lurking in the Dark is a limited time event which mainly focuses on Deep Sea Life. Like the Tech Tree of Life, this one features generators that produce its main currency per second, Nutrients. The event officially started on April 19th, 2023 (5 pm) and lasted until April 25th, 2023 (5 pm), but had several beta runs beforehand.

Story

Opening

"In the deep ocean, creatures live at the murky edge of existence. It is an immense void of darkness, cold, and scarcity. What can survive in these extremes?"

Ending

"By probing the outer limits of extreme survival, I see that life is surprisingly resilient. But that raises a new question: Where are the ultimate boundaries? In what other extremes can life take hold on Earth—and beyond?"

Objectives and Rewards

The requirements that have to be completed in order to get all rewards.

Explore Deep Sea Life (16 Requirements)

1. Collect 25 Sunlight Zone → 2 Augmentations Console
2. Collect Sinking Detritus → 3 Augmentations Console
3. Collect Making Light → Glow Up Badge
4. Collect 25 Twilight Zone, 85 Sunlight Zone → 2 Augmentations Console
5. Collect Oxygen Exploit → 4 Augmentations Console
6. Collect 100 Twilight Zone → 2 Augmentations Console
7. Collect Snot Palace → 5 Augmentations Console
8. Collect 200 Sunlight Zone, 40 Midnight Zone → 4 Augmentations Console
9. Collect Nightly Migrations → 5 Augmentations Console
10. Collect Collective Living → Stronger Together Badge
11. Collect 50 The Abyss, 250 Sunlight Zone → 3 Augmentations Console
12. Collect Whale Fall → 5 Augmentations Console
13. Collect 300 Sunlight Zone, 10 The Trenches → 4 Augmentations Console
14. Collect Upwelling → 8 Augmentations Console)
15. Collect 150 The Abyss, 200 Midnight Zone, 300 Twilight Zone → 3 Augmentations Console
16. Collect Earth's Lifeline → Circle of Life Badge

Badges

This event simulation holds some rewards already mentioned above. The main ones being these three badges: Bronze: Glow Up, Silver: Stronger Together, and Gold: Circle of Life which have an effect on all other evolutionary branches, speeding up every simulation by 1%, and also speeding up production in future Lurking in the Dark simulations by 5, 10 and 15% respectively.

Glow Up

" In the inky dark, creating light is just a first step. Using that glow to hunt or defend and to find mates is the key to survival. "

Stronger Together

" In a harsh world, species team up to survive. Siphonophores are a model alliance of many creatures living as one. "

Circle of Life

" Life supports life in one big, interconnected cycle. Even if it involves a lot of death. "

Generators

The Lurking in the Dark event features five generators which produce the event currency Nutrients Lurking in the Dark. The cost growth is reduced to 11% for Twilight Zone, 12% for The Abyss and 13% for Sunlight Zone. The rest remains at the usual 15%.

Nutrients

Icon	Name	Description	Base Cost	Base Production	Requires
	Sunlight Zone	Sunlight defines the epipelagic zone, the top layer of open ocean. All marine plants live here. Surrounded by thousands of miles of brightly lit water, with nowhere to hide, animals need either speed or camouflage to catch food and avoid becoming food. What eats what?	Lurking in the Dark 30	Lurking in the Dark 1/s	-
	Twilight Zone	From 200 to 1000 meter deep, the mesopelagic ("middle open ocean") appears dark to our eyes, but sunlight does reach here. Blue light, on the high-energy end of the color spectrum, reaches the deepest. In the twilight, how do animals see without being seen by enemies?	Lurking in the Dark 150,000	Lurking in the Dark 150/s	Sinking Detritus
	Midnight Zone	Around 1,000 to 4,000 meters, the bathepelagic zones makes up 90% of the ocean and yet hosts only a fraction of its creatures. There's zero sunlight, crushing pressure, a near-freezing chill, and scant food — just 5% of the sinking detritus. Why live here at all?	Lurking in the Dark 1e12	Lurking in the Dark 3e7/s	Snot Palace
	The Abyss	Below 4,000 meters, the continental shelf bottoms out into an abyssal plain, the mostly bare ocean floor. It covers half of Earth's surface, and yet 99% of the abyss is unexplored. Scant detritus from above settles in the mud. How do abyssal zone creatures survive?	Lurking in the Dark 2e17	Lurking in the Dark 5e12/s	Collective Living
	The Trenches	The ocean floor is scarred with troughs and trenches, cracks formed between tectonic plates. Below 6,000 meters, this hadal zone, named for the Greek god Hades, is nearly as deep as the four previous zones combined. Some life here is like nowhere else on Earth.	Lurking in the Dark 1e22	Lurking in the Dark 5e17/s	Whale Fall

Upgrades

Sunlight Zone Efficiency

Sunlight Zone has 14 upgrades, increasing the generator efficiency with a total x4.37144e24 multiplier.

