Okay, after getting familiar with the Cyclops it is really cool. I've set up a little garden inside it, an aquarium, a bed, a locker, a fabber...all the essentials basically. I'm still leery about taking it places because of energy concerns and a general fear of a leviathan tearing it to shreds, plus my Seamoth is so much smaller and more agile that I really prefer it for the shallower areas I've been slowly exploring further.
Still no Prawn suit blueprints. I'm trying to figure out how to enter the Aurora because I have a hunch I'll find the blueprints there. Either that or in the Undersea Ball Pit, and I really don't wanna dive that deep again until I absolutely have to...
Spoiler for the Aurora:
You enter it from the front, it's reachable via Seaglide or Seamoth. Stick as close to the hull as possible as a bit north and below is Reaper turf.
Bring a Repair Tool and a Cutting torch.
Although you can acquire them on site, bringing an extra fire extinguisher would not hurt
Oh, and the propulsion cannon would be useful.
Aurora Spoiler:
Yeah I'm actually a little annoyed that the game AI was all "Fire Extinguishers and a laser cutter are recommended" when I honestly don't even remember if I used the laser cutter but I could have done everything I needed to do right away with a propulsion cannon from the side entrance.
Okay, after getting familiar with the Cyclops it is really cool. I've set up a little garden inside it, an aquarium, a bed, a locker, a fabber...all the essentials basically. I'm still leery about taking it places because of energy concerns and a general fear of a leviathan tearing it to shreds, plus my Seamoth is so much smaller and more agile that I really prefer it for the shallower areas I've been slowly exploring further.
Still no Prawn suit blueprints. I'm trying to figure out how to enter the Aurora because I have a hunch I'll find the blueprints there. Either that or in the Undersea Ball Pit, and I really don't wanna dive that deep again until I absolutely have to...
Spoiler for the Aurora:
You enter it from the front, it's reachable via Seaglide or Seamoth. Stick as close to the hull as possible as a bit north and below is Reaper turf.
Bring a Repair Tool and a Cutting torch.
Although you can acquire them on site, bringing an extra fire extinguisher would not hurt
Oh, and the propulsion cannon would be useful.
Aurora Spoiler:
Yeah I'm actually a little annoyed that the game AI was all "Fire Extinguishers and a laser cutter are recommended" when I honestly don't even remember if I used the laser cutter but I could have done everything I needed to do right away with a propulsion cannon from the side entrance.
I remember at least one door in the Aurora that needs the laser cutter.
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NEO|PhyteThey follow the stars, bound together.Strands in a braid till the end.Registered Userregular
Made it to the first Degasi base and back safely, I now have an even bigger air tank, so I can make it deeper from the surface. Kinda doubt it'll be enough to get me to the second Degasi base though. Suppose I ought to see about getting the bits to make a prawn and a cyclops.
It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
Made it to the first Degasi base and back safely, I now have an even bigger air tank, so I can make it deeper from the surface. Kinda doubt it'll be enough to get me to the second Degasi base though. Suppose I ought to see about getting the bits to make a prawn and a cyclops.
You can try making a second tank for your inventory and swapping it out when your first is almost empty. I think Mudd said that still works.
Made it to the first Degasi base and back safely, I now have an even bigger air tank, so I can make it deeper from the surface. Kinda doubt it'll be enough to get me to the second Degasi base though. Suppose I ought to see about getting the bits to make a prawn and a cyclops.
You can try making a second tank for your inventory and swapping it out when your first is almost empty. I think Mudd said that still works.
That does work.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
+2
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
edited January 2018
I just realized I never found the alien containment blueprint on my playthrough. I also never saw a cuddlefish egg.
Sir Carcass on
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NEO|PhyteThey follow the stars, bound together.Strands in a braid till the end.Registered Userregular
Adventures press on, made myself a Cyclops, deconstructed my base and loaded all of the supplies into my Cyclops, and headed off for deeper pastures to plant a new base in. Decided on the Grand Reef caves if I'm remembering names correctly. Thermal vents for easy power, not too much of a hassle to get topside for anything I still need up there, and I'm pretty sure that somewhere there's an entrance to the deeper stuff for when it's progression time.
