Forgotten Kingdom Proving Grounds Guide

The Proving Grounds is a new area of Yaesha added in Remnant 2’s Forgotten Kingdom DLC that seems to be some ritual or trial that adults of the Pan are meant to overcome. It’s an area full of deadly poison darts, vicious enemies, cruel traps, and more. But, on every level of this multi-floor puzzle gauntlet, there are rewards waiting for you to find, you just have to know where to look.

While the entirety of this map is ‘called’ the Proving Grounds, it’s really just this one section with the dart, moving platform, and spinning sawblade traps that is the Proving Grounds. The other areas of this map can be randomly injected with any variety of other Yaesha puzzles or events, so that’s worth keeping in mind. Now, without further ado, let’s take a deeper look at the Proving Grounds in Remnant 2 and go over exactly how you’re meant to get through this area.

Updated December 1st, 2024 by Jacob Buchalter: Now that all three main DLCs for Remnant 2 are out, it’s easy to look back and see what each one excelled at. The Awakened King has by far the most atmospheric new areas and the best final boss fight, The Dark Horizon has the most complex new Archetype and synergistic new Equipment, and the Forgotten Kingdom has the best puzzles and overall exploration. And, one big part of the exploration and puzzle side of The Forgotten Kingdom DLC has to be the Proving Grounds area/tileset. This area is literally packed full of traps, secrets, and items of all kinds. So, to make things a bit less arduous, let’s take an expanded look at everything in here and how best to go about getting through it.

Proving Grounds Rewards

All The Items & Equipment To Be Found Here

First off, let’s just go over all the items you can get in this Forgotten Kingdom DLC-specific area so you know what you’re in for. Unfortunately, despite how tough the puzzles in the Proving Grounds can be, outside of the Flying Bomb Trap Weapon Mod, most of the gear found in this area is pretty specific to very particular builds. Still, for the completionists and collectors out there, it’s still probably worth grabbing these:

Proving Grounds Puzzle

Advancing Downward Through This Arduous Gauntlet

Now let’s get into the actual puzzles of the Proving Grounds. This area is a multi-leveled vertical gauntlet where you’ll be advancing through a series of rooms with different types of traps all to get to a switch at the end that lowers the water level enough for you to progress down to the next level of puzzles. The video above goes through all the traps in detail, but for those who don’t want to watch it let’s go through each of the three floors individually.

Floor 1: Dart Trap Obstacle Course

Dodging Back & Forth Is the Key

In this first room, there’s no avoiding activating the dart traps, you can’t sidestep the pressure plates that turn them on when you walk in. To get through this first puzzle area, it’s just a matter of taking notice of the firing pattern of the darts and progressing forward until you step on a pressure plate that turns off the current dart traps and activates the next ones. There are three main ‘sections’ of this in total:

This area is pretty frustrating at first, but after a few tries you’ll get used to the patterns and it’ll become a lot easier. In multiplayer we would recommend attempting this separately, as you can sort of get in each other’s way if you attempt to go through the Dart Trap sections at the same time. Another thing we’d recommend is that, for any of the parts where you have to jump across the gap, wait until the darts for the side you want to jump from have just passed the gap, then jump. If you do it a bit too haphazardly or a bit too late, you’ll end up doing the mantling animation which will almost assuredly get you killed.

Floor 2: More Darts & Platforming Floor

Platforming & Some Well-Timed Jumps

Next up is another room with a lot of dart traps, but they aren’t the primary ‘focus’ of the room this time around. Instead, you’ll want to pay attention to the pillars around the room that can be lowered by stepping on specific pressure plates. If you’re going through this room solo, you’ll notice that after lowering a pillar and moving off of the pressure plate the pillar will start to raise itself after a short duration has passed.

In co-op, the lowering and raising of the pillars seem to work differently and it seems to require the player on the pressure plate to actually move off and step on another one for the pillar to raise, but maybe that was just our experience.

The puzzle for this room is pretty simple overall, it just involves a small jumping puzzle after clearing out the room. First off, clear out all the pot-shaped stone constructs in the room, and after that:

This is by far the easiest room in this gauntlet, but it’s still a bit of a pain. If you have to make subsequent attempts, always make sure to kill the potted enemies at the four corners of the room right as you walk in, just to get that out of the way. Overall, it should only take a couple of attempts as, at worst, you might end up crushed against the ceiling once or twice.

Floor 3: The Buzzsaw Gauntlet

It’s All About Patience & Timing

The third and final section of the Proving Ground is probably the most frustrating, but thankfully they do give you checkpoints on each floor so respawning isn’t too tedious. The goal in these buzzsaw rooms is to find the pattern in the way the buzzsaws move, walk through them, stand on a pressure plate, wait for a door to open, and then move forward through said door. Just like the other two areas, there are three sections in here:

Backtrack & Grab Some Items

After lowering the water level for the final time, simply follow the path forward that leads down, and you’ll end up in a room with the Ceramic Flask on a pedestal in front of you. Grab this and head forward, taking the elevator back up to the beginning. Open the shortcut, then you’ll want to go back through these three levels again, as there are new items to find.

Floor 1: Lower Area

First off, when checking the lowered area in the dart room you’ll find the Battle Set on a body on the ground that was previously submerged underwater (as well as a few stone golem enemies as well). Take the ladder back up and run forward to go back to the room with the pot enemies and raised pillars.

Floor 2: Illusory Wall

Originally, we didn’t think there was any extra item to find in this room. However, as it turns out, there’s an illusory wall here. Step on the first pressure plate that lowers the pillar between two other raised sections. Run over and stand on this lowered pillar, facing the back wall.

You’ll want to wait until the pillar gets pretty close to crushing you on the roof, then jump off directly at this square of wall. You should phase directly through the illusory wall if done correctly, and then you just need to follow the path forward to find a sarcophagus as well as the Floodlit Diamond Ring.

Floor 3: Hidden Paths

There are a couple of optional paths to be found in the three buzzsaw rooms, starting with the first room. In the first room, simply stand on the pressure plate then turn around entirely. You’ll see a small section of wall rise as well, so head through this when it fully opens. Follow this path and you’ll end up in a room with ankle-high water where The Fractured can be found.

Kill this Abberation to get the Gladiator Melee Weapon Mutator, then step on the red pressure plate in this room to open the path that leads back to the buzzsaw rooms. In the second room, there is no hidden path, so just continue forward into the third room.

In the third room, step on the pressure plate and then head forward until you get all the way across. But, instead of heading through the exit, take the path that would typically lead back around to the start of the room. There should be a new pathway that opened on the left side of this hallway, follow this to find the room with a mummified Pan body in it as well as the Deep Sea Armada Crest Ring.