After surviving your first few moments in the Leviathan Expedition, only to have to kill yourself in order to repair your Starship, you’ll eventually be directed to meet Specialist Polo on the Space Anomaly. This leads into the Bounds Testing Milestone, where Polo offers up three separate ‘Loop Research’ missions to recover Ancestral Memories, Liquid Sun, and Somnal Dust. You only need to complete one to reach the Milestone, though they all contribute to the ongoing community targets. However, with the Somnal Dust mission requiring a risky trip to a Derelict Freighter, that’s probably best left alone to begin with ― which leaves you with two options.
How to complete the Ancestral Memories Loop Research in the Leviathan Expedition
To gain the Ancestral Memories you simply need to befriend some of the local wildlife by feeding them, which can make this the quickest and easiest option if you get lucky and find yourself among a herd of friendly animals. To get some food you just need to craft (or buy) some Creature Pellets, with Carbon being one of many options to make them. Once happily fed, you can interact with them to get a few options, including the choice to adopt them as a companion. This can be a great way to turn a predator into a powerful ally if you can bait them into a feast.
For the purposes of this mission, you obviously need to go for ‘Harvest Ancestral Memories’, which will see 15 of them sucked into your inventory. You need 200 in total, so you’ll have to repeat this at least 14 times, but the good news is that you can reuse the same animal after a short cooldown period. Having three or four creatures to bounce around will also speed things up a lot. Once you’ve hit the quota, you’re good to return to Polo to complete the mission.
How to complete the Liquid Sun Loop Research in the Leviathan Expedition
This might be the more obvious one to take on, as repairing your ship rewards you with a Solar Ray upgrade for your Multitool, which turns metal deposits into this Liquid Sun element. You’ll need 50 Cobalt and 50 Magnetised Ferrite (which can be refined from Pure Ferrite) to get it installed and then you just need to find a nearby metal source to mine ― thankfully your starting planet is rich in Copper.
You can pop up your Analysis Visor to scout for locations, or fly around to look for the tell-tale yellow shine of a Copper deposit. Once you’ve reached the location, double-check that you have the Solar Ray selected over your usual Terrain Manipulator (you’ll see the HUD change to read Liquid Sun when you target the Copper), and start mining. Be warned, the Solar Ray burns through its Sodium power supply very quickly. Make sure you’ve got enough at hand for at least a couple of recharges (at 50 Sodium a time) to gather the full 250 units of Liquid Sun that Polo is after.
Whatever option you go for, return to Specialist Polo on the Space Anomaly to turn in your mission. Upon completion, you can access the now-unlocked Milestone in the Expedition menu to collect your rewards. These include a Hyperdrive and a bunch of Warp Cells to charge it up with (plus an Emergency Broadcast Receiver if you still fancy a crack at a Derelict Freighter), which sets you up perfectly for the next major Milestone.
