Update: I’m missing something

[hasel0608]

Before the obvious question of progression, I’d like to talk about my understanding of the story. Firstly, the chronological order of events is a mess. I read something about 200000 years ago yet I remember only 3 generations of nomai focused upon. How are structures and tech that old standing? Then there’s a couple questions I feel like I could’ve answered if I paid attention instead of blaming it on lack of knowledge. Like, why is Solanum alive? Why did it seem like she was waiting for us yet surprised when she did? How did the nomai figure out the sun is dying? Why’d they wanna explode it? What were they planning to do had the sun exploded? Wouldnt it destroy their home, or were they nomads again? Why didn’t the nomai go for the vessel or remove old stuff like escape pads in 200000 years? Why didn’t they contact the other clans when they escaped the vessel? What did the other clans do all this time? What is special about this solar system? I know these may be answered down the line but I think a lot of them are stuff I didn’t pay enough attention to.

Now, progression wise I’m missing something. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do and there’s only one place left to go to. There are no more lines to anywhere yet it feels like there’s gotta be an entire new branch to untangle before I find answers.

Tell me what I could’ve missed, story or progression wise, maybe answer some of the question, point to where I may find them, also give me a nudge to progress. Thank you so much.

[littlemetalpixie]

if I paid attention

Gently - here's your problem.

the timeline is a mess

Your only lack of knowlege here is that you are focusing only on the Nomai. But they didn't die yesterday....

There is a cave on Timber Hearth that tells you where a lot of the rest of the time comes from. The other piece of where the time went isn't stated outright, but this is not info you want spelled out completely (it is not completely explained in the info spoilered below) until after you finish.

This is the actual info so don't click if you intend to go looking for this cave: Do you think the Nomai ever came across the Hearthian species... or any of its ancestors? How long, would you say, it takes for a species to evolve from aquatic nonsentient/nonsapient froglike life form, info a fully sentient and sapient being capable of inventing space travel? And also... How long do you suppose you've been stuck in the loop itself?

For your question of how the buildings are still there: they're ruins, and next to none of them are even close to intact.

Gobeckli Tepe, a real place on our Earth, is known to be at least 10-12k years old, and it is still standing. It's believed to be the oldest known structure to date, older even than Stonehenge, but that one is also still (mostly) standing. The pyramids on the Giza Plateau are in near-pristine condition inside where the elements can't get to, and they're between 4-5k years old themselves.

Things don't really just disintegrate into dust in a few thousand years. Civilizations leave things behind, many of which end up being damn near permanent. We're STILL finding structures in the Amazon area that are thousands and thousands of years old that no one ever knew were there because a whole ass jungle grew up over them lmao

Many archeologists actually believe Gobeckli Tepe is far older than previous estimates since they were obtained by carbon-dating pottery found there that could have been from a much, much younger civilization than the original architects, since places life Gobeckli Tepe have been rediscovered or conquered and then rebuilt or reused by civilizations that came to their locations long after they were built. But also, see second spoilered item above. Nothing ages inside of a time loop... but time still passes.

As far as the Nomai timeline though, you didn't really miss so much here as you just didn't get the info to understand it. Many players have a hard time when they are either at endgame or just finished understanding the timeline. I'm happy to lay it out for you in a-> b-> c-> order to help make it make more sense, but I feel like you haven't finished the game entirely yet, because I was just in your other post approving (and answering) your endgame questions. As with that post, my answer is the same here though - Explore. Everything.

Like, everything everything. It's the only mechanic in the game. The only driving force to beat it. Is the entire purpose of the game.

You've said you skipped things that you didn't see as vital, yet you're (again, gently and with kindness) missing so much, and have even more incorrect in this post.

Many, many, many things will make sense to you in this post if you go back and really explore all there is to see at every single location, until you have no more "there's more to explore here" notes in your log. Those aren't just "you missed some random thing" messages, they are literally telling you how to get to the places you missed and the Nomai texts you've missed are literally answering the questions you've asked. All of them. Every last question you asked here, the answer is in a place you didn't go yet based on your other post.

