Phineas’s Lab—Page Summary
- Meet with Phineas
- Create Throw-away save file for main story mission Foundation
- Main story mission The City and the Stars
Phineas’s Lab—Roadmap and Key Decisions
- Key Decision #1: Send a corrupted signal
- Key Decision #2: Execute termination protocol Foundation on a throw-away file
- Obtain the chemicals for Phineas
- Key Decision #3: Siphon off only 26.371% of the chemicals—NOT 100%
- Key Decision #4: As a player, decide whether to play the Gorgon and Eridanos quest lines in game or as mop-up.
Byzantium side quests & tasks. Items not bolded are optional:
- Why Call Them Back From Retirement
- The Lying Earth
Long Distance
Make Long Distance active. Exit the ship—your choice of companions doesn’t matter and you need not take any. Walk the short distance and enter the lab.
Before you talk to Phineas, grab the Shrink Ray science weapon off the table. It’s the fifth science weapon.
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Use the intercom to talk to Phineas. There’s a fair amount of ground to cover. Phineas needs you to obtain some chemicals in Byzantium. He provides a NavKey to the Byzantium Freight Port Landing Pad where you can meet with his contact. This initiates the main story quest The City and the Stars.
During the conversation, be truthful and reveal Sophia wants you to send a tracking signal from the lab. Tell him your intention is to refuse.
Phineas tells you to send the signal but corrupted. After exhausting conversational options, go to the nearby terminal. Make sure to choose the option to send the corrupted signal.
Walk back to your ship and enter—you can’t fast travel. AS SOON AS YOU ENTER and BEFORE going towards ADA, make a hard save. Do NOT overwrite this save, it is your Supernova game file of record.
You can now change the game’s difficulty. You need not, but it will make it easier to track the throw-away save files. If you change it to Story, all the save files you create will be marked with Story. When you’re finished unlocking a mutually exclusive achievement, they’re easily identifiable and you can erase them.
Make another manual save on a NEW save slot adhering to our policy of never over-writing a supernova file with a non-supernova file. This is for a throw-away segment.
Go to the Nav terminal. ADA will patch through a message from Sophia. She'll commend you for sending the tracking signal and attribute its corruption to Phineas’s security measures. She’ll ask to speak with you in person in Byzantium.
Before you go to Byzantium take a quick jaunt back to Emerald Vale. You’ll land at the Edgewater Landing pad. Enter Edgewater. Go directly to the Saltuna Factory and up the elevator. Without preamble, kill Reed and his guards. Quickly, go back the way you came and board your ship. You should encounter no resistance.
Note that we are on a throw-away segment. There’s no need to loot or go out of our way for extras. Travel to Byzantium and talk to Sophia. She’ll give you two missions—Signal Point in Space and Foundation.
Sophia may not give you both missions at the same time. If she only gives out one, return and she’ll give you the second. We’re only interested in Foundation.
There are reports of Foundation not activating. If so, make Signal Point in Space active. Note that, under normal circ*mstances, Signal Point in Space is optional and I recommend not doing it. However, it is simple and will trigger Foundation if it does not otherwise become available.
Make Foundation active.
Foundation
Return to your ship and fly to Emerald Vale. Exit the ship. Take SAM and Parvati with you—we’ll be fighting robots and they’ve got some bonuses against auto-mechanicals. Since, presumably, you’re no longer on a supernova file, fast travel to the Geothermal Plant.
Enter. Captain Hogarth will intercept you. Use dialog skills and he’ll step aside. Access the terminal at the quest marker and initiate the termination protocol.
Exit the Geothermal Plant and fast travel to Edgewater. The town is full of hostile robots. Kill them. When you defeat the last robot, you unlock:
- Ludwig was Right
Brought robo-destruction to Edgewater.
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That’s all we were after with this throw-away file—no need to return to your ship. Load up the supernova save file of record and delete the non-supernova throw-away save files.
We can now proceed with the game proper. As before, go to the Nav terminal. ADA will patch Sophia through. Sophia will commend you for a job well done but tell you that Phineas had some defenses in place that garbled the signal. She’ll ask to see you in Byzantium.
Return to Byzantium. Since you’re back on supernova, manage your equipment & inventory, sleep, eat, and drink as necessary. Exit the ship.
Sophia will give you the mission Signal Point in Space. She will also praise you for the great job you did in turning Edgewater around and restoring it to productivity. If she doesn’t tell you this when you first talk to her, return after exhausting the first dialog and she will. This unlocks:
- Mightier than the Sword
Saved Edgewater permanently.
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In many ways, Signal Point in Space is redundant to Radio Free Monarch. The only nuance is that, in addition to stopping the broadcasts which we’ve already done, the Board wishes to control the Devil's Peak station and regulate future broadcasts. It is optional and I recommend NOT doing it—we are going to depart from the Halcyon path & the Board’s agenda and get back on the Phineas path.
