The Rickenbacker walkthrough is done from the perspective of a character having weapons skills. When I say "shoot" you can substitute your character’s skills, like using PSI or hacking security panels or turrets instead of good old-fashioned lead slinging. I will not mention where the security panels are located. They’re easy enough to see.

As you enter Deck B, you notice everything’s upside down. That’s because you reversed the gravity on the last deck.

Exit the elevator and turn right (west). Follow the corridor until you come to a room on the left, a chapel. There are probably three cyborg assassins in there; two at the far end on the right, around a corner, and one on the left around a corner. As soon as you deal with them a bot comes through the door behind you.

Leave the chapel and go left (north). You’ll soon come to a room with pipes. Walk across the pipes and jump to the ladder at the north end of the room. If you fall off the pipes, you’ll take major damage, but can still climb the ladder. Continue west down this corridor to another ladder.

Climb the ladder and follow the corridor into another room where you can see a ladder and a corpse. There are some invisible (transparent) spiders in there. You can hear their noises so they should easy to take care of. After you do that you can still hear spider noises. There’s more up the next ladder.

Climb this ladder from the backside, not the side facing you as you enter the room. At the top, turn left, there’s one spider next to an overturned piece of furniture. Turn right and look toward the red light in the bottom of the recess in the next room. There’s two more there.

On your way out you can search but bridge, but I found nothing of value. Go back to the room with the security camera and the floor marker that points to the escape pod. Go down the ladder, turn and follow the corridor. In my case, the bottom of the ladder was guarded by two spiders. Follow the corridor into the pod. At the far end on the right is a seat with a button on the console. Click it to launch the pod.

Welcome to the body of the many. Exit northeast through the passage with the whitish circle around it. Follow the tunnel until you come to a log from Prefontaine that looks like it’s at the end of a dead-end. The grayish blockage is a membrane, you can shoot is away.

Just through the membrane turn left. There may be a Rumbler and a spider here. Soon the short corridor turns to the right. Just to your left is another corridor going down. If you keep going straight a few steps you should see a body and to the right of it is a corridor going up. Take the corridor up. It leads to a room with a replicator in it. The replicator is turned on its side but it’s functional. There are also some chemicals there but this isn’t the main chemical store.

Return to the left and take the tunnel to the left down to the pool. Later on you’ll find another log that describes how you can open two large sphincters by destroying two nerve nodes. One of the nodes is down this tunnel. There is a Reaver brain under the water controlling a floater. If you can get the brain and then the floater you can deal with the node as your leisure. It’s a brown lump located on one of the walls above the water. You’ll know it when you destroy it. It splits open like the egg pods. Go back up the tunnel to the intersection where the body is.

Head northwest, turn left when the tunnel does and go until you see another tunnel leading off to the right. Go until you find a body in front of a tunnel that leads left and upward. If you go up you’ll come to a room with not much in it.

Continue past this tunnel and the body and go to the next tunnel on the left. The second nerve cluster is down it. This cluster is difficult because the pool is radiation contaminated. If you don’t have a hazard suit or a lot of rad hypos, or some PSI protection, you probably won’t survive. Swim down toward the bottom. Just past the floating table (desk) is an exit. Go through and follow the passage. It will split twice. Each time take the left passage and go until you can surface. Swim on the surface through a narrow passage. At the end, turn around and the nerve cluster will be up on the wall above you. Swim back out and go back to the main tunnel where you entered this tunnel.

Continue northwest to an intersection full of water. Turn left and follow the passage to the first left. Follow this passage to the chemical stores. This room also contains all four upgrade units, a recharger and a replicator.

Leave this room and go back to the end of the corridor where you entered. Turn left (north) then east with the tunnel and go until you see a tunnel entrance slightly above eye level. It should have a large blue nerve fiber running into it. Go in and directly in front of you should be an open sphincter. Go through and follow the tunnel. Be on the watch for Midwives and Spiders.

You should come to a small pool with a shelter built from doors on one side. In the next room is a giant tooth sliding up and down (Don’t look at me, I didn’t design this level). Walk around the tooth and exit through the tunnel on the other side. Follow the tunnel until you come to a room with two sets of teeth going up and down in a pit.