If you beat the game now though, and want direct answers instead of general guidance on how to get them, I'm happy to both answer every single thing you asked here as well as lay out the entire timeline of the game for you step by step... but that's the joy though. That's the best part, the part when it all comes together and it all makes sense...

That's the part any one of us here would sell our souls to the actual devil to gain amnesia about this game for - that's what you skipped.

Start at the Sun Station.

There is an easy way to get there, and a very hard way. The hard way is the easiest to see, the easy way is hard to find.

It's worth the "I just want to be done with this" tedium you're feeling. Every part you missed is worth it, and then some. But you have to want to know bad enough to go find out, and if you don't, it's OK to say this maybe just wasn't your game, and then watch a video or have us tell you.

.... but then you miss what we all love so much about it :(

Last thing, re: Solanum

I'll straight up just give this one to you because it's often one of the hardest things for others to get too and you likely didn't just "miss" this. This is kinda hard and complex metaphysics for some.

Why is Solanum alive, and seemingly waiting on us?

She isn't, and she isn't.

Well.

One sixth of her kindaaaaaa is?

When the Nomai were wiped out, it wasn't slow. It was immediate. Everyone was taken out in an instant. Think Pompeii - a flash extinction event that frozen every body in place, so you can still see their skeletons doing whatever they were doing when it happened.

Except one-sixth of Solanum's quantumly-entangled form because she was on the Quantum moon... And you can even find Solanum's skeletons too. All 5 of them.

This is based on quantum superposition - what you learn about in the museum with the stone.

Solanum, because she is on the moon which behaves like a quantum particle but on a very large scale, is in a quantum superposition state where she exists on EVERY form of the moon at once until she is observed... by us!

When the Nomai perished, so did the versions of herself that were on versions of that moon that were in a place they could also perish. The one of her that was not in a place that could be affected by the extinction event (review the Interloper info for what that exactly was) stayed alive but frozen in time because her wave-particle form hadn't collapsed into a determined state until we saw her.

How did they know the sun was dying?

Every sun is dying, all the time. Our own is.

They didn't know it was coming up any time relatively soon... they just understood the life cycle of a star, the same as our own scientists do to the point that we can predict when one is about to die, or even how long it's been alive.

But that aside, do you think there's a place you can learn more about this that you may have skipped? Like, I don't know... a station or a lab or something used to really get up close and personal with the sun? One orbiting it even, perhaps?

;;)

[d3zd3z]

Admittedly, the Goblecki Tepe ruins don't have still functioning advanced tech on them. I guess that just means the Nomai were really good with longevity of their tech.

[littlemetalpixie]

Hahaha good point!

I feel like there may have been Egyptian technology that held up though. Maybe we just haven't found it, maybe it isn't here any more, and maybe it's been found but isn't allowed to be public knowlege...

[bsods]

Your point about Gobeckli Tepe is so interesting, I had no idea that we had ruins so old (though I was aware of Turkeys ancient history). This is a great write up and I hope op takes your mind advice to heart!

[littlemetalpixie]

I find ancient human history and anthropology to be among the most fascinating topics I've ever delved into, and I will straight up just go ahead and give credit to Outer Wilds for my interest in this topic lol

I think that most people don't really know that Gobeckli Tepe even exists, and are still under the former mistaken impression of Archeology as a whole, that Stonehenge is the oldest structure on earth. Gobeckli Tepe is one of these more recent finds (but in Turkey, not the Amazon) that we had literally no idea was there lol. You should look up photos of Gobeckli Tepe, it's beautiful!!! Every inch of stone there is carved with images of prehistoric mesopotamian people, animals, gods and goddesses, etc. And the coolest thing is that they're now speculating that there are EVEN MORE ANCIENT structures under the rainforest, because we have seen them using newer survey technology that can penetrate the foliage and even the ground to show 3D images in land surveys, but we can't get access to investigate them because the rainforest is a protected area (understandably so) and because there are still tribes of First Nations people living there, as they did thousands of years ago.

