• Guide

Get Neuronal Energy in Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey

Neuronal Energy is essential to your ability to effectively evolve in Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey. Here's how it works.

Bill Lavoy

August 27, 2019 9:30 AM

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If you want to develop motor skills, gain knowledge, and improve communication with your clan while playing Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, you’re going to need a lot of Neuronal Energy. Since the game tells you right from the start it won’t offer much help, we will. This guide will help you understand what Neuronal Energy is, and how you can get more of it and use it on your quest for evolution.

What is Neuronal Energy?

In Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, Neuronal Energy is almost like experience, or a currency that you can use to unlock skills on a skill tree. Ancestors is a bit more subtle than that explanation, but that’s a fair way to wrap your head around it. The more Neuronal Energy you earn, the more upgrades you can unlock, and the higher potential you’ll have for increasing the skills, knowledge, and communication of your clan.

How to earn Neuronal Energy

To earn Neuronal Energy, players must first allow kids in their clan to piggyback off them. This is done by approaching and highlighting a kid, then choosing the option to give them a piggyback. From there, one must simply explore and interact with the game world to earn Neuronal Energy. This could be as simple as identifying another species, cracking open a coconut, or constructing a new bed in the settlement. All these actions will build Neuronal Energy while you’re carrying kids with you.

How to use Neuronal Energy

Neuronal Energy can be used when lying in a bed and then choosing the Evolution option from the three prompts on the left side of the screen. Note that the Evolution option is not present until you’re lying down.

Three tabs will appear for players to browse: Evolution, Generation, Neuronal. The default should be the Neuronal tab, and that’s where Neuronal Energy can be spent to unlock new motor skills, knowledge, and communication options with your clan.

Take note of the white dots on the menu. Some will be connected to the center, but some will be separate and not connected. If you hover your cursor over a dot that’s white but not connected, you’ll get an option to either unlock or initiate growth. Doing so will cost you some of your Neuronal Energy, but it will give you a new ability. An early-game example of this is the ability to use both your hands and pass items from one to the other.

At times this can seem random, but it’s not. The actions your take during gameplay will lead to the things you can unlock in that Neuronal menu. For example, I took my entire clan (with kids hanging off me) on my quest to kill a Giant Warthog. I had a sharpened stick in my hand and walked right up to the animal. It, as you’d expect, charged me. When it was over, I had been trampled by that Giant Warthog at least three times, and successfully counterattacked five times. When I got back to my settlement to lie down, the Neuronal menu had a new motricity ability to unlock with Neuronal Energy, Acute Stress Response. This ability made escapes and counterattacks a bit easier.

Now that you know all about Neuronal Energy, you’ll probably want to study up on how Reinforcements work, or just browse all our content with the Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey topic we’ve built.

Bill Lavoy

Managing Editor

Bill, who is also known as Rumpo, is a lifelong gamer and Toronto Maple Leafs fan. He made his mark early in his career through guide writing and a deep understanding of editorial SEO. He enjoys putting in the work to create a great content, be it a wild feature or grinding out an in-depth collectible guide. Tweet him @RumpoPlays if you have a question or comment about one of his articles.