The moment The Last Caretaker lets you grow an actual human, the game quietly changes gear. Up to that point, it’s rust, storms, and slow upgrades; then the “Seeds of the Future” quest drops, and suddenly you’re a courier for the last viable human DNA on Earth, racing a hidden timer across a minefield of bad UX decisions.
This walkthrough focuses on one question: where the human seed actually is, and what you have to do around Norfolk Grave and Seed Vault Prometheus to get it into a working Lazarus rack without soft-locking your save.
Seeds of the Future quest flow at a glance
| Stage | Location | Core objective | Key risks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Rebuild Lazarus complex | Lazarus complex / Hall of Humanity | Repair Lazarus racks, bring local systems and navigation relay online | Underpowered infrastructure if you rush repairs |
| 2. Find Norfolk Grave | Norfolk Grave (submerged ruin) | Dive into the structure and bring its systems online | Pressure stat too low to dive; combat in close quarters |
| 3. Unlock Seed Vault Prometheus | Seed Vault Prometheus (surface facility) | Power the vault, clear cocoons, reach the human seeds | Severe power demands, heavy enemy density |
| 4. Transport human seed | Boat route: Prometheus → Lazarus | Load seed into a Lazarus pod and sprint back | Hard one‑hour timer; stopping en route wastes seeds |
| 5. Grow a human | Hall of Humanity | Feed water, power, nutrients, and memories into a Lazarus rack | 10k L water + 10 kWh requirement; easy to under‑build |
How Norfolk Grave leads you to the human seed
Norfolk Grave is the submerged “grave” site that points you to Seed Vault Prometheus. It sits well below the surface, so if you’ve been ignoring the pressure stat in your skill tree, this is where that choice comes back to bite.
Once you have enough pressure resistance to safely dive, you enter Norfolk Grave through an opening on the lower part of the taller ruined structure. Players describe it as a circular gap on the roof section: drop through, find an air pocket, and then work your way through the interior. Inside, the pattern is familiar by this point in the game: repair critical machinery, power it, and fight your way through cocoons and Nightcrawlers to reach a control point.
Bringing Norfolk Grave’s systems and its relay online is what reveals Seed Vault Prometheus on your map as the next objective in the “Seeds of the Future” chain. You do not get human seeds at Norfolk Grave itself; you get the coordinates for the place that stores them.
Reaching Seed Vault Prometheus
Seed Vault Prometheus is a surface facility out in heavy seas, marked on your map once you’ve completed the Lazarus navigation work and Norfolk Grave step. When you approach by boat, the Caretaker’s voiceover calls out that you’re at “the seed vault” and tells you to treasure the moment; that’s your confirmation you’re in the right place.
The dock layout is straightforward: moor on the side, secure your lines, and head up the stairs to the main entrance. The building itself is locked and powerless when you arrive. There’s no convenient shore power socket; you’re expected to bootstrap a power system on site.
Powering Seed Vault Prometheus
To get into the vault, you need to power multiple layers:
| Layer | What you power | How you power it | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Surface access | Backup station, entry doors | Portable battery or wind turbine + cable | Often a single typhoon‑class turbine plus battery |
| Elevator | Lift between overseer office, mid‑level, and deep vault | Shared grid from your turbine/battery stack | Elevator will stall or die if power dips |
| Deep vault | Lights, doors, seed chamber, internal terminals | Same grid, often reinforced by on‑site generators | Slug cocoons and Nightcrawlers are dense here |
Most players place at least one high‑tier wind turbine (Typhoon) outside, wired into a medium battery. The turbine builds slowly but will happily charge the battery while you clear enemies inside. If you want a more robust setup, two or three turbines chained into multiple batteries will carry not just the entry and elevator but also any on‑site generators you add later.
Inside, you’ll find a small backup station and Pico terminals, but they’re dead until you hook up power. Connecting a charged medium battery directly to a wall socket is enough to boot the surface level and open the main door, revealing an elevator shaft and a ladder that drops all the way to the ocean‑view level, where the seeds are stored.
Clearing the vault: cocoons, slugs, and flamethrowers
The lower levels of Seed Vault Prometheus are heavily infested. Red cocoons line the walls and ceilings, and bursting them floods the corridors with Nightcrawlers. You can brute‑force this with regular pistol and rifle ammo, but the attrition is brutal. The more efficient approach is to lean into the toolset the game has been teaching you:
- Shard ammunition for pistols and rifles uses glass scraps to create high‑damage rounds for soft targets. You can hear the glass shattering when they hit.
