What the black tide is doing
You sail toward the Abyssal Sea, the water turns black, and your ship gets shoved back. That is the failure people keep posting about, and the same question shows up under several videos: how do I get in, the black tide keeps pushing me back.
Repeated comments give the same cause. Abyssal entry needs a ship add-on, and Poseidon's Compass is the item they name. One reply is blunt about a related dead end: owning a ship called Poseidon does not help, because the wall is the add-on rather than the hull.
How to recognise it in ten seconds:
- The sea name on screen reads Abyssal, or the map shows you at the boundary.
- You can still steer, but the ship loses ground whenever you point at the black water.
- Nothing in your inventory or ship menu mentions a compass or an Abyssal add-on.
If all three are true, you are at the gate, and buying a bigger hull or levelling further will not move it.
The two answers, side by side
The comments split into two camps. Neither side has footage behind it.
| Route A: Flying Dutchman | Route B: Celestial Sea serpent | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the claim comes from | Comments under Flying Dutchman and boss videos | Comments under Celestial Sea and cathedral-mission videos |
| What you do | Kill the Dutchman, take the compass as a drop | Kill the serpent at the Aurora Rift, then buy the compass from the outfitter |
| What the compass is described as | Loot from a boss encounter | A ship add-on in the outfitter's special section |
| Confirmed on camera | No | No |
| Cost to test | One boss attempt plus a repair bill | A trip to the Celestial Sea, the serpent fight, then outfitter gold |
Route A is the cheaper test. The Dutchman has been beaten solo in a recorded run with no commentary, so one player can reach the fight and read the loot table without a crew. Comments also argue about how to fight it, with some saying weapons on foot beat cannon fire. That fight and the rest of the bosses with confirmed mechanics sit on the boss list.
Route B matches the strongest description of the item itself. If the compass is a ship add-on sold in a special outfitter section, something has to unlock it first, and the serpent is the unlock those comments name. The location details line up too: the Aurora Rift sits behind Skyhold Gardens, inside the Celestial Sea.
Test both routes without wasting a session
Steps to run, in this order. Each one ends with a look at a menu, so you learn something whether or not the kill pays out.
- Before you sail, open the outfitter and scroll to its special section. Note whether Poseidon's Compass is visible, greyed out, or absent. This is your baseline.
- Sail to where the Dutchman spawns and beat it. Do not leave the loot behind: walk the wreck and pick up everything that dropped.
- Open your inventory and your ship's add-on list. A new compass entry means Route A is live on your account.
- Go back to the outfitter and check the special section again. If the compass changed from absent to buyable, Route A is the unlock and Route B is the purchase step, which would explain why the two camps disagree.
- If nothing changed, sail to the Celestial Sea and the Aurora Rift behind Skyhold Gardens, kill the serpent there, then repeat steps 3 and 4.
What success looks like: an add-on you can equip, followed by a ship that stops losing ground at the black tide. What failure looks like: the boss dies, the loot is picked up, and no compass appears in either menu.
One warning before you spend. The store sells an item called Poseidon's Vault for R$4,999, and its description is gold with a bonus percentage. It is not the compass, and buying it will not open Abyssal.
What else the gate asks for
The compass is the first condition people hit, not the whole checklist. Players report that Poseidon himself waits in the Dead Man's Sea, which is the sea the comments point to whenever someone asks where he is. Getting past him is described as a prerequisite for the top hulls, and the ship panel that everyone quotes, the Ironclad, has been listed at $100,000,000 gold.
The Ironbound Sea sits further along the same path. Official store text calls War Sigils its material and sells them in packs of ten and twenty-five, noting that Imperial Iron, gold and each ship's route quest still have to be earned by playing. That text ties the sigils to the Royal Corsair and the Ironclad, and the packs disappear once your ships no longer need them.
A realistic order: clear the black tide, kill Poseidon, then collect sigils and gold for the hull that follows. The sea order and the other gate conditions are on the seas and their gates, and what the compass and later hulls change is on the ship ladder.
When neither test works
Sometimes both routes come back empty. Before you conclude the compass does not exist, rule out the boring causes:
- You picked up loot but did not equip the add-on. Check the ship menu rather than your character inventory.
- You fought the Dutchman in a group and the drop went to whoever landed the final hit.
- You checked the outfitter before the boss, not after it.
- Your ship has no module slots free for another add-on.
If all four are clean and both bosses have died without a compass, leave the sea alone for a while. The game shipped at the end of September 2026 and players report that gates get patched between updates, so a route that worked in an October comment may have moved. Re-test after the next patch rather than grinding a drop that a comment described weeks ago.
The honest summary is that no recording shows the compass being obtained. This page gives two tests because the community has two answers, and unconfirmed means nobody has filmed it, not that the item is missing.