Clues

Throughout the main story-line, the player must find and scan clues for Esther to determine the location of the next artifact. There are five artifacts total, one for five of the races, and five respective quests. There is a preceding version of the quest, requiring the player to scan through the Outpost, before the race-specific quests begin.

In each quest, the player must find clues that are race specific decorations and furniture. This requires exploration of increasingly hazardous solar-systems and planets. The developers intended for this to help players, by means of quest objectives, progress through the game's tiers of technological advancement.^[1]

Quest progress is tracked by means of a point system, where each race-specific object is assigned a point value. Once the player reaches 50 points they must return to Ester to initiate the next part of the quest-line. Most objects are assigned a low point value, though there are a few objects that will give the player as many as 20 points. Although rare, talking to NPCs of a specific race can give clues that contribute 4 points each.