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Developed by Housemarque and published by Sony,Returnalis one of the Roguelike games with the best graphics out there. As you start the game, you’ll play as Selene who’ll be stranded on a random rogue island. Every time you get defeated in the game, you’ll have to start all over again.
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The game will take you to the Overgrown Ruins when you start playing for the first time, and you’ll have to find some specific items to get past this biome. The rooms are randomly generated every time you start a new run, but the main requirements to beat the area stay the same.
How To Beat Overgrown Ruins
The biomes in Returnal have two types of rooms determined by their door icon on the map.If the icon is a rectangular Cyan or Red door, it’s essential and contains some part of the main story. On the other hand, a blue triangular door leads to different side rooms that aren’t necessary to progress in the game.
If you want to beat Overgrown Ruins,you’ll first have to find the portal room shown above. This room’s door icon on the map will be rectangular with a circle above it. There are only two doors that look like that in Overgrown Ruins: one leads to the Tower Of Sisyphus while the other leads to the portal room.
You won’t be able to get to Tower Of Sisyphus for a whilesince it needs you to get a certain technology that can only be found in the Crimson Wastes domain. This part is not required for beating Overgrown Ruins.
In this portal room, you’ll find a broken Automaton that will give you the Atropian Sword.This is the permanent Melee weapon in the game and you don’t lose it even if you’re defeated. Although, you will lose certain artefacts and parasites that can increase its effects.
After claiming the sword, the main door of this room will have a red barrier. You have to destroy this barrier to move forward.The main quest will also update and it’ll ask you to break another red barrier apart from the one in the portal room entry. With this, you’ll finish the first step to beat the Overgrown Ruins.
How To Find Anathema Key
The next step is touse the Atropian Sword to get into a specific room that is blocked by a red barrier. You might’ve already seen this room before you found the portal room. To find it easily, head over to your map and look for rectangular doors that aren’t grayed out yet. One of these will likely be the door you’re looking for.
If you don’t see any doors like this,you will have to explore the area further and find it. Once you break the barrier in this room, you’ll find the Anathema Key sitting in front of a statue.This key looks like a normal key except for the glowing red part in the middle. When you pick the key up, a bunch of Lamiadon will spawn behind the statue.
It’s not necessary to kill these enemies sinceyou can use the doorway to go out or use the teleporting device to get to the next area. The enemies won’t follow you for long if you run, but you can also defeat them easily since they have low HP.
How To Find Phrike
Once you have the Anathema Key in your possession,it’s time to look for the main boss in Overgrown Ruins. Open your map and see if you may find a red rectangular door as shown above.There are only two doors like this in the entire biome and you’ll find Phrike after going through themand using the Anathema Key.
Go through the first red door to find two narrow pathways leading up to the vault. This area will contain multiple Atropian Turret, and some of them will have a red shield around them.Just like the red barriers, you’ll need to attack these turrets with your melee weapon, which means you have to get close to them.
Apart from the constant fire from the turret themselves,the shining lights in the area will also make it harder to get close to the turrets. If you get detected by these lights, a giant eye will shoot deadly lasers at you. This attack is very fast and it can be hard to dodge, so it’s important to constantly move.
Defeat all the turrets andget to the top of the area where you’ll be able to use the Anathema Key to open the vault. Beyond the vault entrance, you’ll see a huge crack in the wall that will lead you to Phrike. Near the crack, you’ll find a body with a pistol shown as a red object in the room.
This pistol is generally bait and you don’t need to exchange it for your weapon since it doesn’t give any special powers.It’s mostly used as a landmark to tell you that you’re headed to the boss room. At the bottom, you will get the Crimson Key once you defeat Phrike. Although, the boss has three phases and can be quite hard to beat.
Head back to the portal room where you found the Atropian Sword with the key.This will let you activate the portal and get you to the next biome, Crimson Wastes.
Tips To Beat Overgrown Ruins
Even if it’s the first biome,Overgrown Ruins can be the hardest biome to beat because you have to learn a lot of mechanics. Here are a few tips that can help you get to Crimson Wastes:
