Surviving Mars
80 Achievements
0-1h
Swan Song
Complete the Inner Light mystery
4.1%
How to unlock the Swan Song achievement in Surviving Mars - Definitive Guide
This mystery, as with Power of Three, mostly plays out by itself and is narrative in structure. You cannot make wrong choices in this mystery, so choose as you wish - pretend this is a Telltale game! It didn't trigger until Sol 80 for me, and may have been caused by the expansion of my colony's population.
You'll need to research Dream Simulation (Breakthrough) when it comes up. It's pretty cheap, needing only 1000 research.
As the mystery develops, the game will assign a Dreamer trait to colonists. You will be able to teach it in schools. Dreamers will pass out when Mirages occur (randomly) and the number of dreamers who are asleep seems to be what moves the mystery on. You should build a dome or two and fill it with nurseries and schools teaching the Dreamer trait as soon as you viably can. Set the dome's filter to port in children born across your colony - and be sure to set every other dome to reject kids to force them to move. Continue expanding your colony and ensure each dome has a high comfort to promote procreation.
Eventually, the mystery will say you can treat Dreamers in Sanatorium to remove the trait. Don't do it. You need large numbers of Dreamers to finish the mystery. I had 532 colonists by the end of my mystery run.
This is a story heavy mystery that is lengthy, but by far the most interesting mystery in my opinion.
I just want to give a couple notes on completing this since it can seem to stall out due to its length.
1. To complete this you either need to get to 250 dreamers via training the trait in schools and waiting or eliminate all dreamers from your population via a sanitorium. I would strongly encourage getting to 250 dreamers for both the story of the mystery and the benefits of going that route.
2. When given the option to warn the clans at the rally or stay quite and bide your time, warn the clans.
Pick “Inner Light” mystery when you start a new game. The mystery triggers automatically after a set amount of time (approximately 40 Sols)
Recommendations:
1) You need as many Colonists as possible (approximate 500) to complete the mystery
2) Build Schools and keep your Colonists happy
When the Mystery starts, a small portion of your Colonists will gain the 'Dreamer' trait. Every few Sols, the game will turn a hue of green indicating a "Dream" event is occuring, which is when these Colonists with the trait will collapse, suffer some Sanity/Morale penalties and will not be working.
Starting off, you'll be asked to research the "Dream Simulation" breakthrough tech given to you. Thereafter, to consistently progress through each step of the mystery, you need to increase the number of Colonists with the Dreamer trait, and that can only be done 2 ways - Consistently expanding your population and building schools while selecting the option to teach the Dreamer trait to children. You'll probably need around 100-200 people with the Dreamer trait in order to trigger the final event.
The mystery is fairly straightforward and will require you to make a few choices but ultimately at the end all Colonists with the Dreamer trait will gain +15 work performance and no more "Dream" event will occur. You also gain a random technology.
Note: Sanatoriums can be customized to remove the Dreamer trait as it is deemed as a Flaw trait while the mystery is still active. It is said that removing the trait from all Colonists may end the mystery, but unknown if this counts as completing the mystery.