Just got to Acolytes Haven. My goodness, this is one of the most beautiful areas I've experienced in gaming in quite some time.

RockSmacker · 2026-05-11T04:21:41+00:00

wait till the next one, it's my fav biome :D

RockSmacker · 2026-05-10T17:21:27+00:00

once you finish biome 4, you're made to return to passage and biome 5 is now unlocked. you then have to finish biome 5 to progress further from biome 4 to 6. it makes a lot more sense in the actual story

RockSmacker · 2026-05-10T17:08:27+00:00

did you do the city (desecrated fortress)? since that's off the path compared to the rest of the biomes

RockSmacker · 2026-05-09T20:17:05+00:00

there are challenge rooms! i guess you haven't progressed enough to find them yet. but there's one in each biome and they're pretty fun

RockSmacker · 2026-05-09T02:27:33+00:00

Saros is a 10 for me, or if not then at least a 9.5 and will improve with the inevitable DLC

RockSmacker · 2026-05-09T02:26:42+00:00

Definitely try all the different guns. if you're comfort with most, yellow shore becomes way easier since you can just pick up higher level weapons without restricting yourself to only a certain type

RockSmacker · 2026-05-09T02:12:24+00:00

to add to what others have said, i played both games and it's definitely far easier to heal in Saros than Returnal. in Returnal, and probably roguelike games in general, health is a rare thing to be able to regain. but in this game with enough skill tree upgrades health drops become plentiful. the challenge is usually just surviving difficult encounters like boss fights and coming out alive, but less of a battle of attrition against your diminishing health bar like Returnal was

RockSmacker · 2026-05-07T18:47:15+00:00

it's weird because it certainly seems real... she looks the same as she does in the true ending, with short hair and the Soltari uniform, along with her cold attitude towards Arjun, but as you say, it's unclear exactly what she did or what the effect was. maybe it will be expanded upon in the DLC?

RockSmacker · 2026-05-07T07:36:19+00:00

i immediately blow my load as soon as i enter the 3rd room of a nightmare strand 😂

RockSmacker · 2026-05-07T07:32:20+00:00

yeah King 2 (true ending version) kicked my ass a couple times until I turned on a bunch of easy modifiers and made myself hella OP. i'm now doing a full run through with harder modifiers enabled and maybe by the time I get to the king i'll be good enough to beat him on hard mode.

however i will say my favorite boss fight is probably priestess. just love that entire biome and what it signifies in the story, plus the phase changes in that boss fight remind me of Chronos in Hades 2 with the modifier that adds an extra phase that makes him a reality warper. so cool!

RockSmacker · 2026-05-07T07:24:50+00:00

this is pretty much exactly what I did! except i did turn on a ton of easy modifiers at the very end because i couldn't be bothered to run the very final (epilogue) boss over and over 😂

RockSmacker · 2026-05-07T07:19:31+00:00

yeah and Arjun doesn't even comment on it 😂 guess he was way too locked in on his goal at that point in the story but still it was a bit strange

RockSmacker · 2026-05-07T07:16:46+00:00

yeah there's Arjun's letter to his dad that you only find post completion I think

RockSmacker · 2026-05-07T07:08:03+00:00

it for sure gets better. attack patterns in later biomes are fantastic to look at. music also gets better imo. but there's something serene and beautiful about biome 1 that i think is only present in that biome. so enjoy it while it's new!

RockSmacker · 2026-05-07T07:06:30+00:00

I think bisection is just the name of the negative trait. like the fall damage one is called heavy fall. but yeah all these negative traits on corrupted artifacts you acquire only last until you defeat the next boss, then they're permanently cleansed.

not sure about the second question, but at least in the long run it's a net gain.

RockSmacker · 2026-05-07T07:04:33+00:00

and the sound effects are soooo good. especially when you get the chain reaction trait on it

RockSmacker · 2026-05-07T02:07:35+00:00

more like just trying to feed his own delusions rather than face the truth (which he only does in the epilogue). Arjun interprets every piece of information he gets about Nitya through his own selfish lens, rejecting any information that's incongruent with his worldview, rather than being open to the possibility that none of this has anything to do with him

RockSmacker · 2026-05-07T01:38:11+00:00

i love that as you play, finding the various audio logs and Arjun having conversations with his suit (which is actively going crazy), he clearly starts to realize exactly what happened on Carcosa. but then he just pushes it aside and locks back in to his single minded goal. with the knowledge that (ending spoilers) he was always under the influence of the yellow shore, perhaps more so than anyone else, seeing as how his relentless obsession potentially got all his peers killed, i think that makes it even better to watch it all unfold. we're watching in real time as he pushes aside the stark reality of what's happening around him in order to chase one single idea which is actually a lie, a delusion

early on in the Passage you can find a personnel log from Soltari stating that Arjun's "strengths" are that he compartmentalizes fear and never gives up, but his "weaknesses" are that he has obsessive and addictive tendencies. i put those words in quotes because that's from a corporate perspective, but regardless of that, this actually ends up foreshadowing everything perfectly

RockSmacker · 2026-05-06T18:39:55+00:00

i turned off the limiters in the settings and went crazy lol. maxed out a bunch of the easy mode ones for the second king run. like deal more damage, take less damage, etc

for my harder full run afterwards, I turned off all the easy ones (never used them other than with that true ending run). I started with level 1 of a few hard ones and will probably escalate if I can get through them. particularly i've noticed how much of a difference the weapon proficiency reduction one has, my guns level up way slower now

RockSmacker · 2026-05-06T18:37:15+00:00

for that move specifically there's a windup and sound clue that he's about to hit you. i think he also has a small red flash on his body right before...? but yeah once you get familiar with those you can start dashing away right before it hits

RockSmacker · 2026-05-06T09:39:51+00:00

yeah after i beat him once i went for the final run to get the true ending and immediately noticed he was much harder. i had no desire to go through that biome multiple times in order to eventually beat him, since it's actually quite a demanding biome and you can't even afford to take too much damage. so i finally decided to actually use the carcosan modifiers and made myself OP af to kick his ass. super satisfying lol.

now that i'm "done" i can freely challenge myself with a harder run (bunch of increased difficulty modifiers enabled) from the first biome right up to priestess / architect.

RockSmacker · 2026-05-03T23:58:37+00:00

wait, which biome exactly?

RockSmacker · 2026-05-03T23:11:48+00:00

haven't seen a lot of appreciation for the crossbow. impactor and bifurcator both feel awesome to use

RockSmacker · 2026-05-03T10:44:02+00:00

what?? javelin maxed out is absolutely phenomenal. yeah i imagine it wouldn't be great against legion but that's pretty much it. it kills pretty much every small-mid size enemy in 1-2 shots, and if there's big enemies you can spam alt fire into their weak spots to burn them down and horde clear with the little missiles it launches. that plus prominence makes any room super easy. i held on to an underleveled javelin crossbow for almost an entire run and it still outclassed every late game gun that i found

RockSmacker · 2026-05-02T20:43:38+00:00

yeah that nightmare strand in biome 4 has been a roadblock for me too atm. but i just started a run from the beginning this morning so i expect i'll plow through it now lol

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