Icon	Name	Description	Cost	Efficiency	Requires
	Microscopic Plants	Open ocean plants are all microscopic algae called phytoplankton — from drifting, single-celled diatoms to dinoflagellates that whip through water. They use sunlight to pull carbon from carbon dioxide and turn it into sugar, a nutrient that fuels growth.	Lurking in the Dark 75	10%	Sunlight Zone
	Global Drifters	Algae drift far and wide on currents, waves, and tides. Along for the ride are zooplankton (microscopic animals) such as krill, copepods, and fish larvae. Because Earth's seawater is all connected, ocean drifters and the swimmers that eat them are similar everywhere.	Lurking in the Dark 250	50%	Microscopic Plants
	Speedy Swimmers	Swimmers in the sunlight zone tend to be blue or gray to blend in. Marlin and other apex predators are streamlined for speed and long-distance travel. They herd schools of fish into a tight, dense circle called a bait ball and then zoom through it to feed.	Lurking in the Dark 2,000	25%	Global Drifters
	Whale Power	Whales are massive beasts, thanks to the bounty of food here — and below. To small creatures, turbulent currents feel like a washing machine set on high, but bulky whales can power through the viscous liquid with ease. They're the deepest diving mammals.	Lurking in the Dark 12,000	25%	Speedy Swimmers
	Sinking Detritus	After eating phytoplankton or each other, animals excrete waste full of carbon, nitrogen, and other nutrients. This detritus sinks, along with shells, scales, molted skeletons, carcasses, and everything else that can't float. Remember the fact as we descend.	Lurking in the Dark 30,000	200%	Whale Power
	Marine Snow	Only 20% of detritus from the sunlight zone makes it here. On the way down, it is eaten, expelled, and eaten again. Also called marine snow, the fraction of particles that do reach the bottom will take weeks to arrive — slightly faster if they clump together.	Lurking in the Dark 4e9	1e6%	Twilight Zone
	Snot Palace	Drifters that rely on food coming to them have to grab as much as they can. In less than an hour, giant Larvacea can build a sticky, meter-wide "snot palace" out of mucus. The many chambers and channels trap and filter detritus for the tadpole-sized resident.	Lurking in the Dark 3e11	5,000%	Marine Snow
	Nightly Migrations	A scarcity of food drives Earth's biggest migration. Each night, hordes of glowing jellies, squid, fish, and zooplankton rise to the surface to feed. Journeying to a predator-filled zone is exhausting and risky, but survivors return to inly-black safety before dawn.	Lurking in the Dark 2e13	100,000%	Midnight Zone
	Slow Living	With little to eat, midnight zone creatures are sluggish. Sleeper sharks swim to the surface each night, but at a top speed that's slower than a walk. The upside to a slow metabolism is longevity. Sleeper sharks live to at least 272 years, the longest of any vertebrate.	Lurking in the Dark 8e15	4,000%	Midnight Zone
	Whale Fall	A gift from above! One whale carcass can feed the famished abyss for years. First in are sleeper sharks, hagfish (slime eels), and rattails, then snow crabs, brittle stars, anomones, and others. Finally, hundreds of thousands of bone-eating worms reduce the skeleton to bits.	Lurking in the Dark 1.25e21	1e7%	Benthic Desert
	Upwelling	Far above, in the sunlight zone, wind pushes warm water away from shore toward the open ocean. Here in the abyss, a cold current rises to fill the space left by what water. This upwelling picks up and carries detritus — including the leftover bits of a dead whale.	Lurking in the Dark 1.75e26	200%	Briny Death Traps
	Nutrient Express	Detritus contains many vital nutrients: carbon (the base element of all life), nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phospohorous, sulfur, and other minor chemicals. Nutrients allow life forms to digest food, grow, build shells, repair damage, breathe, and otherwise function.	Lurking in the Dark 4e26	200%	Upwelling
	Climate Control	The rising cold current mixes with warm surface water while elsewhere, warm currents join cold ones. It takes a drop of water 1,000 years to travel the great ocean conveyor, a global loop of currents that moderates ocean temperatures — and Earth's entire climate.	Lurking in the Dark 1.25e27	200%	Nutrient Express
	Earth's Lifeline	Upwelled nutrients draw masses of surface life, which become prime fishing spots for sea and land creatures. Algae thrive, producing most of the oxygen in our atmosphere. Food, oxygen, and climate: The deep sea boosts the sunlight zone, which sustains all life on Earth.	Lurking in the Dark 8e27	1e9%	Climate Control

