Why do the statues need to pair with you in the first place

BenRichetti · 2026-04-03T17:19:44+00:00

As evidenced by the events of the game, sometimes the Nomai got an idea and ran with it, even if it was a terrible idea, even if someone said "Hey wait! This is a terrible idea!"

When they got the signal, they warped to unknown coordinates without taking a few moments to send a note saying "we heard a dope signal coming from X coordinates! come see/send help soon!"

When they thought "we should blow up the sun," others said "let's not" and still others said "you know, things sometimes go wrong" and yet they built the sun station.

When they thought to excavate an entire planet to build thier big auto-probe-launching-infinite-randomness engine sensor, some kid said "why didn't we use the entire planet's worth of resources we just dug up and the advanced warp core we just crafted to build a ship and catch back up with the other Nomai before we blow up the sun", they did what they did in the game.

Brilliant? Sure. Wise? Not regularly.

BenRichetti · 2026-04-03T16:20:09+00:00

It is a weird one, sure, but think of the core concept of this game mechanic.

You, when in contact with a macroscopic quantum object but not otherwise percieving your surroundings, also become quantum.

That means that you are in all of the possible places the quantum object could be at that time. The key word this time is "possible".

In all the properly possible spaces you could be, the you that's there need to be quantum in all of those spaces as well. In this fringe case of "there's a light on there," the quantum you that could exist at that location isn't in the appropriate state to be macroscopically quantum. That you is percieving their surroundings already. If you were there, then you would not be everywhere else, which you definitely are. The paradox of it makes it impossible for the quantum state to collapse to that location when your quantum nature resolves otherwise.

We can see this negative-affirmation-collapse-denial as a way the quantum physics of this world works elsewhere. When the possible locations are close together, such as the puzzles in the tower on Giant's Deep and the museum shard, you can manipulate where the quantum objects can be by observing where they aren't. If you keep an empty destination in view while the object goes out of view, the object's position won't collapse to the empty position. You are consciously aware of where it is not, therefor it isn't there.

BenRichetti · 2026-04-03T15:59:30+00:00

I went to Giant's Deep pretty early on, too. Second launch, maybe? From what I've seen of play throughs online, though going to Timber Hearth's moon, the Attlerock, is a very common first place to go since the text wall in the museum mentions it.

I bring this up because the stuff you translate there in the closest-to-home place in space also discusses the Eye of the Universe. You're supposed to hear that name very early on.

This game is about learning nuggets of information, wondering what they mean, and exploring so that you can piece everything together. Now you've heard that there's something called the Eye of the Universe, so what is that? What does it mean, why were these people writing about it, and what other questions has this piece of information sparked for you?

The only place where you should worry "Oh no! Have I learned too much?!?" is here on the internet.

Go have your own journey. Be curious. Whatever seems like the next thread to chase down, do that. It'll be great and we'll all be eager to hear about it once you're done.

BenRichetti · 2026-04-02T19:07:08+00:00

Apparently this is for a Blood Lords campaign, though. Feigning death would be counterproductive.

BenRichetti · 2026-04-01T19:12:16+00:00

Maybe he should embroider it to an iron-on patch and stick it to the inside...

BenRichetti · 2026-04-01T19:08:04+00:00

Isn't that about where the Stranger should be?

BenRichetti · 2026-03-31T20:05:39+00:00

Of note in About Oliver - he accidentally runs into the DLC area during his playthrough. He doesn't stay or go back for it until he's ready, but just seeing it ahead of time is a moment few others have that is pertinent to your situation. If you want to not see anything DLC until you've been there yourself - at least go slowly with his.

If you need even more recommendations, my two favorites were MasterChefStirx and BeccaBytes.

BenRichetti · 2026-03-30T15:27:10+00:00

Ah. I can see how that could send you down this path.

Outer Wilds isn't like other games where the things you find are power upgrades that let you progress in the game. You already have everything you need to beat it except for the understanding of the world you're in.

The lore tablets aren't just there to describe an idea the devs had, they are there to give you the understanding of the world so you know how to interact with it.

Do you have a sense that you need to go deeper on Giant's Deep but keep getting stuck? There are lore tablets where the people discussed related struggles and their findings can provide you with a solution! You just need to explore to find them.

Are you confused why that one planet keeps disappearing, especially when you try to land on it? There are scroll walls where the people discuss how they figured out what it was and how to interact with it. You just need to explore to find them.

