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Lesson 2.4Safe Harbor, and how demotion actually works
Half your own floor, one free week, and never more than one level at a time.
Prefer to listen? This is the same lesson, word for word. The text below is the transcript.
This lesson prepares you to: Work out whether a soft week will cost you your fleet, and how far you can actually fall.
Your hold line is half your own floor
Once you hold a fleet, you do not have to beat its threshold again every week to keep it. You have to stay above the hold line, which is half your own fleet's floor.
- Silver Compass. Floor 200,000, hold line 100,000.
- Gold Helm. Floor 400,000, hold line 200,000.
- Sapphire Fleet. Floor 1,250,000, hold line 625,000.
- Diamond Armada. Floor 3,500,000, hold line 1,750,000.
Finish a week at or above your hold line and nothing happens. Nothing at all, even though you did not beat your own floor. A Gold Helm creator who takes 200,000 in gifts is still Gold Helm on Monday.
Diamond Armada floor 3,500,000, so hold line = 3,500,000 / 2 = 1,750,000
Safe Harbor is one free week
Finish below your hold line once and you get Safe Harbor. That is a grace week. Nothing drops, and you keep your split.
Finish below the hold line a second consecutive week and you drop exactly one fleet. Never more than one, however far below the line you finished. A Diamond Armada creator with two empty weeks becomes Sapphire Fleet, not Bronze Anchor.
After a drop, the counter resets. It takes two more soft weeks to drop again. A week at or above the hold line also resets the counter, so the two soft weeks have to be back to back. Soft, strong, soft is not a demotion. Soft, soft is.
Bronze Anchor can never be demoted. There is nothing below it.
A long absence is one miss, not many
The weekly close only ever looks at the single week immediately before it. If you are away for six weeks, that is not six drops. Several missed weeks collapse into one miss.
Do not let anyone tell you that a long break compounds. It does not. Come back after a season away and you are one fleet lower at most, and only if the week before you left was also below your hold line.
What this means in practice
The system is more forgiving than most creators think and less forgiving than the ones who ignore it hope. Two things are worth holding on to.
- One bad week is free. Illness, travel, a flat week. Safe Harbor covers it. You do not need to scramble.
- Two in a row costs one level. If you know week one was soft, week two is the one that matters. Half your floor is the number to clear, not the full threshold.
And remember from lesson 2.2, only real gifts count toward that hold line. Hearts, power-ups and Crew revenue will not keep you above it.
Next: the gallery, the ring, the live list, and why the leaderboard is allowed to disagree with your fleet.