About the Game

Overview

Aggregated knowledge about this rather non-verbose game.

Introduction

This quide ..

• collects mostly general information about this game that is rather quiet on conveying its inner workings.
• is not necessarily meant as a good read-through but rather a reference and will likely feature some repetition.
• will also be incomplete and most likely contain errors.

Unfortunately, Morphite does not provide a lot of replay value so I cannot be bothered to double-check everything but also do not want to go collected information to go to waste.

Feedback may persuade me to fact-check again or provide further information.

Find some key mappings in a parallel guide.

Starting Hints

Since Morphite is a messy game with bugs and glitches here some initial remarks.

HUD
When on a planet or space station you should be able to see to see a health bar in the top left corner of the screen and when collecting drops it should clearly be indicated what you collected at the center bottom of the screen.
The first ten or so hours I played my view was cropped and I did not see the health bar or specific drop collected (but “Weapon Acquired”). Not sure what solved that but I restarted the game at one point and also had a controller connected at one point and ultimately the view corrected itself.

Main Mission Items
During the course of the main missions, there are eight items you need to collect and bring to some recipient. It is sometimes possible to glitch by and not return stuff. Although this does not break the game it might as well make it impossible to continue the specific tangent once the main mission is completed. For instance, I failed to return the Capacitor to the Feline queen and could never start the game. When I got back to the planet later the race would be set up but my (fifth) car would not be around. I had to deactivate cloud-saving, remove the savegame and play up to that point again.

Map Your Progress
The game does a poor job at showing you where you have been. Only a few of the most recent systems you visited are marked on the star map and you cannot check star systems without flying there. Being able to look into star systems would give you access to planet names and then clicking planets would show whether you visited them already.
To be fair, keeping track is not strictly necessary to finish they game. As long as there are main missions you will be guided towards the next destination.
But once you see you missed something you may want to revisit a planet and those can be hard to find.
I suggest to at least keep track of visited systems – maybe also what planets they have with what temperatures, atmospheres, resources offered. A most easy track could be achieved by simply having a screenshot of every jump to another system and maybe also each (green) mission planet or space station.

Movement

There is FPS movement on planets and in stations and “jump to” movement outside of those.

When on your ship the dashboard lets you select the star map which you can use to travel to other star systems. Scroll the visible section by clicking the arrows at the edges, then select a star system by clicking a disc. You can also select the next neighbouring systems by pressing WASD. Double-click a system to travel to it. You can also press the spacebar when a system is selected or click the GO button.

There is a Free Flight mode which is available from the dashboard on your ship. You will have to aim your ship at some destination in the system, then hold spacebar until you reach it.
You can select the current system’s station or planet by clicking them, then travel there by pressing the spacebar, double-clicking the target or hitting GO.

Economy

There are only two actual tradables: chunks and resources.
Chunks are the basic currency in Morphite while resources are 8 made-up materials.
Then there are a number of things tangential to trading. Scans can only be sold, repairs, fuel, ammunition and upgrades only bought.
Chunks, resources, repairs, fuel and ammunition can all be affected, both negatively and positively, by random encounters.
Additionally, you can buy some rather useless items, i.e. food items from bars in space stations and modes of transportation from merchants on planets.

Chunks
Currency in Morphite.

• primarily obtained by selling scans and as mission rewards but also dropped from destructibles (enemies, stones, crates) and exchanged for resources
• used to buy resources, repairs, fuel, ammunition, upgrades and rarely needed to start side missions

Resources
One of Quantium, Fezium, Lumite, Xenite, Crylogen, Ferrogen, Brycol, Giocol. Resources are materials akin to crystals or ores.

• primarily obtained from destructibles (crystals, blockages, crates) but also in exchange for chunks from randomly encountered space traders
• can be sold at randomly encountered space traders or at merchants on planets and space stations

Scans
Comes in varieties common and rare. Rare scans serve as blueprints for suit upgrades and are usually worth more than ten times the value of common scans.

• obtained by scanning “unknown” flora, fauna, fungi and tech on planets or space stations

Repairs and Fuel
Repairs bring your ship hull state to a 100% after it has been damaged in space fights or asteroid fields. Fuel is used when jumping to another star system.

• repairs and fuel can be topped up in exchange for chunks when flying to a space station
• fuel also replenishes over time

Ammunition
Most of the tools used on planets are weapons and need ammunition.

• ammo can be topped up quite inexpensively with merchants or drops from destructibles (enemies, crates)

Upgrades

There are three systems that can be upgraded: your ship, your suit and your tools. Upgrade cost is semi-balanced, i.e. you will soon be able to buy upgrades but it will take some time to get all upgrades.
Your ship parts require only chunks to upgrade but a lot of those.
Your suit requires rare scans and resources to upgrade.
Your tools require resources and chunks to upgrade

Ship

You have one ship throughout the game which comes with a number of systems:

• ship health – if this goes to zero you die
• shields – absorbs physical damage; once at zero, damage goes against the ship; shields replenish over time
• evade (vector rocket) – this can evade physical damage, could not find out how to use this effectively
• engine – uses fuel to jump to other star systems, determines how far a single jump takes you and how fast fuel replenishes
• weapon systems – allows acquiring the missile launcher or railgun
• laser – standard weapon
• missile cannon – must be bought, homing(?)
• railgun – must be bought

Your ship’s weapons – laser, missile cannon and railgun – can overheat. When one weapon is overheated, all are.

