Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora brings dozens of features that are staples of the RPG genre, but it also has some unique ones. One fresh feature is Explorer Mode, and players will have to choose whether or not they want to activate the optional feature before loading into the game.
What is Explorer Mode in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora?
Explorer Mode is an optional toggleable feature that is designed to make adventuring more immersive by limiting the amount of guidance you receive from your map and UI in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. Usually, you will see a glowing quest marker every time you activate Na’vi Sense, and this same marker will be reflected on your map. When Explorer More is turned on, these quest markers are removed—meaning you need to figure out where you’re headed on your own.
How limiting is Explorer Mode?
When Explorer Mode is toggled on, you do not receive any quest markers of any kind, however, you still have full access to your map, which will still display your player icon and key locations. Because of a neat little feature called Hints in AFOP, you actually should be able to competently navigate to required locations without the help of quest markers. Hints are fairly simple—in addition to your UI showing a brief description of a quest’s goal, you will also be shown a statement or two that help you navigate. For example, a quest description might look like this:
- (Description) Meet Eetu near Home Tree.
- (Hint) He is waiting northwest Home Tree.
- (Hint) He should be next to a lake.
Hints will always include landmarks and general directions from the nearest named location, so they are a decent replacement for quest markers. What’s more—you don’t need to waste time pulling up your quest journal to see Hints—they are always displayed with the quest description on your UI. These tips were included in the game specifically to allow players to use Explorer Mode without spending all of their time wandering around.
Can you turn Adventure Mode on or off mid-playthrough?
Thankfully, you can toggle Explorer Mode on or off at any time—even smack dab in the middle of a quest. If you ever find a specific hint to be just too vague, you can bail out and turn Adventure Mode off, which will cause quest markers to immediately show up once more when you use Na’vi sense and when you open your map. You aren’t rewarded or punished for keeping Explorer Mode on or off—it really is just designed as an option for players who want the added immersion that comes with needing to navigate for yourself rather than just following a marker.
Should you play with Explorer Mode turned on?
I recommend activating Explorer Mode for several reasons.
- It forces you to engage more with the beautiful atmospheres of Pandora.
- You can always turn it off if you’re stuck.
- It ends up saving time and making gameplay more fluid.
That last reason took me several hours to realize, but it’s abundantly true. When you activate Na’vi Sense, you stop sprinting and move at a slow walk for the duration that you leave it on. If you want to see a Quest Marker, you must either use Na’vi Sense or open your map. If you get in the habit of relying on quest markers, you will be doing both of those things every couple of seconds as you approach a quest objective.
Alternatively, getting used to Explorer Mode means only using Na’vi Sense to track animals, identify weakspots, or locate harvesting ingredients—which makes for a much more fluid and satisfying exploration experience. Of course, it comes down to personal preference, but I highly recommend at least trying Explorer Mode out for an hour or two. Once I got the hang of it, I found Explorer Mode to be liberating and satisfying, and I didn’t feel like I was ever wasting my time wandering in circles to find quest objectives.
