Control Resonant Into the Valley of Death Walkthrough: Alfred och monstret

Into the Valley of Death is the meatiest side story in Control Resonant's middle stretch, with combat, traversal and a genuinely odd puzzle built around a cat. It sends Dylan into the Sinkhole apartments to retrieve Langston's missing pet, and the thing living in those apartments turns out to be a bigger problem than the cat. The fight at the end cannot be won by hitting it, which catches people out.

Into the Valley of Death Quest Overview

The full campaign order across all three quest chains sits in the Control Resonant Walkthrough Hub. This is the second job Langston gives you, after Control Resonant Panopticon Service Request Walkthrough.

How to Start Into the Valley of Death

After the incident with the CFD, speak to Pope at the Oldest House. Once she has finished with the main quest information, she mentions that Langston has been looking for help with something of his own.

Visit him at his station near the Field Office in Central to start the side story.

What he wants is Alfred, who turns out to be his cat, and who is stuck somewhere in the apartments down in the Sinkhole.

If you are heading into the Sinkhole for the main story anyway, there is no conflict. This quest runs along the same route and can be finished on the way down, which is the efficient way to handle it given how long the descent is.

It is also worth taking the quest before you go rather than after. The apartments are a section of the Sinkhole you would otherwise pass without a reason to stop, and doubling back down here later means repeating a descent that has no fast-travel shortcut partway.

How to Enter the Sinkhole

Entry is through a new FBC access point near the laundromat in the western Evacuation Zone.

Grab the Power Upgrade shard from the chest to the left of the security door before you go in. Three of these expand your Power pool, which feeds Combat Abilities.

Head through the doors, down the stairs, and through the halls until you reach the chasm that makes up the first section of the Sinkhole.

Drop to the checkpoint on the small platform near the bottom of the apartments, then go through the door surrounded by yellow tape.

From here the tape is your navigation. Follow the lines and arrows on the floors and walls, through a hole with a Dark Matter 2099 movie poster beside it, and keep following until you reach a second chasm.

The tape is worth trusting completely. The Sinkhole apartments are a jumble of collapsed floors and rooms at wrong angles, and there is no map coverage down here to fall back on. Whenever the route stops making sense, the correct move is to look for the next stretch of yellow rather than to guess at the geometry.

Find Langston's Apartment

Look up and across the second chasm for a shimmering white light. That is a flashing television.

Go to it and speak with the FBC ranger sitting in front of the screen. He eventually gets around to mentioning Langston's cat, and the monster he says lives in the apartment. Remember him, because he matters later.

Follow the floor tape north through a hole in the wall and around until you find the body of the TV ranger. Langston's apartment is not far from there.

The apartment is perched over a bottomless pit with a bridge running to it. Cross carefully, unlock the door, and head inside.

Langston speaks to you through his wi-fi cat feeder, which is exactly the kind of device you would expect him to own.

Investigate the apartment, including the blood on the floor of the back hallway and the scratch marks on the foyer wall. Langston works out from these that Alfred has got out, and asks you to put the feeder into the cat's carrier so he can help you search.

Do that, pick up the carrier, and head back out toward the chasm.

How to Find and Trap Alfred

Alfred has left a trail of broken potted plants behind him, and that trail is the route.

The first plant is close to the hole in the wall leading to Langston's apartment, heading southwest. There are a lot of broken pots to follow, but the general direction holds: keep going south-southwest through the apartments and you will end up where they lead.

Eventually you reach another chasm ledge and Alfred yowls somewhere in the distance. Now the puzzle starts.

What Alfred needs. To lure him into the carrier, you have to set up a room with four specific qualities: a soft bed, a working television, music, and no plants.

The apartment that can provide all four is on the southern wall, just to the right of where the potted plants led you. Jump in and follow the hall around until you reach the bedroom.

Setting the room up:

1. Place Alfred's carrier on the bed
2. Interact with the nearby keyboard to provide the music
3. Remove all four plants from the room by picking them up and dropping them into the chasm

The plants are behind the TV, by the open armoire, and on either side of the bookcase. All four have to go.

