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Your time exploring Carcosa in Saros is rife with danger, and it can be difficult to know what to focus on while you’re playing. We’ve spent over 40 hours in Saros so far, and we want to share our insight with those who have only jumped in for the first few hours. Here are six of the most important things we recommend doing first when playing Saros.
Don’t Backtrack in Older Areas - Keep Moving Forward
It’s tempting to want to return to previous locations and explore what you might have missed, especially if you have new equipment. Although it is tempting, we recommend against that until you’ve unlocked at least every piece of equipment. If you haven’t done that yet, you won’t find too much value in returning to older regions.
You’re better off focusing on the primary objective and pushing through the latest area. In the Armor Matrix, the major boss of an area blocks off a lot of your next tier of upgrades, and focusing on those is a good way to stay on top of every area. If you spend time backtracking, you can get Lucenite, but you’ll run out of Halcyon pickups for those upgrades, and you won’t be getting new upgrade slots. You’re better off focusing on the main plot until you reach close to the end of the game, and you have every Permanent Equipment slot available.
Focus on Drive Upgrades and Looting Halcyons
Upon returning to the main area where you can interact with Primary and the other survivors of your team, you’ll gain access to the Armor Matrix. Here, you can spend any of the Lucenite you’ve acquired on armor upgrades. Of the available armor upgrades, focusing on the Drive ones is your best choice. These improve the amount of Lucenite you receive when defeating enemies and the ones you pick up from the ground. In the long run, having a higher Drive stat means you can unlock additional upgrades for your others, such as Resilience and Command.
Additionally, the Armor Matrix gives you access to Halcyon upgrades. You can find these as you explore the various regions of Carcosa in Saros. There’s a chance you can find these from exploring side paths or unlocking containers. Whenever you have a chance to pick these up, do so! Each region has a set amount, and the more you pick up, you’ll be able to unlock worthwhile upgrades for your armor, and you’ll see them less whenever you explore that area. This provides you with additional weapon or Power Weapon upgrades.
Wait to Start Eclipse as Late as Possible
The Eclipse is a more intense phase that makes the monsters more aggressive during your run in Carcosa. Thankfully, there’s a pedestal that appears for you to interact with if you want to enter this part of the game. However, we recommend waiting as long as possible, so much so that progression is blocked until you do this.
Our main reasoning behind this comes down to the increased difficulty of the phase and that you’ll start finding corrupted Artifacts, which can have some negative side effects.
Artifacts are passive upgrades that provide a wide variety of benefits for you. Corrupted Artifacts on the other hand, appear only during an Eclipse. While the corruption provides a boost to the benefits you receive from an Artifact, it also comes with a negative, such as taking extra damage from enemies or losing Lucenite when you get hit. This can make your progression through the level even more challenging.
Waiting to start the Eclipse until you don’t have a choice is the best way to ensure you can progress further in a run. Knowing you have to do this is important, and it might also be a good idea to activate one at the beginning of a run. However, we recommend you do this when you’ve reached far into the game, and you want to reach every hidden area and have access to all of the Permanent Equipment.
Always Compare Weapon Traits and Skills
Unfortunately, every weapon that you encounter in Saros will be completely randomized with various traits and skills allocated to it. For this reason, your main focus when it comes to weapons should always be picking up ones that offer a higher proficiency score than your current one. But when their stats are relatively close, be sure to take a look at the special traits and skills associated with them.
You’ll find that there are at least three stat skills associated with a weapon, and one to five traits that augment how these weapons work. The stat skills are better compared to your current stat scores for that run, meaning you might want to use a Handcannon with two Command skills over an Onslaught Rifle that only has one, or none. Additionally, a weapon’s traits also provide other benefits as well, such as an Onslaught Rifle with Piercing Rounds and Trinity Hit.
You can take a look and examine these skills from your Equipment page in the menu, and becoming familiar with these can give you a leg up on your journey. It doesn’t hurt to become picky with your weapons, unless the proficiency score is a five-level difference. At that point, take the weapon with the higher skill because the damage scaling between those two weapons is too great for you to continue to use a lower-level weapon, even if you appreciate it more.
Don’t Be Afraid to Remove Artifacts
The Artifacts you pick up during a run normally stay with you until you die, or return to the Passage and try again. Every Artifact you pick up provides a series of benefits (and negatives if it’s a Corrupted Artifact). If you find one as you’re exploring that you really want to add to your build, but you have a full inventory, you can remove an Artifact if you don’t find the benefits worthwhile for you. The only way to do this is with an Acolyte’s Wager.
The Acolyte’s Wager is an Armor Matrix upgrade that appears after you defeat Prophet, and you have enough Lucenite to buy it. These appear in your run, but you can start with one at the beginning of a run with the Armor Matrix upgrade. Your Acolyte’s Wager is primarily used to reroll any weapon, Artifact, or Power Weapon rewards you unlock from containers, but you can also use it to remove any of the Artifacts you’ve picked up.
We recommend reviewing your Artifacts before a boss fight, or if you find one that suits your build and you don’t have any slots yet. So long as you have at least one Acolyte’s Water, you’ll be able to remove any Artifact you’ve picked up and switch it out for a new one.
Grab Lucenite Quickly
Noticed that you’re not acquiring as much Lucenite as you might have expected? Well, you’re not imagining it, as the Lucenite is actually disappearing before you can even get to it. This happens because once you’ve defeated a foe, it’ll drop all of its Lucenite on the ground, and you’ll have just a short amount of time to pick it up before it shoots into the air, disappearing altogether.
You can try grabbing it during a fight, or purchase upgrades from the Armor Matrix screen to have it remain on the ground for longer periods of time. These are worthwhile upgrades as you advance further in Saros and face off against stronger foes. Sometimes, it’s better to let the Lucenite disappear, rather than chase after it and risk taking a hefty hit from a hostile projectile, cutting your run short!
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