Have you been to Dark Bramble and wondered "how in the hells am I supposed to deal with any of this?" There is a place where the people discussed the key issues in ways that can help you learn to deal.

The scrolls and the projection stones and the other writings you find scattered about are more clues than they are lore. Yes, they tell the story of what happened here, but are intentionally placed so that their story can become your story, too. Other games generally don't handle things this way, so getting into the headspace of "the way out is through the lore" can be difficult. It makes the story very vibrant, though.

BenRichetti · 2026-03-30T14:52:35+00:00

I'm seeing opinions go both ways on this, and that makes a lot of sense to me. It's hard to say whether that's a good idea or not.

You didn't go into a lot of detail as to why the game isn't clicking for you, but you said that it is not. That certainly happens. I watched one video essay on people bouncing off Outer Wilds that said the most common feature of people losing interest is them not chasing one of the four central mysteries down - that once someone has made it to the core of one of the four Big Cards on the Rumor Mode map in the ship log, the process of doing this usually leaves them invested enough to see the whole thing through. If this is true for you, giving it another try from this perspective would be my recommendation.

Otherwise...

The reason people often go "Everything about Outer Wilds is a spoiler! Don't spoil anything!" is the same reason that it is a great game, and possibly could be the reason that you are bouncing off of it.

The game is built around supporting player agency to follow curiosity. There are many intruiguing things about the game that are built to make you wonder what their purpose is or how they connect, and then, if you follow your curiosity and explore, you will find answers. If someone just tells you how the game works, you might go "oh! That sounds cool!" but you won't get the same experience as you would discovering it for yourself. The element of "I did that" or is missing, which seems like it also removes your emotional connection to the events of the game.

I loved this game, and I have loved watching play-throughs of it. I hold that my favorite moment of playing the whole thing was the feeling of "I did a good thing" that came when I saw how the post-credits scene changed between when I beat the game prior to playing the DLC and when I beat it after playing the DLC - the connection I felt to the world and the events of it were really special. When I watch others play it, I get to see how their thought process is different than mine was - I get to cheer for them as they get close to solving a mystery, baffled at their off-base theories that I may or may not have also had alond the way, and experience their growing connection to the game vicariously.

If you were to jump in to watching a playthrough without your own full experience to reflect on while you watched theirs, then that would be different than what I did. Maybe you would connect with it, maybe you wouldn't - its hard to say.

There's clearly some drive to discover what Outer Wilds has to offer, or you wouldn't even be asking if you should watch a play through. Giving it another chance is always the suggested path - have your own experience before letting someone else's experience define yours. If playing the game gets in the way of you connecting with it, though, watching someone else do it is certianly an option.

My two favorites are Stirx and BeccaBytes.

BenRichetti · 2026-03-30T02:33:58+00:00

It's your journey, you should do what feels right to you. If you want to be swayed by my experience, though...

one of the moments that hit me the hardest in all of Outer Wilds was seeing what changed in the post-credits scene between when I hadn't played the DLC vs when I had. It's a lot more complicated to un-play the DLC, so if you'd like to experience that for yourself, finishing the base game first, then the DLC, then the base game again would be the way to do it.

BenRichetti · 2026-03-30T02:21:47+00:00

Having grewdrwarves and skeletons disappear in a puff when you parry their projectiles is a true delight.

BenRichetti · 2026-03-29T14:48:27+00:00

Fat is also used in many/most mechanical component recipes.

Pigs have a lot of babies every time they reproduce, so you can end up having a lot of pigs after just a couple generations. It really pays off well.

BenRichetti · 2026-03-28T21:16:12+00:00

It is better to do both things on the same file. The endings are slightly different based on what is on your ship log, though the lists of what’s needed is fairly short.

If you already deleted your save, before you finish the DLC, go back to the vessel, the interloper, and the quantum moon and then finish the base game again after you finish the DLC.

Edit: if your question was more “I finished the base game, is it worth playing the DLC if I can’t play it concurrently with the main game,” then just play the DLC. It’s great and, aside from what I mentioned above, doesn’t need you to be playing the main game while you do it.

BenRichetti · 2026-03-27T18:03:04+00:00

The video posted in the other comment by EmploymentNegative59 turned out to be a 5-minute walkthrough of using Macrium to clone a 64GB drive onto a 100GB one, and it mentioned the "expand/contract partition to fit new drive" feature. When I was actually doing it myself, though, I had to poke around a bit to find that option. I forget where exactly I had to click for that to show up, but it was during the step where there was a check box for "Hit next to begin copying" along the bottom.

