Progressing through the main story of Saros gives players more insight into Arjun's character and how the world of Carcosa works. Throughout your exploration of the different biomes, you will come across yellow barriers, grapple points, jump pads, and more. These will be inaccessible at the start of the game, but as you progress further, they will unlock automatically. Some of these abilities have additional uses beyond accessing certain areas, and the Saros guide below goes into more detail.

All Abilities in Saros

Jump Network

• Biome: Ancient Depths

The first ability you unlock is the Jump Network pads. These can be found all over the game and start appearing in the first biome. After defeating the first boss, Prophet, and reaching the second biome, Ancient Depths, you will have to return to the Passage. Shortly after this, you can use the World Dial feature on the Primary to teleport back to the second biome, move forward, and obtain the ability.

With the ability unlocked, all the pads will be activated across the game, allowing you to simply press jump on them and go much higher than you normally can. This lets you reach previously inaccessible areas, and the pads are also part of one of the bosses in the game.

Grapple

• Biome: Shattered Descent

Similar to the first ability, you will also start spotting these throughout the first two biomes, but they unlock upon reaching the third biome. After you reach Shattered Descent for the first time, you will have to retrieve an item and bring it back to the Passage. After the cutscene plays out, head back to Shattered Descent, and you will have the objective to activate the terminal up ahead. Doing this unlocks the Grapple ability.

With the grapple ability, you can press Triangle to get across vast areas and even check out some side paths that have a grapple point in the middle. There are some grapple points in certain hostile rooms or boss arenas, so you can make use of them when enemies get close, and you want to avoid projectiles or attacks.

Overdrive

• Biome: Blighted Marsh

Overdrive is an ability that is not linked to opening any rooms or inaccessible areas, but instead helps in fights. As you damage enemies using your Main or Power weapons, you will start to charge the Overdrive mechanic, which unlocks in the fourth biome, Blighted Marsh. Once the meter is full, a small prompt will appear on your screen indicating that Overdrive is charged, and you can use it at any time by pressing L3 and R3 at the same time.

The Overdrive ability is exceptionally good against Overlords or Alpha hostiles since it deals a large chunk of their health. You can also use it to clear rooms, but a good approach is to lure enemies together and gather them, allowing you to hit multiple at the same time.

There is a Bronze trophy where you have to dispatch 30 hostiles with Overdrive, so if you are aiming for the Platinum, you should use the ability to clear out rooms as often as possible.

Parry

• Biome: Blighted Marsh

Right from the tutorial, the boss fight with Consort, you will see red projectiles called Nova projectiles. These cannot be absorbed using the Soltari Shield, nor can they be dashed through like the yellow projectiles. You have to avoid them until you reach the middle of biome 4, where you must restore power. After this, you will have an interaction with an NPC and finally unlock the parry ability.

With the parry ability unlocked, whenever you come across Nova projectiles, you can simply use your melee button to parry them in the direction you are facing. After unlocking the ability, quite a lot of enemies will start using red projectiles as well, so you now have the option to parry them back and stagger enemies in the process.

Eclipse Threads

• Biome: Desecrated Fortress

Eclipse Threads is one of the abilities players won’t notice until they unlock it because, unlike Grapple and Jump Network, it is not clearly visible. You might have come across certain rooms where the containers are extremely far away with no way of reaching them. If you look closely, you will spot a faint white line moving in a curved manner. This is the Eclipse Threads, which unlock in the fifth biome, Desecrated Fortress.

Upon unlocking it, press L1 next to the thread to traverse it and reach longer distances. This makes moving around the biomes much quicker, but it is not placed in every room. This ability also unlocks certain side paths and collectibles that were previously locked behind it.

It is important to note that you can only use this ability while the Eclipse is active. If you have not activated the Eclipse, you will continue to see a faint white line.

Blazing Strike

• Biome: Yellow Shore

Blazing Strike is probably the most sought-after ability in the game, primarily because the yellow barriers start appearing from the first biome, and this is a mechanic in Returnal as well. Unlike Housemarque's previous game, where you had to fabricate an artifact that upgrades your melee weapon for the following run, allowing you to break the barriers, Saros works differently. The difference here is that Blazing Strike is locked behind story progression, and once you unlock it, you can break the yellow barriers at any time in any biome.

The only drawback of the ability is that you unlock it in the final biome of the game, Yellow Shore, which becomes available after completing Act 2. Once you complete the sections in the Passage and make your way to Yellow Shore, you will immediately come across a yellow barrier blocking your path, and it is here that you unlock the ability.

With the ability unlocked, you can break yellow barriers in previous biomes, but it also has additional functions. Firstly, beyond yellow barriers, you can now break yellow-locked containers that normally require a Carcosan Key to open. With this ability, simply melee them to obtain a Power Weapon.

The second function of Blazing Strike is tied to staggered enemies. After dealing enough damage, a normal enemy or Alpha hostile will remain staggered for a few seconds, and you will now have the option to press R1 on them, dealing a massive amount of damage that is often enough to dispatch normal enemies.