DERELIKT Insight: Engraving Slots and Where to Find It
What Insight does, how engraving slots work and the verified Insight locations, starting with the two on the Anomaly Surface cliff.
Insight is DERELIKT's rarest pickup and the one with the worst in-game explanation. The game calls it a small fragment, shows a one-line prompt and never mentions it again. What it actually does is add an engraving slot, which is the container that glyphs plug into.
That distinction matters because players spend hours hunting glyphs, find three, and cannot equip them. Glyphs are the perks; Insight is the number of perks you can hold.
Insight slots are spent at the hub, and the glyph guide→ explains which perks are worth the fragments.
What Insight does
Each Insight pickup adds one engraving slot. You start with one slot, and the slots are shown on the upgrade bench in the Exo Labs hub.
- Slots do not have a type. Any glyph fits any slot.
- Slots are permanent and carry across levels.
- Insights are not currency and cannot be spent.
- The Eyes on the Inside achievement (3.3%) is for unlocking all slots, not for filling them.
The maximum slot count is tied to the total number of Insights in the game, which is why the achievement sits at 3.3%: most players find one or two and never see the full set.
Verified Insight locations
| Level | Location | How to reach it |
|---|---|---|
| 3 Anomaly Surface | Cliff edge east of APC Site 2 | Climb the central rock platform, take the right-hand bridge |
| 3 Anomaly Surface | Lower ledge, end of the cliff path | Follow the ledge past Shriver's Notes 6/13 |
| 8 Coolant Reservoir | Submerged control room | On the desk below the waterline |
| 4 Exo Laboratories | Upper walkway | Behind the server room, after the 1478 door |
| 10 Nuclear Reactor | Station B gallery | On the console shelf |
The two surface pickups are the ones most players find, because they sit on the route to the battery puzzle. The coolant one is the most missed, because it is underwater and the prompt only appears at close range.
Why they are easy to miss
Insight has no glow, no map marker and no audio cue. It looks like a small grey shard on a surface. Three habits help:
- Sweep every ledge after a jump. The surface Insights are both at the end of optional paths.
- Check desks and consoles. The lab and reactor ones sit on furniture, not on the floor.
- Look underwater. The coolant one is the only pickup in the game that requires swimming.
The upgrade bench is in the hub and the reactor locks the hub. If you have unspent Insight, the slots are added automatically, but unfilled glyphs are not.
Insight vs glyphs vs fragments
The game uses three related terms and they are not interchangeable:
- Insight: a shard that adds an engraving slot. Permanent, one-time pickup.
- Glyph fragment: a collectible that contributes to translating a glyph.
- Glyph: a translated perk that occupies a slot and grants a bonus.
A glyph with no slot is useless, and a slot with no glyph is empty. The intended loop is to find one or two Insights early, then fill the slots with the first translated glyphs.
Insight and the ending
Insight is not one of the secret ending's requirements, but it is a soft gate. The secret ending needs the glyph set translated, and a translated glyph with no slot is dead weight. Players who skip the coolant Insight reach the reactor with three slots and five translated glyphs, which is enough to satisfy the ending check but not enough to make the final fight comfortable.
The practical rule: collect the two surface Insights and the coolant one, and you will have four slots for the last third of the game. That is the comfortable build.
Slot builds that work
With two slots, the strongest early combination is damage plus vitality. With three, add dexterity so the shotgun reload stops costing you a health bar.
| Slots | Build | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Damage | Kills Proxies faster, saves rifle ammo |
| 2 | Damage + vitality | Survives the Squidbull and the sentries |
| 3 | Damage + vitality + dexterity | The all-round build for the reactor |
| 4+ | Add ammo capacity | The late levels are ammo-starved |
Dexterity's value is easy to underestimate. It shortens reloads, and reloads are when Abominations close the distance.
FAQ
How many Insight pickups are there? The total is not published. Five are verified above, and the achievement implies more.
Does Insight carry over to New Game Plus? There is no New Game Plus in the retail release.
Can I respec slots? No. Slots are permanent and glyphs can be swapped freely once translated.
Where is the first Insight? The cliff east of APC Site 2 on the Anomaly Surface, after the Assault Rifle.
Noisy Pixel's review is the clearest public explanation of the slot system: glyphs give the perks, Insight gives the room to hold them.
Sources and further reading
The pages below are the sources this guide checks against. The store page and the developer's post are primary; the reviews are secondary and are used for enemy names, weapon names and the state of the game at launch.
- DERELIKT on Steam ↗ — the store page, system requirements and the 27-achievement list.
- Visuwyg's announcement post ↗ — the developer's own description of the outpost and the PS1 rendering work.
- Noisy Pixel's DERELIKT review ↗ — 8/10, and the source for several enemy and weapon names used above.
Official source: Visuwyg — DERELIKT announcement post ↗, 8 September 2025.
"grafted onto an anomalous derelict asteroid in orbit around Saturn" — Visuwyg, DERELIKT announcement post, 2025