If you’ve been playing Neverness to Everness for a while, you’ve probably already completed a bunch of anomalous missions. Some are part of the main storyline, while others are simply scattered around the map, stumbled upon by chance. But few missions compare in difficulty to “The Lone Player.”
It’s one of the few missions with a four-star difficulty that isn’t a world boss. And the difficulty is completely justified: you’ll not only have to solve several puzzles but also do some serious preparation beforehand. Below is a full breakdown of what you need to do and the optimal route.
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What should you prepare before starting “The Lone Player”?
Before tackling the “The Lone Player” mission in NTE, you’ll need to pick up three gadgets from random students at school. Two of them are critical to completing the game, the third is optional, especially if you follow our guide:
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Empathy Drops — mandatory
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Cheese — mandatory
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Pipi’s Glasses — optional
For gadgets, head to school in the morning—there are no students there at night. If you’re having trouble at the main entrance, move a little to the side and simply jump over the fence. It works.
How to get Empathy Drops
Go to the school track—it’s located in the upper right part of the school grounds on the map.
Near the track is a gym (basketball stadium), and next to it is a girl. Talk to her: she’ll ask you to use Empathy Drops three times during the conversation to find her diary.
Once the conversation is over, follow the path to the right of the girl—there’s a tree sticking out between the school buildings. The diary is next to it. Carry it back to get the Empathy Drops. It’s simple.
How to get “Cheese”
“Cheese” is an anomaly camera. Press the shutter, and a specific area is completely frozen. To get it, go to the rectangular building on the left side of the school grounds and find the Occult Club student with the camera hovering nearby.
After the first conversation, he’ll change locations. You’ll need to find him three more times, answering the question correctly each time. Here’s the full layout:
After all four encounters, the student will give you “Cheese.”
How to get “Pipi’s Glasses”
An optional gadget, useful against one of the wandering puppets. If you follow this guide strictly, you won’t need it. But if you want to be on the safe side, you’ll have to look for Pipi at several points around the school grounds. The catch is that he only appears inside walls.
The locations must be visited strictly in the correct order. Here’s a description of each:
Reward: “Pipi Points.” They’ll also come in handy for neutralizing wandering puppets.
How to find and invite all the puppets
You’re ready. Change the time of day to between 8:00 PM and 6:00 AM—the puppets won’t appear in the school any earlier. The map above shows all the points, and below is a detailed breakdown of each one.
How to get a puppet to appear in the “Lone Player” quest
It’s exactly 10:00 PM, you run to the basketball court, and the school is completely empty. Sound familiar? The NPC spawning bug in the “Lone Player” quest is a real headache for the NTE community. We’ve combed through Reddit threads, studied complaints on HoYoLAB, and tested everything manually. Spoiler: there’s a solution.
Hidden Spawn Conditions: Why the Game Ignores You
The puppet spawn system in NTE operates according to a very strict script. If you miss even one tiny checkpoint, the desired character simply won’t load (even if you’re standing right at their spawn point).
What to do if the bug occurs: 5 ways to restart a location
If all the checkboxes from the list above are checked, but the desired mob is still missing, you will have to fiddle with the game cache. Here’s a working procedure:
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Move 50 meters away. Running from the desired point and back successfully restarts the scripts for a specific zone.
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Scroll the time twice. First, reset the clock to 12:00 (be sure to wait until daylight has fully arrived), and then reset it to 22:00. This double-switching forcibly clears stuck events.
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Change the active hero. Sometimes the trigger becomes permanently bound to a specific operator. This happens especially often immediately after leaving a tough battle.
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Relogin. Exiting to the main menu and re-entering the server is a great fix. And yes, already invited puppets will not disappear.
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Localization trick. If the fifth target with the cups or the seventh at the piano is frozen, go to the settings and switch the interface language back and forth. It helps in about 30% of cases. Not the most obvious fix.
Broken puppets: gym, stage, and piano
Critical errors in specific rooms are a whole other story. For example, the third puppet in the gym (which we seek after the fifth target on the stage) loves to wander off to random coordinates. It doesn’t respond to the Empathy Drop item at all. This can only be cured by brute force. You’ll have to equip a melee weapon and literally pound all the walls around the stage with attacks until you hear the characteristic clicking sound of an invitation.
The seventh puppet has a different problem. Periodically, it starts playing the wrong melody (not one of the three standard combinations). This is a classic script order glitch. Simply re-enter the notes, then go out the door and back into the room—the music will change to the correct one.
First Puppet
Enter the school—the first puppet is waiting on the same basketball court where you met the student from the Occultism Club during the hunt for the Cheese. As soon as you enter the court, the puppet activates a special effect: it will periodically toss you into the air for a couple of seconds. To invite her, approach her while you’re standing on the ground and use the invite option. The puppet moves in a circle between three points—stand on one of them and simply wait. This is the easiest way to catch her.
