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"The lesson will be taught in due time, Aloy. Until then, we wait." This article contains heavy spoilers. Read ahead with caution.
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- "His dream realized, his old gramps' legacy ensured, our hero beheld the sea of desert lights... and wept at his good fortune."
- ―Stemmur
The Sea of Sands is a main quest in Horizon Forbidden West. It is one of three quests that can be completed after The Eye of the Earth.
Synopsis[]
In search of POSEIDON, Aloy travels to the Stillsands, the ruins of the Old World city of Las Vegas. A particular building sticks out to her that is leaking water, hinting that POSEIDON might be inside. Upon entering the building, Aloy sees two Oseram delvers pull a third out of a flooded shaft. The delvers are revealed to be Morlund, Abadund, and Stemmur, traveling showmen. Morlund had come to the ruins in the footsteps of his grandfather, who had recovered an "Ember" from the same ruins forty years prior. While looking for more Embers in the ruins, the delvers had inadvertently triggered a massive flood that submerged the entire city, after which Morlund attempted to go down the shaft inside a "diving bubble" contraption he had built in an attempt to descend into the ruins, almost drowning in the process. Recognizing Morlund's ingenuity, Aloy suggests improvements on the design. After recovering Morlund's air tube from the flooded shaft, she sets out to gather machine parts necessary to craft a more portable version.
Returning to the delvers, Aloy uses the machine parts to craft a diving mask and descends into the ruins, which are encased in a massive artificial dome. Datapoints provide revelations about Stanley Chen, the architect behind the dome and the water. Aloy's way to POSEIDON is blocked by both very strong currents and a Tideripper. With no way to fight the machine underwater, she uses the city's water control system to manually drain the flood, allowing the Oseram delvers to safely descend into the ruins. After taking down the Tideripper with the help of the delvers, Aloy continues her search. Inside a server room within the ruin's deepest levels, she finds and retrieves POSEIDON. A datapoint provides a final revelation about Stanley Chen: as the Faro Plague closed in on Las Vegas, he left the city's water and electricity systems on standby before boarding the Odyssey, in the hopes that future generations might find and reactivate them.
With her work done, Aloy returns to the surface, where her retrieval of POSEIDON had restored power to the city in a marvelous show of lights. Instead of returning to the Claim, the delvers decide to stay and use their newfound riches to turn the ruins into a bustling hub for trade and entertainment. Aloy wishes them luck and bids them farewell.
Aloy returns to the Base and merges POSEIDON with GAIA. Depending on the progress of either The Kulrut or Seeds of the Past, GAIA may tell Aloy that she has detected a distress signal from ELEUTHIA in the mountains northwest of the Base and urges her to investigate. Having been included in the briefing by GAIA, Erend and Varl accompany Aloy.
Objectives[]
- Go to POSEIDON's Coordinates
- Search the Ruins for a Way Underground
- Investigate the Flooded Ruin
- Talk to Morlund
- Recover the Compressed Air Capsule
- Gather the Machine Parts
- Return to Morlund
- Craft the Diving Mask
- Find POSEIDON
- Find the Red Light
- Investigate the Red Light
- Drain the City
- Find POSEIDON
- Kill the Tideripper
- Talk to Morlund and His Crew [Optional]
- Find POSEIDON
- Recover POSEIDON
- Return to the Elevator Shaft
- Climb to the Surface
- Exit the Ruin
- Return to the Base
- Deliver POSEIDON to GAIA
Notes[]
- With the diving mask available, Aloy can now safely access Sunken Caverns and other underwater locations across the map.
- In New Game+, Aloy will already have the diving mask equipped, and can use it immediately, even when retrieving the Compressed Air Capsule, though she will still need to go through the process of creating the mask again to progress the mission. However, the machine parts needed may likely already be in inventory from the prior play-through, allowing the gathering part of the mission to be bypassed. This differs from other special gear held over in New Game+ which is usually disabled during the replay of missions that involve crafting sub-missions (for example, the Firegleam ignitor in the mission Death's Door).