The Dovion Glossary: Hold, Broadside, Log Boom...
Every game forges its own language, and Dovion is no exception: between the hold you need to empty, the log booms to dodge, and the golden marker to chase, a newcomer can quickly feel like they're in a foreign country. This glossary gathers Dovion's vocabulary — the game's terms, sorted by theme, with the essentials for each. Keep it handy; it'll turn you into a veteran faster than you'd expect.
Aboard: your ship and your resources
- Hold: your ship's cargo bay, where gold earned from mining, fishing, and looting piles up. Golden rule: gold in the hold is lost if you sink — it only counts once sold at a selling point.
- Selling point: where you convert your cargo. The prudent captain's regular pilgrimage.
- Hull: your ship, simply put. The game has 31 of them, from the starting Chaloupe to the level-45 monsters.
- Lineage: one of the 9 ship families, chosen at level 15. Each lineage has its own identity and ability — the full tour is in the guide to the 9 lineages.
- Evolution: the hull change offered at levels 5, 15, 30, and 45.
- Active (or E key): your lineage's special ability, triggered with E (Space remains fire), with a visible cooldown. All of them are covered in the E key: active abilities explained.
- Rate of Fire / Ram: two signature stats among those you invest your level points in — firing speed for one, collision damage for the other.
In combat
- Broadside: a volley of cannons fired from the side. The Grande Bordée (Full Broadside, Broadsides lineage) fires both sides at once.
- Recoil-surf: the art of using the Grande Bordée's recoil as a burst of acceleration. A connoisseur's technique.
- Charge: the ramming rush of the Narwhal lineage — damage scales with speed, but beware: charging into empty water stuns your own ship.
- Log boom (Estacade): a wall of floating logs laid down by the Traps lineage. Blocks ships AND cannonballs, and hurts on contact. Running into one while fleeing is very bad news.
- Fanal (Beacon): the Floating Fortress's beam, which cuts through fog and reveals invisible ships.
- Voiles Mortes (Dead Sails): the Ghost Ship's stealth — vanishing from enemy screens. A whole art, told in our Voiles Mortes guide.
- Lobbed shell: the Mortar lineage's indirect fire, arcing over obstacles.
- Deep Gong: the ability of the lineage of the same name — an area heal that summons whales.
On the map
- Grid: the archipelago's coordinate grid, squares A1 to K11 (letter = vertical, number = horizontal). The tool for meetups and battle stories.
- The center (or lagoon): the map's misty heart — the richest and most dangerous zone, bosses included.
- Black market / altar: the central lagoon's counter, where a captured mermaid sells for a huge amount of XP.
- Golden marker / bounty: the minimap marker flagging a bounty target. A magnet for hunters.
- Mystery barrel: a floating random bonus — including regeneration and the rare golden bubble, which deflects incoming shots for a few seconds.
- Lighthouse: a light landmark, invaluable in the center's fog and at night.
The archipelago's inhabitants
- Corsair, raider (boarder), skiff: the pirate family, from attack ship to small vicious dinghy.
- Caravan / escort: the merchant convoy and its guards — to loot or to protect.
- Black Pearl: the legendary pirate ship of the boarding events.
- The Colonel, Haaland, the Admiral, the Guardian: the game's named characters — the first two being humorous parodies of footballers, with no connection to the real players.
- Mermaid / Mermaid Queen: fearsome creatures in groups; small hulls can harness them into a sled.
The meta
- Revenge ticket: resume the match after death — 800 XP each, or via the shop.
- Guest: playing without an account, instantly. The default mode.
- Hollandais Doré (Golden Dutchman): the secret hull outside the tree. We won't say more — that's the whole point.
The genre's general glossary (FFA, farm, kite...) has its own article: the .io games glossary. Now that you speak fluent Dovion, all that's left is practicing the accent: Play Dovion for free — and drop your first "recoil-surf" into a conversation.