Twilight Zone Efficiency

Twilight Zone has 14 upgrades, increasing the generator efficiency with a total x3.69369e24 multiplier.

Icon	Name	Description	Cost	Efficiency	Requires
	Fish World	Air-breathing whales, seals, dolphins, and other mammals dive deep to feed. About 90% of the world's fish (by mass) live in this zone, where dimness offers them some cover. Quadrillions of small fish called bristlemouths are the most numerous vertebrate on the planet.	Lurking in the Dark 300,000	100%	Twilight Zone
	Making Light	Life that can glow is rare on land, but it's the rule in the dark sea. Up to 90% of deep dwellers are bioluminescent. Some have photophore glands in their skin that create light chemically, combining oxygen and luciferin. Other harbor glowing bacteria on their bodies.	Lurking in the Dark 2.15e6	100%	Twilight Zone
	Seeing Blue	Twilight eyes are tuned to blue light. Phronima is a tiny hunter with two big eyes that peer far ahead and two side eyes that scan nearby. When it spies the blue glow of a salp plankton, it claws and chews out the salp's guts and uses the barrel remnant as a nursery.	Lurking in the Dark 8e6	100%	Twilight Zone
	Red is the New Black	Red sunlight doesn't reach this deep, so the color appears black. Even a bright-red grouper blends into the dark, hidden from predators and able to sneak up on tasty crabs. Many transparent jellyfish have red stomachs to conceal the glowing prey they eat.	Lurking in the Dark 3.6e7	150%	Seeing Blue
	See-Through Bodies	In dim light, transparent bodies are invisible. Sea butterflies are snails that evolved see-through camouflage by ditching their shells and pigments. A single muscular foor for crawling became two flaps for swimming, each coated with a sticky mucus to snag detritus to eat.	Lurking in the Dark 1.15e8	150%	Red is the New Black
	Oxygen Exploit	Oxygen-poor can't sustain big predators. To exploit these safer areas, the vampire squid evolved oversized gills and blue blood that circulates oxygen well. It's the only cephalopod that can live its whole life in an oxygen minimum zone, eating mostly detritus.	Lurking in the Dark 2e9	200%	Twilight Zone
	Light as a Lure	Anglerfish are named for their fishing rod — a glowing barbel, or feeler, that dangles over a gaping, toothy mouth. With their large eyes, squid and fish home in on that glow — usually the sign of a snack — but they can't see the dark hunter lurking behing.	Lurking in the Dark 1.75e10	100%	Making Light
	Lurking Champion	Most bioluminescence is blue, but the black dragonfish also emits a red glow that spotlights red prey, like a snaper scope. The hunter's eyes can detect red, but the prey's eyes cannot, which makes this top twilight predator a master lurker. It can see without being seen.	Lurking in the Dark 2.5e10	150%	Making Light
	Hiding in Light	Hatchetfish use light to hide. When seen from below, photophores lining the belly blend into the light above. Its huge yellow eyes can distinguish sunlight from bioluminescence, but enemy eyes can't. A skinny body profile also make the fish hard to see.	Lurking in the Dark 7e10	100%	Light as a Lure Lurking Champion
	Alarms and Flash Bangs	Light can be a defense. Jellyfish put on a fireworks show to warn, "I taste bad and i sting!" Copepods drop a time-delayed "flash-bang" to allow for a getaway. When attacked, many prey species emit an alarm light to lure a second predator to eat the first one.	Lurking in the Dark 9e10	200%	Light as a Lure Lurking Champion
	Snot Palace	Drifters that rely on food coming to them have to grab as much as they can. In less than an hour, giant Larvacea can build a sticky, meter-wide "snot palace" out of mucus. The many chambers and channels trap and filter detritus for the tadpole-sized resident.	Lurking in the Dark 3e11	100%	Marine Snow
	Nightly Migrations	A scarcity of food drives Earth's biggest migration. Each night, hordes of glowing jellies, squid, fish, and zooplankton rise to the surface to feed. Journeying to a predator-filled zone is exhausting and risky, but survivors return to inky-black safety before dawn.	Lurking in the Dark 2e13	100,000%	Midnight Zone
	Slow Living	With little to eat, midnight zone creatures are sluggish. Sleeper sharks swim to the surface each night, but at a top speed that's slower than a walk. The upside to a slow metabolism is longevity. Sleeper sharks live to at least 272 years, the longest of any vertebrate.	Lurking in the Dark 8e15	4,000%	Midnight Zone
	Climate Control	The rising cold current mixes with warm surface water while elsewhere, warm currents join cold ones. It takes a drop of water 1,000 years to travel the great ocean conveyer, a global loop of currents that moderates ocean temperatures — and Earth's entire climate.	Lurking in the Dark 1,25e27	1e18%	Nutrient Express

