Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey Senses | How to use hearing and smelling

In Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey you’ll have to use your senses to survive in a prehistoric world. Two senses, smell and hearing, are the ones that will serve you most. If you’re trying to sniff out food or listen for a member of your clan, you’ll need to learn how to use your senses, as the interface is somewhat abstract.

Your senses supplement your intelligence ability in Ancestors and are the only way you can find specific resources. Both hearing and scent have a big part to play in the game, and you can read further to learn how and when to use them.

How to use your senses in Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey

Accessing your senses in Ancestors is a subfunction of intelligence. When you press Y/Triangle to activate your intelligence, you can choose to hit X/Square to access your sense of smell. Alternatively, you can press B/Circle to see what you’re currently hearing.

Both smelling and hearing are useful and show different sets of information. Don’t make the mistake of only using your intelligence for everything as scent and audio detection can be much more helpful at times and show you things you wouldn’t otherwise notice.

How does hearing work in Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey?

When you activate your sense of hearing in Ancestors, you’ll notice little ripples all across the screen. These signify the cacophony of sounds in the jungle. What you need to focus on are the ripples that are more pronounced. These ripples will turn yellow when you hover over them, and you can then hold B/Circle to focus on and identify their source.

Hearing is primarily used to locate living things that are out of the range of your sight. This is very useful when you’re trying to find your tribe but can’t see them. With the hearing sense, you can call out and home in on their response. Hearing can also be used to find hominids living outside of your settlement that you can potentially recruit and at times you’ll even be able to spot predators by sound alone.

How does smelling work in Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey?

When you switch to scent mode, you’ll see clouds of odor appear all around you. Smelling is one of the most useful functions in Ancestors, and one you’ll likely overlook at first. Activating your sense of smell is the only way you can detect food sources. Using intelligence alone will only let you find non-edible resources. To see things to eat, you need to rely on smelling them out.

Just like with hearing and intelligence, when you hover over an item of interest in smelling mode, the odor cloud will turn yellow. You can then hold X/Square to focus on and identify the scent. You can also use your sense of smell to identify some predators and find deceased members of your tribe.

More Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a third-person open world survival game where you Explore, Expand, and Evolve to advance your clan to the next generation in this exhilarating new adventure from the creator of Assassin’s Creed.

Embark on the most incredible odyssey known to humankind: human evolution. Spanning from 10 million to 2 million years ago, begin your journey, before us, in Neogene period Africa. Explore a beautiful yet ruthless world, from swinging through tree branches in the jungle to stalking prey across the golden savannah grasslands. Decide what attributes to learn and hone in order to pass down knowledge to future generations, from crafting tools to enhancing evasive tactics against predators. Just like real life, make sure to eat, drink, and sleep to stay alive and have the energy to face any danger that may come your way.

Grow your clan and find strength in numbers as you progress through critical evolutionary stages of human evolution. Your choices will write your clan’s story and determine if you can survive your evolution.