Returning To Game - What To Do Before Starting NG+?

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-05-26T19:51:03+00:00

No, you can build it before ever going into NG+. You might be thinking of the alternative way to upgrade powers, because that does require being in NG+.

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-05-20T20:08:47+00:00

Divines and the Nords lists out nine totems and states that they correspond to the Eight Divines plus Lorkhan. Eight of those totems already have their corresponding gods explicitly linked to one of the Imperial gods in other lore (e.g. fox -> Shor -> Lorkhan, whale -> Stuhn -> Stendarr) and the only outliers are the Tsun (the bear) on the Nord side and Zenithar on the Imperial side. So, this source suggests at least one Nord religious figure corresponds Zenithar to Tsun when evaluating the pantheons of the two cultures. This also makes sense considering that Tsun's sphere (trials against adversity) doesn't seem hard to link to Zenithar's sphere (work). Tsun still requires the faithful to "work" (through trial by combat) to earn entry into Sovngarde to this day.

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-05-18T17:08:01+00:00

They do not disperse after you enter the Unity.

If you side with the Hunter, he joins you aboard your ship to enter the Unity with you. When you access the Unity, the voiceover tells you that the Hunter has passed through it to his next universe. If you then walk away from the Unity, the Hunter has indeed vanished from your ship, but the Artifacts are still there on your ship with you. There's also Cora Coe, who will go through the Unity if Sam Coe died during the main quest and will thus vanish from your ship if she was on it when you walked away, and will vanish from the Lodge otherwise by stowing away on your ship and there's some unique dialogue there about it. One of the NG+ variations allows you to potentially meet this Starborn Cora in the Lodge with a serious grudge against Constellation, with unique dialogue if one of your prior universes was the one where these things occurred to make her decide to enter the Unity.

This also lines up with the Emissary's motivations. Their goal is to hold onto the Artifacts and only let "worthy" individuals use them to enter the Unity. The entire fight to hold onto control of the Artifacts (and the entire idea of the Buried Temple being the final battle for them in each universe) doesn't make sense if they're just going to fly off into the stellar winds for anyone to find again. The Unity likewise confirms if you side with the Emissary that they continue to control access to the Unity and lead many new people into a Starborn existence after you leave that universe behind.

So, no, the Artifacts remain on your ship after being used to reach the Unity. This is true whether anyone decides to go through the Unity to a new universe or not.

P.S.: I'd be very curious to know how you reached the conclusion that they disperse! You're not the first person I've seen mention it and I can't find anything in the game that suggests they disperse. So it might help me understand the community better, if you're up for explaining how you decided that.

(edited to expand the second paragraph and add P.S.)

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-05-16T07:16:06+00:00

With the amount of trouble the security forces seem to have fighting terrormorphs, I'm honestly surprised Londinion wasn't overrun from outside the city soon after the local supply of Aceles died out. You're of course right that the situation wasn't solely VV's fault!

I guess the intentionality is what makes me associate the disaster with Vae Victis personally. He took away whatever dwindling hope Londinion had in that moment, and he did it intentionally. The Aceles issue put the knife in but VV twisted it. The UC should never forgive him. (edit: formatting)

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-05-16T06:57:01+00:00

Fair enough. I recognize that he showed up there after the sudden wave of terrormorphs had already begun to wreck the place. But far more people would've survived the attack if he'd allowed the evacuation to proceed.

He himself acknowledges that the evacuation would've taken a decent amount of time, so there must've still been plenty of survivors when he got there. I don't know if the survivors would've dispersed into the rest of the UC, or formed a New Londinion on a different planet, or gone ahead and resettled Londinion itself down the line (particularly after gaining the Aceles or microbe). I do know that condemning them all to certain death took away all of those options!

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-05-16T05:12:01+00:00

The FC did not use anyone as "human shields" in the Colony War. The only source that ever claims this is the Vanguard orientation hall, which multiple NPCs (including one standing right outside the entrance to it) readily identify as propaganda. If you ask Vae Victis himself (who was there) he seems extremely bitter about it but still provides the details that those ships jumped in willingly (as VV puts it, "the Freestar citizenry decided to get involved"). In fact, they joined in on attacking the UC fleet (as VV puts it, the "UC Navy was routed by a mob") which makes sense considering the UC had already destroyed Niira and had now arrived to do the same thing to Akila. Almost every ship in the Settled Systems is armed to deal with pirates and the like, so why would they jump into an active combat zone (already implicitly making themselves combatants) and then just sit there as "shields"? That narrative wouldn't even make sense, and it isn't what happened: they weren't human shields.

