Once Human has gone to sea. Isles of Abyss, the biggest free expansion the survival shooter has had since it launched in July 2024, went live overnight after a three-hour maintenance window that began at 4:00 PM Pacific on October 21. It is out now on every platform the game supports: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, iOS and Android. It costs nothing, and anyone who logs in can claim a free bonus pack to get started.
What Isles of Abyss actually is
Like the game's earlier scenarios, Isles of Abyss is a separate server ruleset rather than a patch to the main map. You sign up for it from the scenario screen once the servers are open. Developer Starry Studio has said there is no advance registration this time. First-wave servers opened immediately after the update in North America and Europe, with more in South America, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia and Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Each server runs 12 worlds, and the studio says it will add servers as existing ones fill up.
The scenario is PvE and runs on a cycle of roughly 21 days. Phase I lasts between five and ten days, and gets shorter the faster a server pushes its shared purification progress. Phase II runs for 11 days and opens the endgame fight against the Sunken Lord. A rest stage follows once both phases finish. Isles of Abyss launches without a Vision tag, the modifier system Once Human uses to vary its worlds. A Vision World for these servers is planned for later, alongside the game's Season 5 Vision release.
The ocean is the enemy
The setting is five new oceanic regions, and the premise is that the sea itself is alive. The ocean is a single conscious entity called the Sunken Lord. The water you sail across is its body. Its watchful lighthouses, called the Towers, and the spectral ghost ships known as Voyagers that drift through the fog act as its organs and agents. In its own announcement, the team describes a sea that watches players, reacts to them and feeds on their fear. That shows up as dynamic regional hazards: choking fog, violent black tides, and skies that rain what the studio calls temporal fire.
Each region has a boss anchored inside one of those colossal Towers, and clearing them is how a server works its way toward the Sunken Lord. The pitch is a creature-feature version of the game's existing formula, with the strange, Lovecraftian monster design Once Human is known for moved offshore.
From a log raft to a sea fortress
Everyone starts small. Your first vessel is a basic wooden raft, and the expansion's central system is turning it into what Starry Studio calls a Mobile Sea Fortress. The boat is meant to be your base, not just your transport. It serves as a workshop, a forward camp, a weapons platform and your main survival tool, and you can build it up and customize it freely.
The studio's examples cover a wide range: a classic wooden pirate ship with broadside cannons, an industrial drilling rig, a sci-fi aircraft carrier, or something more abstract. Squads can sail together as player fleets, with ships built for different jobs so the group can handle different hazards. Ship design is meant to be your tactical answer to whatever a region throws at you, so a vessel built for one stretch of water may not suit the next.
Land and sea feed each other
Progression runs both ways. You wake on a starter island, and after that you can take on the other four regions in any order, so two players' routes through the expansion can look very different. Resources gathered on the islands pay for naval tech and heavier ship weapons. Trips into deep water yield special materials that upgrade your gear and your base back on land.
There is also a proper underwater layer. You can dive into sunken ruins for treasure, harvest rare aquatic resources and hunt deep-sea creatures to keep your crew fed and supplied. That is where the free bonus pack's diving gear comes in.
Everything else in the update
Isles of Abyss is the headline, but the October 21 update carries a lot more:
- Isles of Abyss: RaidZone, a new ocean map for the RaidZone mode.
- New weapon and armor: the SOCR – Cosmic Visitor rifle and the Snowline Elite Vest, both built around new Frost Vortex and Ice Spear mechanics for frost builds.
- A first-person over-the-shoulder option for combat.
- Halloween Wonder Night, a limited-time seasonal event, plus a limited Lightforge Loot Crate and new Custom Dye fashion items.
- Maintenance compensation for all players: 1,000 Starchrom, 100 Mitsuko's Marks, an Epic Stardust Secret Crate (S15) and 30 Colorful Badges.
The free bonus pack
A free Isles of Abyss Bonus Pack is available on all platforms, including as a free DLC on Steam. It lets you pick one of seven exclusive Morphed Deviations, the game's collectible creature companions. It also includes an Ocean Survival Supply Bag with a Compact Water Filter and a Diving Suit, plus 2,000 Starchrom. The pack can be claimed once per account across all platforms, and only the first claim counts, so pick the platform you play on most.
Download sizes
The update is big, mostly because of the new scenario and the RaidZone ocean map. Official figures are roughly 26.28 GB for the PC launcher download plus 751 MB in game, 12.29 GB plus 76 MB on PS5, and 20.39 GB plus 82 MB on Xbox. On phones it is about 4.8 GB on Android and 5.7 GB on iOS. The studio advises downloading over Wi-Fi and clearing storage first. It also warns that if Steam's push of the update is delayed, PC players may end up downloading some of it twice.
