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  • How To Reach Abyssal Scar
  • How To Get Started In Abyssal Scar
  • How To Get Past The Gap
  • How To Open The Abyssal Vault
  • Tips To Survive In Abyssal Scar

After the brutal battle in the first five biomes of Returnal, you'll be able to land on the final biome called the Abyssal Scar. Since it's the final step in the main story, it'll be the hardest biome to beat. It also features a bunch of unique enemies that are exclusive to this area.

RELATED: Returnal: Fractured Wastes Walkthrough

All of your questions will be answered when you beat this biome, and the Roguelike nature of the game will remain, which will let you go through all the biomes again. You can also return to the first three areas with a special mechanism once you beat the story.

How To Reach Abyssal Scar

When you start playing Returnal for the first time, you'll spawn in the Overgrown Ruins biome and learn the game's basic mechanics. This will set you on a journey to find and beat unique enemies across the next few biomes until you reach the Fractured Wastes, which is the ice area in the game.

This is the only biome that doesn't have a final boss, but you have to get three Hadal Keys to open the main vault with a red door. The process to get these keys will be quite difficult since you'll be fighting certain mini-bosses that might be the most brutal mobs you've faced.

When you get inside the red vault, you'll find the permanent upgrade shown above, and it will let you go under the water. You can also find the permanent upgrade that lets you avoid damage from the red toxic water in this biome. Upon unlocking these upgrades, you can jump into the giant pool to get to Abyssal Scar.

The cool part about this area is that you can get to it from both Echoing Ruins and Fractured Wastes biome. Here's the location for the pool leading you to the biome in both areas:

  • Fractured Wastes has a giant room that has three paths where you found the Hadal Keys, the main vault door, and a giant pool in the middle.
  • As for Echoing Ruins, you'll have to go through two red doors to find two paths in the boss room. One of these paths will lead you to Fractured Wastes, while the other one leads to Abyssal Scar.

How To Get Started In Abyssal Scar

The Abyssal Scar area will feature plenty of mechanics that you've never seen before. For example, you'll notice that you can jump higher and longer as soon as you land in the area. This is because you're under the water, and your equipment allows you to jump higher and you don't go back to the ground as fast.

After claiming the healing consumable and the weapon proficiency item at the start, you can enter the main biome. As shown above, the starting area will be filled with small pathways and some traps dropping constant red orbs on the field. Other than that, you'll also encounter plenty of enemies called Anomos.

These are self-sacrificing enemies that can be defeated with one shot of any weapon. Moreover, it might take you a while to get used to platforms in this area since the distance between them is larger than in other biomes. You can still make this distance with a long jump and dash easily.

This area also has some hidden paths, and you need to look out for them. The path only gets revealed when you get to a specific area. You'll be going through plenty of rooms when your quest simply says "Sink into the depths", so don't worry about that too much. You'll eventually get to an area where the next platform will be far away.

As soon as you get here, your quest will be updated and you'll have to look around to find a way past the gap.

How To Get Past The Gap

Apart from the main gap you have to cross, you'll also see another gap that will lead you to a giant room below. To get the required item, you have to drop through this gap. In the room below, you'll see a new weapon along with a giant hostile blocking your way. This hostile is called the Malformed Typhonops.

There'll be a path behind the hostile that will have a door blocking it. You have to defeat the Malformed enemy to open the door, and it'll be one of the hardest battles in the game. Head through the path and you'll find the final permanent upgrade of the game on a Severed body. This will allow you to see certain white spheres.

You can hit these spheres with your weapon once to reveal the hidden platforms in the area, and this will help you cross the initial gap that started the quest.

After crossing the gap, you'll come across the room shown above, and it will have a bunch of Fabricators in front. Keep in mind that you won't be able to go back to any rooms before this once you jump into the area. Once you've done all the fabricating, jump down the huge hole in the middle to get to the next part.

After falling for a few seconds, you'll reach a room that will most likely have a tower that heals the surrounding hostiles. Furthermore, you'll be facing Abyssal Archonact and Typhonops here at the same time. If you manage to get past this room without losing all your health, you can go through a few more rooms to find the Abyssal Vault.

How To Open The Abyssal Vault

When you get the quest to open the Abyssal Vault, you'll see a marker that will lead you through the next area. Eventually, you'll reveal a structure of hidden platforms connected in the way shown above. When you step on these platforms, a bunch of Anomos and an Abyssal Archonact will spawn.

Defeat all the enemies and keep going to find the Abyssal Key in the next room. There will be another sphere that will create a path to the top part of the area. If you want to claim the items above, you'll have to defeat another Typhonops. Get the key back to the vault and open it to get to the final boss fight.

Defeat Ophion and enter the hole created by it. Keep following the path to find a giant creature that will reveal the entire story of how you got to Atropos. After this giant cutscene, you can use the device in your ship to switch between the first three and the last three biomes.

Tips To Survive In Abyssal Scar

With all the new mechanics and enemies, it can take you plenty of tries before you can even get to the final boss in Abyssal Scar. Though a few tips that can make your job a lot easier:

  • It's important to have headphones in this biome because you'll mostly be surrounded by Anomos, and they create a screeching sound before they dash at you. It's important to recognize this audio cue and perform a dash to dodge the hit instantly.
  • Typhonops and Abyssal Archonact enemies have certain attacks that can trigger a malfunction. Because of this, it's important to have no malfunctions from the items during your run. Certain consumables can also remove all your malfunctions instantly.
  • Some weapons like the Spitmaw Blaster and Pyroshell Caster can be quite useless in this biome since the former encourages close-range combat and the latter has a delayed hit effect. It's recommended to use long-range weapons with a bunch of bullets for all the enemies here.
  • Don't try to rush a certain battle. If you're fighting against too many enemies, it's recommended to go around the area and use the previous rooms to bait them one at a time. If you try to brute force the battle here, it will actively work against you.

NEXT: Returnal: How To Get Inside The House And What You'll Find Inside