I followed my hunch and got the Cyclops down to the Ghost Tree. That was quite an adventure in itself, navigating around the perils of the Lost River!
Sure enough, past the Ghost Tree, there is lava everywhere. It was deeper than I could go with my gear, but fortunatly as I had my Prawn docked in the Cyclops bay and a mod station on the sub, I went back to lost river and could farm the Nickel I needed to upgrade the depth mods, right there on the spot. Boy, I love that Cyclops.
So down we go into the lava zone. I prefer going with the lights off becasue it seems, or maybe I just like to believe, that it drawns less attention from the creatures. So the atmosphere for the lava zone is dark, oppressive, things lit by a hot red glow if they are lit at all. Managed to find some Kyanite down there, and once again with the mod station on board I could get the depth mods right away. The Prawn of course made sense, because it was in the vehicle bay. I guess it is more of a bug than a feature, but I saved the game just to see if I could swap the Cyclops one fast enough to not get crushed. As soon as I removed the MK2, alarms were going off saying surface immediatly. But since I didn't move, I didn't seem to take any damage. I upgraded to the MK3 and re-installed, now good for the deepest parts of the game. Which was great but a *tiny* part of me was dissapointed I didn't have to wait to install it until I could get higher.
At any rate, now I began exploring the lava zone in earnest. I found there were some kind of parasites that would attach to the sub and start sucking the energy out. I had to keep getting off and inspecting the sub to knock them off with the knife.
With some more wandering, the computer chimed in and said that it detected something below the "natural structure in the center of this cave". That was a bit vague for me, so at first I missed it... instead I found these triple lava falls going even deeper, so with some care I navigated the Cyclops down there.
Underneath there was a giant lava lake, and a large alien facility in the middle of it. There was also an *enourmous* sea leviathan patrolling the area who was more than happy to give my Cyclops a whack and send the alarms blaring. With water pouring in, I quickly had to get out of the way and tuck the sub in behind the facility so I could get out and do some repairs.
Once I get that fixed up, I start concentrating on trying to get into the facility. The front door seems obvious enough, but it is locked with a blue tablet, which I have not seen before. So I started exploring the rest of the area with the Prawn trying to see if there was another way in. After some time I figured there was simply no alternative, so I dropped a beacon determined to come back later.
At this point, now I had a bit of a problem with my Cyclops... the doors wouldn't open to let my Prawn back in. I couldn't figure out why, so I tried getting out and swimming in the hatch, which worked. To my surprise, the lights were off and the computer informed me that we were running on emergency power only. Unfortunatly while I had been parked for 30+ minutes, I had failed to see some of those parasites attached to the hull, and they had drained the power cells totally dry. Fortunatly, I had created some spares because I didn't know how long the trip would be, so I knocked those pests off, put in a couple of new cells, and headed back out of the cave... but now I would have to be pretty careful with my power. I debated going back to base, but I resolved to explore a bit more first with the power I had left.
After a few more close calls with that giant monster, I made it back up the lava falls and into the first area. I kept exploring and then was lucky enough to see a faint greenish glow, the colour usually associated with the alien tech. I headed over, and there was an entrance into a large cavern, this must have been the "natural structure" the computer had mentioned earlier that I had missed.
I didn't have any more backup power cells, so after my first experience I decided that to be safe, I would pull all of the power cells out of the engine before leaving the Cyclops. I would need to power back up before getting the Prawn back in the sub, but the doors do open without power to let you out at least. Suck on that dry tank, you buggers!
I headed on inside with the Prawn, and sure enough, there was the alien facility I had been looking for originally.
Exploring inside, I was excited to find not only the mysterious blue tablet, but blueprints for ion batteries and ion power cells! Since I was traveling with a stock of materials on the Cyclops, I was able to make an ion power cell. I decided that using one of my few ion cubes was worth it to get me out of this situation. Combined with what charge was left in the remaining cells, I had more power than ever, even with those leeches on the hull. With this new development, I decided I no longer needed to head back to base, and I was determined to head back to the facility with the blue tablet and unlock that front door.
After navigating back to the lava lake, I lowered the forcefield and stepped inside. The large room in the middle was a veritable trasure trove of artifacts to scan, but the best part was in the middle... a machine that generated seemingly unlimited ion cubes out of nothing! Using this I would be able to change all of my power cells for ion power cells.