Your first 30 minutes in End of Abyss: learn dodge roll and the scanner, find your first Restoration Pod, and stop wasting your only pistol.
End of Abyss Beginner Guide: First 30 Minutes Without Waste
The first half hour of End of Abyss is a corridor, not an open area. You follow Soldier E-19 through the Outer Sector, learn the two verbs the whole game runs on — pulling levers and using the Scanner — shoot two Energy Nodes to open one door, ride the elevator, and walk into a Save Room in the Habitation Sector. That room is the most important stop in the game, reachable in roughly half an hour if you take one route instead of exploring.
The other half of the answer is ammo. Cel starts with a single pistol on unlimited ammo; every other gun runs on ammunition you craft at an upgrade station. Fire the pistol freely, treat everything else as rationed until you have seen that station.
Your first 30 minutes, in order
This is the route from the opening shot to your second region, following Game Rant's full walkthrough room by room.
- Outer Sector: follow Soldier E-19. He is the tutorial. Staying near him is how you learn to pull levers and use the Scanner — the only two interaction verbs the rest of the game asks for.
- The broken-panel room is the Scanner tutorial. Go to the ledge at the top of the hole in the floor and jump down.
- Crates, ledges, floor holes, then a ladder. Break the crates, drop the ledges, crawl through the holes, climb the ladder at the end.
- Pull the lever on the door on the left side of the room. That is the door Soldier E-19 is waiting behind. Miss it and you will circle the Outer Sector looking for a soldier who is not coming.
- Energy Node Door: scan the wall, then shoot. The Scanner reveals two energy nodes in the wall. Shoot both and the door opens.
- Ride the elevator to the Habitation Sector.
- Take the door in the northeast corner into the Save Room. Your first Restoration Pod, and the first place you can save.
- Pick up the Health Booster on the floor. It sits in plain sight in that Save Room, and most players walk past it while still reading the tutorial prompts.
- Look at the Workbench. One sits in every Save Room. It is inactive this early, but it is where weapon upgrades and consumable crafting happen for the rest of the run.
- Head east of the Save Room, down to B1, back up to F1, then southeast to a small room with a covered vent. Remove the Ventilation Cover and crawl through.
- Take the Worker Access Keycard past the vent. It opens the door north of the Habitation Sector entrance and carries you into the Communication Center, where your first Security Control Unit is waiting.
The four inputs that actually matter
| Input | What it does |
|---|---|
| Left stick | Move Cel |
| Right stick | Aim in any direction — it plays like a twin-stick shooter even though the game is 3D |
| D-pad (down) | Opens the Scanner, which sweeps the room with blue light and analyzes objects, structures and creatures |
| Dodge roll | Pulls you out of an incoming attack and buys you time to shoot back |
The Scanner is not a decoration: it registers subjects in your log, tells you what a locked door wants, and identifies the enemy you are looking at — which is how you find Energy Nodes before you shoot them. Shacknews' review describes it as a D-pad switch that doubles as a Pokedex for what is standing in the room. It has a page of its own: End of Abyss Scanner Guide.
There is no stamina bar attached to the roll and no meter that drains while you dodge. Use it as a panic button the moment you are caught in a bad angle instead of trying to walk out of trouble.
Why your ammo rule is backwards from what most players expect
Cel's starting pistol — the Pulse Gun — has unlimited ammo. That is the one gun you can empty into a room without thinking about it, and it is why the opening is survivable. Every other weapon changes that equation:
- The other five guns all run on magazines you have to refill, and ammo is crafted, not found.
- Crafting happens at upgrade stations, where you also spend Fragments on weapon upgrades. Those are also the only rooms where you can manually save, so a bad fight with a newly found shotgun is really a bad trip, not just a bad fight.
For roughly the first twenty minutes your only real damage output is the unlimited-ammo Pulse Gun. Everything you find early is on a finite magazine you cannot refill until you reach a Save Room with an active Workbench. Switch to a shotgun mid-corridor and you will be reloading in a room you cannot save in.
The full weapons list has the region, floor and unlock condition for all six guns, and weapon upgrade priority covers what to spend Fragments on first once you have a surplus.
The Restoration Pod is the only room that really matters
The Restoration Pod in that first Save Room does four things at once, and every one of them comes back for the rest of the game:
- It saves your progress and sets your respawn point.
- It refills your health and your Health Booster charges — which is why the free Health Booster on that floor matters so much early.