The Second Puppet
This one is waiting on the track on the right side of the school. You’ll see it kneeling at the starting line. Approach it, and the race will begin. But as soon as you start, the puppet will instantly appear at the finish line. There are other puppets in the stands—they don’t interact with you in any way, so you can ignore them. The main puppet teleports to the finish line if you look away. So, keep your eyes on it during the race—otherwise, it’s over. After a while, another puppet from the stands will move toward the finish line. If it gets there before you, the race is a failure.
The winning strategy is this: run along the track, keeping your eyes on the main puppet, but keep a little to the side. Closer to the finish line, a row of puppets will block your path—deviating from the straight line will allow you to bypass them. If you win, invite them.
The Third Puppet
The third one is located at the entrance to the gym, just above the treadmill on the right side of the area. You’ll need Empathy Drops for this. First, melee the puppet near the open entrance—this will reveal the puppet, who will immediately disappear, clearing the way. Inside, click on the drops to switch to the next puppet’s viewpoint. Without this, they are invisible. Attack near each one to summon the right one. Locations of all targets:
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The first one after the one blocking the entrance is near the nearest basketball, to the left of the right basket.
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The third one is near the exit on the left side of the gym, on the front wall.
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The fourth one is located at the top level via the stairs on the right (if facing the stage), go all the way to the end, and melee it.
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The fifth one is right on the stage.
Unfortunately, the puppet after the fifth one sometimes has a bug and simply doesn’t appear through the drops. Its location is also random. You can try exiting to the main menu and re-entering—this trick didn’t work for us. We had to simply smash the walls around the stage with melee attacks, and that’s how we found it. Incidentally, exiting the area or re-entering the game doesn’t reset any puppets already found in this quest. This is important.
Fourth Puppet
Look for the fourth one next to the same tree where you found the student’s diary with the “Empathy Drops.” It will disappear when you approach, but its footsteps will still be audible. The trick is to listen for the sound: when you get close enough, an invitation icon will appear. Follow the puppet by ear and invite it whenever you can.
Fifth Puppet
Move left on the map from the previous point until you see three puppets looking up. Enter the building they’re staring at, go up two floors, and you’ll find yourself in the same classroom where you last met Pipi. Inside, a puppet juggles a ball under three cups. The task is to guess where it is. When two cups disappear, they’ve been swapped. After each swap, Pipi can tell you the location. The correct order is: middle, right, middle. Three correct answers in a row means an invitation is in your pocket.
Sixth Puppet
Return to the spot where the student with the Empathy Drops stood and look toward the tree. This time, enter the building on the left—the one with the wooden staircase to the roof. Inside, you’ll see a puppet in the distance. Approach, but stop when you’re about one classroom away. This is where the Cheese comes in handy—another puppet will appear on the floor. Invite this new one to complete the stage.
The Seventh Puppet
In the same building, climb the stairs to the second floor and enter the first classroom—the piano will start playing. The trick is this: first, you need to reach the room with the puppet at the piano, and then press the keys in the correct order. To get there, walk clockwise around the central column. The scenery will change three times, and on the third change, the puppet will appear at the piano. Each room plays its own melody. This stage is also a bit buggy—the melodies the puppet plays may not match the ones you want to repeat. In the image above, we’ve numbered the keys from 1 to 10 (left to right). You’ll only need half the keyboard; the black keys are not needed. Here are three combinations for three different melodies:
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Combination 1: 4 – 10 – 8 – 6 – 1 – 10 – 7 – 5
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Combination 2: 1 – 5 – 10 – 9 – 10 – 5 – 10 – 5 – 1 – 5 – 10 – 9 – 10 – 5 – 10 – 5
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Combination 3: 8 – 7 – 5 – 7 – 8 – 7 – 5 – 8 – 7 – 5
The order they’re played in appears random. We had to enter them in this exact order—your results may vary. After entering the keys, press confirm. If everything is correct, a green smile will appear. It may take a couple of tries to get the sequence right.
The Eighth Puppet
Look for the next target in the large vertical rectangular building in the middle-left part of the school grounds. Enter the hallway and you’ll see a teleporting puppet. Enter the room at the end of the hallway and use the door at the back of the classroom to exit. Next, you’ll find a small puppet in four different classrooms. After each find, continue through the closed back doors. Here’s the order:
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In the first room, which you enter through the back door, the puppet is sitting on a table.
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In the second room, it’s immediately visible in the closet on the right.
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In the next classroom, open the locker in the upper left corner – it’s there.
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In the fourth classroom, attack the flower pot from the front under the board. After doing this, you can collect the statue.
After all this, the next room will be a warehouse – invite the puppet there.
The Ninth Puppet
The Final Target Go to the building with the puppet greeting you outside—it’s in the upper left corner of the school grounds. Inside, talk to the puppet on stage. Here, you’ll neutralize the anomaly and receive rewards. The “Lone Player” quest in Neverness to Everness is complete.
Read more: Guide to Raising Hunter Level.