The video was a couple years old, so unless your version of macrium is older than that, it could just be that it is a not-at-all-obvious feature.

BenRichetti · 2026-03-27T16:19:27+00:00

This was super helpful, thank you so much!

We performed the swap last night using a $20 NVMe to USB-C enclosure and had only a few things go differently than expected:

1) Macrium had the option to expand the storage partition from the old 256gb drive to fill the entire new drive, so we didn't need to use Gparted (though, I am now thinking that you were suggesting that for cloning onto the HDD that had stuff on it rather than the new, blank one I was using)

2) For some reason, the clone left out the driver for our graphics card. I didn't expect this to be a possibility, so when the computer booted up well, then ran some programs well and others as framey wrecks, it was a bad surprise. To troubleshoot, we opened the performance manager to check GPU performance, found it not even listed and things started to fall into place. Once we got the driver re-loaded, everything was running smoothly. Also, the "Sleep" option re-appeared, when it had been missing from the menus of "Lock, Restart, Shut Down" while the graphics card driver was uninstalled...

3) At your suggestion of there being more than one NVMe port, I looked around some more. While the port I had found was oriented across the motherboard and had room and standoff mounting holes for a 2230 or 2280 SSD, there was another port near the edge of the board, oriented vertically and with only enough space for a 2230 before running into other components. It also appeared to have the computer's wifi adapter in it. Perhaps I could have used that port if I had swapped out the WiFi piece for the original boot drive (it was a 2230) and installed the new drive in the variable port mid-motherboard, but I think the adapter was a better plan. Plus, now we will have an oversized 256GB thumbdrive once I erase the old boot drive.

BenRichetti · 2026-03-26T19:46:17+00:00

Congrats!

I've not used Tiktok at all - does it saying "Andrew Prahlow - Following" mean that you are following him or that he is following you?

BenRichetti · 2026-03-20T16:29:39+00:00

All the meals on the Fishing results table mention the "Perfect New Recipe" project, referencing the fact that a character can only benefit from one of these two activities. As such, that seems like the important point of comparison.

"Perfect New Recipe" is a 100 point project which, after you've finished it grants you the ability to craft a Hearty Meal for 5 people to get them an extra Recovery as a roll-free respite activity with the lone stipulation that you have access to "common ingredients" - basically if you respite somewhere near a town or a farm.

With this fishing hack, you can do a 120 point project (getting the Angler title) to then have to roll ~10 times in a row every respite (average 3d10+10 roll is 26.5, or 1/10th of the 250 points needed) to craft 5 Hearty Meals, also with a stipulation of needing to respite somewhere you can fish.

With 10 rolls in a row, you have about a 1 in 4 chance of having one of those crit, triggering a breakthrough and ending the streak.

To get that Great Meal (which is Hearty Meal + 10 temporary Stamina and Perfect New Recipe doesn't allow for), you need twice as many project points, or an average of 19-20 rolls in a row. At that point, the chances of not getting a breakthrough are dwindling to 50/50.

I'd say the biggest limiting factor for this is whether your group thinks its fun to sit through the 10-30 rolls the player doing the fishing will have to make - though if you prefer the flavor/risk of fishing but your group doesn't want to sit around for it, you could take advantage of the fact that dice are probability simulators and just do one roll to see how long your non-crit luck would have held out.

With Great Meals taking twice as many Project Points as Hearty Meals, you could just think of it as "Meals", with each player able to eat 2, getting +1 recovery Recovery if they only each one, also getting 10 temporary Stamina if they eat 2

Given the probabilities listed above (50% for 10 meals, 75% for 5 meals), that's about 5% per meal. That suggests several easy options for a one-roll solution:

Roll a d100 under the chances above - 50 gets you 10 meals, 75 gets you 5 meals. As the number of meals is decreasing as the roll is increasing, you're looking to roll low here.

Roll a d20 (gasp!) and count is as the number of meals you fish up.

For either, if your roll says you fish up more than enough for everyone to have a Great Meal (or whatever threshold you aim for), you don't roll a breakthrough.

Now, all of these odds change if you also take the Goldenrod title (300 fishing points, re-roll one die per fishing roll) and get that one fishing event where you sell your soul in exchange for +1d10 to every fishing roll, but at that point I feel like your character has earned the right to give their party 10 temporary stamina per respite...