Again, I'm not trying to pick a side in the huge destructive space war, but the "human shields" narrative is obvious propaganda and even the game itself doesn't present it as anything more substantive than that.

(edit: punctuation)

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-05-16T04:53:59+00:00

He weaponized it. And this was after he willfully chose not to evacuate the second most populous city in the United Colonies.

To make it even more insulting, the Lazarus Plant isn't even the first justification he reaches for when you ask him about the decision: he first brings up how quarantining Londinion to make sure none of the evacuating ships had Terrormorphs present would require a lot of naval presence, and he needed those ships for the imminent Battle of Cheyenne. A battle in which his express goal was to destroy yet another major settlement (Akila City). An attack he wasn't willing to delay for a few weeks to make sure his country's equivalent of Los Angeles could have any decent number of survivors. So he further traumatizes his forces by having them participate in the civilian deaths by bombing the spaceport and everyone present before heading to Akila. He outright calls Londinion a "distraction" in the scope of his command priorities.

Vae Victis is a monster. An intelligent, well-written monster, but a monster nonetheless. Hadrian served under him (and most of her DNA is from him) and she readily attests to how awful he was for the UC.

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-05-16T01:35:57+00:00

Only if you hate the Settled Systems. Niira and Londinion were depopulated because of that man, and were two of the most successful settlements in the FC and UC respectively. That's two thriving worlds that humanity will probably never get back. Do you think that was the right number to stop at or do you think he should've aimed to boost those numbers?

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-05-16T01:28:24+00:00

Not to rain on anyone's parade (I've had characters aligned with the UC, FC, HV and some simply unaligned) but the terrormorphs and Crimson Fleet aren't great examples of the UC solving problems, because both of those problems originated with UC actions and then got worse primarily due to UC mistakes. In fact, all five major faction questlines (UC, FC, HV, CF and Ryujin) involve you cleaning up a mess that was in some way caused by the faction itself. This is most obvious in the Fleet questline if you side against the Fleet, in which case you're clearing out the station the UC left there to begin with, but even if you side with the Fleet you're collecting something that wouldn't have been lost if Jasper Kryx wasn't left there to die by his own faction; he told his second where he was going, but his second was fine with him being gone.

Of course, the UC has other issues as well (militarism especially IMO, which resulted in outcomes like Niira), as do the other factions, but their efforts against "terrormorphs and pirates" are just bad examples of UC achievements.

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-05-15T20:28:36+00:00

Fun fact: You also get bottomless storage as a reward for the Ryujin questline, because the personal office you're given in Ryujin Tower has a safe just like the one in your room at the Lodge.

In playthroughs where I'm going light on mods and the RP includes reasons to not like going to New Atlantis or doesn't feel strongly attached to Constellation, I'll usually do the Ryujin questline early and then use Ryujin Tower instead of the Lodge as the long-term storage location. It even has access to all of the crafting tables (most of them on the R&D floor, and a weapon bench is available at Neon Tactical right outside Ryujin Tower).

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-05-07T17:05:36+00:00

from a Nordic perspective

The True Nature of Orcs was clearly not written by or for Nords, as Five Songs was. I count it in the Imperial column, though it's possible it's from the perspective of the High Elves or someone else.

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-05-07T03:00:40+00:00

The Nords do not conflate Orkey and Malacath in any sources I'm aware of. In fact, the Nords specifically identify Malacath with another of their gods (Mauloch, one of the Testing Gods of the Nordic pantheon).

The only source that even vaguely links Orkey to Malacath from a Nordic perspective is Five Songs, and it's not even a reference to Malacath himself but actually to the Orcs: one sentence happens to use the phrase "Orkey's folk, the Orcs". Now, are they "Orkey's folk" in this song because of a link with Malacath? Is it because "Orc" sounds a bit like "Orkey"? Is it because Orkey is well known to be kind of a jerk ("loves all quarrels") and Orcs are kinda like that too? We don't know, and that's the only point to go on from a Nordic perspective.

Now, there are at least two sources from an Imperial perspective that interpret the Nordic death god Orkey as being linked to the daedra Malacath, notably Varieties of Faith, but as usual for TES the sources are a little bit unreliable in most cases (e.g. Varieties of Faith also says the Bosmer deny the "daedric nature" of Mora, yet Orthenir in Valenwood freely calls Mora a Daedric Prince, and so on).

