By now, you’ve already encountered the sword in Returnal, better known as the Atropian Blade. This melee weapon is a powerful tool while doing combat, and it also allows you to slice open red barriers that you normally couldn’t open.
However, you may have noticed that the Atropian Blade doesn’t affect the orange barriers when you strike them with it. Is there another weapon you need to open these doors? No, but there is an item that can enhance the Atropian Blade to slice down those barriers.
The item in question is the Blade Balancer, an artifact that can be created at a fabricator for 250 Obolites (in-game currency). The downside to this is that the Blade Balancer is a random item and won’t always appear in the current cycle that you’re playing. I’ve played multiple Return sessions and haven’t seen the item she up, so your mileage may vary.
However, should you eventually get the chance to purchase the Blade Balancer, I recommend you do so – since you can finally chop through the orange barriers.
Keep in mind that even if you do gain access to the Blade Balancer, that Returnal doesn’t allow you to keep artifacts upon death. Should you die, you’ll have to find and purchase the item all over again.
Deciding if spending the Obolites towards the Blade Balancer is up to you. Thanks to the RNG nature of Returnal, there’s no telling what’s behind the orange barriers. There have been times where I regretted buying the Blade Balancer instead of some much-needed healing simply because I wanted to find out what I was missing out on.
Returnal is exclusive to the PlayStation 5 and developed by Housemarque.
