Returnal: How to Open Orange Barriers

As you explore Atropos’ various biomes in Returnal, you’ll have no doubt come across the various energy barriers that protect enemies and others that prevent you from accessing items and other treasures. The former, the red energy barriers can be taken care of with a strike of your Atropian Blade (melee weapon), but how do you open orange energy barriers in Returnal?

If you try hitting these orange or yellow-colored energy barriers often preventing you from a cheeky chest or Silphium Resin with your melee attack, you’ll find that it simply doesn’t work. That is, of course, unless you get a melee upgrade from a Fabricator.

Breaking Orange Energy Barriers in Returnal

To open these orange energy barriers, you need to purchase the Blade Balancer Artifact from a Fabricator. It costs 250 Obolites and has the vague in-game description of: “Enables a more powerful melee attack.”

Once you’ve purchased this, you can then walk over to the orange barriers and press Square to use your melee attack to slice through them. This will destroy the barrier and allow you to get to the goodies that await you on the other side.

The Blade Balancer Artifact also increases the damage you’ll deal to enemies with your melee attack. The problem is this artifact, like many items that appear in the Fabricators in Returnal are random, so you’re not always guaranteed to be able to buy it from the first one you stumble across, or even at all in an entire run.

When the Blade Balancer Artifact does pop up then, we’d recommend buying it. The items you’ll get from breaking orange barriers is well worth it, and your melee attack can come in clutch for dispatching more common enemies with ease.

For more tips and tricks, head over to our wiki.

Returnal is available on PlayStation 5 now.