How to get to the Alpha Quadrant in System Shock

System Shock is a game that likes to hint towards your objective without giving you a quest log that guides you too much. As such, you may find yourself confused as to how to proceed through the Medical floor of the game.

Below is a step-by-step of the key areas you'll need to explore on the Medical floor to get to the Alpha Quadrant, restore power to the elevator, and get to the Research Floor.

How do you get to the Alpha Quadrant?

Gamma Quadrant

• Go to the Central Hub
• Up the lift opposite the turret
• Into D'arcy's room, get his audio log
• Head to the gamma quadrant from the Central Hub

• Go down the central Gamma Quadrant room and turn right at the vending machines, into the corridor.
• From the corridor, take the first door to the left.

• Enter the room opposite the corpse by the windows with the audio log next to him.
• Defeat the enemy in this room and pick up the Group – 1 [GPI] Access Card inside the briefcase on the table.
• Head to the locked door immediately right of this room.
• Advance through the office up to the Beta doorway.

Beta Quadrant

• Approach the junction box to the right and solve the puzzle. Connect the power lines until it reaches the bar on the right side. Make sure you don’t put too little or too much power into the meter, hit the correct range for it to work. If the levels of power are off, you may need to swap around the connectors.
• Hit the lever next to the junction box when solved to summon the bridge and continue across it.
• Turn right then follow the corridor up the stairs.
• Turn left around the bend and continue until you see another lever. Pull it to summon another bridge that follows on from the original one.
• Head back down to the new bridge, turn left, and pick up the audio log on the console to get the medical armory password. (705)

• Either return to the Gamma quadrant to stock up on supplies or continue. Inside the medical armoury is the option to buy a weapon mod for your pistol, a shock mine, frag grenades and ammo vending machines.
• Continue through the corridor from the audio log and turn the lever to the left to deactivate the Alpha Quadrant barrier. This is a shortcut back to the Central Hub.

Alpha Quadrant

• The lift to the left of the barrier will take you to some ammo. Take the lift directly ahead and go across the bridge.
• SHODAN will intervene and the bridge will fall.
• There is a lift on the level you have dropped to but the power will need to be restored.
• Head to the barrier on the right and pull the lever to bring down one of the barriers. Step inside and pull the lever again to dispel the other one.
• Fight the enemy and pull the lever on the control panel to restore power to the lift.
• Repeat the lever process to get out and continue up the lift.
• Go directly forward into the control room and press the button to restore the bridge.

Restoring power to the elevator

• From the bridge continue right and follow the corridor around until you reach a door with a yellow sign of a robot.
• Here you will need to enter Cyberspace (the room on the left) and unlock the red barrier in the room. To do so, click on the pronged device in front of the glowing green hexagon.
• Once you have gone through Cyberspace, battle the computer viruses and get to the purple core. Destroy this and the medical barrier will be lifted, follow the glowing green hexagon for the way out of Cyberspace.
• Now, proceed through the barrier, go down the lift to the left and try to avoid the security droid.

• Walk forward to the GPU Node room, and destroy each node by breaking the screens. There are three screens on each side of every node, each needs to be destroyed for the whole structure to explode. The explosion will cause damage if you're too close so you may wish to use a gun for this.
• Make a note of the flashing red number on the center terminal once the nodes are destroyed. This will form part of a code needed later in the game.
• Return to the bridge.
• From the bridge turn left through the doorway.
• At the end of this section, to the left is a lever, pull this to create a shortcut back to the Gamma Quadrant. To the right is the elevator.
• Inside the elevator, you can proceed to the next floor (Research) now that the nodes have been destroyed.

Read here for our guide on how to get a pistol early in System Shock, which will help on your run through the game.