Outer Wilds guide: Dark Bramble

After exploring everywhere else and reaching the Black Hole Forge, we can finally travel to the mysterious Dark Bramble.

In this guide, we’ll find the Hearthian explorer Feldspar, and then move on to finding Escape Pod 3 and the Nomai Vessel.

Find Feldspar

The Dark Bramble is mysterious and dangerous. You’ll be flying through a foggy planet full of thorned vines and weird, nesting dimensions inside seeds. Also, there are giant anglerfish that will eat your ship whole.

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When you approach Dark Bramble, fly into the foggy core of the planet. Pull up your signalscope, and tune it to Outer Wilds Ventures. You’re listening for Feldspar’s harmonica.

Inside the core, you’ll see glowing orbs where seeds are located. Assuming you haven’t rolled around too much on your flight here, the first seed you’re looking for is down and too the left. It’s the only signal you’ll pick up from him.

While traveling inside the core, you’ll be in danger of attracting the attention of anglerfish. But we learned back in the Sunless City that they’re blind, so you can avoid them by using your ship’s engines sparingly. Coast as much as possible, and when you do have to adjust your trajectory, do so gently and briefly.

Continue into the seed where you’re picking up Feldspar’s signal. You’ll have to dodge around some vines to get there.

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The next seed node will have a lot of orbs inside. Several of them will have a signal from Feldspar. The leftmost one is where you’re headed. Use the image above to help guide you.

Head into the next seed, and then continue forward to the next orb. It will be an anglerfish skeleton, and you’ll find Feldspar’s camp inside.

Feldspar’s Camp

Talk to Feldspar for a while to exhaust your dialogue options. He’s not super forthcoming or helpful, but he’s kind of lonely and has extra marshmallows.

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A lot of what you’ll learn from him will be about getting into the core of Giant’s Deep, which we’ve already done.

When you ask him You reached the core of Giant’s Deep? How’d you do it?, he won’t give you any new information, but he will point you to a new place to explore nearby.

Frozen Jellyfish

From Feldspar’s Camp, head toward the tail of the anglerfish skeleton. Straight out the back, you’ll see a flickering light — that’s Feldspar’s ship.

Keep heading straight for the ship. When you get close, don’t try to touch the ship — the electrical system is on the fritz, so you’ll get shocked. Instead, duck around the ship and into the hollow vine it crashed into.

Inside the hollow vine, follow it left and up. Just keep following that path for a while.

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After a quick warp, the path will continue. Just keep walking forward until you reach a snowy path. Follow that path around to the Frozen Jellyfish. Listen to Feldspar’s recording.

Just like we did on Giant’s Deep, walk up into the jellyfish’s bell. Inside the bell, you’ll find a note from Feldspar.

This camp and corpse are largely to teach you how to reach Giant’s Deep core, which we’ve already done in our earlier guides.

Once you’ve read everything, return to your ship, and we’ll head out to find Escape Pod 3.

Escape Pod 3

The easiest way to approach and find Escape Pod 3 is to start from orbit (and, depending on how long your first visit took, you might not have a choice). Approach Dark Bramble’s core the same way you did the first time.

Inside, tune your signalscope to the distress beacon frequency. Your goal will be on your right (again, assuming you didn’t roll too much). It’s the only signal you’ll be picking up.

Inside the next seed you come to, the signal will move down and a little right. You won’t be doing any more seed warping to get there, but it’s a ways off, there are a lot of vines, and there are anglerfish around. Just take your time on the approach.

Keep following your signalscope, and focus on only making small adjustments with your engines when necessary.

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When you reach Escape Pod 3, loop around to the back and head inside. Check the Nomai recording floating in the hallway, and continue inside. The layout of this escape pod is the same as the ones on Brittle Hollow and Ember Twin. Read all of the information on the Nomai computer, and then continue down to blow the escape pod’s door.

There’s one more Nomai recording to read just before you leave. It mentions that the Nomai left a trail of lights leading to their next destination.

Nomai Grave

Head back to your ship, and follow the lights. You’ll arrive at a grim scene.

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Hop out of your ship, and check the Nomai recording floating near the front as you approach. We know how signals in the Dark Bramble work, so we should be able to track down the Vessel from here.

Fire a scout into the seed. Use the camera to make sure it finds its way to the Vessel. Another scout signal will appear on your HUD.

Follow that scout signal.

The Vessel

Your approach to the Vessel won’t be easy.

Follow the scout signal from the Nomai Grave to a seed glowing red. Before you make it to the center and warp, make sure you’re going extremely slowly.

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On the other side of this seed, there are three (three!) anglerfish waiting for you. To get past them, you’re going to have to be extremely patient and careful.

Very slowly — excruciatingly slowly, in fact — make your way behind the first pair of anglerfish. This will take you a little out of the way, but it will get you around them. Make sure your engines never light up more than one notch on your instruments. You can even move before they light up a single notch. You’ll be crawling along, but if you get eaten, you’ll have to start from scratch, so it’s worth it.

Follow your scout’s signal to another seed. Head through it, and keep following the signal until you reach the Vessel.

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The entrance is through a tunnel in the side, near where your scout landed.

Inside, there is a flat surface that we’ll call the floor, and a curved surface we’ll call the ceiling. Take the first left. It’s a tunnel that leads to the Vessel’s control room.

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There’s a lot of confusing controls in here that don’t do anything at the moment. If you look in the center of the room, you’ll spot the Vessel’s broken warp core. (If only we knew where there was a working one.)

Follow the spiral ramps up to the second floor. There are two walls of Nomai script to read. On one side, you’ll see a distress call from the Vessel’s captain. On the other, you’ll see incoming transmissions from other Nomai.

What have we learned? // What’s next?

The biggest thing we learned was just how to reach the Vessel. We also found that it has a broken warp core — which we’ll presumably be replacing with the working warp core from the Ash Twin Project.

The Nomai writings we found filled in a little more of their (tragic) story.

If you check your ship log (and have been following along with us), you should only have a couple rumors not filled in yet. The Tower of Quantum Knowledge on Brittle Hollow, and the Quantum Moon. Since the tower is the suggested starting point before heading to the moon, let’s start there.