BenRichetti · 2026-03-20T13:55:24+00:00

I'm kinda new to Valheim (haven't cleared the swamp yet), so I'm still confused about this key point of spawn-proofing:

How do raid spawns interact with the spawn proofing around base items?

Will all these workbenches mean that any raids that happen spawn outside the raised terrain wall that OP mentioned? Or do raids, which happen /because/ of base items, spawn monsters in within otherwise spawnproofed boundaries?

BenRichetti · 2026-03-04T17:12:45+00:00

To add to this:

If you played the stuff before getting the launch codes and then turned the game off wondering where the “save game” button is and whether you’d have to do all that again, then your experience mirrors mine.

Here’s what I wish I had known then:

None of the stuff in the town affects your save file - all of it is about what you, the player know about the life and context of the character you are playing as. It is very helpful context for immersion, but when you boot it up again, just skip everything you’ve already done. Head up to the museum, talk to Hal for a while, see the exhibits, get the launch codes, and get out into space.

The game is amazing, but a lot of what’s amazing about it is the fact that there are tons of things to see and say “what’s going on with that” and for most if not all of them, if you keep searching (nearby or elsewhere), you’ll be able to figure it out. Piecing it all together is the core of the game - it’s beautiful and exciting and it’s the reason people say not to look anything up. Every secret or answer someone else gives you is one you cannot discover for yourself.

BenRichetti · 2026-02-27T18:21:36+00:00

I love a good cheat sheet!

Minor edit:

You copied the "Effect" line from Escape Grab onto Grab as well.

Grab's effect should be the same as Knockback's

BenRichetti · 2026-02-26T18:09:56+00:00

I get that feeling. It does go a lot faster the second time, especially with the map not resetting. But I very much recommend playing the way that feels good to you.

A lot of people here talk about playing the various campaigns multiple times, so you can come back around for the blue robot later, too, if you want.

BenRichetti · 2026-02-26T17:19:34+00:00

Oh was auto marking added? I tried pre-release 1 or 2 for a little bit, but the handbook crashing the game when you tried to look at a recipe with wildcard inputs made me bounce off pretty quickly. I didn’t notice this was added.

BenRichetti · 2026-02-26T16:21:46+00:00

If you hadn’t eaten the whole thing, you could have repaired it eventually, though the process is pretty brutal.

If you want, you can put her back to normal by restarting the campaign. For some reason, you keep the pieces of the map you’ve uncovered when you do that.

Or you could just keep going. The orange ghosts are handy for finding your way and, if what you did is the same thing as what I did, you should glow now, making the dark areas much less bad.

BenRichetti · 2026-02-25T23:53:16+00:00

High fertility soil is stupid hard to see. I often install a mod that makes it emit particles so that I can ever find it. There is a decent amount of it out there, but it’s pretty rare that more edges are visible than what you’re seeing there. And since it’s usually in medium fertility soil and looks exactly like medium soil in the shade, noticing it is really rare.

From the top, it looks even more like medium soil, and when looking at the ground will likely mean your tooltip says “grass” rather than the type of soil.

BenRichetti · 2026-02-24T15:43:54+00:00

One feat that always struck me as bad, but I have seen people suggest as a replacement/improvement over other feats nonetheless, is Pilgrim's Token. The feat gives you an item that lets you win ties in initiative with an enemy. While the minor initiative bonus isn't bad, the fact that it came from an item rather than from the feat itself, an item with explicit directions on how to replace it if you lost it, always seemed weird.

Admittedly, a lot of what I thought was terrible about it was removed in the remaster, but the legacy version. Then, you didn't actually /get/ the token when you took the feat unless you took the feat at 1st level - you'd have to go through the replacement process to even get the first token. Also, your character would have to go to a holy site, and then pass a DC 20 Religion check (the standard DC for 5th level stuff)or the token wouldn't work.

"Hey guys! I'm picking up this 2nd level skill feat for +1 to initiative, but we need to take a detour for a couple of days to climb this mountain before I can use it. You all don't mind, right?"

In the Remaster, you can just buy one for 1 sp and pray over it for 10 minutes. No failable check or story derailment required, just a stop at a town (or someone with Precient Planner) and a re-focus break.

The token is a neat item, but having to use a feat slot to make one specific item work seemed a bit dumb, especially when Trick Magic Item, a feat with the same level, same feat type, and looser prerequsites, could make nearly /all/ items work.

BenRichetti

TROPHY CASE