You’re about halfway up the depth of the pit. Far enough, anyway, that if you jump in you won’t be climbing out. If you get as close to the edge of the opening as you can and look up and to the left you’ll see a closed sphincter. That’s where we need to go. When the noisy tooth in front of you comes down, you can see straight ahead, up toward the ceiling, a small yellow triangle. It’s really a small room with a nerve cluster in it. We must go there first and destroy it to open the sphincter.

Notice the cycle of the tooth in front of you. At certain times it never meshes with the one above it. You need to time your jump to the tooth so that after you ride it up, you have space to jump into the room with the nerve cluster instead of being crushed by the tooth on top coming down.

Leaving is much the same. You must jump to the same tooth, as it’s going down, turn right and at the proper time, jump into the room with the now opened sphincter. Follow the tunnel to a cavern with three exits. The cavern also has an overturned desk and a door/shelter.

The tunnel on the far left leads to a room that has several crates with goodies in them. There are also Midwives and Spiders. The one on the right leads to two or three other rooms you can search for goodies. Search if you must. When you’re done go through the center tunnel.

This tunnel should lead to a room with a crate, a corpse, a log and a door shelter. Go through the cavern and out the other side. Walk until you come to a membrane. Remove it.

Once you jump from the cliff into the water, there’s no way back. On the other side of the pool are a floater and a Rumbler. You must leave the water, pass these enemies, go along a short series of tunnels into a main room where the central nervous system of the Many is and destroy it. Between the water and the main room are several more Floaters (who will regenerate unless their controlling brains are killed), Rumblers and Midwives.

Inside the room are more Floaters, Midwives and Spiders. Along each side of the room are 6 pits in the floor – 3 to each side of the room. The Floater-controlling brains are in these pits. Around the Central Nervous System are three little orbiting stars. These must be destroyed before the System can take any damage. After the Central Nervous System is destroyed the only way out is to jump down the hole in the platform that is uncovered when the organ is destroyed.

You will have to deal with these enemies however your character is equipped. For my character and his weapons skills, it was basically a four-step process:

1. Swim out of the water and destroy the Rumbler and Floater on the shore and run through the tunnel toward the main room destroying any enemies found there. You must be fast because the Floaters will regenerate.
2. Quickly save the game, run into the main room and starting on the right side, shoot the brains in the pits. Always keeping moving, cross behind the Central Nervous System and get the 3 brains in the pits on the other side of the room. Exit the room back into the tunnel.
3. Restore health as best you can and check ammo. Now run back into the room and, never stopping, shoot the remaining Floaters. They won’t regenerate since the brains are dead. Try for some of the three orbiting stars if you have time. Exit back into the tunnel.
4. 4. Go back the fourth time, finish off the stars and jump in the hole left by the destroyed organ.

Head south and go up the ramp. At the top you will find all four types of upgrade stations. The area should look familiar, it’s the center section of the bridge area. You start out at the bottom where the two gun turrets were. At the top of the ramp turn left, then right and go through the door. Take the only way out of the next room – along the wire-mesh corridor.

At the end of the corridor, turn right. There’s a surgical unit here that will operate if you have a key. Go south from there. Just at the end of the corridor before turning left, there’s a camera on the right. Go left to the next intersection where there’s another camera. Just past this camera is a short ramp up to the right. Go right and stand at the top of the ramp.

The best way to find Shodan is to follow the red, blue and green floating objects. What you’re looking for is a short platform with an audio log floating above it in midair. On either side of the log’s platform are short ramps going up. Behind the log is the beginning of a weird curving stairway you must take down by jumping from step to step. Miss a step and you’re history. At the bottom of the corridor is a tunnel you can jump into. At the end of the tunnel, just before you jump down the shaft, is one last log. Read the log and jump down the shaft. You’ll be carried to the final confrontation.

Von Braun
[ CanOfWorms | Intro | Deck 2 | Deck 1 | Deck 3 | Deck 4 | Deck 5 | Deck 6 ]

Rickenbacker
[ Deck A | Deck B | Deck C | Body of the Many | Where Am I?]

System Shock II Walkthru © 1999 by Jim Blanchard

All original material including names and images © 1999 by
Looking Glass Studios and Eidos Interactive