Who here is sick of the damp, dark, scary mines, being chased around by all sorts of beasties? All of you? That's what I thought.

There is an answer, it's the tropical Island Reef. An archipelago of sun soaked tropical islands containing wondrous sights, perfect beaches, new flowers, new trees, new beautiful butterflies, critters, and new fish (anyone remember Finding Nemo? Yeah, you can re-create the movie with the stars of the show!).

There is also a new gemstone to be harvested in the waters of the Island Reef, the aquamarine.



And it doesn't stop there. The Island Reef have been long been visited by pirates, burying their treasure all over the chain of islands (didn't anyone tell them littering is bad?!). To find these chests, you'll need to bring golden treasures to feed to the shark statues found scattered to get maps. Each time you visit the Island Reef, you can get 20 maps to buried chests. These color coded chests contain all of the treasures from both mine levels and new loot exclusive to the Island Reef. Oh and you can grab that statue too for decorations once 20 maps have been acquired.





On the topic of litter, it appears many prior tourists just left their coolers full of umbrellas, beach chairs, hammocks, towels, and many colored Frisbees. Please help yourself to them scattered across the beaches to make yourself more comfortable. Also please take them home and reduce the litter on our beaches.



So, how do we get there? Well, first you need the airport, the requirements for eleven NPCs have moved in and your town is in year two. Doesn't matter which eleven, only that eleven have moved in. Once those have been met, Fletch will offer you the deed regardless of what season your game is in. One caveat is if you're in year two, you need to be in least day one of summer as the game starts in summer, thus triggering the two years in game. Place the deed down where you want (gulp down the dread from the massive cost) and get to collecting building material.

The airport will take a day to complete once you add all the materials in and it is only open on Sundays, so plan accordingly! Nancy, the pilot is the new NPC that will safety fly you to and from the Island Reef once you have your ticket, which costs a whopping 250,000 dink per ride. Stiff? Maybe, but it's not a dark, damp, scary cave full of animals trying to kill you.

Every trip needs a packing list!

Because the Island Reef have so much stuff to bring back, keeping inventory open is vital, but what to bring is dependent on what you want to do.

Are you looking for the new gem, Aquamarine? Then you'll need a dive helmet and jackhammer/pickax.

Are you hunting for buried treasure like a pirate? Then you'll need a shovel, 100 keys, and preferably a metal detector to speed up finding the buried booty.

Are you just collecting fish, bugs, critters, pineapples, acacia seeds and other plants? Then an axe/chainsaw, bug net, fishing rod, and bug and fish books.

Are you after corals to setup your own aquarium? Bring a dive helmet, pickax/jackhammer, and energy food.

Are you hunting the Great Mystical Shark of the Island Reef? Bring a good weapon (iron spear, battle shovel, alpha weapon), and combat/health food bottle brew, prime roast/mighty spread, sausage roll and a dive helmet. You'll also need a way to free it from its shipwreck cage, so pack a chainsaw or copper/iron axe.

The Island Reef are spread out and it's vital to bring some sort of water or air borne craft. The seaplane is the fastest to get around, the helicopter gives good altitude and is moderately fast, the jet ski is affordable and quick, and the balloon can land on water, but is very slow. I do not recommend the rowboat as it is too slow without the airborne benefits.

Everyone's goals on the Island Reef will differ, so adjust your inventory list accordingly.

Speaking of that, you have five friends right? Because you can bring them for FREE! Everyone rides the airship to the Island Reef for the price of one ticket! Bring your friends, have a party on the beach, fight the shark together, have a blast as a party.

Now that is an oddly specific question Mr. Tourist. I am contractually obligated by the South City Authorities to notify you that yes, you may get eaten by a shark the size of Megalodon should you visit the Island Reef.

Now, WILL YOU? Hopefully, with my help, you won't.

It's not all paradise and pineapples in the Island Reef. Should you come across a shipwreck, which the developer has promised every map will contain at least one and up to three, randomly placed around the map, which looks like this:



You'll need to break it with an copper/iron axe or chainsaw. This will then free the Alpha Shark, the new alpha and only animal that can be killed, other than yourself, in the Island Reef. Now, this thing looks pretty scary:



But don't despair, we'll go over how to slay this beast. While it does do a lot of damage with its massive teeth and bubble area of attack effect, there are several ways to handle this toothy beast.



