Most players will mainline the story in Control Resonant and wonder why their build feels weak by the third zone. The answer isn’t grinding the same enemy packs. It’s skipping the side quests that hand out the best permanent upgrades in the game.
Here are the 10 side quests that matter most — ranked by what they actually give you, not by how good the story is.
Every one of them makes the game easier to play for the next thirty hours.
The Complete Set
This quest starts at the auction house in Downtown. You pick up a bouncing speaker, then hunt down the rest of the set across the city. The reward artifact is called the Bout Guard — it boosts power recovery by 50% at the cost of 20% more incoming damage.
That tradeoff is worth it. Power is the resource for combat abilities. More power recovery means more abilities. The extra damage you take matters less when you’re stun-locking enemies with fault builds.
One detail most guides miss: after placing all speakers, you choose between shutting the system down or turning the volume up. Both give the same artifact. But turning the volume up triggers a much more interesting environmental event that reveals a hidden lore document about the Patterning’s auditory effects.
Incursion Fault (West Incursion Zone)
This is marked by a giant image of Jesse on a parking garage. Climb to the top, drop through the hole in the center, and you unlock the Gravity Shift ability.
This lets you cling to certain walls and ceilings. It’s not just for traversal. In combat, you can reposition to high ground and force melee enemies to climb to reach you. That changes how you approach the Factory Resident fight in Central.
The enemies in the West Incursion Zone are typically one level higher than Central’s. If they show as skulls, leave and come back after a few zone upgrades.
Subway Vault (Evacuation Zone)
Find this in the Railyard Street Station. Completing it gives you Reach — the grapple ability that targets spatial anomalies (those glowing spheres you’ve seen everywhere).
Reach is the single biggest quality-of-life upgrade in the game. Before you have it, exploring the upper levels of buildings requires elaborate jump sequences. After, you can chain grapple points to cover distance faster than running.
There are two level four enemy encounters before the vault entrance. If you haven’t picked up any health upgrades yet, this will punish you. Get three health upgrades before attempting it.
The Factory Resident
This is the optional boss in Central zone. Defeating it unlocks the Inferno or Ignite combat abilities. Both deal fire damage, which is the only damage type that melts mold enemies efficiently.
Inferno is a punch-based fire attack that drains power per hit. Ignite imbues your melee weapon with fire. If you’re running a strike primary build, Inferno is better because you can weave it between combos without resetting your attack chain.
Without fire abilities, the mold zones (Park, parts of Evacuation) become tedious grindfests. This quest is effectively mandatory.
Unsupervised Science
This chain sends you to FBC testing facilities in each zone. The rooms contain puzzles that usually involve activating terminals in sequence.
Each facility rewards a power upgrade point — three of these increase your power bar, which controls how many combat abilities you can use before recharging.
The entrance to each facility is never where the map marker sits. The map pin shows the facility’s interior. The actual door is usually in a tunnel system several hundred meters away. Look for manhole covers or service entrances nearby.
The Complete Set Part 2 (Speaker Hunt)
Different from the auction house starter. This one involves tracking speakers to FBC field offices and the Oldest House interior.
The reward is a power upgrade point and a significant chunk of zone XP. But the real value is that one speaker is hidden in a path that leads to a vendor you might have missed in Downtown.
Vending Machine Hunting
These red-flashing machines appear in about a dozen locations across Manhattan. Attack them, and they’ll scuttle away while spitting materials.
Each machine drops a reset item when destroyed. Reset items let you respec your weapon tree, combat abilities, or talents. You get one from each machine.
Reset items cost 1,500 source from vendors. The vending machines give them for free. This is the only renewable source of early-game reset items before you start fighting Resonant bosses.
The Dog on the Rooftop
Southwest of the Oldest House, you’ll find a dog on a rooftop with its toy missing. The toy is on a neighboring roof — one jump away.
Returning the toy moves the dog to its next location. There are seven dog locations across the seven zones. Completing all seven gives a cosmetic and a decent source of health upgrade materials.
Do this when you’re already passing through a zone. Don’t go out of your way for it until you have both traversal abilities.
The Taxi Cab Chain
Listen for a horn honking. Getting into the taxi starts a quest where you spot patterns in photos left around the world.
The reward is an artifact that boosts damage against specific enemy types. More importantly, each taxi stop adds a fast travel door to your network. Zones that are a pain to traverse become manageable.
The Terminal Questions
Inside FBC-controlled zones, look for computer terminals. Interacting with them presents a yes/no/”I don’t know” question sequence. The answers don’t seem to matter — pick anything.
Each terminal gives 200 source and upgrade materials. There’s one per zone. The total haul is about 1,400 source and enough materials for two or three weapon tree unlocks. Do them whenever you see the icon.
FAQ_Q: Can I miss any of these side quests permanently?
FAQ_A: Most side quests in Control Resonant remain available until a Resonant boss is defeated in that zone, which triggers a world reset. If you haven’t started a quest before the reset, it may disappear. The dog chain and FBC testing facilities persist across cycles.
FAQ_Q: Do I need the traversal abilities to do all these quests?
FAQ_A: The Complete Set and the Terminal Questions need no special abilities. The West Incursion Fault and Subway Vault are the quests that give you the traversal abilities. Do them first.
FAQ_Q: What’s the one quest I should absolutely not skip?
FAQ_A: The Factory Resident. Mold enemies without fire damage become the hardest encounters in the game. Inferno or Ignite are direct counters. Pick one before you enter the Park zone.
The dog quest chain is the outlier here. Its rewards are cosmetic, not mechanical. But it teaches you how Remedy hides progression in plain sight — you walk past a rooftop, hear a bark, and that thread pulls you through every zone in the game. That’s the design philosophy behind all these quests. None of them are required. Every one of them makes the game easier to play for the next thirty hours.
- Can I miss any of these side quests permanently?Most side quests in Control Resonant remain available until a Resonant boss is defeated in that zone, which triggers a world reset. If you haven't started a quest before the reset, it may disappear. The dog chain and FBC testing facilities persist across cycles.
- Do I need the traversal abilities to do all these quests?The Complete Set and the Terminal Questions need no special abilities. The West Incursion Fault and Subway Vault are the quests that give you the traversal abilities. Do them first.
- What's the one quest I should absolutely not skip?The Factory Resident. Mold enemies without fire damage become the hardest encounters in the game. Inferno or Ignite are direct counters. Pick one before you enter the Park zone.
