Metroid Prime 4: Beyond Guide - What are the Green Energy Crystals for and how to upgrade the Psychic Beam

There aren't many major secrets to explore in Metroid Prime 4: Beyond as the game is actually surprisingly linear, but one of the core and more mysterious parts of the game revolves around an object you're introduced to very, very early on.

As you begin your exploration through Fury Green, you'll come across the Altar of Legacy, a strange looking object shortly after the hub area where you leave Mac to fiddle with ancient alien relics. It's here that you're told to fill this item up with a bunch of Green Energy Crystals hidden from around the world, but what does that mean and why should you bother doing it?

For starters, the crystals are pretty much exclusively found in the open desert area of Sol Valley, even if you might run into a few here and there otherwise. You can collect them by simply smashing through them on Vi-O-La, with the powerslide move being particularly effective at hitting all the crystals in one swift action. You'll then suck them all up and add them to your collection, which is handily never really explained how many you need for rewards nor how many you have, or how many in total there are around the world. There is a graphic in the menu, but it's hardly specific...

Anyway, you smash these crystals and gather as many as you can, steadily filling up the graphic. Mac, as he loves to, spoils the surprise as to whenever you do hit a milestone, so keep an ear out for his calls while riding around Sol Valley, but otherwise a good time to check back is when you surpass the 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% markers. These are somewhat outlined with the gaps in the graphic, or by the colour of the graphic switching from green to light blue (this happens post 100% on the green graphic).

When you hit these milestones you can head back to the Altar of Legacy and bank your crystals for incredibly useful rewards that impact your Psychic Beam, Control Beam, and armour.

The Psychic Beam upgrade makes your shots travel faster and deal more damage, a very helpful upgrade as the game progresses. The Control Beam enhancement is similar as the projectile now travels faster, making it equally useful, but the real cream of the crop is the Legacy Suit.

This is the silver and black armour for Samus Aran, and it brings a couple of improvements, one being a new feature that can spawn a protective barrier around Samus by pressing and holding R at the cost of 35 Missile Ammo. The other feature is the improvement to Samus' visor that creates a compass effect that shows you when you're near Green Energy Crystals in Sol Valley. Essentially, it makes finding any missed crystals all the simpler.

You are also rewarded with the Memory Fruit, which is an item that is basically a collection of Lamorn knowledge and history, perfect for any database-perusers out there.

So there you have it. This is why you absolutely should collect Green Energy Crystals and continue to fill the Altar of Legacy, despite how mind-numbingly boring it can be to cruise around the desert and smash up crystals...