- Electric rifles can be charged for heavy shots, but the power draw is high and they’re not dramatically stronger than a well‑built pistol against slugs.
- Flamethrowers are by far the cleanest answer to cocoons and Nightcrawlers. With a petrol‑filled backpack connected by cable, you can walk the corridors and simply hose down every cocoon and slug cluster you see.
A typical pattern in the deep level looks like this: burn out cocoons, dodge Nightcrawlers, manually open doors where power allows, then drop into ventilation ducts to bypass chokepoints the slugs have overrun. One of these ducts leads into a side room with power hardware, where you can place an electric generator and hook it up to your petrol storage to stabilize the grid.
That local generator is important for two reasons: it keeps lights and doors powered while you work, and it prevents the elevator and control consoles from cutting out just as you reach the seed chamber.
Reaching the human seeds in the deep chamber
At the bottom of the facility, behind powered doors and a final layer of cocoons, you reach the actual human seeds. Visually, this area stands out: rows of seed containers, terminals, and a more clinical lab feel compared to the rusted upper decks.
Two things matter here:
- The human seeds themselves are inert until you place them inside a Lazarus pod (sometimes called a Lazarus seed container).
- The chamber is still crawling with slug residue; it’s worth taking a few seconds to burn or shoot anything that might explode into more Nightcrawlers while you handle the seeds.
You’ll see freestanding pods in the room. Interact with one to open it, then pick up a human seed from the storage rack and slot it inside the pod. Once you close it, the pod transforms into a self‑contained transport container for that seed.
As soon as a seed leaves its original refrigerated rack and sits in your pod, an on‑screen timer starts counting down.
The hidden timer on human seeds and why players are restarting saves
This is the trap that’s catching a lot of players: the human seeds are on a hard timer once removed from their storage in Seed Vault Prometheus. The timer is not prominently telegraphed by UI, but it is there if you look at the pod, and the Caretaker voiceover tells you to return to the Lazarus complex “as soon as possible.” The side of the pod itself is labeled with a large warning that the seed must be kept refrigerated.
The key behaviour:
| Action | What happens | Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Take seed out of Prometheus rack and load into pod | Timer starts (roughly one hour of in‑game time) | You must deliver to a functional Lazarus rack before expiry |
| Make side stops (e.g., Nomads Tower) on the way back | Timer continues in the background | Seeds quietly vanish from pods and inventory when timer hits zero |
| Let all seeds expire without delivering any | No more human seeds in your world | Effectively soft‑locks progression; many players restart the save |
Multiple players who pulled all seeds at once, then detoured to explore or loot on the way back, have reported returning to their boat to find that every pod is now empty and every loose seed has despawned. There is no recovery mechanic for expired seeds. If you burn all of them, you have no way to grow humans, and the only fix is rolling back to an earlier manual save or restarting the world.
That’s why veteran players give the same blunt advice: do not make any stops on the trip from Seed Vault Prometheus back to the Lazarus complex.
How many seeds to take per run (and when)
Technically, nothing stops you from transferring every seed you see into pods and trying to haul them all back in one go. Practically, that’s a good way to lose your entire stock if your infrastructure at the Lazarus complex isn’t ready.
Reported behaviour shows a rough ceiling of four seeds per run being realistic, but only if you’ve already done the following at the Lazarus complex:
- Repaired every Lazarus rack in the Hall of Humanity that you intend to use.
- Built a full power grid with enough wind turbines / solar panels and medium batteries to deliver around 10 kWh per active rack during growth cycles.
- Installed at least one water purifier and five medium fresh water tanks per active rack (each rack wants roughly 10,000 L available for a single growth).
If you don’t have that, you’re better off taking one seed at a time until your systems are proven. Once the first human is successfully grown and its growth timer has shown you how your power and water behave, you can scale up.
One player who tried to grab everything at once without this preparation watched “the last four” seeds expire one by one in their pods while they scrambled to get water and power online, then concluded the save was irrecoverable.
Boat prep: speed and routing back to Lazarus
Once you load a seed into a pod at Seed Vault Prometheus and start the timer, every minute matters. The clock runs during travel, combat, looting, and base building. The only thing that helps is reducing transit time and avoiding detours.