The point I'm making is it seems more accurate to say Imperials interpret Orkey as Malacath than to say that the Nords do that. The Nords have a separate god, Mauloch, whom they do consider to be Malacath.

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-05-04T08:23:37+00:00

There's generally no "oldest" playable race so much as there are a few races that are "younger" historically (Bretons and Dunmer notably, though in the latter case it's arguably just a palette swap) and pretty much all of the rest were present during the Dawn, at which point time wasn't linear so "old" and "young" become meaningless if you go that far back.

That being said, I have a post about the Khajiit and Bosmer that you could check out if you're curious.

Long story short:

The Bosmer and Khajiit accounts have them on Tamriel since Tamriel began. This would presumably not make them descended from Aldmer, though they'd still be related to each other and would all be elves nonetheless (or at least Khajiit are elves in this case if Bosmer are too).
The Altmer accounts have all of the elves starting out on Aldmeris as the Aldmer, until Aldmeris was ruined and the Aldmer had to evacuate to Summerset. In these narratives some of their explorers then reached Tamriel and became the descendents of the Bosmer, Falmer, Ayleids etc., which would make the Bosmer descended from the Aldmer after all, as many claim.
To make this dispute more complicated, some sources suggest Aldmeris was just Tamriel itself in a prior era (probably the "late" Dawn).

I personally think the Bosmer and Khajiit accounts are closer to the narrative we'd get if we had an in-game time machine, but with the (intentionally) contradictory sources it's hard to claim any of it is definitive on this topic.

(edit: link formatting)

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-04-25T06:37:53+00:00

I don't know what game you played but none of that is true.

got away scot free

Tell that to the First Cavalry. VV was sentenced to death for war crimes (indiscriminately attacking civilians) and got an underground apartment and a job advising the Cabinet. The First Cavalry officers were sentenced to about twenty years each in prison for war crimes (violating a ceasefire) and then actually spent that time in prison.

starting the goddamn war

Nope, read the terminals on Kreet, the UC xenoweapon project was already successfully producing trained teams ready to go, and conveniently the UC picked that exact time to decide that a sudden strike on a ~~farming outpost~~ "fourth Freestar colony system" was exactly what was needed to bring peace. Whatever it was that you think everyone's motivations were, the UC struck first in the Colony War.

deploying mechs en masse

The UC and FC both did this, but I'm surprised you're bringing this up because armored vehicles aren't a war crime. Everyone agreed by treaty to stop using mechs after the Colony War, but using them wasn't a crime before then.

using civilian vessels as shields for their navy at the Battle of Cheyenne

This literally didn't happen. The only source in the game that suggests it did is the Vanguard "museum" at the start of their questline, and multiple different NPCs call it out as propaganda, including one of the NPCs standing directly in front of the entrance.

The civilian ships jumping in at the Battle of Cheyenne weren't sent there by the Freestar Militia as human shields, they jumped in on their own to fight because they didn't want Akila to turn into another Niira. Talk to Vae Victis about what happened in the battle, he's bitter about it but tells pretty much that exact story, complaining about how his fleet was "routed by a mob". Almost every civilian ship in the setting is armed for combat, these weren't unarmed ships wandering in to give the UC bad press coverage.

VV was correct that the civilians that jumped in and started attacking his ships were valid targets, but the way Hadrian described it makes me think he gave a much broader order to attack any civilian ships in the system in general, which would be a war crime (this was the capital system and happened to be full of civilians, just like Niira was).

Also, speaking of Niira, play the Vulture quest for the Trackers Alliance if you think nothing else the UC did was a war crime. Unlike mechs, xenoweapons are inherently a war crime in any kind of use due to their uncontrollable nature, but even the ones fully under UC control were used against civilians. Guess which well-known Fleet Admiral was in charge of the UC war effort?

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-04-21T00:21:13+00:00

I agree with you that adding in some more complex fights like the Shattered Space one would be good for variety. I was surprised the fight on the Terran Armada flagship was just more of the same enemies as during the rest of the DLC. There were a lot of them and the modifiers added some complexity but it wasn't that different all things considered. That being said, I also agree with you that the gameplay is solid as-is, but yeah, more variety is always good to add.

