Topic: Returnal

@Jimmer-jammer The way the obelisk works is that it gives you a completely new item you couldn’t find before. From that point you can find it randomly.

@Jimmer-jammer I'm stuck at b5 as well. My issue is the time it take to get to the boss. I think it's the biggest time sync. To get to the boss fight. You fight a bit in b4. Then get 3 keys is b5 before even getting to the boss. I often don't have enough time in my day for that and I'm still hesitant to put my ps5 in rest mode with a game still active.

@Elodin You'll be fine putting your PS5 into rest mode, as long as you turn off auto updates. Pretty sure even the developers reccomend doing it.

@Jimmer-jammer @render @Voltan Whenever I use a Reclaimer, I make sure I use an Inert Reclaimer I've come across, which heals you and improves your integrity, therefore nulify the lost integrity.

@Voltan ahh, so you can’t even find them until you “unlock” them. Good to know, thanks! I’m finding a lot more ether in act 2 so I’ll be spending some for sure.

@Elodin I haven’t even been able to get 1 key yet... I’ve been starting with the growth door for the most part, to get it out of the way, and the room has just been destroying me. The darn drones from B3 are back as well, which I struggle terribly with for some reason. I did get the arm attachments though, so I feel like I’ve made some kind of progression. Yeah it’s feeling like quite the mountain at the moment. I played for about 3 hours last night and didn’t get anywhere...good thing the game is always fun to play 👍

@Jimmer-jammer Yeah, I’d tried the recycler, or whatever it’s called, once and the lost integrity hurt and wasn’t worth it in that instance. Let me know if you find the reconstructor helpful. Especially if the ether flows like wine in B4 then you may have plenty to basically get another free life.

I did complete a daily challenge yesterday for the first time and it gives you like around 5 ether for just running through the rooms to the end of the biome. It took about 30 minutes maybe so it was worth it if you just need ether. Of course meanwhile you’re making no progress in the main campaign, but it was still fun to do when playtime was more limited. I think I finished at about the 50th percentile in the rankings.

@Th3solution nice! I did one challenge but haven’t been back to do another. I was definitely in the lower percentile range I think. With how long the runs can be, I have a hard time reconciling ‘wasting a run’ so to speak.

@JohnnyShoulder interesting. The few times I’ve used one it has increased my overall integrity but hasn’t healed me much. Kind of like resin. Still, I’m always happy to find one.

@Jimmer-jammer Once you’ve unlocked them they then go into circulation so you might then find one randomly, but the price increases each time you buy one so it ends up getting stupidly expensive. Some of the items are quite useful though so I tried to do the daily challenge when I had time just so I could unlock something. You’ve probably already got some data cubes but they are similar.

@JohnnyShoulder Good tip on that. I don’t think I ever used a recycler @Voltan where if didn’t take a load of integrity off of me. I bet it’s like a 1% chance of it not 😆.

@render thanks!!

I had a couple hours tonight, so I didn’t really expect to get to the B3 boss but I was itching to play. I also figured, what the hey — even I can just get to Nemesis, no matter in what kind of weakened and poorly prepared state, at least I get experience against it. Every time I face it the more comfortable I’ll be. I also was wanting to experiment with maybe different weapons just for the heck of it.

I ended up with a halfway decent run. Just did half of Biome 1 up to the fabricator store, then the open areas of Biome 2, then just jumped over to Biome 3. I had actually a really good thing going until the climb up the tower to the boss. Criminey, that is a tough climb. It dropped a lock down on me with the green tower, and the tower was a couple levels up so I had to go through about 10 of the tough enemies including at least one brute dude and a bunch of biped kamikaze sphere dudes and turrets galore to get the green tower and destroy it. Then deal with all the enemies. Sheesh, by the end of that I had just a tiny bit of health left, so I had to burn both my silphiums to get to just 3/4 of my total integrity. So I started the boss with zero health packs in the bank and already a quarter health gone. And darned if I didn’t make it all the way to the last fourth of Nemesis’s third phase! Definitely there is an advantage to taking the first phase down as quick as possible. So much easier if you get good damage in. I was using a level 11 Carbine with high caliber and armor piercing, so it whittled him down quick.
I’m bummed that if I’d just had one more silphium vials I could have beat him probably. But now I know - I think the carbine is likely to be my weapon of choice for it if I can get a good one on the way.

I also feel like maybe I’ll save some of the health drops on the way up the tower. Sure it’s great to get potential resins for upgrade but that last crazy battle before the boss wears down the health and if I can backtrack to use the silphium drops to recoup most of that then I think it’s more valuable than a last sliver of added integrity bar. I feel like I need to go in with full health and at least one if not two silphium vials.

@Th3solution That sounds like a big step - you're nearly there now!

I was stuck on B3 for a LONG time, and I think that's starting to sound more like the sort of run I ended up moving towards over time (I always skipped B2 though). But with either practice or luck, or most likely both, you'll also be able to get up the tower to the boss without engaging so much and losing health.

@Th3solution In Biome 3, there is a room that should have a load of health. Before you cross the bridge, with the big tree/spine searchlights and two turrets. There is a transporter sphere right outside too, so you could jump back after you cleared the last room before the boss.

Of course with the RNG in play, it could be a load of obolites too!

@Th3solution It's great that you've found a weapon and strategy that you can use against Nemesis!! It won't be long now before you can bask in the glory of notching up another boss kill!