The first method is to brute force it, fighting the shark up close and person in the water. This requires the combination of bottle brew, lot burger, prime roast to solo the alpha shark with a battle shovel or melee alpha weapon, but only after you have let the health and stamina go to max. But those are all top tier, expensive, hard to get foods and you may not want to spend to defeat an alpha shark. You're going to take a lot of damage this way.

The second is to create a little island near the shipwreck BEFORE freeing the shark with either a shovel or a dirt printer, place a chair, preferably a beach chair from one of the coolers, bring a decent melee weapon and a ranged weapon like the bow, alpha spear, or alpha bat. Drink bottle brew and eat some combat booster like prime roast/mighty spread/sausage roll. Then free the shark, get a few melee hits in and then retreat to regenerate energy and heal in the chair. Fire off some ranged attacks while it circles your island and after you’re back to full health and energy, waded into the water again to get some melee hits in. Wash, rinse, repeat until the shark is dead.

The third and safest method is to pen the shark in. Now with the introduction of the pontoon tile, you can strap on a dive helmet and use a jackhammer to clear the area around a shipwreck, then place pontoon tiles around the shipwreck. Bring a dirt printer to create a small island in the pontoon area to attack from, then break the shipwreck open. The alpha shark will not cross the pontoon tiles. If you have not discovered pontoon tiles yet, then bring a dirt printer or shovel, and raise a pen around the shipwreck BEFORE you break it. Note that shark will ignore deep submerged fences and swim right over them. But the shark will not cross slightly submerged fences. This method contains the shark and lets you defeat it with ranged weapons. You don't even need buffs this way.



Be aware that the shipwreck will sometimes spawn next to land and sometimes in the water. If you are lucky to be near land you can hit and run, retreating to higher ground and jumping to avoid the bubble attack. If you are stuck out in the open ocean, prepare to fight walking around the ocean floor, but you should consider the tactic of building up a small island nearby.

Once you kill the Alpha Shark, it will drop prime meat and potentially either an alpha tooth or a secret cosmetic item. The tooth is used by Ted Snelly to create the Alpha Trident, another top tier weapon.

Oh and if you're thinking about bringing more friends to easily gang up on the shark, think again. The shark gets a boost in health for every additional player in multiplayer, for a max health of 2,600 HP with 6 players in the game.

The Island Reef contains a number of new items, which can be found in the blue chests, in coolers, lying around, or by defeating the Alpha Shark and then finding Ted Selly. Uncolored and green chests will also spawn, but they contain items found in the regular mine and Undergrove.


One of the most powerful items in the game, the silver watch slows time down, making the game down go from 30 minutes to about 60 minutes. Click it once and time will slow down until you click it again, or quit the game. You do not need to hold it or even have it in your inventory for it to work.

Where the bottle of clouds causes rain to happen, a cup of sunshine will stop rainy weather, but unlike the bottle of clouds, it happens immediately. Extremely useful when hunting for aquamarines as it can stop the rain from obscuring submerged gemstones. It is one of the two weather controlling devices available to a player. It has limited uses and cannot be repaired, so be judicious about how often you use it.

Equip as a cosmetic item in your head slot that will cause a Ulysses Butterfly to fly around your head as a flying companion.




It’s not a true beach day without beach gear! The coolers, 10 of which, are spread across each Island Reef, contain umbrellas, hammocks, beach chairs, towels, in three different colors, along with an inflatable beach ball. There's also an inflatable colorful kiddie pool!



Discus or frisbees, come in a variety of colors and can be used to play catch with other players or as impromptu weapons. They also do not appear to despawn and emit a beam of light corresponding to their color. Feel free to use them as beacons or alternative light sources. They also can be used on item signs to create a bull’s eye target.




Located submerged in water, the clothes line can be picked up and used as a rotating decoration. Clothes currently cannot be attached. Yet.



A defeated Alpha Shark may drop an ultrarare shark egg. Equip it into your head slot for a cosmetic flying shark companion.

