Surviving Mars

Surviving Mars

80 Achievements

0-1h

GOG
Log in or Register to track Surviving Mars achievements progress.
Cubism

Cubism

Complete The Power of Three Mystery

7.5%

How to unlock the Cubism achievement in Surviving Mars - Definitive Guide

Select the "Power of Three" mystery when setting up a new game.

This mystery plays out mostly by itself. Cubes will start to appear around your colony. You may wish to build special statues with them (no apparent effect) or just destroy them. A new storage unit for Black Cubes will also appear in your Build menu. You can use these storage areas to have your drones automatically clear the cubes from your build area.

Eventually, you will come across an update about researching the S.H.E.P.I.D. technology. The mystery log will read, "We should research the S.H.E.P.I.D. technology to protect the colony structures from the Black Cubes." At this point, be sure to build a Concrete Extractor if you do not have one. I went heavy with Extractors in the early days of my colony so I had decommissioned all of mine due to stockpiling ridiculous amounts of concrete. However, you need at least one Extrator in order for the story to advance. Once an Extractor is destroyed by a Cube, the technology to search (and therefore advance the mystery) will appear in the Breakthrough queue.

There doesn't seem to be any way of failing this mystery, so enjoy the story as it unfolds!
18
1

24 Mar 2018 08:30

7 Comments
I'm curious if anyone has had any issues with building the cube depots. I've tried four times now and every single time the second I hit [A] to build it the game crashes. I know I don't have to build the depots, as I didn't in the previous game with this mystery (everyone died in that game, so I never unlocked the achievement), but it'd be nice since they're taking up a ton of space. Any help would be appreciated.

Update: Just in case anyone else is having this issue, I found the following info on Steam Community that seems to work:
u could actually get the game to not crash by placing the depot in a lace where waste rock was...
but if theres no wasterock around...
so thanks!
So basically, demolish some Dumping Grounds that are full and then build the depots underneath the piles of garbage that are left. Weird fix, but it seems to work.
0
0
By Chyld989 on 27 Nov 2018 03:12
You are awesome. I will try this after work tonight. I was stuck for about 50 Sols last night trying to find SHEPID tech. Like you, all my extractors were gone and I had 500 Concrete left so I didn’t build any more. Explains why I was stuck.
0
0
By Thai J on 24 Mar 2018 16:35
Can you update this with the full how to on this one please?
0
0
By Chaos Mythology on 01 Apr 2018 13:53
I'm on the part where I have to put down Sensor towers and I have but nothing more is going on. any help?
0
0
By Chaos Mythology on 01 Apr 2018 14:42
Just keep playing. Progress seems to unlock randomly at different Sols. It took me over 80 Sols to complete the mystery.
0
0
By Fuzzy Bear Hugs on 01 Apr 2018 17:01
When does the achivement pop for this? Do I need to build the final tech?

Edit: Weird, it popped randomly about an hour later, without building the final tech.
0
0
By risseless on 15 Mar 2020 21:19
Sorry, I don't know; I wish I could remember. I think there are some Xbox Live issues today and that might be affecting it?
0
0
By Fuzzy Bear Hugs on 15 Mar 2020 21:22
View all 7 comments Show less comments
Mostly spoiler free.

A few notes to successfully complete this mystery:

1. The black cubes require their own depots to be deconstructed by drones.

2. You will need a lot of depots to store all the black cubes. 10+.

3. Drones will only disassemble black cubes into depots that are within range.

Other than that this is a pretty easy and enjoyable mystery.
0
0

05 Aug 2018 23:58

Pick “The Power of Three” mystery when you start a new game. The mystery triggers automatically after a set amount of time (approximately 30 Sols) and will culminate in 1 of 3 possible outcomes depending on your actions. The trophy unlocks no matter what the outcome. As the mystery progresses, you must complete the breakthrough research technologies “Dark Spectrometry” and “SHEPID” to proceed to the next step. To get “Dark Spectrometry” to appear in the research screen, you must have one active Concrete Extractor which will be destroyed and acts as the trigger for the next step of the mystery.

Recommendations:
1) Have a lot of drones for this mystery.

There are 3 possible outcomes depending on your choice of action in dealing with the Black Cubes appearing throughout the map – (1) Non-aggressive/Cautious: Store the black cubes in storage depots, (2) Aggressive: Destroy the black cubes, (3) Non-aggressive/Worship: Construct decorations out of Black Cubes. As far as I know, only choice (1) does not have any negative consequences.

You’ll need to build Black Cube storage depots and the drones will automatically pick up the Black Cubes within their operational zone and store in the depots. Black Cubes will spawn randomly all over the map thus hindering your colony expansion unless dealt with through any of the 3 choice mentioned above. If you choose choice (1), towards the end, your drones will automatically start to build a dome-like Black Monument on its own from the accumulated Black Cubes, and once completed you’ll be rewarded with a random technology.

0
0
The game froze and did not start the last stage, I endured up to 6000 cubes, then I realized that it was not my destiny to get a trophy on this playthrough. I had to start over, the second time I destroyed it right away, and everything went smoothly.
0
0

24 Sep 2021 12:13