Sonar Receiver Artifact — Where It Hides in Outer Banks
The artifact behind almost every Outer Banks 5/6 — buried inside a bush pocket that only gives it up if you destroy the whole bush, not just cut a path through.
▶ TL;DR
The Sonar Receiver is the third of Outer Banks' six artifacts, and the single most-missed pickup in Stage 3. It hides in a bush pocket during an 'extra-line-time' section, after the first cosmetic and before the Jar of Dirt and Canned Bread chain that leads to the southwestern shortcut. The catch is the mechanic: you have to clear the entire bush, not just slice a lane through it, or the artifact never spawns. MrLeLedg's walkthrough shows it at the 2:04 mark. If your list is stuck at 5/6, check this pocket first.
◇ Step-by-step pickup
Open Outer Banks from the destination wheel.
Outer Banks is Stage 3, the Graveyard of the Atlantic. It plays as a longer descent with several 'extra-line-time' stretches where the game hands you more line to push deeper. Those bonus-line sections are exactly where the easy-to-miss secrets hide, so slow down rather than racing the line out.
Grab the first cosmetic, then reach the extra-line section.
Collect the opening cosmetic first so you can track your progress cleanly. Keep descending until the game gives you an extra-line-time prompt. The Sonar Receiver's bush pocket lives inside that stretch, before you reach the Jar of Dirt and Canned Bread chain further along the route.
Find the bush pocket — do NOT just cut a lane through it.
This is the whole trick. At 2:04 in MrLeLedg's walkthrough there's a bush sitting in the extra-line pocket. If you only carve a narrow path through it to keep moving, the Sonar Receiver never appears. The artifact is gated behind clearing the bush completely.
Destroy the entire bush.
Work the hook across the whole bush until every piece of it is gone, not just the strip in front of your line. Only once the pocket is fully cleared does the diamond-shaped Sonar Receiver spawn into view at the top-right of the opening. This is the moment frame 2 above captures.
Touch the Sonar Receiver to bank it.
With the bush gone, swing the hook up to the top-right of the pocket and make contact with the device. There's no fight and no scaling — the pickup banks the instant you touch it. That's artifact 3 of 6 secured. The pickup window in the clip is only about four seconds, but you have all the time you need on your own run.
Continue to the Jar of Dirt and Canned Bread chain.
Past the bush pocket the route opens toward the Jar of Dirt and Canned Bread artifacts and then the southwestern-path shortcut. Keep counting from here — Outer Banks splits its six artifacts across the run, and three more wait beyond this point.
◐ Walkthrough Keyframes
✦ Tips
- Treat every extra-line-time section as a search prompt, not a speed section. The bonus line exists to let you fully clear pockets like this bush — the Sonar Receiver is the reward for clearing it completely.
- If your Outer Banks count reads 5/6, do NOT re-run the whole map first. Come straight back to this bush pocket — a half-cleared bush here is far and away the most common reason the count comes up one short.
- The Sonar Receiver is a small diamond-shaped device that sits at the top-right of the cleared pocket. Once you know its silhouette it's obvious, but it stays completely hidden while any of the bush remains.
⚠ Warnings
- Cutting a path through the bush instead of destroying all of it is the #1 mistake here. A lane lets your line pass but never spawns the artifact — the game requires the bush fully gone.
- Don't confuse this pocket with the later Jar of Dirt / Canned Bread chain. The Sonar Receiver comes first, inside the extra-line section, before that chain and the southwestern shortcut.
- It's easy to blow past the bush during an extra-line stretch because the bonus line tempts you to keep diving. Pause and clear the pocket before you push deeper, or you'll finish the world at 5/6.
⌕ Common Questions
I'm stuck at 5/6 artifacts in Outer Banks. Which one did I miss?
I cleared the bush but I still don't see the Sonar Receiver. What's wrong?
Does the Sonar Receiver sell for anything, or do I have to collect it?
★ What you get
- Completion
- Counts toward the Outer Banks 100% Secrets achievement.
- Endgame impact
- One of the six Outer Banks artifacts that, together, complete the Stage 3 Secrets set.
- Sells for
- Sonar Receiver cannot be sold. Artifacts exist for lore and 100% completion only.
✎ What Players Are Asking
Real questions from Steam Community discussions, archived as they appeared.
“EDIT: An artifact was left out of the edit, at 2:04 where you see me get an extra line time, destroy the whole bush to uncover the Sonar Receiver artifact.”
Why this matters: Why this matters: the walkthrough author missed this artifact in his own edit and had to pin a correction in the description. If the person making the 100% guide cut it by accident, that is the strongest possible proof of how easy the Sonar Receiver is to overlook — and exactly why so many players land on 5/6.
“If your Outer Banks list is stuck at 5/6, check this route before searching the whole map again.”
Why this matters: Why this matters: the dedicated text guide singles out this exact pocket as the first thing to recheck when a player is one artifact short. It documents the 5/6 Sonar miss as a known, repeatable pattern rather than a one-off, which is why this page leads with the bush mechanic.
⌬ Related Secrets
Why the game called this artifact a Sonar Receiver
SONAR stands for SOund Navigation And Ranging, and it works by sending sound waves into the water and listening for the echoes that bounce back off the seafloor and any submerged objects. That same principle is exactly how modern researchers find and document shipwrecks. NOAA's Monitor National Marine Sanctuary uses single-beam, multibeam and side-scan sonar to survey wrecks across the Graveyard of the Atlantic off North Carolina — the very waters this stage is set in — cataloguing the vessels lost to the region's storms and shifting shoals over the centuries. Pulling a 'Sonar Receiver' out of the muck here is a genuinely fitting nod: it is the real technology that has located and mapped the hundreds of wrecks scattered along the Outer Banks, turning sound into a picture of the drowned coast below.