It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
I just realized I never found the alien containment blueprint on my playthrough. I also never saw a cuddlefish egg.
Alien Containment:
I think the only one is at the Degasi base deep beneath the floating island. Not sure if there are broken pieces somewhere, but I got mine from scanning the full one there.
I just realized I never found the alien containment blueprint on my playthrough. I also never saw a cuddlefish egg.
Alien Containment:
I think the only one is at the Degasi base deep beneath the floating island. Not sure if there are broken pieces somewhere, but I got mine from scanning the full one there.
I got mine well before that, I believe there is a chance to get it from a data box in a wreck somewhere.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
I just realized I never found the alien containment blueprint on my playthrough. I also never saw a cuddlefish egg.
Alien Containment:
I think the only one is at the Degasi base deep beneath the floating island. Not sure if there are broken pieces somewhere, but I got mine from scanning the full one there.
I got mine well before that, I believe there is a chance to get it from a data box in a wreck somewhere.
According to the wiki it can either be Bulb Zone or Mountains. I don't remember exploring either, really, because by that point I was terrified of leviathans and was pushing forward with the story. Thinking of starting a new game to do more exploring this time around.
Yeah, there has to be, because I haven't been to that wreck and I have an aquarium.
In other news, I got the first Cyclops depth module, which means I really should start going deeper, but man am I scared to. I can dodge most things in a Seamoth, but I have no idea what I'm going to do if one of those big serpent things happens to run across my Cyclops.
Yeah, there has to be, because I haven't been to that wreck and I have an aquarium.
In other news, I got the first Cyclops depth module, which means I really should start going deeper, but man am I scared to. I can dodge most things in a Seamoth, but I have no idea what I'm going to do if one of those big serpent things happens to run across my Cyclops.
Cut your engines, turn off your lights, and pray.
Sir Carcass on
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The_SpaniardIt's never lupinesIrvine, CaliforniaRegistered Userregular
You can get remarkably close to the various Leviathans with silent running. Remember... they aren't actually seeing you. They react to light and sound. The slower you go, the quieter you are. Silent Running takes that even further but takes extra power.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
You can get remarkably close to the various Leviathans with silent running. Remember... they aren't actually seeing you. They react to light and sound. The slower you go, the quieter you are. Silent Running takes that even further but takes extra power.
While helming the Cyclops, if you look at the radar, there'll be a hazy light-blue halo that grows and shrinks as you speed up/slow down. That's the audio detection range on the Cyclops. As long as hostiles are outside that halo, they won't detect you. Running with engines set to slow will shrink it a fair bit...hitting Silent Running drops it even more...but the only way to have the detection range be so small that you're undetectable is to turn off the engines. While you're sitting there helpless, may as well turn off all lights (exterior and interior) and just watch the threat display and wait for the threat to swim away.
To be honest, it's one of the feelings that I absolutely love in the game (knowing that you're completely helpless against the major threats, and all avoidance is based on staying undetected).
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
You can get remarkably close to the various Leviathans with silent running. Remember... they aren't actually seeing you. They react to light and sound. The slower you go, the quieter you are. Silent Running takes that even further but takes extra power.
While helming the Cyclops, if you look at the radar, there'll be a hazy light-blue halo that grows and shrinks as you speed up/slow down. That's the audio detection range on the Cyclops. As long as hostiles are outside that halo, they won't detect you. Running with engines set to slow will shrink it a fair bit...hitting Silent Running drops it even more...but the only way to have the detection range be so small that you're undetectable is to turn off the engines. While you're sitting there helpless, may as well turn off all lights (exterior and interior) and just watch the threat display and wait for the threat to swim away.
To be honest, it's one of the feelings that I absolutely love in the game (knowing that you're completely helpless against the major threats, and all avoidance is based on staying undetected).
