Silver Pines: The Best Mementos to Grab First and How Vessel Shards Work

Silver Pines, Wych Elm's survival horror metroidvania, launched October 8 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, Switch 2 and PC via Steam. Underneath the Twin Peaks-flavored mystery sits a dense equipment layer built on 25 collectible mementos, each one a small passive bonus that reshapes how investigator Red Walker fights, dodges and heals. As of this week the community has mapped out the full set, and a few early picks are clearly worth detouring for before the rest.

Team17's announce trailer for Silver Pines.

What Mementos Actually Do

Mementos are small found objects, mostly personal effects left behind by Silver Pines' residents, that sit in dedicated equipment slots and grant passive combat or movement bonuses for as long as they're equipped. Nothing about them is cosmetic. A Mended Tooth adds 15% melee damage but makes your melee weapons wear out 25% faster, and a Rusted Spur adds 10% ranged damage at the cost of noticeably worse recoil. Every memento in the game trades something for something, which is what makes picking the right handful early such a real decision rather than a checklist chore.

You'll find them behind locked doors, dropped by bosses, dug out of the ground with a shovel, or handed over for solving a room's puzzle. A few require combining two halves first, like the Torn Polaroid pieces found in the Grizzly Suite and backstage at the Rabbit Hole Bar, which fuse into the Repaired Polaroid and speed up every healing item you carry. Team17 first announced the game as a loving throwback to '90s survival horror, and the memento system is where that design shows up most.

Expanding Your Slots With Vessel Shards

Equipping more than one or two mementos at a time means hunting down Memento Vessel Shards, a separate collectible found by shooting the wooden bird figurines with wind chimes hanging under them scattered around town. There are 16 shards total, and every four you collect combine automatically into a Memento Vessel, which permanently adds one equip slot. A full run of shard collecting tops out around five usable slots, so slot order matters just as much as item order: grab the shards in whatever area you're already clearing rather than backtracking for them later.

The Mementos Worth Prioritizing Early

With a limited number of slots for most of the game, a few mementos pay off faster than the rest. These are the ones worth a short detour the moment you're in the area:

• Mended Tooth — on a desk in the Quiet Hour Cafe back room. +15% melee damage, the single best early damage spike for a melee-first loadout.
• Smooth Stone with a Hole — reward for solving the bird cage puzzle at the Quiet Hour Cafe. Headshots deal 20% more damage, which pairs well with the North Star Shotgun.
• Switchblade Cufflink — inside a crate behind a wooden barrier you have to shoot open. Melee attacks come out 30% faster.
• Badge 0013 — pried from a body in the Sheriff's Office morgue with the crowbar. The last shot before a magazine empties deals 25% more damage, which rewards running weapons dry on purpose.
• Repaired Polaroid — combine the two Torn Polaroid halves. Healing items activate faster and Flatleaf Herb heals 50% more, which matters once inventory space gets tight.
• Sea Polished Glass Shard — found after a boss fight in the apartment 4B dream sequence. Swimming costs much less stamina and it's required to cross to the Church Hill docks, so it's as much a progression key as a buff.

Working Toward the Full Set

Finding all 25 mementos unlocks the Burden of Memories achievement, and it also matters for the story. According to community-mapped endings, collecting the complete set opens the option to burn everything in the furnace near the game's close, which is the path to the Live ending, one of three outcomes alongside Leave and Rest. If you're aiming for that outcome on a first run, keep every memento you pick up rather than treating any of them as filler, since duplicates and low-value items like the Torn Polaroid pieces or Old Corsage still count toward the total even when they're not equipped.

The Wikipedia entry for Silver Pines has the full credits list, including composer Karl Flodin, if you want the wider production background.

Our Silver Pines launch guide covers editions and platform availability if you're still deciding where to buy it.

Quick Setup Checklist

1. Shoot every wind-chime bird figurine you spot for Memento Vessel Shards; four shards equal one new slot.
2. Grab Mended Tooth and Smooth Stone with a Hole first for an immediate damage boost in either playstyle.
3. Combine Torn Polaroid halves as soon as you have both for faster healing.
4. Save riskier picks like Dice Pair for once you've learned enemy attack patterns.
5. Keep every memento even after your slots fill up, since the full set feeds into the Burden of Memories achievement and the Live ending.

None of this requires a guide to execute once you know what to look for. Wych Elm built Silver Pines so that exploring off the critical path is consistently rewarded, and the memento system is the clearest example of that design holding up.