The Outer Worlds: How to Complete “Passage to Anywhere”

One of the earliest quests you’ll run across in The Outer Worlds after completing “Comes Now the Power” and gaining access to the Groundbreaker space station is a quest called “Passage to Anywhere”. This sees you attaining a ‘NavKey’ from a woman named Gladys. The NavKey is a device that allows you to secure safe passage to the town of Stellar Bay on the planet Monarch.

Gladys is also asking for 10,000 bits before she’ll even part with the NavKey, a hefty price for somebody who’s barely just left the tutorial town and set off into the big world. Luckily, there are multiple ways you can handle Gladys and the entire NavKey situation. Here’s our guide on following the four distinct paths to complete the quest “Passage to Anywhere”.

Buy the “Passage to Anywhere” NavKey Out of Pocket

Buying the NavKey out of pocket is almost assuredly impossible at this point in the game given that you haven’t managed to stockpile a ton of bits at any point leading up to “Passage to Anywhere”.

Regardless, Gladys will send you to the settlement of Roseway on Terra-2, which is a great place to finish other quests and earn bits along the way.

To get more bits, be sure to sell as much equipment as you can and complete as many quests as you can. It’s possible at this point to get all the bits you need by completing most of the quests on Groundbreaker and in Roseway. 

Acquire Research for Gladys

Gladys will send you to investigate a distress signal from a settlement called Roseway, which is back on Terra-2 (the same planet you were just on if you’re coming straight from Edgewater).

If you haven’t yet gained clearance to leave the Groundbreaker, head on over to the Halcyon Corp headquarters and speak with Udom Bedford to get that fixed up.

When you reach Roseway, you’ll need to collect two distinct pieces of research from the Covert Lab, and another one from the Storage Facility, all associated with the quest “The Distress Signal”.

You don’t need to speak to the corresponding quest givers to claim these pieces of research and bring them back to Gladys, but you should still at least meet Anton Crane in the Comms center and Vaughn Cortes in the nearby luxury apartment complex.

Each piece of research is as easy to find as following a quest marker, but we’ve shared the primary details below. 

You’ll find Anton’s research on Cassandra O’Malley in the Covert Lab, and you can deal with her however you please. Vaughn’s research, meanwhile, is on a nearby terminal, and you’ll need to either complete or recalibrate his research in order to get it.

You can find the third and final piece of crucial research for “Passage to Anywhere”, a weapon schematic poster, propped up inside of the Storage Facility.

You don’t want to bring any of these pieces of research back to their “rightful” owners. Instead, you want to bring all three of them directly to Gladys, who will essentially pay your efforts back with her NavKey.

Acquire the NavKey Illicitly in The Outer Worlds

In traditional Obsidian fashion, you can always just rob Gladys by snatching the NavKey directly out of her safe.

On that note, you don’t even necessarily need to kill Gladys to get an opportunity to do so. Just pick her safe open (you need 25+ Lockpick skill and five Mag-Picks) and loot the NavKey.

Fly Straight to Monarch

Finally, you can severely shorten the length of “Passage to Anywhere” by flying directly to Monarch as soon as it becomes available. It’s worth adding a warning here: upon landing in the wilderness, you’ll run afoul of a few tough swarms of enemies set several levels above you.

By choosing this path, you skip the NavKey, Roseway, and all of the opportunities you’d have normally squeezed for experience points along the way.