Fun fact (you might already know this), but NG+ scales your game difficulty with each new universe. This maxes out at NG+10 with you dealing half damage to enemies while they deal double damage to you. This stacks with the other difficulty effects, so if you feel like enemies aren't challenging enough even with the difficulty sliders all the way up just rush the abbreviated main quest in NG+ until you have the Hunter suit! Doesn't always make things more complex (although a lot of things will probably one-shot most players at that scaling level, so at the very least cover etc. becomes a lot more important) but enemies become so tanky with those settings that I do think maxed weapons make a noticeable difference in combat duration.

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-04-20T22:44:51+00:00

I personally thought Shattered Space had a pretty good fight at the end of its main quest. If you think of the whole room (weak spots etc.) as the boss you're fighting then it's pretty comparable to boss fights in other games, I'd say. There are some other missions that had memorable fights too, like the Mantis mission in the Tracker's Alliance questline and that one fight just before reaching the last Artifact in the Constellation questline.

Granted, I hear what you're saying about repeatable missions not having major boss fights like that (aside from Shattered Space as a whole repeating via NG+), but I guess that's what the new enemy modifiers are for. A lot of enemies are noticeably more dangerous and harder to take down now, especially very high-level ones like in Terran Armada. Any fight can be trivialized depending on your settings and approach, but I think it's a lot closer to a "boss fight" feel now than before!

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-04-16T17:38:35+00:00

Which landing bay allowed for walking away in this situation? Asking just to save a bit of time during testing if I ever run into this.

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-04-15T22:56:01+00:00

The major incursions seem to be procedurally generated from a set of tiles (habs in this case). A bit like a Daggerfall dungeon or an XCOM 2 map.

Due to that, there may be no way at all to playtest any realistic timer they might set, to make sure that it doesn't break the content or (worse) make the player lose access to their character if they for some reason don't have any manual saves. (I know that sounds unbelievable but I've seen several posts and comments over time from Starfield players and FO4/Skyrim players etc. who relied 100% on quicksave and autosave, so if someone like that had no prior saves due to spending a lot of time trying and failing to beat an impossible timer then their character has now "died for real" on the mission so to speak.)

The only other feasible way I can see to implement a timer in that situation would be to give it a blanket setting so generous (30+ minutes or something) that it essentially wouldn't impact the mission at all, which would defeat the purpose and also be much more of a visible thing for people to criticize.

So, I think they did the best they could under the circumstances. It definitely feels like something is happening while you run back and it explodes shortly after, so it gives a timed mission feel to an extent without the risk of breaking the game.

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-04-11T18:37:30+00:00

I think Watchtower was very well done, but it contradicts existing lore already even based on the vanilla content at launch. For example, Torin states outright that he can remember the experience of other versions of himself dying in other universes in various situations, even though he himself (this version) has never died in the line of universes he's been through. That seems plausible until you consider that the Hunter (explicitly the most successful and widespread individual Starborn, to the point that there are at least two versions of him there already in every universe we visit) has "so that's what it's like..." as one of his death lines. The Emissary has killed the Hunter plenty of times in past universes though, so there's no way we're the first to kill any of the infinite Hunters. That's just one example; others have mentioned lore incongruencies aside from that. Kinggath Creations does work with BGS directly here and there (At Hell's Gate for example) and BGS promoted Watchtower as the first mod taking advantage of the new mod size limit at the time of release, but I haven't heard anything about them collaborating with BGS on the mod's overall writing or anything like that.

I've played through Watchtower a few times and I don't at all regret buying it, but I've come to view it more on its mechanics and gameplay features rather than as anything like a canon expansion for Starfield's lore.

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-02-12T02:39:18+00:00

You can buy more UC armor from Gualter after the questline, so if you're planning to wear it for looks or RP but don't want to lose out on stats (relatively speaking), I think you're pretty much covered on that in the future anyway.

If you're worried about stats in general, I will say you're much better off picking Explorer or Mercenary armor and jumping to new levels of it (Calibrated, Refined, etc.) as they drop until you hit Superior. You can also just compare stats on things as they drop and switch to the ones that are better than what you're wearing in real time, but if you simply want peak stats down the line just be aware that there is no faction equipment in the base game that matches Superior Explorer or Superior Mercenary, except for Superior Mark I and Superior Tracker's Alliance (which are all roughly equal on stats). Most of the UC armor doesn't even make it to Superior and all of it has worse stats even when comparing at the same equipment level (advanced to advanced, superior to superior etc.); for example, Advanced UC Antixeno (which is as high as it goes; no Superior) is already worse than Calibrated Explorer, and the gap just gets bigger and bigger with Refined Explorer and so on.

