Control Resonant New Growth Walkthrough: Dr. Underhill and All Three Specimens

New Growth is the longest side story in The Park and one of the longest in Control Resonant full stop. It runs from an FBC outpost on a rooftop, back to an office in the Oldest House, into a rented apartment, and finally down into a sewer lab where the FBC's head Mold researcher was keeping experiments that have since let themselves out. The reward is a form upgrade recipe and a trophy, and the ending gives you a choice that matters less than it looks.

New Growth Quest Overview

The full campaign order across all three quest chains sits in the Control Resonant Walkthrough Hub. The same briefing that opens this quest also opens Control Resonant Maintenance Protocol Walkthrough.

How to Start New Growth

The quest begins during Zoe's briefing at the Watchtower, where she mentions Dr. Raya Underhill, the head researcher on the FBC's Mold team. Underhill is missing and the team needs help finding her.

From there the trail runs through The Park, not the Evacuation Zone, and the first stop is the FBC presence inside the zone itself.

Get to The Park and Find the Trail

Open the map and mark The Park Checkpoint in the Central district. Cross it on foot, clearing the hostile Mold organisms in the quarantine streets, and continue into the quarantine facility.

You come out onto The Park rooftops. Activate the Park Valley Fast Travel Door as soon as you reach it, then fight through the Mold-infected hosts toward the FBC Base. Activate the FBC Base Fast Travel Door when you arrive.

Both doors matter more than usual here, because this quest sends you back and forth between The Park and Central Executive, and doing that walk twice is unpleasant.

At the base, talk to Ranger Busken. He tells you Underhill disappeared while working at a nearby research site, which changes your objective to examining her last known location.

Cross the rooftops south through the block to find Underhill's deserted field outpost. On the workstation table are two items: Underhill's Resignation Letter and the Level 6 Keycard.

Search Underhill's Office

Take the elevator back to the Oldest House and head to Central Executive.

In the Executive Research wing, use your new Level 6 clearance on office 06 to unlock her old room. If you are coming in from the fast travel point, it is the second locked door on the left.

Two things are on the desk. The Welcome Letter lists the address she was renting, 140 Fletcher Ave, and Underhill's Apartment Key sits alongside it. Take both.

Return to the FBC Base in The Park through the Central Executive fast travel door.

Search the Apartment

Follow the streets to 140 Fletcher Ave. There are Mold enemies outside the building, and clearing them is what opens the entrance.

Go up a floor and the apartment is on the left. Pick up Research Notes On The Mold on your way through.

Dr. Underhill is alive and hiding in the kitchen. Speak with her and she explains she has a lab down in the sewers, and that the test subjects she was keeping there have escaped. She wants them found.

Take the Key to Underhill's Sewer Lab from the counter.

Clear the Sewer Lab

The sewer drain is northeast of the apartment. Use the key to open Underhill's Sewer Lab, then turn left inside to open the door.

Collect everything in this room before moving on:

• Mold Growth Stimulator, which you need for the next step
• Sample Tubes, also required
• Response From Pope, a document
• Power Upgrade Point (2/3), easy to walk past

Apply the stimulator to the pulsating Mold clumps in the lab. They respond by moving off after the escaped test subjects, marking their route with glowing spore trails.

Drop down from the railing to pick up the trail, then follow it into the deeper pipe system. There is a tracking prompt on screen, and you keep using it until the trail splits into two.

Where to Find All Three Specimens

The trail branches rather than giving you a fixed list, so the order below follows the route rather than the labels.

Specimen A. At the first split, follow the trail that goes left. It leads to Specimen A, which is airborne and fights you in the flooded tunnels.

The second branch. Go back and follow the other trail. It heads up into the Park area and splits again into two more paths. Either one works, and the specimen waits at the end.

The third. Take the remaining path from that second split for the last specimen.

Across the three, one is cornered in the open maintenance yard along the orange-lit drainage path, and one is at street level in an alleyway that you reach by leaping across The Park rooftops.

Fire is the answer to all three. Mold is armored and fire-weak, and if you have a fire-based Combat Ability such as Inferno, this section goes from a slog to a formality. If you do not, the Central Resonant hands one out and is worth the detour before you come down here.

Harvest a Mold Sample Test Tube from each kill. You need all three.

Spoiler warning. The section below covers how the quest resolves and what each ending choice does. Stop here if you would rather decide cold.

The Choices and What They Change

With all three test tubes, head back to Underhill's apartment and speak with her. The conversation ends with three options:

• Take the samples
• I have to report you
• Go... without the samples

The important thing to know is that none of them changes your reward. All three complete the quest and pay out the same items.

What they change is what happens to Underhill. Reporting her means the FBC takes her away. The other two let her stay where she is, with or without the Mold you collected, and let her keep working.

There are no additional interactions with her after the quest closes regardless of which you pick, so the decision is a character call rather than a mechanical one.

New Growth Rewards

Completing the quest awards the Untapped Brass Dusters recipe, a Mold Sample Test Tube, and the Budding Mycologist trophy. The Power Upgrade Point (2/3) from the lab is yours whether or not you finish.

The Brass Dusters are a form upgrade for the Aberrant, which makes this one of the few side quests in Control Resonant that pays out in combat capability rather than cosmetics. As with the rest of the Untapped line, it arrives as a recipe and has to be crafted at the Artifact Formation before you can equip it.

Common Mistakes

Heading for the Evacuation Zone. The briefing sends you after a missing researcher, but every stop in this quest is either in The Park or in Central Executive.

Skipping the two fast travel doors on the way in. The quest bounces you between The Park and the Oldest House. Without Park Valley and FBC Base activated, that is a long walk each way.

Leaving the Power Upgrade Point in the lab. It is in the same room as the Stimulator and there is no reason to come back for it.

Hunting specimens without fire damage. They are armored Mold. Blunt damage alone will get you there eventually, but slowly and with a lot of burn gauge management.

Agonising over the final choice. The reward is identical in all three branches.

What to Do Next

Control Resonant Maintenance Protocol Walkthrough opened at the same briefing and is considerably shorter, so it is a reasonable palate cleanser.

You are also in the right zone for two more. Control Resonant Carbon Copy Walkthrough is a short message run across The Park, and Control Resonant Unsupervised Science Walkthrough has one of its testing facilities in the northeast of this zone, reachable through the same sewers you have just been crawling around in.