Chapter 01 - City Ruins

The Bunker

The chapter starts with both 2B and 9S able to explore the bunker freely. Check the terminal in 2B's room for starters to stock up on items, since whatever you have left during the prologue does not carry over. Head outside when ready to visit all the other rooms in search of freebies. Room 8B has a Small Recovery, room 21O has Impact Bracer (S). Take the terminal elevator to Maintenance Bay and grab the Ranged Attack Up (S). Feel free to look at what the shop has to offer, but you don't really have much funds right now to actually afford anything.

Go back to the dormitory floor, head right and through the unlabeled exit. Here, look to the right to collect the Medium Recovery before using the lift. At the bottom, look behind the lift that you just used to find another item box with 3000 G in it. Speak with the other androids if you like. Otherwise, just go find out what the commander wants then access hangar via an elevator in the dormitory level. There, board your flight units and take off for the city ruins.

You will encounter some resistance on the way there, but it's really nothing you haven't seen before. So just keep destroying them until you find a place to land. Also tucked away in the corner of the building you landed on is a chained box that can't be opened yet. Use the containers to go higher and head for the edge of the building for a scene. Your journey through the world of NieR Automata officially begins here.

City Ruins

Look around for a path to take you inside the building and start making your way down via the stairs or the broken floors. Once you reach the fields below, you can either head straight for the destination or stray from it for a while to explore. Also take note of those red dots on the minimap and approach them to find access points you can activate. Doing so allows you to save your progress anytime so long as you're within range of an active access point.

The sidequests in this game are also marked with the same icon by the way, but for now they mostly just indicate access points. You can check the locations of these red dots by selecting Event Markers in the map screen. Spend some time tracking down the ones you can reach while destroying robots to gain levels and make money at the same time. Most of the machines here are non-threatening or weak so its a good place to put some training in. The dry desert-like section of the ruins has the most enemies; go there if you wish to fight. Be sure to keep an eye out for possible access points and loot as well.

There is wildlife grazing on the greener parts of the city ruins, and you can ride them provided they are first distracted by animal bait. Do this if you want an alternate way to travel. Keep in mind however that these animals can attack if you get in their face too much. Not to mention they do hit pretty hard. As for 9S, you can change his combat style at anytime by talking to him. Head for the Resistance Camp when you're done getting side-tracked to proceed.

Once you arrive at the camp, open the item box next to the supply trader for a Medium Recovery, and to the left of the area where Anemone (the resistance leader) is standing is another box containing a Small Recovery plus a Melee Defense (S) on the ground. There's also a locked room here that you won't be granted access to until later, but do hop onto the back of one of the trucks for an Animal Bait. Also visit the tent behind the weapons trader and talk to the woman standing beside the jukebox. Say yes to her question to receive the Sound Data 1. Finally, check the far east side of the camp and climb the ladder to score a Small Recovery.

Go speak to Anemone and she'll tell you ask around. At this point two new sidequests will open up and both must be completed before you can proceed. Talk to the Strange Resistance Woman and the Maintenance Shop Owner to ask for advice on a variety of topics. I recommend going through each of them to learn more about the game's more complex mechanics. Now for the sidequests, the Weapons Trader needs you to get him 4 Complex Gadgets while the Supply Trader needs quite a few items to able to start selling plug-in chips.

The target locations for both quests will be marked on your map. The items needed by the weapons trader are found lying around within the big red target zone; simply locate the four shinys around the area and pick them up. As for the materials requested by the supply trader, you have to destroy some enemies and hope they drop what you need. You should already have some of them on hand if you did a good amount of fighting before reaching the camp. So just go for the ones you're missing until you can check off everything on the list. Once you have everything, take them back to the clients to complete the quests.

With both shops back in business, go ahead and check their wares to see if you can afford to grab some. If not, then you can always come back here later after returning from the desert. You should have plenty of funds by then. Talk to Anemone to get briefed on your next mission. Also don't forget to activate the access point here if you haven't already done so. Head for the target location at the desert section of the ruins and talk to the woman waiting for you there. Jackass will set off an explosive and grant you access to a tunnel leading to the next level.