Yeah I was trying to gently suggest talking to Gabbro again because that’s a legitimate quality-of-life issue and I guess I was too subtle.
There are also knowledge-locked secret entrances to the Sunless City you talked about—the rising sand funnels you towards the path toward the gravity cannon, and there’s a pile of rocks obscuring the exit, but once you know there’s a hole in the top, you can get back to the Sunless City much faster—and to the Hanging City on Brittle Hollow, which is at the top of the Meltwater District, which kicks you back to the planet surface among the ice islands at the north pole. Other shortcuts are more about tool proficiency, like realizing what kind of things you can track using the signalscope, using the probe or switching to the handheld camera of your scout launcher, having a good sense for what your jetpack can accomplish, and understanding some of the Nomai’s big ideas.
There’s also one frankly infuriating part in the very end that I’ll just explain right now: if you find that there’s an object you want to approach, but existence fades out whenever you get close to it and it resets your progress, pull out your signalscope and just use the zoom function to look at it from a distance. I’ve seen lots of people get stuck there.
Holy shit I tried this game again last week and I talked to that Gabbro jabroni and didn’t get shit worth shit outta him and I’m pretty sure I didn’t the first time I played the game 3 years ago either, that is wild
Maybe I missed it due to tornadoes, I dunno, I didn’t like that they kept interrupting my conversation though I think there’s an option to pause time while chatting? Or maybe that was some other game I played recently.
Anyway I felt a lot like you did, username. Glad I finally got to try it on PC though, game was much nicer on there than PS4, shame it’s no longer on game pass and the uh non game pass version I downloaded has some bug that causes the screen to constantly flash black, spent like five minutes wondering if it was a puzzle I forgot, maybe I’ll get to finally finish it someday even though all I do is complain
Oh I just read my previous posts in this thread, I guess I complain cuz my relationship to this game is cursed, every time I played the damn thing I got bit by a bug!!
i never finished this game but i did fly to the edge of the solar system until all the instruments lined up and i listened to that song until the world ended and that made me cry so i think did, in fact, finish the game
I can’t speak to this specific sand situation because I have little memory of the particulars at this point - but -
The game is very consciously designed around knowledge being the only key. You’ve probably played enough that this is not much of a spoiler but when you are ready to beat the game, you will do it in a single 22 minute cycle starting fresh, just like you are doing now. You could beat the game right now if you only knew how! There aren’t really any other gates like the launch codes where things your avatar knows provide automatic shortcuts. There won’t be things the game remembers. Only things that you remember.
In terms of frustrations it’s best not to beat your head against a single problem. There’s lots of things to explore and they all laterally mutually reinforce your knowledge. Poking around somewhere new can often give you the inspiration to tackle a problem in front of you that you can’t currently understand. The knowledge web in your ship is really excellent at keeping track of all the dangling threads that are available to pull on.
I talked to that guy today (by coincidence actually, I read the first reply but couldn’t remember their name) and while the convo was nice it didn’t really change things for me; it is good to know that I at least wasn’t screwing that up I was literally standing still staring at a tornado for a while waiting for something to happen. I have to head back there as I am really bad at the whole tornado deal, I know what the trick is but have seemingly screwed up the execution part several times, I’ll make a note to talk to him once more.
I actually did find the Hanging City path but it felt like it was likely one way (I think I had a levatator pointing up when I got there) but perhaps it resets with the cycle.
I don’t want to say that the next useful thing I do with the probe/scout launcher will be the first as it played a role in that one high gravity quantum tower I legit finished a minute before the cycle ended (I would have screamed if it went the other way) but aside from ghost stuff it has felt rather useless for the most part so far.
I actually have been flying all over the place trying different stuff for the most part (sand place is big reason why) but I still don’t feel in any way more capable or closer to anything really, like if one were to ask me how I expect to do any part of a theoretical final cycle I’d basically say that the gravity cannon seems like something that would likely pop up but that’s about it. So for now I pretty much just continue looking for alien swirls I haven’t seen before as they seem likely to add stuff to my digital bulletin board and I assume I will eventually come across something that makes me go “…oh!”
BTW I went to check how long I’ve played the game so far and the PS5 says 3 hours, but it also says I played Elden Ring for 65 hours (off by about 80 hours) and Miles Morales for 1 (I completed it) so I guess that feature is a bit buggy.