Apart from weapons systems which offer flat upgrades – basically buy and install – upgrades come as levels, e.g. Fire Rate I to Fire Rate V for the laser. Those leveled upgrades follow a few simple lanes each a straight subset of 100, 150, 200, 300, 400, 550, 700, 900:

Suit

You have one suit throughout the game which consists of three systems:

• Visor – sensor array
• Armor – features related to damage and which temperatures you can endure, affects which planets you can land on
• Boots – movement-related features

All these systems’ upgrades require rare scans or rather some special component it brings along. Apart from the Stealth upgrade, each upgrade also requires additional resources. Usually you need an amount of a main resource and then about half that amount of side resource.

Tools

You start the game with the Plasma Pistol and right after get the Beacon and Scanner – the latter being the primary tool to make money. Throughout the game you collect a number of tools and weapons. Most of them are needed to progress through the game as they open doors, activate switches or have another way of getting you where you could not go before. And most of those tools can be upgraded.

Each upgrades requires two types of resources and chunks. Apart from the Missile Launcher’s Homing and the Grappling Hook’s Stun upgrades can be bought as levels from I to V following one of two simple lanes which define how much of each resource is needed and how many chunks.

This reads as: An upgrade following Lane 5 will need 7 of each of its resources and 25 chunks to upgrade from Level I to Level II.

Trinkets

In main mission locations and randomly on planets you can find secret chests that need to be shot with a weapon indicated by a symbol. Those chests contain trinkets. No idea what they are for.

In my notes I find:

• Eight Ball
• Dice
• Tiki Doll
• Dog collar
• Quantum Field Generator
• Holoscope
• Bone
• Bracelet

Artifact Weapons

Sometimes you will find artifacts on planets. Those artifacts are basically for fun and can only be used on that planet and you will drop them when you use one of your tools.

• fan gun
• (shock) Bat
• sword

Items

Collected during and “needed” for main missions.

• Large Xenite
• Converter
• Robot Head
• Modulator
• Capacitor
• Hieroglyphic (1)
• Hieroglyphic (2)
• Hieroglyphic (3)

Bugs & Glitches

• Keys cannot be remapped even though the settings menu contains a corresponding prompt which just does not trigger the right thing.
• You may lose the mouse cursor. Try to bring it back by opening the game menu (Esc) and closing it by clicking Resume, the X, or hitting Backspace.
• When aiming down as much as possible shooting will always fail with the bullet getting stuck on some invisible barrier even if you are standing on some ledge with passable space in front.
• Hitboxes can be bad, objects often have parts you can see through but not shoot through.

Some design decision so egregious I consider them bugs:

• Access to the equivalents of inventory, character sheet, and mission log is largely restricted.
• Cannot search for systems or planets on the star map.
• Scanning is restricted to the closest “scannable” in view as opposed to the one you currently aim at.

“Water Temple” on Octonia

During the mission on Octonia where hallways and elevators take you to four different domes I got confused as to what leads where and where I currently am. I failed to see the labels on elevators on the first smooth run through.

Elevators
The elevators have labels on their back wall. Those labels look like black panels, say basically where the elevator goes and are mostly only at the top of the elevator.

Domes
There are four domes you will visit:

• Dome 1
• Dome 2
• Statue Dome
• Tower Dome

Map
This is a rough map of the location.

After activating the switch in the Statue Dome the door to the Tower Dome can be shot to open.

Side Missions & Rumours

Side missions can be found randomly with individuals on planets or space stations.
Once you got all side missions, the “quest givers” will start offering rumours potentially helping with completing the side missions.

Side missions are usually not bound to a planet or space stations but can be complete when they randomly reappear somewhere else. For instance, you can collect three of the four poisonous frogs on one planet, miss the fourth frog, find the side mission on another planet and simply return any further frog to complete the mission.

Some hints for side missions:

• eggs (planet, shoot): will just be in caves, mostly the Y-formed ones with two blockages
• morphite fighters (station, shoot): the ships flying through the station and firing in your direction
• frogs (planet, carry-return)
• owl (planet, up on big tree): probably needs improved jumping or fortunately shaped planet surface
• antlers: forest planet worked for me, found elk

Achievements

About achievements with counters:
The counter on the steam page can lag behind several minutes or be up-to-date a few seconds after the counter should have changed.
The “NO CONNECTION” problem does not cause increments to be lost though I am not sure whether the achievement can be completed in this state.

Elite Trader:
No actual transaction needs to take place, you just need to click “Let’s trade” before cancelling the dialog to make progress.