Yeah, it's quite amazing. It's very akin to the great scenes from WW2 submarine movies like Das Boot where they're all sitting quietly, scared out of their minds and sweating profusely, listening to the ping of the sonar and hear the depth charges get closer.
Okay, after getting familiar with the Cyclops it is really cool. I've set up a little garden inside it, an aquarium, a bed, a locker, a fabber...all the essentials basically. I'm still leery about taking it places because of energy concerns and a general fear of a leviathan tearing it to shreds, plus my Seamoth is so much smaller and more agile that I really prefer it for the shallower areas I've been slowly exploring further.
Still no Prawn suit blueprints. I'm trying to figure out how to enter the Aurora because I have a hunch I'll find the blueprints there. Either that or in the Undersea Ball Pit, and I really don't wanna dive that deep again until I absolutely have to...
Spoiler for the Aurora:
You enter it from the front, it's reachable via Seaglide or Seamoth. Stick as close to the hull as possible as a bit north and below is Reaper turf.
Bring a Repair Tool and a Cutting torch.
Although you can acquire them on site, bringing an extra fire extinguisher would not hurt
Oh, and the propulsion cannon would be useful.
Aurora Spoiler:
Yeah I'm actually a little annoyed that the game AI was all "Fire Extinguishers and a laser cutter are recommended" when I honestly don't even remember if I used the laser cutter but I could have done everything I needed to do right away with a propulsion cannon from the side entrance.
I remember at least one door in the Aurora that needs the laser cutter.
You definitely need it to advance the story and to get the best goodies.
PRAWN room and living quarters need the laser cutter (either the underwater route or through the cargo bay). 3 extinguishers is also a good safety buffer.
I'm also pretty confident leviathans do not attack bases. But they will be jerks and break your poor defenseless seamoth while you assemble a habitat with a bioreactor to use their eggs for fuel.
I also feel like I get sidetracked building tiny bases in various places without advancing the plot significantly. Or going very deep. I've gone down to 400 m right now. Although that has gotten me basically all the material I need except the stuff that sounds like it needs 900+ m of depth. Some key blueprints have been hard to come by though.
I've got a base at 350 m down at the edge of a cliff south of the floating island where a leviathan swims overhead. Found out it's just above a cave full of uranite. I did not know there was a glowing evil sea snake there when I started construction. He broke the seamoth I parked at 295 m. Now my only mission is to get a prawn, some drill arms and a grapple for that sweet, sweet revenge.
So I finally beat the game over the weekend. I've been mulling over my thoughts on it since. Putting this all in spoilers for now because I'm going to talk about plot stuff in here.
Just like in Early Access, the loop of gathering, using that material to make better equipment, and using that equipment to get better materials is extremely well paced. It also helps gate the story in a fairly organic way. I love it. On top of that, everything just seems so pretty. They did such an good job of designing all these biomes. The sci-fi tech, the story, the aliens. All of it right in the sweet spot for me.
Overall the game is extremely addictive and immersive. I think the choice to not have a map makes a lot of difference here.
That said, there were some flaws that irk me a tiny bit.
Pacing and exploration:
The early game is all about exploring. Go check out this signal. Go back the other direction to repair the Aurora. Go to this beach and watch the Sunbeam explode. It's fairly open ended and non-linear. Can't get any further? Check out a new direction and you might find a biome with the fragments you need. Then you use those upgrades to progress somewhere else.
But a kink appears about the time you start diving deep. The plot becomes much more linear. Roughly it goes like this:
-Alien Gun points you toward the Research Facility
-Research Facility points you toward the Thermal Plant
-Thermal Plant points you toward the Castle
Additionally there is the lower Degassi base which unlocks the secondary research site.
Except they aren't really highlighted and you can easily run across these in the completely wrong order. When I first did the Lost River I went right past the entrance to the Research Facility without even seeing it. If you come from the other direction, it's super obvious, but if you come from the Grand Reef entrance you might not even realize its there, depending on how alert you are.