Defeating the Alpha Shark may net you a rare Alpha Tooth nestled among the prime meat.

Take three Alpha Tooths along with other crafting ingredients to Ted Selly and he’ll make you the Trident, a ranged weapon that fires three water balls doing significant damage, with a high chance of stunning.



A rare item, the turf roll will let you lay down infinite amounts of tropical grass, with the only limitations being space to place grass and your stamina. This item will let you stop farming tropical grass.

Most crops are seasonally dependent and die in seasons they’re not rated for. This fertilizer, which is obtained by placing a turf roll into a composter, stops this. Used like regular fertilizer, it will then allow the crop that’s planted on it to ignore all seasonal changes. Meaning, you can have coffee, watermelon, tomatoes, and other crops grow indefinitely, harvesting their bountiful goods as long as you want. Just make sure you fence it and place scarecrows nearby so that birds and animals don’t eat the crop, because if there’s no crop planted, it will eventually disappear.

If you don’t want to choose violence, you can put an alpha tooth, like all alpha items, into a composter to get fertilizer that will randomly accelerate growing of a single crop.



A number of new plants, trees, and flowers can be found, from Acacia trees, purple and white hibiscus, numerous corals, and red seaweed are all available for foraging.

Here are some tips to doing well in the Island Reef:

Nancy, the airship pilot, who sells you the ticket and flies you to the Island Reef, sometimes has a pathing problem to get into the airport. Many players report a missing Nancy with the airport saying "clerk busy." Consider clearing around the airport so she has a straightforward method of entering the building. You can also quit to menu and then reload the day and she should start inside the airport ready to help you start your trip.

Bring the hand trolley. This is game changing in that you can now bring back a chest full of stuff plus your inventory. 24 additional storage slots of stuff to bring back from the island reef. I cannot stress how important this is. I found that regularly making trips back during chest hunting to unload into a chest near the airship resulted in having nearly everything I found near the airship at the end of the day. It’s easier to determine what to take and what to leave when it’s all in one place. There is currently a visual bug where the hand trolley and the storage being carried on it disappears when you enter the air ship. Don't panic. It's still there and will reappear when you leave the airport.

Aquamarines are very difficult to spot at twilight or at late afternoon. Spend your morning and noon time hunting for the gems as they're easier to see in the daylight. Absolutely bring the dive helmet as you'll need it to harvest the gems from the ocean floor. You're looking for a little bit of teal sticking out of a rock:



Inventory management is vital. There are an absurd amounts of items to acquire as every chest is available and coolers full of decorations are also lying around. Prioritize what you want and come to the Island Reef without many items. Eat your food to free up inventory slots you can fill before leaving. If you're a late game player, you'll likely take very little to nothing from the regular chests, berkonium ore from the green, and empty the blue chests.

Without mods (some of which are broken now), fish and bugs do not stack, so be careful about filling your inventory with the new critters, bugs, and fish. One of the bugs is time dependent, so check around with the bug book at various times during the day.

The critters are hard to spot sometimes and even harder to determine what they are. There are three new ones, with sponges being the more prolific. Get to the edge of the map where no coral or rocks spawn and you'll see empty water but with critters as the game will spawn them a few tiles into the empty water. This lets you see exactly what critter is what so you can avoid the sponges and get the Triton like this, although preferably with the jetski and not the helicopter:



All players on the Island Reef share the same map and icons, so everyone can see where the treasure chests are by opening the map. You may want to come up with a system so that if someone wants to check what was items were left behind, they know where to go, like marking the red X with another icon to let people know it was unearthed. There's so much stuff that players will inevitably leave many items behind. What is one player's trash is another's treasure. Consider also marking coolers as people may be missing a certain color discus and want to check coolers others have already viewed.

If you're going with multiple players, it's best to have them join your game on Saturday, sleep on your map that night and all immediately head to the airport first thing in the morning to maximize time on the Island Reef. It also gives people an in game day to prepare their inventories, storing unnecessary items in their travel bags. Hopefully the host has equipment people can borrow, such as jet skis, dive helmets, and food.

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