Midnight Zone Efficiency

Midnight Zone has 8 upgrades, increasing the generator efficiency with a total x1.22512e13 multiplier.

Icon	Name	Description	Cost	Efficiency	Requires
	Mammal Limit	Whales dive deeper than any mammal. Their lungs can shrink to 1% of their size under water pressure, but even so, most bottom out at 2,000 meters. Cuvier's beaked whales hold two record: deepest dive at 2,992 meters and longest dive at 3 hours and 42 minutes.	Lurking in the Dark 3e12	200%	Midnight Zone
	Under Pressure	Water pressure is no problem for jellies, a general term for animals with boneless, squishy bodies. They collapse and expand to keep pressure balanced inside and out. Vertebrates like fish and whales have flexible bone or cartilage that bends under pressure.	Lurking in the Dark 3e12	175%	Mammal Limit
	Giant Eyes	All the light in this zone comes from animals. So, to predators, every glow signals a meal. To detect light from afar, the world's largest invertebrate, the colossal squid, has the biggest eyes. They're the size of dinner plates. Colossal squid mostly eat other squid.	Lurking in the Dark 6e12	175%	Midnight Zone
	The Biggest Gulp	Big meals are a rare treat, and midnight zone hunters take full advantage. Picture a brown balloon on a black string. That's what a gulper eel looks like when its toothless mouth supersizes to engulf prey. When the mouth deflates, the body reverts to a tube shape.	Lurking in the Dark 1e15	100%	Giant Eyes
	Giant Teeth	To gobble a rare large meal, predators like viperfish and fangtooth fish have teeth so long that they can't close their oversized mouths. Fangtooths look fierce, but they're only about the size of a hand. Viperfish feed near the surface at night and can grow foot-sized.	Lurking in the Dark 6e15	200%	The Biggest Gulp
	Extreme Mating	Bio-light helps mates find each other — no easy feat in this immense void. To stay found, a male anglerfish fuses his tiny body onto a far larger female, feeding only on her blood. He'll spend his life fertilizing the eggs she expels and then die, still a part of her.	Lurking in the Dark 9e16	200%	Midnight Zone
	Collective Living	Siphonophores live in colonies to pool survival skills. These chains of mixed jellies function like a floating city and can grow longer than a whale. Bell-shaped jellies provide propulsion, while polyps filter feed and reproduce. A gas-filled float controls buoyancy.	Lurking in the Dark 2e17	200%	Extreme Mating
	Nutrient Express	Detritus contains many vital nutrients: carbon (the base element of all life), nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phospohorous, sulfur, and other minor chemicals. Nutrients allow life forms to digest food, grow, build shells, repair damage, breathe, and otherwise function.	Lurking in the Dark 4e26	1e12%	Upwelling

The Abyss Efficiency

The Abyss has 7 upgrades, increasing the generator efficiency with a total x6,006 multiplier.