I had the same problem with the Thermal Plant. Because there was no map ping, I just thought it was a rock formation, skipped past it and went right to the Castle. Then I had a blue lock device with no idea where to get a blue key. Then it was backtracking the exact same, single path to try and figure out what I missed. (and some research on the wiki)
Ion Batteries:
I feel like these come way too late in the game. By the time you have them, you likely have a bunch of spare Power Cells for the Cyclops and the thermal reactor upgrade. I eventually upgraded all my tools to ion batteries, but that was like 20 minutes before I left the planet on the Neptune Rocket. Not to mention, before the battery plans, ion cubes were used all of... what, three times to unlock a few portals, and a maybe a couple times to make purple keys, if you didn't find enough lying around the Mountain.
If I were to change that design, I would make the Gun point you toward the Power Plant first. Maybe even move the entrance to the Thermal Plant somewhere else, like directly below the floating islands or something. Maybe even make it unconnected to the Lost River. Make it the first place you really risk going deep, and the reward is the ability to make ion batteries to help explore further. Given that your ion cube supply is fairly limited at first, (even if you track down the various caches), it would make ion cubes a more precious resource and you'd have to decide what to use them on.
Cuddlefish:
As adorable as the cuddlefish is, it is also kind of pointless. By the time you find one of the cuddlefish eggs, and the plans for the tank to hatch it in, you are traveling almost exclusively in vehicles. I just ended up leaving it behind because I didn't want to have to keep tabs on it when I zoomed around in the Seamoth. I'd rather it be the kind of thing you find really really early in the game, while you are swimming around the Shallows and Kelp Forests with just your fins. Maybe have it give warning chirps if Stalkers get too close. Make it something you have a real bond with. Hell, maybe add some sort of way for it to travel with you into the deeps. Maybe a small intake tube into the cyclops and a water tank on the bridge it can chill inside of. (ala Seaquest DSV). This would also make the goodbye that much more meaningful. Maybe they go off to play with the baby emperors.
Still, this has to be one of my favorite games in the last five years and instantly is in my top 10 of all time.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
What's the point of the horn on the Cyclops?
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Gennenalyse RuebenThe Prettiest Boy is Ridiculously PrettyRegistered Userregular
Imagine: You're out in the depths of the ocean and catch a glimpse a leviathan skulking through the darkness nearby. Normally you'd be scared, but something inside you snaps. You set the engines to max, put up the shields and set course for the leviathan all the while you're laughing maniacally as you hit the horn over and over again.
Or maybe that's just me.
Gennenalyse Rueben on
+4
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
Imagine: You're out in the depths of the ocean and catch a glimpse a leviathan skulking through the darkness nearby. Normally you'd be scared, but something inside you snaps. You set the engines to max, put up the shields and set course for the leviathan all the while you're laughing maniacally as you hit the horn over and over again.
Or maybe that's just me.
Hmmm, I'm not quite sure that's why they included it. But I could be wrong. :P
I don't really feel like any of the predators in this game are actually much of a threat.
The Reaper Leviathan is the closest thing to a genuine cause for concern because it's the only enemy that can latch on to your sub and start tearing shit up.
But I generally just kind of ignore or blithely glide past everything else.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
So from what I can tell, any story-related HUD locations (i.e., non-lifepod locations) can only have their destination markers shown if the player hasn't found everything at those sites yet.
I point this out as significant because I hit a solid 3-5 hour block of time where I was unable to progress, because I habitually turn off most markers because they clutter the HUD. I went to one location and thought I got everything (I did not, there was a major item or two I needed to progress the story) and turned off the marker, then actually explored waaaaay out past that point and ran into a roadblock because I was missing a necessary item. Which meant I then had to do a fair bit of backtracking and flailing about before I decided to turn every location marker back on and see what came back up.
Lo and behold, the most recent story location wasn't completed yet and was the only Degrassi location still able to be shown on the HUD, and sure enough that's where I found what I needed.
Not a big deal for the shallower areas, but once you start to really get down in depth, having to backtrack can be a pain because large enemies and enclosed spaces.