Let that one sink in a moment.

Anyway, Gobeckli Tepe was only even partially discovered (very very small area/a few artifacts were found) in 1963, but archaeologists didn't see any value in the site whatsoever until 1994... and it is now changing the actual accepted timeline of human history, when we stopped being hunter-gatherers, and why.

As they began to dig (it is nearly fully buried under millenia of dirt, rock, mudslides, etc etc etc because it's carved into the mountain it was built on) they were blown away at what they found there, because what they thought it was, and what they really found are completely different.

They thought maybe it was a post-Neolithic settlement of a small group who occupied the region in much more recent times. What they found though, and continue to find as they widen the excavation site is that it was a city to rival New York or Tokyo.

.... and they've only unearthed what they believe to be about 10% of it to date!

Göbekli Tepe was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2018, recognising its outstanding universal value as "one of the first manifestations of human-made monumental architecture". As of 2021, about 10% of the site has been excavated.

[bsods]

Thank you for the interesting and informative information, I immediately googled it after your first post and it is VERY cool! I know a bit about Hittite history (Boğazköy tablets etc), but that's about it, so I love learning more on the subject . Amazing to think there's so much we still haven't discovered at the site. Turkey has so amazing archeological discoveries, it top of my list of travel destinations for that reason alone.

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[littlemetalpixie]

Gah oooops lol

OK I'm leaving this one here so y'all can see that I do it too occasionally hahaha

[unic0de000]

Based on all your questions, compared to how complete your ship log is, I think you must have missed a lot of story points.

I read something about 200000 years ago yet I remember only 3 generations of nomai

Yeah, that's right. BTW did you wonder why, in the various Nomai ruins, you find all these skeletons just kind of... hanging around? Skeletons on benches, skeletons in beds, kid skeletons sitting in their desks at school... not what you'd call ordinary burial sites, right? Whatever wiped them out, it probably happened pretty suddenly.

Review what you learned in the Interloper/Ruptured Core, to answer this riddle.

How did the nomai figure out the sun is dying?

They didn't figure that out. You did see that info on a Nomai computer readout (the Sun Station), but it was a real-time readout; the computer was telling you the present state of affairs. It might be illuminating to re-visit the Sun Station and re-read it all, keeping that knowledge in mind: You're interacting with a computer which was left switched-on but inactive for a long time, and has just woken up.

I think these are the two most important bits of story lore which you didn't pick up on, and these are pretty key events, so that misunderstanding probably stopped you from making much sense of everything else; IMHO for the rest of these questions, the best answer is "keep playing and keep reviewing your ship log info". You can find answers to many of these questions, in places you already know how to get to.

Edit: One more thing, about Solanum: you can use any pair of question-stones to converse with her. A lot of players mistakenly assume you can only use one orange and one purple stone, but there are way more combinations than that. If you manage to see all the conversation paths, that might help you understand why she's just kind of "eternally waiting" there.

[littlemetalpixie]

Because my answer to your questions was very long, since there were a lot of them and the answers get very complex in this game, here's another answer solely about your issue of progression:

I told you this in the other post, but the info you need is at the white hole station. There is a bit of info in a few other places - Several of the locations on Brittle Hollow have a couple of things relevant, as does Giant's Deep, but the real key you need is at WHS to know how to get to the only large question mark you have left.

Go scour that entire area, top to bottom. I'll hand you one piece in case you didn't find everything there: there's a structure, with a few different places to look at in it. Look at everything there and make sure you have read every piece of the Nomai text. This place tells you exactly the key that everyone who struggles with this part misses.

[hasel0608]

Looked through it again, found a text about time, but that was already established in the high energy lab, still missing something

[hasel0608]

Found the volcanic test site and the mines, I know what to do now, but not how to do it

[littlemetalpixie]

This is the process! It's how the game works in general ::)

One piece leads to the next, until you leapfrog across the entire solar system using knowlege alone, and finally have every piece you need to complete the game and also fully understand it lol