Icon	Name	Description	Cost	Efficiency	Requires
	Smell and Touch	Abyssal creatures don't rely much on sight. Rattails have odor pits to sniff our carcasses. Tripod fish use extra-long, sensitive fins to feel for food. They sometimes perch atop three bony fins, facing the current, and swat passing prey into their mouths.	Lurking in the Dark 3e17	300%	The Abyss
	Electrical Sensors	Long-nosed chimaera, cousins to sharks, are the top abyssal predators. Dot-sized sensors along the large snout detect electrical fields created by the muscle movements of crustaceans and other small prey. As with sharks, their teeth never stop growing.	Lurking in the Dark 5e17	300%	Smell and Touch
	Benthic Desert	In a food desert, mobility beats drifting aimlessly or anchoring to rocks and waiting for a meal. At extreme depths, sea cucumbers, brittle stars, sea lilies, urchins, and other benthic (bottom-dwelling) creatures need to swim or crawl to find food.	Lurking in the Dark 2.5e17	200%	The Abyss
	A Gathering Herd	Once urchins, sea stars, and other echinoderms find their kind in this lonely void, they stick together. Herds of sea cucumbers walk along the muddy bottom, grazing on nutrients. Most echinoderms reproduce by splitting in two. They regenerate the missing parts.	Lurking in the Dark 6e18	225%	Benthic Desert
	Extreme Species	Deep-sea species are often extreme versions of shallow forms. The globural dumbo octopus has two floppy fins what look like ears. The fins help it hover over the bottom while stumpy, webbed tentacles search for food. The eyes are mostly useless, with no retina or lens.	Lurking in the Dark 6.5e19	250%	The Abyss
	Lonesome Predator	The deepsea lizardfish is a benthic hunter that devours anything within reach — even its own kind. The mouth, tongue, and jaws all have fangs. With mates scarce — or apt to become dinner — this lonesome killer is a hermaphrodite, having both male and female organs.	Lurking in the Dark 4e20	175%	Extreme Species
	Whale Fall	A gift from above! One whale carcass can feed the famished abyss for years. First in are sleeper sharks, hagfish (slime eels), and rattails, then snow crabs, brittle stars, anomones, and others. Finally, hundreds of thousands of bone-eating worms reduce the skeleton to bits.	Lurking in the Dark 1.25e21	300%	Benthic Desert

The Trenches Efficiency

The Trenches has 6 upgrades, increasing the generator efficiency with a total x1.14011e7 multiplier.

Icon	Name	Description	Cost	Efficiency	Requires
	Hadal Extremes	Hadal snailfish, the deepest recorded living fish, have no scales, no photophores, and no air-filled swim bladder for buoyancy. A slimy goo keeps their pale-pink, transluscent bodies afloat. A species of cusk eel, a benthic fish, may live even deeper.	Lurking in the Dark 3.5e22	400%	The Trenches
	Hydrothermal Vents	At holes in Earth's crust, frigid seawater meets molten rock. Ir superheats and jets upward like a geyser, carrying a brew of minerals. Hot vents attract some 500 species, but they fizzle out within decades. Anything that can't drift or swim to a new home dies off.	Lurking in the Dark 5e22	300%	The Trenches
	Chemical Ecosystem	Chemicals, not sunlight, power the base of the vent's food web. Bacteria use energy fro hydrogen sulfide to turn carbon into sugar. Mussels eat bacteria; tube worms form symbiotic (win-win) partnerships with them. Crabs and octopuses are top predators.	Lurking in the Dark 2.5e23	375%	Hydrothermal Vents
	Cold Seeps	Cold seeps are vents where methane is a chemical engine for making sugar. This chemosynthesis is carried out by bacteria and a menagerie of one-celled microbes in the kingdom Archaea ("ancient"). Seeps are stable, and so ecosystems can last for centuries.	Lurking in the Dark 3e24	300%	The Trenches
	Briny Death Traps	Brine pools form in low spots on the sea floor. The water is so packed with salt that animals venturing into it die and get pickled. The small pools teem with extremophiles — microbes adapted to extreme conditions. Mussels living around the edges feed on bacteria.	Lurking in the Dark 2.5e25	200%	The Trenches
	Upwelling	Far above, in the sunlight zone, wind pushes warm water away from shore toward the open ocean. Here in the abyss, a cold current rises to fill the space left by what water. This upwelling picks up and carries detritus — including the leftover bits of a dead whale.	Lurking in the Dark 1.75e26	1e6%	Briny Death Traps

Tech Tree

Lurking in the Dark Overview

Duration(s)

• April 19th, 2023 (5 pm) — April 25th, 2023 (5 pm)