I believe at one point it frightened Reapers away, or so I was led to believe. I think it's non-functional now but players missed it so they added it back.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
You can get remarkably close to the various Leviathans with silent running. Remember... they aren't actually seeing you. They react to light and sound. The slower you go, the quieter you are. Silent Running takes that even further but takes extra power.
You can get remarkably close to the various Leviathans with silent running. Remember... they aren't actually seeing you. They react to light and sound. The slower you go, the quieter you are. Silent Running takes that even further but takes extra power.
While helming the Cyclops, if you look at the radar, there'll be a hazy light-blue halo that grows and shrinks as you speed up/slow down. That's the audio detection range on the Cyclops. As long as hostiles are outside that halo, they won't detect you. Running with engines set to slow will shrink it a fair bit...hitting Silent Running drops it even more...but the only way to have the detection range be so small that you're undetectable is to turn off the engines. While you're sitting there helpless, may as well turn off all lights (exterior and interior) and just watch the threat display and wait for the threat to swim away.
To be honest, it's one of the feelings that I absolutely love in the game (knowing that you're completely helpless against the major threats, and all avoidance is based on staying undetected).
Extra power is a rather dangerous thing - I tried the Sonar upgrade a bit and holy hell it eats juice like nobody's business. But it seems it will be necessary to navigate dark areas. I guess I'll make a bunch of extra power cells to store in a locker inside the Cyclops to make sure I have extra reserves.
But it's amusing. When I'm in my Seamoth, the big serpent things actually no longer worry me in the slightest. The anti-hug countermeasures mean that it's often easy enough to let myself get caught and zap them away, then calmly repair the 13 or so damage I took and swim away. But on the Cyclops, a much stronger submarine, they terrify me. I have no idea how a Cyclops could shake off one of those things if they spot me, and I have entirely too many resources in it to lose it. Not just what it cost, but there's an entire small base's worth of materials in there (precisely to build a small scanner base if necessary).
By comparison, my main worry while in the Seamoth are Bonesharks. Bastards come in groups, are relentless, and the spark generator barely seems to shoo them away (and half the time they are coming in too fast to actually brake and still deal you damage by slamming into you even if you spark them as they're coming). They force me to run without lights 100% of the time and I can't see shit.
Also, thanks for the notes on how the cyclops radar worked, because I had no idea what it did.
I just realized that there's an entrance to a largish cave system like 100 m away from my base, in plain sight once I know what I'm looking for. I've been using that base for days.
I also had the pleasure of trying to salvage wreckage located at 250 m depth, in the middle of the night, with a Seamoth still at the base depth limit of 200 m. And I actually mean it when I say that, there's just something amazing about swimming around in a beam of light that I placed myself.
I'm jonesing for this but I have so many other games unplayed that I'm going to hold off until it goes out of games preview on Xbox. Hopefully they'll fix some of the draw distance issues people are reporting by then
I wish you could stack titanium. I built myself a base at 900m and having to trek back to get more titanium and all the other materials was a pain. A set beacon waypoints though made the journey a lot easier, those deep area can be confusing.
I wanted to get a minimal base setup before bringing down the cyclops (needs materials from the area to get the increased depth for the cyclops anyway so I couldn't just take it down).
Having a base on a thermal vent is great though. Power is not an issue.
Silly me though when I brought the cyclops down I left my seamoth back at my main base near Lifepod 17 above the purple mushroom caves, it was a great spot to get access to limestone, sandstone and shale all from the same location early in the game with a long oxygen pipe to help explore.
So to get my seamoth, I left the cyclops at one of my waypoins just before the lost rivers and I did a naked swim back to my main base. The ultra capacity tank gives you great freedom but that time it was tight. The second part was doing the lost rivers naked to go from 900m base back to the cyclops and the drive that huge sub down to my new base. Felt like driving a truck through a narrow alleyway.
I also had the pleasure of trying to salvage wreckage located at 250 m depth, in the middle of the night, with a Seamoth still at the base depth limit of 200 m. And I actually mean it when I say that, there's just something amazing about swimming around in a beam of light that I placed myself.