I must have mentioned it loads of times but I'm pretty sure (unless anyone has seen different) that even if it looks like a lockdown you can always bail out of that murder room on the way up the tower by quickly identifying the sphere or grapple points to carry on your journey up the stairs. That means you don't have to fight everything in that room, unless you want to, and can save all your silphium for the boss.

@render Yeah I've not noticed that room being lockdown either!

@render @JohnnyShoulder
I’ll keep that in mind. I suppose the room’s not a true lockdown since there is no door, and I could see maybe being able to flee most of the time. The last four or five times I’ve made it this far there wasn’t a green regeneration tower there, if I recall correctly, and so that’s what threw me off. But perhaps even then I could have tried to hightail it out of there. If I end up with a similar situation then I might try to avoid the conflict next time. But I think I obtained the carbine after that fight as I was using a Lobber up until then, so it might have to depend what my gear is. That room ends with 2-3 high leveled weapons after all is cleared, between the brute enemy drops and the chest.

And that’s good to know about the room before the searchlights / eyeball towers. I went in there and it had a consumable, but I didn’t venture past there for fear of running into enemies and I was past my bedtime at that point and I just needed the run to end. I did find that room useful to hide out from the drones that ambush you if you try to get that chest on the side though.

As an observation, still no astronaut at the B1 fabricator room for me. I’ve only had it there like 5-6 times in my, what — 40 times to visit that room. Having that also may have been the difference for me, had it been present. The fabricator room always seem to have the blade balancer for me. I’m suspecting that if you actually buy the blade balancer (which I usually don’t and instead use my obolites on the extra 25% integrity and the large silphium) then the next large fabricator room in B2 will have the astronaut then instead of the blade balancer again. I didn’t think about this but my next extended run I might purposefully buy the blade balancer and push through to the B2 fabricator room for the very purpose of making sure I have an astronaut also.

And also — I reckon you all have noticed that sometimes if you turn back around and look out the front cockpit window at the very beginning after crashing that you’ll see an faint image of the astronaut, kind of like a subtle reflection. I’ve noticed that sometimes the image is there and sometimes not. Not sure if there is a correlation with that image and what kind of run is coming up; for example, whether the astronaut will show up in the fabricators or not. Or maybe it’s just random imagery like the flash memory type images after death that occur.

@Th3solution Even when I've not bought the blade Balancer, the Astronaut would still appear elsewhere for me, either in the fabricator room in the next biome or in a locked chest.

Not noticed the Astronaut reflection before, but wouldn't have thought that has any bearing on whether it appears in the game or not.

@JohnnyShoulder @Th3solution I wonder if this is another one of those instances where this appears fixed for your game even though other people see different behaviour. I remember having a conversation on here about the locked red marked chests and the fact that I always get an artefact from them. Others reported getting consumables and even weapons so I made it a thing to open every red marked chest I could find and never got anything other than an artefact.

I didn't notice the astronaut reflection either so good find 😀

@JohnnyShoulder @render Yeah, it’s (the astronaut reflection that is) quite subtle, but it’s definitely there but only sometimes.
…or maybe I’m actually having hallucinations and delusions after playing this game for extended hours on end. I know I was having dreams last night of it — dashing and dodging enemies all night. Someone help please, I’m losing my grip on reality! I think I’m becoming Selene.

As for the appearance of items and their possible non-randomness, I am very curious about that too. I don’t really open locked chests much anymore because they often contain consumables, which to be frank, are often useless. Or at least of minimal use. The jump energy landing one frequently drops for me and it’s never helped me once because a) I can’t remember ever to activate it in the heat of battle and b) when I do it throws off my timing and gets me out of the rhythm of dodging and shooting and ends up causing me to get hit. Same for the ground spike one. My favorite consumables are the ones that you activate and aren’t time limited like a shield or the one that adds integrity per damage dealt until you’ve been hit twice. Love that one.

But yeah, I’d love to learn the code behind why some of these things don’t seem random, like why some of us see patterns of item drops that others don’t see. Perhaps it’s a perception skew, but I’m also suspicious that for whatever reason we each might have a slightly different predetermined random pattern, if that makes sense. Like I’ve wondered if the game code “knows” when you die a certain way that it leans toward helping you out on the next run with something, like a buffing item drop or a specific room sequence or enemy layout, which makes the game a little more approachable for you. Or perhaps it’s the opposite — the game learns your weaknesses and exploits them. Those sadists at Housemarque!

The last run I took I didn’t used any keys because one of my first parasites was some kind of obolite collection buff at the expense of damage when using a key. Since I can sometimes go an entire run and only find like one key, I ended up taking the trade off. (I almost never pick up malignant keys). When I do have a key, I usually find using it on a door to be better chance of a good artifact than using it on a chest which often ends up with a consumable or a weapon that I don’t want or will only use for 15 minutes until a better one shows up. Maybe I need to try more chests though.

Made it to biome 6. Just made it. Have it in rest mode. Fingers crossed it's ok. Using lvl 25 hollowseeker. It doesn't have portal beam though, but is high in damage. I did a couple keys with a 19 portal hollowseeker, but the damage on the new one was too good to pass up.

@Elodin you can do it! It might take a few tries, but you will not have to go through biome 5 again!

@Elodin Well done, I'm sure your console will be fine in rest mode.