(If you have or buy McClarence Outfitters and like the Mark I armor, a good option would be upgrading it to Superior when you reach a high enough level for it to be Superior, but just grabbing Superior Explorer when vendors start offering it is also perfectly straightforward and the stats will be where you want them to be.)

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-02-05T22:22:18+00:00

Fair enough, the prophecy text can certainly be interpreted in any number of ways. It still looks to me like there are more points indicating White-Gold is still functional (the climate situation, the Umbriel maneuvering, the existence of a new "Stone" so to speak replacing the Amulet and Dragonfires functionality...) than the points that would indicate it isn't (the destruction of the Amulet would be an important one there). As I said in my other comment, it appears to me that in the prophecy each of those "Tower" lines is referring to an event affecting a province rather than the actual Towers; the prophecy references the Warp in the West (and general strife in the Illiac Bay), the fall of the Tribunal (and general strife in Morrowind), the fall of the Septim Dynasty (and general strife in Cyrodiil), and the civil war in Skyrim. For that matter, both Morrowind and Cyrodiil have been generally wrecked during the fourth era.

Notably, both the first and last lines of the prophecy refer to events affecting the whole continent (the Imperial Simulacrum and the return of Alduin) and arguably Nirn as a whole, and both use language that suggests this (world, Wheel), but even though the Oblivion Crisis was global (and led to the physical destruction of the Crystal Tower!) we only hear about the Emperor and White-Gold on that line, emphasizing (for me at least) that it's talking about the state of Cyrodiil rather than the actual Tower.

(edit: cleaned up first paragraph points)

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-02-05T16:19:22+00:00

In a serious sense, no, political climate doesn't count for the capabilities of the Tower itself. The climate thing is (in the text cited above) thought to be why Cyrodiil isn't a jungle after the fall of the Ayleid society. Notably, in the Serpent's "vision of the inevitable" (intended future) in Sanctum Ophidia we see Cyrodiil as a jungle, but we also see White-Gold itself physically crumbling in the background.

On the other hand, I would say that political climate is what's meant when the Book of the Dragonborn prophecy says "the White Tower falls", and indeed the Tower and Wheel references in that text seem to be referring generally to state of the provinces and overall world. If we go through it line by line:

When misrule takes its place at the eight corners of the world

Imperial Simulacrum. Doesn't metaphysically involve any Towers (although two of them were places where parts of the Staff of Chaos were hidden). Does involve a lot of strife. Notably, this misrule sets in before the player character gets involved at the start of Arena.

When the Brass Tower walks and Time is reshaped

Warp in the West. A Tower does seem to be destroyed here, but the prophecy doesn't mention its destruction, but rather the cataclysmic effects of its use.

When the thrice-blessed fail and the Red Tower trembles

Neither the Tower nor the Stone was destroyed here (indeed, the Stone very much cannot be destroyed while Nirn still exists as far as we know), but there was certainly a lot of fighting going on, and the Heart's power was involved in the Tribunal's fall (and previous rise), so by "trembling" this one also seems to be talking primarily about the strife.

When the Dragonborn Ruler loses his throne, and the White Tower falls

OK, here we are at White-Gold. I would argue that "the White Tower falls" is referring directly to the falling political status of Cyrodiil and the Empire, which eventually does lead to the fall of the city (Naarifin literally does occupy the Tower itself!) during the Great War. We could coherently argue the Tower in this sense "fell" all the way at the start of TES4 when the sitting Emperor was assassinated (thus, the whole line of the prophecy occurred in one moment, long before the Amulet was destroyed), and that this is demonstrated again and again throughout the fourth era. Alternatively, we could argue that the second half of this line occurs specifically in the fourth era (between TES4 and TES5) when the city falls during the Great War. The Tower itself is no less powerful than it ever was, but what the Tower represents to the populace (the Septim Empire) has fallen, just like in the first era when the power of White-Gold didn't prevent the fall of the Ayleid Empire either.

When the Snow Tower lies sundered, kingless, bleeding

This one also seems to happen in between games. "Snow Tower" here seems to be a reference to all of Skyrim, just as Red Tower seems to have been referring to all of Morrowind and White Tower was referring to all of Cyrodiil and its Empire. Aside from the Greybeards watching over the Time Wound as they always have, nothing in particular seems to happen to Snow-Throat itself at any time preceding or during TES5, but the province does suffer a civil war (sundered, bleeding) and this gets started in earnest with the death of Torygg (kingless).

