Outer Wilds Echoes of the Eye walkthrough: Cinder Isles guide

In this Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye Cinder Isles walkthrough, we’ll guide you through navigating the Cinder Isles, exploring more huts, and finding a hidden lake, plus a Ritual Tower, Burned Reels, a Refueling Station, and more.

Table of contents

• Cinder Isles walkthrough
• Ritual Tower
• Two Burned Reels
• Hidden Entrance to the Ritual Tower
• Refueling Station
• Hidden Reel 2
• Missing Bridge

Cinder Isles walkthrough

As the raft floats, the Cinder Isles are the second area you’re likely to reach in Echoes of the Eye. A collection of precariously stilted huts, the village is easily recognizable due to the looming presence of a tall wooden tower. There are a few secrets to find here, so let’s get looking.

Ritual Tower

Did you notice the hut with paintings and lanterns in the River Lowlands? The Cinder Isles also has a building with the same kind of room, but this one towers over the rest of the village. It will be important later, but you don’t need to worry about it yet.

Two Burned Reels

To find this area’s projection hut, look for a building with white, red, and yellow paint on its exterior. Inside, you’ll find two burned reels, one with a jagged star-like symbol on the outside and a second with a symbol showing intersecting concentric circles.

Image: Mobius Digital/Annapurna Interactive via Polygon

The reel with the intersecting circle symbol shows one of the owl people sealing a mysterious vessel. The reel with the star-like symbol shows one of the owl people witnessing a cataclysmic event related to the star-symbol and burning down the destroyed building in the Cinder Isles. Both reels seem incomplete, though only the star-symbol one has burned slides.

Hidden Entrance to the Ritual Tower

In a building whose facade features white painted symbols that resemble downward-facing antlers, search the top floor to find a different kind of projector that faces a painting of the tower. Placing a lantern on the stool behind the projector will cause light to appear on the painting, showing a backdoor route into the tower.

Grid View

• Image: Mobius Digital/Annapurna Interactive via Polygon
• Image: Mobius Digital/Annapurna Interactive via Polygon
• Image: Mobius Digital/Annapurna Interactive via Polygon
• Image: Mobius Digital/Annapurna Interactive via Polygon
• Image: Mobius Digital/Annapurna Interactive via Polygon
• Image: Mobius Digital/Annapurna Interactive via Polygon

The entrance is a cave hidden in the rocky island that supports the tower. Enter and climb up the spiraling rock ramp to enter the tower. Climb the stairs to find some kind of study featuring a painting of the tower and a reel with a green circle on the outside. Continue to the top of the tower to find four pictures, each depicting one of four ritual structures in The Stranger.

Take the reel back to the projection room and play it. It shows the owl people entering the ritual tower, removing a lantern from in front of the picture of the owl person beneath a ringed planet, and then walking into the now-dark niche where the lantern was. The reel also depicts other owl people doing the same at ritual buildings throughout The Stranger.

Refueling Station

This one is purely practical but, on the island where there are charred remains of a burned-down building, you can find a tank that lets you refuel your jetpack. Exploring The Stranger takes a lot of fuel, so it’s good to keep this location in mind.

Image: Mobius Digital/Annapurna Interactive via Polygon

This burned building also contains a metal etching of a star, which your Ship Log will note, “closely resembles the Nomai symbol for the Eye of the universe.”

Hidden Reel 2

Pilot your jetpack to the top of the burned-down building, then jump and boost to reach the flat cliff across the water. From here, head to the right and boost up onto the slightly higher cliff. You should see a lake that is disconnected from the rest of the water by rock.

Jump in and, using your jetpack, thrust down toward the bottom. On the far edge of the lake, boost up through a hole into a hut built into the rock wall. Here, you’ll find another room with piles of discarded reels and a machine where a reel fits and, on the furthest side, a room where a lantern is displayed in a niche.

Grid View

• Image: Mobius Digital/Annapurna Interactive via Polygon
• Image: Mobius Digital/Annapurna Interactive via Polygon
• Image: Mobius Digital/Annapurna Interactive via Polygon
• Image: Mobius Digital/Annapurna Interactive via Polygon

Take the lantern and a reel, which shows two overlapping concentric circles surrounded by a ring of blue lightning, will appear. Unfortunately, the door will close. Grab the reel and head to the opposite end of the room where there is a hole in the floor which you can drop through. Now, go back into the hut and jump across the broken bridge to reach a locked door that leads back into the projection hut.

The hut shows an owl person holding a shield-like object bearing the overlapping circle symbol climbing onto a raft that can float in two directions, point a light into a crack in a cliff, causing them to teleport. This will be useful information later on when you need to navigate Starlit Cove.

Missing Bridge

Image: Mobius Digital/Annapurna Interactive via Polygon

Continue past the bulk of the Cinder Isles and, on the left, you’ll find a cliff that faces a hut built into the rock wall. The two areas were once joined by a bridge but, at some point, that was swept away. You can’t reach the hut from the cliff, but check out our guide on the Hidden Gorge for details on how to get there.