The "Insanity" Artifact

[MelodicVoid]

Anyone else find the strange artifact that takes forever to research? I just had a very amazing run where I found this artifact at the very end but due to my character already having a deadly ammount of radiation I had to quit before it was fully researched (I got to 35% ish). saw things like blood, the ship landed on the planet, chains in the engine room. medbay saying I had no heart rate, pictures changing, rather... non impressive (no offence dev, love your game) jump scares and a strange whispering voice.

if anyone else has found this and finished the research I would very much so like to know what the final researched project is, as I was unable to wait for the research to finish.

Also dev (if you read this) very good job with the insainity. I saw heard the chains while using the rover and though uh oh, new enemy so I called the rover back (it was full anyway), and was going to be my last run to the planet. it creeped me out I thought the ship was infected with a entity. it wasn't until I saw the blood coming out of the medbay that I realized something was messing with my head, thought it was the radiation effect (never had so much radation in any run) but then the -50 000 for killing the station on my score made me realize what it really was. Bravo!!

[Adamzilla]

Sounds so creep with the blood! :Z

[SlothDemonZ]

It is a certain type of Archeological artifact, helical structure I think. Always reserch to at least phase 3 for unknown artifacts. I typicaly dump them if the value is under 10k without even waiting for the effects. But you can wait until you see if it messes with your head then dump it.

[Xtrapat]

After a while it also tilts your view and spins you around a little. It took me a while to realize that the spinning and view tilt is always towards the location of the artifact, wherever it is currently stored in the ship. Cool little detail there.

[dalas3.14159]

Unfortunately, this artifact is never completely researchable:

Originally posted by Khallis:

The artifact that you refer to, by it's very nature, cannot be known. It does not even have a name.

[Khallis]

The helical column is unrelated to the nameless cognitohazard.

Depending on how you read the description the research computer provides you, it is either evidence suggesting that the aliens were somehow aware of their own genetic structure back in their stoneworking prehistory - or, it might make a few explorers uneasily wonder if it is black or red.

It's nothing important, anyway.

[Dog In Yard]

I'll admit the engineering terminal jumpscare got me. When the medbay said I had no pulse I was pretty sure I should get rid of the thing, but first I went to engineering to make sure it wasn't just the medbay malfunctioning. I chucked the thing overboard right after.

A few questions for the dev (or anyone else) about this:
1. Was medbay -> no pulse -> go to engineering to restart medbay -> get spook'd sort of an "intended" flow for the player to follow? Because if so, you got me!

2. Can you pick up more than one insanity artifact during a run? I was pretty worried the next time I picked up an unidentified object, waited around for level one ID before ending the run just in case.

3. Can the artifact affect what you see through the rover's camera? I killed a couple of enemies that didn't react at all to me while the artifact was on board. Now I wonder if the enemies were dead all along...

[SlothDemonZ]

3. Not all sentrys are fully active, some are destroyed when you find them

2. In theory yes, but I have had one that seemed to move faster then the first one I saw.

Usualy the face jump on the termnal gets me first.

[SpectaKoo]

First I noticed a slew of particles in the air and assumed the ship's circulation had somehow been compromised, followed by finding blood tracked throughout the medbay. I assumed I had some sort of stowaway onboard.

I realized something was fishy when there were five chairs in the cockpit. By sheer coincidence, the jumpscare played the moment I phased through one of the chairs, as if it was part of the chair's model itself. It seems like that might not've been intentional, but dang did it work!

[Scorch]

Just had this happen to me an hour ago. After having (and solving) the rogue AI issue more than once before, I was guessing what was gonna happen if I left the device in my ship. I was not disappointed upon seeing the epilogue. XD I'm curious to know what all the halucinations are though, as I didn't have the ship landing on the planet, but handprints all over the place.

[Khallis]

Originally posted by QueenieChrysalis:

I'm curious to know what all the halucinations are though...

There are 24 possible hallucinations. (What can I say, I liked Eternal Darkness a lot.)

[Razaah !!!!]

Originally posted by Khallis:

Originally posted by QueenieChrysalis:

I'm curious to know what all the halucinations are though...

There are 24 possible hallucinations. _(What can I say, I liked Eternal Darkness a lot.)_

I had a feeling i encountered this type of insanity before.
Are you planning on adding more hallucinations ? I would have a few ideas that could turn out really well.
My favorite so far were those god forsaken hands. Not a good feeling realizing that someone had butter fingers.

[Khallis]

Originally posted by Razaah !!!!:

Are you planning on adding more hallucinations?

Not really - I had a lot more ideas than I put in already, that 24 was the pruned down list. They sure are fun to come up with, aren't they? :)

I think there's enough in there that it's likely to get different people differently, and maybe surprise you a few times even after you've found it once before. Maybe some day I'll share the design docs as an extra - show everybody the cut content that was too ambitious to put into the game.

So far, I've seen five of them screenshotted and another four mentioned here.

Some of them are subtle; some of them aren't.

One of them you can only encounter if you've read all the log entries that game.

No one has mentioned or screenshotted my personal favorite one yet, so I'm still looking forward to that. :)

[Lantantan]

Both times I looted the artifact, I had looted a structure that was pretty loud in radio when I got close. Not sure if that structure was the one the artifact came from. Can anyone confirm?

[SpectaKoo]

The most intriguing one to me thus far would have to be the sort of sphere that flies past the ship's windows; I was only really able to catch it when I looked back at the footage, especially since I was controlling the rover at the time. It's so well implemented that I thought I was actually hallucinating, rather than it being an in-game hallucination.

I've documented 21 of them so far, still on the hunt for those last 3!

[TangoCharlie]

I found the "Unknown Anomaly Tech" artifact this weekend. While it was being analyzed, I saw floating black particles in the Rover Garage, then floating chains in the Engineering Bay, then a fanged face on my rover control terminal. Later on, my bunk was replaced with a bloodstained bed (with an axe nearby), a portrait of a skeletal woman on the wall of my quarters. At one point, I heard voices and saw an extra four chairs on the bridge. When the autodoc reported I had no pulse, I jettisoned the artifact, removing the hallucinations.