Yeah, I did that, too, at the base in the glowing mushrooms / worms area. I had to momentarily dip below the 200m floor and back up to maneuver around the cave, hopping out to repair between dips.
Yeah, there has to be, because I haven't been to that wreck and I have an aquarium.
In other news, I got the first Cyclops depth module, which means I really should start going deeper, but man am I scared to. I can dodge most things in a Seamoth, but I have no idea what I'm going to do if one of those big serpent things happens to run across my Cyclops.
Hit engines to max and run away. It seriously takes like a dozen hits to kill the Cyclops so you have plenty of time to react.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
It does amuse me that pressures that will crush your steel behemoth of a sub are just chill to go free diving in.
Yeah, they put in a limiter with the need of the rebreather but I would have liked a deep dive suit to get passed 500m or something, I feel like I cheated in my progression by going really deep sometimes. I also wish the game had another seamoth like sub to go really deep and fast for fun exploration. The cyclops is not really good for caves and the prawn suit requires a lot more work to pilot.
Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
Well that was a hell of a time capsule. Seamoth/PRAWN engine efficiency module, Seamoth solar charger, Seamoth Depth Upgrade Mk3, Seamoth Perimeter Defense System, and 2 power cells.
Yeah, I'm playing again.
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ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
I just went through the Aurora and scanned/found some info about time capsules, but I haven't found one yet or even know what one would look like.
I just went through the Aurora and scanned/found some info about time capsules, but I haven't found one yet or even know what one would look like.
I likely haven't missed a time capsule have I?
They stick out pretty good, they don't do a full-on lightsource glow like a PDA or a data box, but they've got a nice glowy bit on them.
It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
I went into the aurora and found the keycodes for two of the doors but not the last one. Is that something I should have found or something i'll find later?
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ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
I went into the aurora and found the keycodes for two of the doors but not the last one. Is that something I should have found or something i'll find later?
I just did this and I entered the Aurora through the
debris blocked entrance at the front of the ship that was followed by a fire filled doorway. I didn't find the keycode for Cabin 1 until I progressed past the Prawn Bay and into the next main area. So I had to go back and open it up.
Posts
Aurora Spoiler:
I remember at least one door in the Aurora that needs the laser cutter.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
You can try making a second tank for your inventory and swapping it out when your first is almost empty. I think Mudd said that still works.
That does work.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
Alien Containment:
I got mine well before that, I believe there is a chance to get it from a data box in a wreck somewhere.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
According to the wiki it can either be Bulb Zone or Mountains. I don't remember exploring either, really, because by that point I was terrified of leviathans and was pushing forward with the story. Thinking of starting a new game to do more exploring this time around.
In other news, I got the first Cyclops depth module, which means I really should start going deeper, but man am I scared to. I can dodge most things in a Seamoth, but I have no idea what I'm going to do if one of those big serpent things happens to run across my Cyclops.
Cut your engines, turn off your lights, and pray.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
@Drascin
While helming the Cyclops, if you look at the radar, there'll be a hazy light-blue halo that grows and shrinks as you speed up/slow down. That's the audio detection range on the Cyclops. As long as hostiles are outside that halo, they won't detect you. Running with engines set to slow will shrink it a fair bit...hitting Silent Running drops it even more...but the only way to have the detection range be so small that you're undetectable is to turn off the engines. While you're sitting there helpless, may as well turn off all lights (exterior and interior) and just watch the threat display and wait for the threat to swim away.
To be honest, it's one of the feelings that I absolutely love in the game (knowing that you're completely helpless against the major threats, and all avoidance is based on staying undetected).
Yeah, it's quite amazing. It's very akin to the great scenes from WW2 submarine movies like Das Boot where they're all sitting quietly, scared out of their minds and sweating profusely, listening to the ping of the sonar and hear the depth charges get closer.
You definitely need it to advance the story and to get the best goodies.
I'm also pretty confident leviathans do not attack bases. But they will be jerks and break your poor defenseless seamoth while you assemble a habitat with a bioreactor to use their eggs for fuel.