Regarding the probe launcher: don’t forget that your user interface will always point toward the location of your probe, and putting your probe on something will tell you important characteristics such as whether it’s dangerous to touch or how fragile the surface integrity is, it bounces off some impermeable surfaces, etc. It can fit through some holes that should really be too small for it, you can look around with it, and while you can take photos with it, that’s a pretty specific and narrow function. And hey, it’s also a pretty good light source.
But yeah, find as much text as you can and use your ship computer to find areas you’ve overlooked. When you encounter challenges that seem like they require skilled execution or brute-force trial and error, you’re probably missing some information, or maybe there’s a puzzle you need to figure out.
Fun fact: I’ve had the UI pointing out a specific location for a couple hours now as if there is a way to turn it off when out and about I never figured it out, and I never remember to when at the bulletin board (which I think/hope is where I turned it on). I do remember the surface integrity thing popping up once, turns out hitting something with 34% surface integrity at high speed just gets you killed rather than breaks it open. My plan B of letting the asteroids and black hole take care of it also backfired terribly. I need better plans.
So still working at this, things have been going a little bit better (venting has a purpose) but I am starting to run out of things on the bulletin board that have the “more stuff to be discovered here” mark next to them and still have a few things I just am not figuring out. In terms of the kind of knowledge the game seems to be trading in I am to the point where I know what the quantum moon is, how to locate it with my scope thing and how to land on it so that it doesn’t poof (land on its south pole) but I have no idea how to determine what the south pole is beyond hoping I am oriented so that it appears to be down, and whenever I try to land with my ship it doesn’t let me try landing mode and hence I’d be crashing in upside down if it were solid (it has poofed each time). I tried to match momentum with it and then exit my ship but it breaks my view and it being quantumy it warps elsewhere. I had to drop it as my plans were approaching “maybe fix the probe’s camera on it from inside the ship and hope that prevents it from warping while I get outside and hope to be on its south side” levels of complicated. That’s the closest I’ve felt to approaching the game on the terms I am getting the impression from people it wants me to and… well again, the next bit of progress I make will feel like the first bit.
There was one place I got to in the hanging city I believe, the one on the crumbling planet where you gotta use the gravity crystals to get to that seemed potentially interesting but I had literally 30 or so seconds when I got there some days back and I can’t for the life of me figure out how to return. The one bramble planet that looks somewhat exploded that you can fly into that seems larger inside than outside like that seed that I think landed on my home planet seems like it’d have answers but while I’ve gotten the hang of how to evade the fish a good bit (thanks long dead alien kids) and am open to the notion that it might be a nesting doll of things you fly into that are larger inside than they should be I just ain’t making any progress and would be up to brute force exploration at this point. I want to explore there as there was a note on the high gravity water/twister planet that the guy who is missing figured out what to do with said planet’s electric core and next visited the bramble place, so I’m also stuck there. I still can’t get into the quantum tower of knowledge on the crumbling planet and don’t recall any useful tips regarding it.
So the good news is that I think after several hours I’ve at least started to look for the right bits of info. The bad news is I’m running out of places I haven’t checked and for the most part haven’t actually figured out a single useful thing, or at least anything that feels particularly useful. I’m worried within a day or so I may have to commit to just brute force exploring literally everywhere I know of/have already been looking for something I either missed or didn’t grasp at the time as while my gaming senses have been off all game here this is feeling way too long for nothing to have really fallen into place yet which suggests that I have simply missed something important.
From what you’ve written, I just want to confirm that on your signalscope, you should be able to track at least three different frequencies, not counting the hide-and-seek frequency from the Hearthian village, right? Outer Wilds Ventures, quantum fluctuations, and distress beacons? When you track an unknown signal to its source, make sure you walk right up to the thing emitting the signal so that the signal is identified; this is useful for keeping track of which objects you still haven’t found.
There’s something possibly-unfair about the way the game handles an aspect of the quantum moon, in that it considers the moon’s atmosphere to be part of the moon itself, yet the atmosphere is also capable of obstructing your view of the moon. (You do not need to exit your ship to land on it.)
Dark Bramble is tricky because beyond that advice from those nomai kids, you don’t find much written reference to how to navigate inside. You may want to think more creatively about what you can do with your expedition gear to avoid flying into tunnels that just lead into themselves.
If all else fails, I should point out that each space-faring Hearthian has recommendations about things to check out on their respective planets, and each one has a subject matter they’re an expert on. Probably also a good idea to make sure you’re not overlooking Hearthian wall notes, as they don’t stand out the way Nomai text or audio recorders do.