- It is where you change Suit Mods. Not at a workbench, not at a terminal — at the Pod. The Radiation Protection Suit Mod that makes the Containment Sector survivable gets equipped here, which is why that sector is a wall for players who blew past their Pods.
- Resting resets the enemies in the area, so re-running a cleared room is a legitimate way to farm Fragments — GameSpot's review compared the pods directly to Dark Souls bonfires.
There is no level or experience system here. Progress comes from gear you find and Mods you fit, and Suit Power — really just the number of Mod slots you have — only rises when you install Energy Cells. The Suit Power and Suit Mods guide covers the six Energy Cells and the upgrade order.
Five mistakes that cost beginners the most time
- Not scanning a room you have already cleared. It is the cheapest habit in the game and it is how you find Energy Nodes, notes, Data Shards and Logbook entries at once.
- Trusting the map. Reviewers hit map bugs at launch — rooms that render black until you stand in the right spot, doors the map still shows as locked after you opened them, the occasional soft lock. A day-one patch fixed several, but if a route refuses to open, treat the map as a hint, not proof. The invisible wall and map bug guide covers how to tell a bug from a puzzle.
- Waiting around instead of resting. Resting resets enemies, so use the reset rather than idling.
- Fighting every enemy in the room. Grouping mobs and detonating the red barrels is a confirmed early tactic — IGN calls it a key tactic — and grenades answer anything that crowds you.
- Blowing past a Save Room because the objective marker points elsewhere. Objectives send you to the next area and back again; the Save Room on the way is where your run is actually saved.
What happens in hour one
| Milestone | Why it matters | Where to read next |
|---|---|---|
| Outer Sector tutorials finished | Levers and Scanner unlocked | Scanner guide |
| First Save Room used | Saves, respawns, refills, Mod swaps | Suit Mods and Suit Power |
| Communication Center SCU overridden | First Security Control Unit, story turns | 3 SCUs and the Central Elevator |
| Shuttle entrance unlocked | First fast-travel network access | All 7 shuttle stations |
| Riot Breaker picked up in Habitation Sector | First limited-ammo weapon | All 6 weapons |
Past the opening, the sector-by-sector map reference lists every area and floor so you can place yourself. If the early fights are already brutal, that is a known pattern — several reviewers describe an early difficulty spike that relaxes later. The difficulty and death penalty breakdown covers what the game does and does not let you choose.
PC players get the game from the Epic Games Store only. There is no Steam version, and achievements and trophies run on the PlayStation and Xbox side.
Official source: PlayStation Store page — release date, price, languages.
FAQ
Is there a stamina bar in End of Abyss? No. The roll has no stamina cost and no meter drains while you dodge, so treat it as a free panic button rather than a resource you spend.
What is the first thing I should do when I get in? Follow Soldier E-19. He walks you through both verbs of the game and leads you to the two-node Energy Node Door on the way to your first Save Room.
Do I really only start with one gun? Your starting Pulse Gun has unlimited ammo and is the only weapon you can fire freely. The other five need crafted ammo, so the discipline flips: free-fire the pistol, ration everything else.
Can I save anywhere in the compound? No. Manual saving only happens at upgrade stations, the same room type as the Save Rooms, and that is also where you craft ammunition and spend Fragments.
Is End of Abyss on Steam? No. The PC release is Epic Games Store only, and there is no Steam version to look for.
More End of Abyss Guides
End of Abyss spawns random invisible walls and a map that marks open doors as locked. What each bug looks like and how to get past it.
Every End of Abyss area and floor in one table: Outer Sector, Habitation, Factory East and West, Waterworks, Containment Sector, Lower Levels.
End of Abyss PC is Epic Games Store only. How to install and run it, which settings actually exist, and the answer on co-op and Steam.
End of Abyss scored 8, 90 and 6 across Shacknews, GamingTrend, GameSpot and IGN. What they all agree on, where they split, and who should skip it.
The exact End of Abyss progression chain: three power cores, three SCU overrides, the Central Elevator to Lower Levels, and every keycard on the way.
End of Abyss never explains itself. Who Cel is, why she was sent underground, and what the parasite, the crew and the notes actually tell you.
Missing a lever you already walked past? End of Abyss buries progression in dark multi-floor rooms. A symptom-to-fix table for the common softlocks.
How End of Abyss Suit Power works, where Energy Cells raise it, and which Suit Mod you need to survive radiation. The gate is your suit, not your damage.