Alongside the happenings in EVENTS #520, we're pleased to announce the latest in our updates to ships and seafaring: A massive overhaul of seamonsters!

Seamonsters and denizen-controlled ships will now be randomly encountered on the high seas. Certain regions of the seas have been designated as locations for these encounters, and the seamonsters have potential to appear on your map as you move through these zones.

Seamonsters will show up as a bright magenta "M" on your map. You can view more information about seamonsters close to your ship with the SPYGLASS ability in Seafaring. INFO <direction> will show you any seamonsters in that direction. INFO <direction> <seamonster> will show you detailed information about a specific seamonster.

You can fire ship weapons at a seamonster with FIRE <weapon> AT <seamonster>. All seamonsters and denizen-controlled ships can be fired on with the keyword "seamonster". If there are multiple seamonsters within range of your ship and you wish to target a specific one, you must use the INFO command from the Spyglass ability to determine the type of seamonster, or the seamonster's numeric ID.

Ship ammo will have the following effects on seamonsters:

- Ballista darts and war discs will do damage to the seamonster.
- Chainshot will slow the seamonster's movement speed for a short time.
- Starshot will slow the seamonster's attack speed for a short time.
- Flares will prevent the seamonster from moving for a very short time.
- Spidershot will decrease the damage of the seamonster's next attack.

Seamonsters will chase your ship around in an attempt to get close to your ship and attack it. Most seamonsters also have some ranged attacks that allow them to hit your ship even if they are not adjacent to it. Moving very far from the seamonster's designated "home" will cause the seamonster to sink back to the depths from whence it came.

Seamonster attacks can damage the hull of your ship, damage the sails of your ship, damage the health of players on the ship, or set rooms on the ship aflame. They can also tangle the sails or a weapon on the ship, which must then be cleared as if they had been hit by spidershot or chainshot. The monsters can also attack with a starshot-like attack which will disrupt figurehead melding and must also be cleared before the figurehead can be used again.

Killing a seamonster will reward the ship that lands the killing blow with a trophy that will be placed on the deck of the ship. The trophy can be handed in to Casov, the mariner, in Sea Lion Cove for a gold reward. All crewmembers on the killing ship who participated in the fight by either firing a weapon at the monster, executing a navigational command, or invoking a useful seaspell will receive some experience for killing the monster. Denizen crewmembers will also receive experience and increased morale. In addition, a portion of the ammo used against the seamonster will be retrieved from the corpse and placed on the ship's deck.

Interested in getting started? There's over a dozen of these areas scattered across the seas (with varying levels of seamonster difficulty), but you may want to try looking in the Sapphire Sea, the Scyrian Reaches, or in the Bay of Dardanos.

Penned by My hand on the 25th of Phaestian, in the year 703 AF.