I also feel like I get sidetracked building tiny bases in various places without advancing the plot significantly. Or going very deep. I've gone down to 400 m right now. Although that has gotten me basically all the material I need except the stuff that sounds like it needs 900+ m of depth. Some key blueprints have been hard to come by though.
Does turning on the Cyclops Shield get rid of Larva?
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Yes
They'll also leave if you remove the power cells. Not a bad idea before getting out.
Overall the game is extremely addictive and immersive. I think the choice to not have a map makes a lot of difference here.
That said, there were some flaws that irk me a tiny bit.
Pacing and exploration:
The early game is all about exploring. Go check out this signal. Go back the other direction to repair the Aurora. Go to this beach and watch the Sunbeam explode. It's fairly open ended and non-linear. Can't get any further? Check out a new direction and you might find a biome with the fragments you need. Then you use those upgrades to progress somewhere else.
But a kink appears about the time you start diving deep. The plot becomes much more linear. Roughly it goes like this:
-Alien Gun points you toward the Research Facility
-Research Facility points you toward the Thermal Plant
-Thermal Plant points you toward the Castle
Additionally there is the lower Degassi base which unlocks the secondary research site.
Except they aren't really highlighted and you can easily run across these in the completely wrong order. When I first did the Lost River I went right past the entrance to the Research Facility without even seeing it. If you come from the other direction, it's super obvious, but if you come from the Grand Reef entrance you might not even realize its there, depending on how alert you are.
I had the same problem with the Thermal Plant. Because there was no map ping, I just thought it was a rock formation, skipped past it and went right to the Castle. Then I had a blue lock device with no idea where to get a blue key. Then it was backtracking the exact same, single path to try and figure out what I missed. (and some research on the wiki)
Ion Batteries:
I feel like these come way too late in the game. By the time you have them, you likely have a bunch of spare Power Cells for the Cyclops and the thermal reactor upgrade. I eventually upgraded all my tools to ion batteries, but that was like 20 minutes before I left the planet on the Neptune Rocket. Not to mention, before the battery plans, ion cubes were used all of... what, three times to unlock a few portals, and a maybe a couple times to make purple keys, if you didn't find enough lying around the Mountain.
If I were to change that design, I would make the Gun point you toward the Power Plant first. Maybe even move the entrance to the Thermal Plant somewhere else, like directly below the floating islands or something. Maybe even make it unconnected to the Lost River. Make it the first place you really risk going deep, and the reward is the ability to make ion batteries to help explore further. Given that your ion cube supply is fairly limited at first, (even if you track down the various caches), it would make ion cubes a more precious resource and you'd have to decide what to use them on.
Cuddlefish:
As adorable as the cuddlefish is, it is also kind of pointless. By the time you find one of the cuddlefish eggs, and the plans for the tank to hatch it in, you are traveling almost exclusively in vehicles. I just ended up leaving it behind because I didn't want to have to keep tabs on it when I zoomed around in the Seamoth. I'd rather it be the kind of thing you find really really early in the game, while you are swimming around the Shallows and Kelp Forests with just your fins. Maybe have it give warning chirps if Stalkers get too close. Make it something you have a real bond with. Hell, maybe add some sort of way for it to travel with you into the deeps. Maybe a small intake tube into the cyclops and a water tank on the bridge it can chill inside of. (ala Seaquest DSV). This would also make the goodbye that much more meaningful. Maybe they go off to play with the baby emperors.
Still, this has to be one of my favorite games in the last five years and instantly is in my top 10 of all time.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Imagine: You're out in the depths of the ocean and catch a glimpse a leviathan skulking through the darkness nearby. Normally you'd be scared, but something inside you snaps. You set the engines to max, put up the shields and set course for the leviathan all the while you're laughing maniacally as you hit the horn over and over again.
Or maybe that's just me.
Hmmm, I'm not quite sure that's why they included it. But I could be wrong. :P
The Reaper Leviathan is the closest thing to a genuine cause for concern because it's the only enemy that can latch on to your sub and start tearing shit up.
