Ok so, I found the, uh, thing. This is pretty nuts, I’m wandering, I guess you could say, and just trying random things in random places - hoping things will kind of click into place like it did in the original game. Really cool to be back in the Outer Wilds game universe - I flew around catching up with other astronauts on the other planets first, getting my feel for how to get around for a bit. Really nice!
I can only enjoy Outer Wilds through other players’ new adventures now so I’d love to hear how you fare going back in for Echoes of the Eye! Keep us in the loop (hyuk!) on your progress.
I played a little bit when the game released, enjoyed some of my time with it, frustrated with some. I was partially frustrated because the performance was a dog and that made flying and landing more difficult. I have a new PC now so maybe it will be better. If I play a new game would it be best to have the DLC installed for it?
The DLC does not affect the main game as such. So feel free to play it without and see whether it works better for you.
Let’s see then - played a bunch this weekend, wandered around quite a bit and found a lot of things that kind of make sense? But I haven’t been able to put them together into a cohesive whole just yet. I’ll spoiler block the content because I’d hate to take away the opportunity to discover for oneself if any readers have yet to play -
So I started as I did the main game, just wandering around finding places, things to possibly do, stuff to pick up and wonder what the heck to do with it. I figured out the slide wheels pretty easily and got a bunch of clues to check out. One led me to the cylindrical tower (which I have since discovered is one of three, at least so far) and the ‘secret’ door included within. I moved the lamps away from the noted painting and a door did appear! So then I found a room with some mummies? I think? in a circle facing a green fire. They were all holding odd devices, but I couldn’t do anything with them, nor anything out of the norm with the fire, so I left.
But eventually I figured something out. I had already found the house that was surrounded by ghost matter, though it took me an embarrassing long time to find a safe route inside the house. Once I did I discovered several artifacts that the mummies had, that I could take for myself. It had options for ‘focus’ and ‘conceal’ and the artifact shifted when I activated those options, though I couldn’t tell that anything actually happened. So I took it back to the mummies, hoping something would happen. But it didn’t. Still, I did notice they were circling the fire, and since there were only two things I could do with the fire - I made a marshmallow and took a nap. And woke up … somewhere else.
It’s at this point that I have kind of lost focus. I can wander around slowly, for one reason because it’s so dark and also because there’s a lot of water and apparently I can’t swim. I don’t die, but I guess it wakes me up in the ‘real’ world, so any progress is lost. I got as far as summoning a raft and finding another tower with more slides, but I’m not sure what I’m really supposed to do here.
Oh also! I did find a submerged vault thing. It’s all locked up, but I think it has a green fire as well, so I should try taking the artifact here and napping. I need to try to locate all the fires and see if they do the same thing, or go to the same place. That’s about as much as I have on leads at the moment.
Oh nice. Sounds like you’ve got plenty to be looking into! :) Can’t wait to hear more, in your own time of course.
Yeah, you’ve made some progress there. Never stop exploring.
Something you already mentioned: It took me an embarrassingly long time to just try sleeping by the green fire with the artifact in hand.
I guess I kind of lucked into being on the developers’ wavelength with that one. I noticed the room with the green fire and mummies, all were holding the artifact and seemed to be pointing their artifacts at the fire. I had to go back and find an artifact, but when I got back, there just seemed to be the two options. And I’ll be honest, I tried toasting a marshmallow first.
I played a bit more last night and found stuff, but don’t really feel like I made any real progress. I know that the slide reels hold clues, but I can’t always interpret them, or know where to put them in play. Also, I investigated more of the ‘dream world’ (for lack of a better name) and eventually I just come across more of the owl people, who kick me out of the dream. I can’t really seem to avoid or dodge them, even if I conceal the artifact’s light they seem to be able to find me and they’re really fast, I can’t outrun them. If anyone has a hint or tip about dealing with those guys, I wouldn’t mind a slight push.
As a very generic tip:
There is enough wiggle room to outmanoeuvre them in various ways via stealth and timing but all the locations with them have “puzzle solutions” that “solve” them as well.
