How to drain the water in Sonic Frontiers

Knowing how to drain the water in Sonic Frontiers will help you move forward, as after a lot of comparatively simple running, fishing, and zooming about on grind rails, you're suddenly asked to ‘drain the water’ from the oasis in Ares Island by pulling out a giant plug hanging in the air above the water. But how are you supposed to do that? Don’t worry, we’ve got you.

Drain the water in Sonic Frontiers at Ares Island oasis

The easy bit is getting started on this assignment, by following the on-screen mission marker (the white square with a metre number that decreases as you get closer) until you arrive at this large cannon. 

You know you’re supposed to fire it at the large black structure looming over the lake, but how? Well, first you need to load it, and not with Sonic (though that would have been cool). Look to the right of the lake from where you’re standing and you should see a smaller structure with a large bullet on top of it. Yes, now it starts to make sense. Run over to this.

Once you’re there, it doesn’t seem to do anything. Ah, but it will if you perform a cyloop. This involves holding the Triangle (PlayStation) / Y (Xbox) / X (Switch) button and moving Sonic in a circle around the bullet on its pedestal. You don’t have to make it really big or even make the circle perfectly circular. Just join up the trail that Sonic leaves by looping round and back over your own path. The circle should flash pink like this when you’ve done it right. 

Now let go of the cyloop button and the bullet should levitate and move above Sonic. A countdown timer now begins, and you can’t dash any more, so simply trot back over to the gun (the white square mission marker is still there so you can’t miss it) without wasting any time, where a cut-scene should show the bullet being loaded into it.

Finally, before the clock runs out (you have a few seconds to aim), you need to move the crosshairs upwards and across slightly, until the centre of the crosshairs lines up with the eye icon on the large plug contraption in the air. When it does, push the fire button when prompted.

Voila! The water flows out allowing you to head down into the path that’s opened, and Sonic starts to wonder whether emptying the one oasis around in the desert was really a good thing to do. But as Knuckles points out, you’ve been able to drain the water in Sonic Frontiers and revealed the way forward so… who cares? Hurrah!

If you mess up this process for any reason, then don’t panic – just run back over to where you found the bullet. It will have respawned, allowing you to try again as many times as you need.

Want more Sonic Frontiers? Check out how to unlock and use Sonic Frontiers Fast Travel or read our Sonic Frontiers review.