But I generally just kind of ignore or blithely glide past everything else.
I point this out as significant because I hit a solid 3-5 hour block of time where I was unable to progress, because I habitually turn off most markers because they clutter the HUD. I went to one location and thought I got everything (I did not, there was a major item or two I needed to progress the story) and turned off the marker, then actually explored waaaaay out past that point and ran into a roadblock because I was missing a necessary item. Which meant I then had to do a fair bit of backtracking and flailing about before I decided to turn every location marker back on and see what came back up.
Lo and behold, the most recent story location wasn't completed yet and was the only Degrassi location still able to be shown on the HUD, and sure enough that's where I found what I needed.
Not a big deal for the shallower areas, but once you start to really get down in depth, having to backtrack can be a pain because large enemies and enclosed spaces.
I believe at one point it frightened Reapers away, or so I was led to believe. I think it's non-functional now but players missed it so they added it back.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Extra power is a rather dangerous thing - I tried the Sonar upgrade a bit and holy hell it eats juice like nobody's business. But it seems it will be necessary to navigate dark areas. I guess I'll make a bunch of extra power cells to store in a locker inside the Cyclops to make sure I have extra reserves.
But it's amusing. When I'm in my Seamoth, the big serpent things actually no longer worry me in the slightest. The anti-hug countermeasures mean that it's often easy enough to let myself get caught and zap them away, then calmly repair the 13 or so damage I took and swim away. But on the Cyclops, a much stronger submarine, they terrify me. I have no idea how a Cyclops could shake off one of those things if they spot me, and I have entirely too many resources in it to lose it. Not just what it cost, but there's an entire small base's worth of materials in there (precisely to build a small scanner base if necessary).
By comparison, my main worry while in the Seamoth are Bonesharks. Bastards come in groups, are relentless, and the spark generator barely seems to shoo them away (and half the time they are coming in too fast to actually brake and still deal you damage by slamming into you even if you spark them as they're coming). They force me to run without lights 100% of the time and I can't see shit.
Also, thanks for the notes on how the cyclops radar worked, because I had no idea what it did.
I also had the pleasure of trying to salvage wreckage located at 250 m depth, in the middle of the night, with a Seamoth still at the base depth limit of 200 m. And I actually mean it when I say that, there's just something amazing about swimming around in a beam of light that I placed myself.
I wanted to get a minimal base setup before bringing down the cyclops (needs materials from the area to get the increased depth for the cyclops anyway so I couldn't just take it down).
Having a base on a thermal vent is great though. Power is not an issue.
Silly me though when I brought the cyclops down I left my seamoth back at my main base near Lifepod 17 above the purple mushroom caves, it was a great spot to get access to limestone, sandstone and shale all from the same location early in the game with a long oxygen pipe to help explore.
So to get my seamoth, I left the cyclops at one of my waypoins just before the lost rivers and I did a naked swim back to my main base. The ultra capacity tank gives you great freedom but that time it was tight. The second part was doing the lost rivers naked to go from 900m base back to the cyclops and the drive that huge sub down to my new base. Felt like driving a truck through a narrow alleyway.
Now it's time to Prawn it down to 1500m
Yeah, I did that, too, at the base in the glowing mushrooms / worms area. I had to momentarily dip below the 200m floor and back up to maneuver around the cave, hopping out to repair between dips.
Fantastic gameplay.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Hit engines to max and run away. It seriously takes like a dozen hits to kill the Cyclops so you have plenty of time to react.
Yeah, they put in a limiter with the need of the rebreather but I would have liked a deep dive suit to get passed 500m or something, I feel like I cheated in my progression by going really deep sometimes. I also wish the game had another seamoth like sub to go really deep and fast for fun exploration. The cyclops is not really good for caves and the prawn suit requires a lot more work to pilot.
Yeah, I'm playing again.
I likely haven't missed a time capsule have I?
They stick out pretty good, they don't do a full-on lightsource glow like a PDA or a data box, but they've got a nice glowy bit on them.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I just did this and I entered the Aurora through the