Oh! Apropos of nothing in particular, you remember you can take photos from an in-flight probe, right? This streamer I was watching earlier today didn’t usually bother to do so, and he probably would have caught on to something a lot faster if he’d been taking at least one snapshot every two or three seconds after launching into an out-of-view area, but he just didn’t.
The biggest misunderstanding I had with this game was that I thought you couldn’t go to dark bramble until the very end. When I tried to land a vine just materialized and swatted my ship. I thought the game was going to give me a way to get there later. I think what happened was the model of the planet hadn’t loaded yet. so when it finally popped in it killed me. it would have been nice to have a whole nother planet to keep going back and exploring throughout my playthrough. there was a helpful and elaborately presented hint on dark bramble for a different planet but I had long since used a faq for what the hint was saying.
I currently have four things I can track on my signalscope, those three plus a radio deal. I have also been making sure to get right up to things so they are ID’d.
I do know that I can take pictures from the probe while it is in mid-air, although like most probe things I have yet to stumble upon a useful… use for it.
I did kinda figure something out today: On Brittle Hollow I finally figured out a way into the quantum tower of knowledge or whatever it is: I simply waited for it to get hit by enough asteroids to fall into the black (white?) hole and followed it with my ship, found it floating in space and flew up to the levels I couldn’t otherwise reach. I half feel this is not the intended solution as I saw some of those pedestals where you place a tile to either get some swirl text or a visualization of a different location and there was no tile in there, presumably lost to the vacuum of space. After all this time I still have no idea what other way up there is possible though so I’ll leave that as good enough. Next is that lakebed cave deal on the gradually filling with sand planet which I finally bothered to locate but did not figure out, but which the bulletin board offered a solid hint towards.
no that absolutely IS the intended solution. the tile projectors are like… not crucial to progress for the most part ime they just show you things to look out for elsewhere. but i absolutely remember it being super fiddly to place tiles or scrolls in their activation spots in zero g so i think they’re out there too
Nope, there’s a projector pool and communication wall in the tower, but this is one of the only instances in the game in which there’s nothing to put into them.
So today I learned that while in the cockpit of your space ship you have the ability to fire the probe into space, I never pressed the button before as I saw no possible usefulness in firing said probe at the inside of my windshield. I now ponder if that is how I figure out what the south pole of the quantum moon is as supposedly there are ruins or something on the north pole, today I was looking at said moon very closely and going “well the atmosphere is spinning around it, so if it is rotating around the equator then I just have to pick the point at the bottom that it rotating the least/not at all and aim for that” and that it either wrong or very finicky.
I also figured out the lakebed cave deal which doesn’t seem particularly useful overall but I could see perhaps being key regarding the above spoilered part. I am driving myself a bit mad as I know I found the black hole forge or something like it on Brittle Hollow once before but I cannot for the life of my figure out where it is now, I even screwed around until I could finally get myself to that “4th floor” place by the “ceiling” but aside from a couple bits of swirl text there was nothing there. I’m rather sick of that place now and had to cut short my playing today because of it but I’ve hit the point where I’m down to very few places/things left to find that I am aware of: Got under the surface of Giant’s Deep but apparently need to figure out what missing guy knew to deal with the electric core, he next went to Dark Bramble and I’ve been putting off revisiting as I am no closer to figuring it out but might have to brute force it until I get a better idea. I’d really like to find the black hole forge but again I must have literally walked all around it without stumbling upon it once again. I still have a “more to learn” mark on the sand filling city but I’ve explored it fairly well and it is still a pain in the ass to reach/deal with. The sand losing planet I’ve gotten very little from, believe there is something in its hard to break core but aside from a room full of spiky plants blocking me from one of those blue “levitate you to a different floor” things I’ve stumbled upon nothing of worth. The missing guy has a signalscope thing seemingly from the center of my home planet and I did explore down in the geysers and underwater tunnels but found very little.
That basically leaves me with three leads: black hole forge which I can’t find and is truly under my skin by now, dark bramble which is a huge pain and the sand filling city (sunless city I think?) which I guess I can try that lowermost bit again and see if I missed something before working my way up through there. I think this was eventually a problem I had with Riven too where no matter what you do you eventually end up just left with all the bits that confused you or you didn’t like and the game becomes entirely about them for a long stretch.
There also is that small thing rotating around the sun but it’s very close to it and I can’t lock onto it so I’ve got no idea how to do that without accidentally crashing into the sun several times first.
Also I am on a PS5 with ultrafast loads, let me skip the few dozen flashback images with the press of a button when I end a cycle if I want.