Hm, ok. I’m thinking of a specific situation I encountered last night:
I went into the lodge built into the cliffside, think it’s in the Hidden Gorge? Anyway, the place where you have to light the bridge to make it visible, then cross and find the invisible path back to extinguish the lights in the lodge, then go back into the lodge and do – something? I didn’t get far because there’s this owl guy that sits just on the other side of this bridge I have to cross. One time I successfully drew him over the bridge and off to one side, then I concealed my lamp and sneaked past. But this is hazardous, because while there’s a guardrail on the bridge itself, there isn’t one on the banks and it’s easy to fall in the water and get kicked out of the dream world.
This may be one of those cases where I’m missing the puzzle aspect you speak of, and beating my head against the wall trying to get by. The owl guys kind of remind me of the anglerfish, where I just couldn’t figure out how to get past them to where I wanted to be in the Dark Bramble. Turned out, I just wasn’t picking up what the game was telling me until I had one of those light bulb moments. I’m guessing that’s what’s going on here.
Yuck, that is actually my by far least favourite part/area of the game.
Time to regret my words. Of all the cases in the game this is the one that is not perfectly “cleanly” solvable. This time and in this specific cursed house you are not missing anything more than what you described. You are on the right track and just need to learn the layout. Using hands and certain paths you can limit all encounters to “waiting till they have passed and then quickly crossing their patrol route”, though some stealth and juking while blind can make it much faster.
This section seriously killed my enjoyment for a long while. It is possible to traverse the lodge without contact but to get there you have to learn the layout by failing several times.
As two upsides: once you have done it you (can) learn of a shortcut for future visits, and the other areas are much less frustrating and more rewarding to solve.
Some super real musing spoilers: I hate to say it, but it is 100% possible to avoid all owl guys in the game. And I really mean zero encounters. Zero stealth segments. This does require full in-game knowledge though. You should still discover this for yourself. And always, it’s only in hindsight 20/20 anyways unless you are super clever/experimental.
That’s the issue though, right? Unless you stumble into some sequence breaking mechanical knowledge, you can’t learn how to do this without first passing at least one stealth section the basic way.
Right. It is only natural. I guess I should have just said, duh you can complete Myst in 5 minutes if you know the end-game puzzle. I am a daft meta-gaming extraordinaire.
I suppose with Outer Wilders it can’t be helped.
It is tricky but I loved that segment, mostly because you can scope the place out before lights (and owls) out. I thought that was a clever way of reducing the difficulty down to just the owl folk’s patrols and behaviour. That’s tough enough, of course.
Well, it’s not a huge deal (I hope). There is some comfort in knowing that I have the right idea, just failing in the execution. I guess the thing that kind of bugs me is that I don’t even know what I am there for, or what I need to be doing, or where I need to go. It adds stress to an already fairly stressful situation, wandering around in the dark knowing there are things out there that want to kick me out. If I had a goal I’d head for it, but I don’t even know the layout of the place. I’d wander around before blowing out the lights, but I think the place I need to be is probably behind one of the doors that I open by blowing out the lights in the first place. Oh well, practice makes perfect, I hope!
No harm in having a wander while the lights are on and nobody is home, or awake.
Something in the game explicitly tells you to go here. If this gets too frustrating, you could always go exploring until you run into it.
I don’t recall being told explicitly to go there, but I guess I felt like I was kind of being guided there. So, I found the underwater locked-up thingie (forget what it’s called) and that it has three symbols. I’ve got several slide wheels that point to this thingie being pretty central, and I’m assuming that the three mummy-surrounded fires likely correspond to these locks. I realize that could be way off base, but I’m guessing I have to find the combination to the locks somewhere in the dream world. You don’t have to tell me if I’m wrong, I’m sure I’ll find better info along the way.
There’s a bunch of stuff that I have no idea what to do with. I have no idea what those ‘alarm’ thingies are, the Eye of Sauron things that will also kick me out if they spot me. I’m sure there is important stuff they are guarding but I don’t have any clue about how to get by them yet. I did find one coded lock outside, and the code to open it was nearby, which pointed me to some kind of screen telling me that something wasn’t working? Maybe? Anyway, I’m still kind of in ‘wander around and poke stuff’ mode at this point, it just feels like all the clues (and the slide wheels) point to the dream world, so I’m focusing my effort there at the moment.
Have you explored all buildings in the overworld? That might provide some direction.