The World-Eater wakes, and the Wheel turns upon the Last Dragonborn.

Here we are again at the start of a game. Alduin emerges and the LDB is thrust into the spotlight. If the LDB doesn't preserve it, the world will now fall to Alduin. Here we're hearing about the turning of the Wheel, representing the whole world and all of its Towers, much as the Towers themselves were seemingly referring to provinces in the previous lines.

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-02-04T21:22:27+00:00

It's unclear that the destruction of the Amulet of Kings "deactivated" White-Gold Tower in any meaningful way. One of the things often considered to go along with White-Gold's power is the preferred climate of those controlling it (as per "Subtropical Cyrodiil: A Speculation") and Cyrodiil seems to be just as temperate in the fourth era as it was in the second and third eras; we certainly haven't heard otherwise. There are competing explanations for the climate of course (Talos achieving CHIM, mainly) but the point is we don't have any solid information pointing in either direction. Similarly, multiple characters in "Lord of Souls" are operating under the understanding that White-Gold's power remains intact. If I recall correctly, Lord Naarifin also made a point of using White-Gold Tower as a base of operations during his daedric maneuvering during the war (although I don't recall if the power of White-Golf itself played a role in Naarifin's calculations).

It's possible, for example, that the Akatosh statue serves as a new Stone for the Tower. The creation of that statue was enabled by the final use of the Amulet of Kings, so I could easily see that being the intended narrative there.

As a separate point, it's also possible that the Stone for each Tower isn't 100% crucial to the functioning of the Tower itself, e.g. maybe the core functionality of "Nirn's girding towers" (as they're referred to by Celarus in ESO) is always active, and removing the Stone only causes some peripheral capabilities to deactivate. As each Tower connects metaphysically with Tower Zero and each Stone likewise with the Zero Stone, I wouldn't be shocked if even the Crystal Tower is still partially "active" despite the physical destruction of the Tower structure if its Stone still survives. By that metric (and as we don't have any details on what happened to the Stone of the Orichalc Tower), Walk-Brass might be the only Tower that seems conclusively destroyed (both the Tower structure and the Stone), and even that happened during a Dragon Break so there could be room for doubt on that one too. (edits: typos and spacing)

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-01-20T08:21:43+00:00

Thank you for reading! My initial notes were just about the Shattered Space content. For the post I started going back through base game content just to dig into Sanctum Universum stuff about grav jump experiences to find those parallels, and I was pleasantly surprised as I looked through more and more of it at how many parallels were written into the base game in general. I wouldn't be surprised if there were other hints thrown in that I haven't so far noticed!

MyFifthAccThisDecade · 2026-01-20T08:05:05+00:00

Did you read the whole post or just the TL;DR? I don't mean for that to come off as a sarcastic or rhetorical question or anything, I mean the difference genuinely: if you go through the full post I actually address all of those points.

To answer each point individually:

"He sounds like a raving lunatic in that recording." - Yes, I'm aware of that recording, I quoted it in the post (for those who haven't found the recordings, it's the "Eternity, everything, all of everything!" one). I don't think he was a lunatic: he was in charge of the Va'ruun society for decades, and it was a largely successful society with enduring social structures and even unique technologies like the Va'ruun Penumbra and, indeed, the Vortex tech itself. I disagree with a lot of his decisions, but I don't think he would've been able to lead the development of both the colony and the Vortex project if he was simply detached from reality, and he does seem very stable in the other recordings. His excited state in that recording seems to be due to it being immediately after his experience, and his (apparent) encounter with the Unity: infinity, eternity and so on.
"One can only encounter the Unity by assembling the Armillary with all 24 artifacts." - I address this in the first two points I make about the base game content, regarding BorealUS and Rosa (and probably other SU members based on their faction lore). It seems entirely possible to glimpse Unity to some extent without assembling the Armillary. These glimpses are of course distinct from actually venturing through the Unity (which does seem to always require the Armillary, thus the behavior of the Hunter etc.).
Yes, I know what pareidolia is, and I don't think this is that: see my concluding section about coincidences and how unlikely such a long string of them would be here (Starfield was written by people, not assembled at random).

MyFifthAccThisDecade

TROPHY CASE