How to Earn Chaos Emeralds in Sonic Frontiers

The chaos emeralds have been at the forefront of many a Sonic game, and Sonic Frontiers is no exception. This time, they play a crucial role not only in the plot, but the core gameplay loop as well. If you’re looking for clarification regarding how to earn chaos emeralds in Sonic Frontiers, read on.

Earning Chaos Emeralds in Sonic Frontiers

In each open world section of Sonic Frontiers, the chaos emeralds are locked in structures called vaults. These are peppered throughout each zone, and true to their name, they require a collectible item called Vault Keys to access.

Earing Vault Keys requires the player to play through cyberspace levels—the more linear stages found in Sonic Frontiers—linking the open world and cyberspace segments as a part of the game’s main means of progression.

Every cyberspace level has a set of five missions attached to it. In every instance, these missions are:

1. Reach the goal
2. Clear with Rank S time (changes per level)
3. Clear with X Rings (changes per level)
4. Find all Red Star Rings
5. Clear all 4 missions!

It’s important to keep in mind that each mission rewards you with one Vault Key, but clearing all four missions will grant you three additional keys as a reward for full completion. Clearing all of them will absolutely require multiple playthroughs for some cyberspace levels, but the reward of multiple keys is well worth the extra time investment.

After earning the requisite number of Vault Keys, the player can then navigate Sonic to the nearest chaos emerald. They’re a bit hard to miss given the colorful beam of light they emit to the sky once they’re available.

Once you reach one, it’s a simple matter of approaching the emerald and pressing a button prompt. This will remove the set amount of Vault Keys from your inventory in exchange for the chaos emerald.

Although this is the primary method of earning chaos emeralds in Sonic Frontiers, some of them are also granted to the player for completing certain unavoidable minigames found in the main storyline.

And that was a quick guide detailing how to unlock chaos emeralds in Sonic Frontiers. If you want to better understand how to access the aforementioned cyberspace levels, be sure to reference our guide on just that. If you want some pointers on earning skill points in Sonic Frontiers, Twinfinite has you covered there as well.