Two upgrades on the boat change the math:
- Engine cylinders unlocked in the skill tree and installed on all engines. With top‑tier cylinders across the board, players report cruise speeds around 45–46 km/h.
- Diesel generator + diesel tank to run engines at full power and ignore battery drain during the sprint back.
At around 45 km/h, the run from Seed Vault Prometheus to the Lazarus complex can be done in roughly 20 minutes of in‑game time, which leaves a comfortable buffer on the one‑hour seed timer to unload pods and slot seeds into Lazarus racks.
Navigation‑wise, the safest pattern is simple:
- Plot a direct route from Seed Vault Prometheus to the Lazarus complex.
- Stay alert for sea mines and sharks, but do not divert to other structures or beacons.
- Drop anchor and secure mooring lines at Lazarus as soon as you’re alongside; then grab pods and run for the Hall of Humanity.
Every extra stop is an exponential risk: docking, exploring, and re‑embarking all eat into the timer, and the pods won’t warn you before the seeds blink out of existence.
What to do with the seed at the Lazarus complex
When you arrive back at the Lazarus complex with a live seed in its pod, the game’s tone shifts from courier mission to life support engineer. The pod’s tooltip will remind you: “Seed not refrigerated. Insert into the functional Lazarus rack.” The Hall of Humanity is already set up for this; you just have to finish the plumbing.
Each Lazarus rack requires three things per growth cycle:
| Requirement | Typical amount per human | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Fresh water | ~10,000 L | Saltwater pumps + water purifier + fresh water tanks |
| Electric power | ~10 kWh | Wind turbines/solar panels + medium batteries (and optionally petrol generators) |
| Growth enhancers & memories | Several food items + memory objects | Food processor & collected artifacts/books/toys |
The rough build looks like this for a single working rig:
- Power: 4–6 high‑tier wind turbines on the roof or dock, feeding 3–4 medium batteries. All tied into the Hall of Humanity’s power grid.
- Water: 1 fully repaired saltwater pump and 1 water purifier downstairs, feeding five chained medium freshwater tanks that all equalize with one another and then feed up to the Lazarus rack.
- Processing: A food processor placed near the Hall of Humanity, powered and hooked into the same fresh water line, producing items like high fat, neutraore, physique fuel, mind surge, and other enhancers you’ve unlocked in the skills menu.
Players who tried to start growth with only a single battery and one or two small tanks immediately saw “Human in danger: not enough resources” warnings and watched power and water bounce between low and empty until the process stalled. The successful pattern is to overbuild and let the tanks and batteries reach full before you ever press “Begin growth.”
Inside the Lazarus rack: meeting the minimums
With a working seed inserted into a powered and plumbed Lazarus rack, a new interface appears showing the embryo’s projected stats: life expectancy, height, weight, intellect, strength, and a scatter of personality traits. Below that sit two inventories: growth enhancers (food‑like items) and memories (objects such as books, toys, tools).
The rack will not start growth until it hits minimum thresholds for life expectancy, height, and weight. Hitting those thresholds is a matter of stacking the right enhancers:
- High fat and neutraore nudge life expectancy and mass upward.
- Physique fuel, muscle fortification, and similar items add to height and strength.
- Mind surge boosts intellect, but isn’t enough on its own to satisfy biological baselines.
Each enhancer contributes a set of hidden points to the embryo’s stats. A common pattern for a “bare minimum” viable human is a mix of one or two of each key enhancer until the rack shows life expectancy in the high 20s or better and height around 30 cm. Pushing further with extra enhancers increases those numbers and shifts likely professions, but that’s outside the immediate scope of simply not wasting your first seed.
Memories then layer on top to steer specialisation: programming manuals, maps, engineering blueprints, and technical books bias the child toward system engineer or technician roles; toys, love letters, and art can raise empathy, creativity, and social traits. There’s a tradeoff: some memories improve soft skills but nibble at logic or discipline, and vice versa.
Once minimums are satisfied, the interface displays a growth time of ten minutes for the current build. Only then should you hit “Begin growth.”
Seed Vault Prometheus isn’t hard to find once Norfolk Grave is online, but the questline around it is unforgiving. The short version: the human seed lives at the very bottom of that vault; it is perishable from the moment you move it, and the only safe way to handle it is to over‑prepare your power and water at the Lazarus complex, take as few seeds per run as you can manage, and sail straight home without distractions. If you do that, the Hall of Humanity will finally live up to its name.