However, Signal Point in Space is super easy if you elect to do it. You simply have to travel to Fallbrook and go to the Devil’s Peak Station. Once inside, talk to Hiram and intimidate him into doing Sophia’s bidding.
If we had not previously done Radio Free Monarch, the quest would have been quite complex. We would have, first, been required to go through the machinations to convince MSI and the Iconoclasts to stop their broadcasts.
If, for whatever reason, Sophia does not commend you for your work in Edgewater and you do not unlock the Mightier than the Sword achievement, make Signal Point in Space active. Note that, under normal circ*mstances, Signal Point in Space is optional and I recommend not doing it. However, it is simple and will trigger Foundation if it does not otherwise become available.
Whether or not you do Signal Point in Space, make The City and the Stars active. Fast travel to your ship.
The City and the Stars
Go to the Nav terminal. Travel to the Byzantium Freight Port Landing Pad. Make sure you have 3 Spectrum Vodka Red in inventory. If you don’t have them in inventory and/or in your stash, you can find them in your stateroom and elsewhere on your ship.
Exit the ship. I recommend SAM and Nyoka as companions to boost Intimidate and Lie. You should be able to pass skill checks on your own so the choice is up to you including taking no companions.
Keep an eye open for the following weapons when you check with vendors and vending machines. Alternatively, you might find them as loot:
- Dead-Eye Assault Rifle III—mod it with Extend-O-Sight, FunTimes barrel, and Mag-2-Melt
- Light Assault Rifle Mk 3—mod it with Extend-O-Sight, FunTimes barrel, and Mag-2-Zap
These are the most advanced of the weapons best suited to your character build. Don’t go out of your way because they may not be available yet. When they do become available, they are not uncommon and you will come across them sooner or later.
Items not bolded are optional and can be skipped by those who favor expediency
- The Unreliable docking point
- Carmen Imagawa
- Elevator to Upper Level
Depending on how much you’ve been exploring and/or the degree to which you have been pursuing side quests and tasks, you should be close to level 30 and may have even surpassed it. Once you reach level 30, you unlock:
- Level 30
Character level 30 reached.
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If you have not reached level 30 yet, don’t worry. The XP rewards from the upcoming quests are substantial and you should soon reach that level. The Gorgon and Eridanos quest lines provide massive XP whether played in-game or as mop up. Thus, there is no danger of missing the achievement.
Follow the quest marker to Carmen Imagawa, Phineas’s contact. Exhaust the conversation. Among other things, you learn of a guard with a key.
Follow the quest marker. Go behind Carmen to an elevator. Take it up to enter the city. You exit close to the point where you first encountered Maverick Johnston.
Items not bolded are optional and can be skipped by those who favor expediency
- Exit from Freight Port Landing Pad elevator to City of Byzantium
- Billingsly's House of Inebriation—ply Guard Mayfield with Vodka
- Hortense Ingalsbee—Why Call Them Back From Retirement?
- Minister Clarke’s Residence
- HHC Building
- Ministry of Accuracy & Morale
Follow the quest marker to Billingsly's House of Inebriation. If you don’t have 3 Spectrum Red Vodkas, buy them from the auto-mechanical bartender. Once you have the vodkas, at the quest marker, talk to Guard Mayfield.
Use the conversational choices to give him Spectrum Vodka each time it's an option. After the third drink, Mayfield retires to a small room and falls asleep on the couch. Follow him and close the door. Loot him while he’s sleeping to get the Minister's Estate Key.
Follow the quest marker to Minister Clarke's residence. Along the way, you encounter Hortense Ingalsbee. You don’t need to speak to her. If you do, she gives you the optional side quest, Why Call Them Back From Retirement?
I recommend you ignore Hortense and skip the quest. It’s a tedious investigation into the Retirement District that involves combat with auto-mechanicals. At this point, it’s a distraction at a critical juncture in the story.
At Minister Clarke's residence, tell the guard you have a parcel—the one you looted earlier from the HPC. He’ll let you enter. Go upstairs and talk to Minister Clarke.
Exhaust the conversational options to learn some disturbing information. He'll give you an HHC access card. Additionally, he initiates the optional quest, the Lying Earth. Though optional, it dovetails with what we’re doing and only involves an entry at a terminal we’ll be accessing anyway for an achievement.
Follow the quest marker into the HHC and up the elevator to the lobby where you’ve been interacting with Sophia. No need to talk to anyone. You’re in the Board’s good graces and should already be cleared. If you have been doing things differently from the WT and are challenged, use dialog skills to get by.
Follow the quest marker to the locked door and use the access card you got from Minister Clarke to open it. Once inside, follow the marker through a hole in the wall into the next room. Access the terminal designated by the marker.
