One Saros Trick Will Melt Every Boss In The Entire Game

Every time you start a new cycle in Saros, your ultimate goal is to defeat the boss at the end of the biome. Broadly speaking, Saros‘ bosses are the game’s ultimate challenges, requiring a mastery of weapons, platforming, dodging, shielding, and parrying. Housemarque has tightly designed the game to be more forgiving than Returnal, where each biome can set you up well to have a chance at beating its boss, but adopting one adjustment to your strategy will make them all a cakewalk.

One of Saros‘ major concessions to the player (as compared to Returnal) is a checkpoint at the beginning of every biome to which you can teleport from the Passage. Dying is simply part of the experience, and Housemarque wants you to play biomes multiple times so you can learn each one’s rooms and enemy attack patterns. This can keep runs satisfyingly brief, but bosses can be trivialized by opting into longer cycles.

Repeating Previous Saros Biomes Will Make You Overpowered

If you get stuck banging your head against a boss, you can drastically tilt the odds in your favor by taking a cycle through multiple biomes consecutively. If you’re struggling with Legion at the end of Blighted Marsh, for instance, try starting a cycle from Saros‘ first biome, Shattered Rise, beating the Prophet again, and then continuing through Ancient Depths and Shattered Descent, killing Bastion and Rhabdom on your way.

This will require one key change in strategy: you should not pick up every single Artifact you come across. When you’re going immediately to the furthest biome you have unlocked, Saros typically doles out enough Artifacts to shape your run, but not hit your maximum. When you do a full replay of preceding biomes, however, you have to be a little more picky with which Artifacts you take, otherwise you may run out of inventory space and have to leave great ones behind.

To maximize your build potential, try activating the eclipse at the earliest opportunity in every biome.

You don’t always have to start with Shattered Rise – if you’re further into the game, try running through two or three biomes before facing the current boss. The biggest impact this trick has is increasing your Proficiency level well beyond what it can reach in a single biome. You’ll be able to use much more powerful weapons this way, plus you’ll have more opportunities to redraw and get the guns you’re best at using.

There Are A Lot Of Benefits To Revisiting Biomes

Image from trailer for SAROS with a monster with six hands and a crown of thorns

Beyond increasing your chances of beating the current boss, regularly taking a long cycle through previous biomes can be a huge boon for both meta-progression and story comprehension. Replaying biomes is the only way to get all the Halcyon they have to offer, since some are gated behind abilities gained later in the game, and you’ll accrue a massive amount of Lucenite, helping you unlock Armor Matrix upgrades.

Similarly, there are audio and text logs you cannot access your first time through each biome, and they really add to Saros‘ scattered narrative. It can seem like adopting this strategy is a time sink, but it’s really just a trade-off. The alternative is to repeatedly run a biome until you master it and learn all the boss attacks. This is a viable strategy, but you can use your time in Saros more effectively by revisiting biomes and building momentum.

Saros was designed to induce flow-state gameplay, and opting for a long, multi-biome run anecdotally does just that. Every boss grows easier after you’ve already cleared them, and you can get into an incredible rhythm melting each one and blitzing through the interim biomes. If you ever feel like you’ve hit a wall in Saros, the solution is to play through a few preceding biomes and build up an overpowered kit.