Items

Not one item in this bucket is a weapon you pick up and start using. Every single one is a permit. It buys you entry to a place you are currently locked out of, a creature you cannot otherwise own, a boss terminal that will not otherwise open, or a set of levels you have not earned yet. Lined up by what they charge for that permission, the nine pages turn into a fee scale, and the scale runs a very long way.

The free tier: notes that pay you instead

Explorer notes invert the whole arrangement. They cost nothing but the walk, and they are the only items here that hand you levels rather than demanding them. Each note is worth 100 XP on pickup and starts a stretch of doubled experience, which makes a collection run one of the more efficient things you can do with an afternoon.

On Aberration our page maps eleven separate pickups with coordinates, running from the Portal area through to the Old Railway Cave. Extinction organises its notes by author instead, so you are collecting Helena Walker's dossiers alongside entries from Mei Yin, Santiago, Diana Altaras and the one who waits, with two Genesis Chronicles entries and a Forest Cave note folded in. Extinction is also the better payday: finishing the set there is worth ten character levels on top of the per-note experience.

The Genesis Chronicles are a strange member of the family, because although the reward is a Genesis one, the fifteen notes are not on Genesis. They are scattered over The Island, Scorched Earth, Aberration and Extinction, grouped into three volumes, which means the collection is really a tour of everywhere you have already been. What they unlock is cosmetic, a set of Corrupted Avatar skins, so this is the one entry on the list where the permit buys you a look rather than an ability.

The middle tier: two suits and an egg

Aberration is the map that charges you to be there at all, and it does it with two pieces of gear that are really admission tickets. The Glider Suit unlocks at level 62 and needs Blue Gems, which our page pins to a farm at 37 lat, 53 lon, alongside the usual metal, hide and fiber. In a place with no flyers, a suit you deploy by tapping the spacebar twice is not a luxury item; it is how you cross the map.

The Hazard Suit sits six levels higher at 68 and solves the other half of the problem. Blue Gems again, plus Congealed Gas Balls, polymer and crystal at a Fabricator, and what you get for it is permission to walk through radiation. Together the two suits are the reason Aberration needs its own map coverage rather than just a spawn list.

Magmasaur Eggs are the odd one out, an item whose price is paid entirely in nerve. Lost Island keeps them in two lava caves: one at 10.5, 66.9, the other over at 22.3, 65.3. The job is to take an egg out from under a guarding dragon while wearing enough heat protection to survive the room. The permit here is a creature: there is no taming route, so the egg is the only way in.

The expensive tier: Fjordur wants everything

Fjordur supplies three of the nine pages and all three of the largest bills, which is unusual for a map that is otherwise thinly covered here.

The artifacts page is one of the more reliable documents in this folder: it promises twelve and it names exactly twelve, from the Strong at 08.8, 24.5 through the Hunter, Immune, Clever, Pack, Brute, Skylord, Cunning, Devourer, Massive, Stalker and Shadows. What that dozen buys is access, and the page carries the terminal coordinates to prove it, covering Beyla, Steinbjorn, Hati and Skol, Broodmother, Megapithecus, Dragon and Fenrir. Seven doors for twelve keys. It also has a troubleshooting section for artifacts that refuse to spawn, which is worth knowing about before you assume you have walked to the wrong cave.

Then there are the runes, and the number is not a typo: two hundred of them. Our page breaks the hunt down by region rather than trying to number them in one list, working through the Swamp, Volcanic and Space biomes and then Vannaland, Vanaheim, Asgard, Jotunheim and Vardiland. Like the artifacts page it ends on a section about runestones failing to appear, which tells you something about how long people spend on this.

Mjolnir: the item that wants you finished first

And then the top of the scale. Mjolnir asks for all two hundred runes, character level 190, and a clean sweep of the bosses. Our page lays the sequence out as four separate jobs: kill Alpha creatures for runestones, kill the Alpha mini-bosses for relics, kill the Island bosses for trophies, and then kill Fenrir, who is the one actually holding the hammer. What you walk away with is a weapon that throws chain lightning.

It is worth sitting with the shape of that for a moment, because it is what makes this bucket coherent. At one end are the explorer notes, which cost nothing and hand you ten levels. At the other is a hammer that will not acknowledge you below level 190. The items in this game start out making you stronger and end up demanding that you already are, and everything in between, the suits, the eggs, the artifacts, is a step along that line. If you want the systems that actually turn materials into gear, they are in our mechanics guide, the raw materials are in resources, and the wiki hub covers which map to be on.

Frequently asked questions

What is the fastest way to level using items?

Explorer notes, and Extinction's set in particular. Every note is 100 XP with a doubled-experience window on top, and completing Extinction's collection is worth ten character levels by itself.

Do I need both Aberration suits?

They solve different problems. The Glider Suit at level 62 is how you move around a map with no flyers, and the Hazard Suit at level 68 is what keeps radiation from killing you. Most of Aberration eventually asks for both.

How many Fjordur artifacts are there and what are they for?

Twelve, and our page names all twelve with cave coordinates. They open the seven boss terminals on that map, which include the Broodmother, Megapithecus, Dragon and Fenrir.

Is Mjolnir worth the grind?

That depends on whether you were going to do the work anyway. The requirements, 200 runes, level 190 and every boss, describe a more or less completed save, so the hammer is closer to a trophy for finishing Fjordur than a tool for getting through it.