Choose the option Send Minister Clarke's Message to Earth to conclude the Lying Earth task. Continue choosing options—View Priority Message and Print Ministry Keycard. The latter gives you access to the Ministry of Accuracy and Morale. After you print out the Ministry of Accuracy and Morale Key, you view a cutscene. Watching it unlocks:
- The Audience Gasps
Learned the shocking truth about the colony.
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If you want, you can skip the cutscene and the achievement will still pop. Nevertheless, it provides valuable insight into the Board’s intentions. After watching it (or skipping it), exit the office.
If Percival Platt accosts you, use dialog skills—lie or intimidate—and he’ll return to his desk. Head down the elevator and transition to Byzantium. Follow the quest marker left and use the Ministry of Accuracy and Morale Key you just printed to open the locked door. Transition into the Ministry of Accuracy and Morale creating an auto-save as you do so.
You face a flight of stairs with guards on either side. Pickpocket the one on the left to get a UDL ID Cartridge so you can disguise yourself in the restricted areas with the holographic shroud.
Don’t go up the stairs. Follow the quest marker. Go either left or right, enter a door, and go to the elevator. Both the door on the right and the door on the left lead into the area with the elevator. Take the elevator down.
Follow the quest marker left following the yellow line on the floor that leads to the Hibernation Lab. It’s a little complex so you might want to refer to the below map and its instructions.
Note that, if you are the inquisitive type and had previously recovered Giles Molina’s lab sprats, he will be in animal testing—follow the red line on the floor. Since you had helped him, Giles is well disposed towards you and will give you the key to chemical storage. This is more a piece of trivia than an actual advantage—the solution below suffices just fine.
Ministry of Accuracy and Morale
- Starting point—follow the yellow line on the floor past the Central Lab to the Hibernation Lab
- Enter the Hibernation Lab. Go up the stairs to the right. Wait for guard to pass. Enter the door and jump over the railing to the lower level
- Access the terminal. Transfer 26.371% Dimethyl Sulfoxide
- Steal Dimethyl Sulfoxide cannister
- Unbar door and exit. Take the elevator up. Unbar another door. Turn left and exit the Ministry of Accuracy and Morale
The terminal gives you options to transfer either 100% or 26.371% of the Dimethyl Sulfoxide. Phineas will grumble because you didn’t siphon off the entire amount. But it is the right thing to do.
If you take all of it, you will kill the people hibernating in the Hibernation Lab. Moreover, Phineas is not the only person who needs the chemicals and the colony will suffer if you take all of it. Thus, for the best ending, choose the 26.371% option.
Once you exit, fast travel to your ship. Go to Phineas’s Lab. Sophia might cut in on the comms channels with an irate message but there’s nothing she can do to stop you.
When you arrive at the lab, exit the ship. Take Parvati and Max with you although you won’t need their boosts to Engineering and Science respectively. Exhaust the conversational options. Pass science and engineering skill checks—about 40 each—and suggest jumping The Hope. This initiates the main story quest. Kept Secret But Not Forgotten.
Make a hard manual save here. Decide whether you want to go to Gorgon or The Hope.
If you have not purchased the DLCs, skip to page 13. Otherwise, you have a Decision Point:
- Recommended Approach: You can continue to follow the walkthrough on supernova as written.
- Next in sequence are the two DLCs: Peril on Gorgon and Murder on Eridanos
- The two DLCs are add-ons to the story. Each presents a questline with associated story.
- Alternative Approach: Skip pages 11 and 12 and go to page 13. Complete the main story and unlock the Supernova achievement
- Load the special system save the game created at the point of no return.
- Resume playing pages 11, 12, and the introduction to page 13.
If you play the Gorgon and Eridanos DLCs in-game, you will increase your accomplishments in the end-game notes. Since we are opting for the best outcome for each quest line, your efforts result in substantial improvements to the colony. This has nothing to do with achievements—it relates only to your personal game-playing goals.
At this point in the game, you are quite advanced and have (or are about to acquire) the most powerful weapons at your disposal. The Gorgon and Eridanos quest lines give you the opportunity to showcase your mastery of the game.
On the other hand, if your primary goal is achievement hunting, the most expedient approach is to rush through to the end of the game. With the Supernova achievement in hand, backtrack on the easy Story difficulty and mop up the Gorgon and Eridanos quest lines and a couple of miscellaneous achievements.
With this in mind, proceed. If you want to play the Gorgon and Eridanos DLCs in-game, go to page 11. If you want to play the Gorgon and Eridanos DLCs as mop-up, go to page 13 and circle back to page 11 once you have the Supernova achievement.
If you have not purchased one or both of the DLCs, skip the associated DLC playthrough presented in pages 11 and/or 12. Proceed to page 13 and complete the base game.
11. Peril on Gorgon9. Byzantium
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