The bookcase pair is the one people miss, because two plants flanking the same piece of furniture read as a single decoration rather than two separate objects. Count them out as you throw them, since the room gives you no confirmation that the condition has been satisfied.

Then you have to leave, because Alfred will not come out while you are standing there. Jump to the other side of the chasm, wait until you hear him mew, and return to the carrier.

Spoiler warning. The rest of this walkthrough covers what the ranger was warning you about and how the fight at the end works. Skip ahead if you would rather meet it cold.

How to Find the Monster

After Langston finishes baby-talking his cat over the feeder, you hear a scream.

Jump back across the chasm to the ranger in front of the television. He is dead now. Drop to the bottom of the chasm and through the hole in the middle of the floor.

Fall onto the blood stain, then drop again to land next to a checkpoint.

South of the checkpoint is a room lined with windows on what should be the ceilings and the walls. Shortly after you arrive, a Hiss named Maria attacks.

How to Beat Maria

Maria fights normally at first, and you can damage her the usual way. At around 50% health she vanishes into the walls, and from that point hitting her is not an option. This is where the fight actually starts.

Alfred is the weapon. Place him at the red-glowing crack in one of the walls. Doing so causes one of the windows in the room to light up bright red.

The timing. You need to approach and interact with a window just before it turns red, so that the interact bar has time to fill. Interacting too late means the window is already lit and the attempt fails.

This is the part of the quest that gets people stuck, and it is almost always the same misreading. The lit window looks like the target, so the instinct is to run at whichever pane is currently glowing. That is the one attempt guaranteed not to work. The red light is confirmation that a window has already been used, not an instruction.

Time it correctly and Alfred goes into the walls after Maria. Do this successfully three times and she is forced back out into the room, at which point she can be killed like any other Hiss enemy.

The trick to reading it is to watch which window lights next rather than reacting to the one already glowing. The pattern gives you enough warning to be standing at the right pane before it changes.

Finish the Quest

With Maria dead, place Alfred's carrier next to the dead ranger. Langston arranges for an FBC evacuation crew to collect both the cat and the body.

That completes Into the Valley of Death. The ranger you spoke to at the start, who warned you about the monster in the apartments and was ignored by everyone including you, gets collected in the same trip as the cat.

Into the Valley of Death Rewards

The quest pays out the Untapped Catnip Toy Artifact.

Once activated and equipped, it reduces the damage you take from falling into a bottomless pit. Given that this quest alone has you crossing a bridge over one, dropping down two chasms, and deliberately throwing houseplants into a third, the thematic fit is hard to argue with.

Whether it earns a slot is a different question. It is situational by design, but the Sinkhole, the Underpass and the Unknown all involve a great deal of movement over nothing at all, so it has more uses in the back half of the campaign than it looks like at first.

As with every Untapped-line item, it does nothing until it is activated and equipped.

Common Mistakes

Skipping the Power Upgrade shard at the entrance. It is in a chest to the left of the security door before you go down, and there is no convenient reason to come back for it.

Leaving one plant in the bedroom. All four have to go into the chasm. Alfred will not come out otherwise, and the room gives you no feedback about which condition is unmet.

Staying in the room to watch. He will not appear while you are there. Cross the chasm and wait for the mew.

Trying to damage Maria after she disappears. She is inside the walls and cannot be hit. The only way to bring her back out is three successful Alfred attacks.

Interacting with a window that is already red. The bar needs time to fill, so the interaction has to start before the window lights.

What to Do Next

Langston's two jobs bookend a long stretch of the campaign. If you have not done the first, Control Resonant Panopticon Service Request Walkthrough covers it and is considerably shorter than this one.

If you are heading deeper for the main story, the Sinkhole route continues downward from here. For other side content in the same zone, Control Resonant Urban Survival Walkthrough and Control Resonant Freeze Frame Walkthrough both run through the Evacuation Zone above you.