Situated on Venus and accessible through the Fortuna mission node, Orb Vallis is a massive open-world expanse of icy mountains, Orokin artifice and corpus industry. An introductory quest is available from Eudico in Fortuna, that will reward you with a K-Drive, access to the Solaris United syndicate and a Garuda blueprint. The enemies you face will be from the corpus faction, including some rather dangerous robotic proxies – expect them to hit hard and disable powers with Nullifier and Scrambus units!

Bounty missions are the primary activity type on the Vallis and can be picked up from Eudico, sitting beside the gate out of Fortuna. Each consists of a set of loosely connected missions that you complete in sequence, gaining a reward for each stage. These rewards are drawn from a pool based on the difficulty of the bounty, and later stages in a bounty will have an increased chance to drop uncommon or rare rewards. In addition, each stage has an optional objective that will grant you an extra item from the reward pool should you complete it. Typical rewards include void relics, focus lenses, crafting resources, set mods, standing tokens and parts of Garuda, along with a bit of Solaris United standing.

Rude Zuud offers kitguns, custom primary and secondary weapons that can be tailored towards critical or status chance. The projectile of each weapon is set by their chamber, with chaining beams, penetrating waves, and high-yield grenades all being options alongside the normal energy bolts. Other components can be used to determine if it’s a primary or secondary weapon, the fire rate, clip size and more. Keep in mind that more component recipes will be made available as you increase in Solaris standing!

Legs can help you build a MOA companion, should you wish. These little robots are somewhere between a Kubrow and Sentinel in function, and can provide some crowd control, a defensive dome or hack terminals for you. They can use the “link” mods to copy your health, armour and shields (making them reasonably tough) and can also equip a “robotic” weapon. Legs will also sell you a variety of other robotic weapons that can be equipped on MOA or sentinel companions, along with the Oxylus sentinel.

Finally, you have the Ventkids clubhouse, accessible via a vent on the upper deck of Fortuna. A mini-syndicate solely dedicated to the art of K-Driving, they became a bit more relevant with the introduction of Yareli. They sell components to make upgrade K-Drives, and you gain gain reputation with the faction by performing chains of tricks on your K-Drive or running races (indicated by a pink board icon) on the Vallis. If you are having trouble getting a high score or time in trick chains, try going to “The Pearl” location on the Vallis. You’ll need to clear out the garrison, but the Pearl itself is surrounded by a ring wall ideal for grinding. By performing short jumps you can hop over the ramps and keep grinding ad-infinitum, and by performing a trick or two while in the air, you can rack up a high score in a fairly short time.

Moving outside of Fortuna, you’ll see the Corpus mining outposts dot the Vallis – these often become locations for Eudico’s bounties. You can also take them over for a while by killing the Corpus units stationed there until you find a datamass – inserting a datamass into a console will begin a short defence mission, then a Solaris agent will turn up who you can offer further bounty missions.

Corpus units can call in support of their own. If you see a crewman place a beacon in the ground, you can either blow it up or let it run, as it slowly elevates the “alarm” level of Nef Anyo’s forces, represented by red diamonds beneath the mini-map. As the alarm level goes up, you can expect corpus reinforcements to beam in or be deployed by dropship, with their level increasing as time goes on – destroying all beacons or moving away will cause the alarm level to drop.

Getting around the Vallis can take quite a bit of time – so I advise you either use your Archwing Launcher (if you have one) or a K-Drive (hoverboard) to speed things up. There’s even races (marked with a purple icon) for K-Drives if you want to show off!

Strange, iridescent patches on the “water” of the Vallis give away the location of fishing spots – by hurling in bait (bought from “The Business” in Fortuna) you can attract mechanised “fish” that can be salvaged for parts or donated for Solaris standing. To fish in Orb Vallis, you’ll need to equip an Electro-Spear from your gear wheel and patiently wait at the waters edge before making your cast. Luminous dye will still work on these “fish” and I highly recommend using it.

You can also make use of a Tranq Rifle and Echo Lures (again, bought from “The Business” in Fortuna) to hunt rare wildlife and capture them intact. Note that certain frame abilities can make this much easier – Equinox can use Rest/Rage (2) to knock out creatures without using the Tranq Rifle as can Ivara with Sleep Arrow (1) while remaining invisible with Prowl (3.)

Minerals can be found in small colourful veins on the Vallis, typically red for metals and blue for gems. Equip a cutter or drill from your gear wheel (Smokefinger in Fortuna sells them) and focus the beam on the 1-3 highlighted points. Each one will bring up a timing based mini-game, which influence the amount of minerals you get. The extensive cave systems scattered throughout Orb Vallis are a great place to look for both mineral veins and fishing spots!

Crafting items and frames found in the Vallis may also require toroids, strange items that can be used in crafting or for the secretive Vox Solaris faction. These have a very low drop chance from enemies found in:

• Calda Toroid: Enrichment Labs
• Sola Toroid: Temple of Profit
• Vega Toroid: The Spaceport

Though the larger Crisma and Lazulite toroids will only drop from Profit Taker and Exploiter bosses, respectively. Try using Nekros or Atlas with Ore Gaze, Khora with Pilfering Strangledome or Hydroid with Pilfering Tentacles for a much better drop rate of toroids. You should also allow the alarm to remain active, since this will increase the number of foes available to defeat and loot!

There are a couple of giant mechanical spiders to be found on the Vallis, the Exploiter Orb and the Profit-Taker Orb. These corpus-sentient hybrid machines cannot be fought directly, and have special bounty missions associated with them, available from the Vox Solaris syndicate:

• Exploiter Orb: Revisit Deck 12 and use Diluted Thermia (from Thermia Fractures) to overheat Exploiter.
• Profit-Taker Orb: Help Vox Solaris sabotage Profit-Taker’s shields in a series of heists before taking it down for good.