Useful Tips for New Players
General Tips:
- Familiarize yourself with NPCs and what they sell; don’t forget about Wallace in the watch tower, who can increase the number of heals you carry and craft new classes once you find the part for them.
- Check with Cass every time you come back to Ward 13; she’ll often have new items and various irons in stock; once an item shows up in her shop, it won’t disappear, so no pressure to purchase what’s there immediately.
- Most dungeons have something called an injectible; this is a rng-based injection into the default layout of the dungeon, and often has special bosses called aberrations that give you mutators.
- Every area has one purple pickup (item) and one blue pickup (trait point) in addition to whatever fixed pickups that dungeon has; try to ensure you’ve found both before moving on from the zone.
- The area before a world boss always has a simulacrum; make sure to find it before moving on to the final boss of the world; these are extremely important as they increase the number of heals you have, and is required to take weapons from +19 to +20.
Upgrading and Player Power:
- Areas scale to player level, and increase throughout the campaign as well; the final boss is level 15 by default (can be higher if player level is higher), so as you progress keep an eye on this level called World Level, which is visible when you’re in a dungeon in the upper right corner of the mini-map
- You can also know what world level will be since it’s always 1 higher than than your player level, which can be viewed in the Character tab of the menu
- Don’t level your weapons up as fast as possible; only level them when you see the WL increase, and this should put your loadout at +13/+14 weapons by the time the campaign ends
Overall, I recommend keeping your player level and weapon level (viewable in menu under character tab on the left) at +16 to +18; this makes it easier to level up and test other weapons you’ve gotten as you play, while still collecting hardened iron, which you need for the last tier of upgrades; once you level classes and find stuff you really enjoy using, then take them to +20 and walk into nightmare and apoc with focused builds. The jump from Veteran to Nightmare is the largest difficulty jump, as enemies have x2 damage and x2 health compared to Veteran.
Class Related Tips:
- Root Water regenerates 0.75 health per second. It might not seem like a lot, but it helps a ton in the beginning. It can be bought from Mudtooth.
- Always check Cass’s inventory. She carries some really decent items from time to time. One is Burden of the Destroyer, which is currently one of the better rings in the game for raw damage. She also carries Braided Thorns, which raises your crit by 10%, which is more helpful than you might think.
- If you feel weak, level up your guns a bit, but not too much, or the game will scale the difficulty. It’s recommended to stay below your current level so that the difficulty doesn’t get too out of hand for you.
- Next, and arguably the most important thing: your movement and the enemy’s movement and attacks. This will take a while to learn. The best tip I can give you is to practice waiting to dodge. See an attack, let the enemy come at you, then evade. This causes the enemy to overcommit and blow right past you as you dodge, giving you distance and an opening for some damage.
- Never stand and fight; always be moving unless built for it. This means a lot of times it will come down to your better judgment about whether to fight or flee. Most times it will be better to run, reposition, and wait for an opening to attack. Not always, though.
- Find some status effects to use; they help a ton with mobbing, especially bleed. It doesn’t do the most damage, but it stops 50% of the enemy’s healing, and I haven’t found a boss modifier that can combat it yet. It’s just a good tool to have in your back pocket.
- Use shields. I know you want damage, but in the beginning, it’s far more important to survive. Shields are a very strong way to accomplish this. As a side note, you can look at a shield as extra health; it acts the same as health and benefits from damage reduction.
Hardcore Tips:
- Handler and Challenger give a free revive.
- You can also get the Black Cat Band for a second revive.
- If you’re STILL scared, running a Survivor difficulty Yaesha can get you the Thaen Tree, for a third revive (more if you have them in your inventory slotted to consume if the first one pops, but that’s usually excessive).
- Other than that, you can just try to cheese most bosses if you’re insecure about fighting them.
- You can also try rolling for easier ones. I lucked out and got basically all of my preferred ones.
Play a class and weapons you’re comfortable with, Challenger has a 2nd life, but suffers from ranged dmg as you have to close range to get the dmg buffs, Handler also has a 2nd life and a very useful dog, Gunslinger very good ammo, only get a 2nd archetype after finishing the 2nd World.
As soon as possible buy the Black Cat Band, get Healing shot, and get Vigor maxed out first, Endurance doesn’t do much, either get Spirit so you can spam more healing shots or Expertise, if you’re comfortable with your skills, just run medium armor, if not you can get the Leto armor set after completing the Labyrinth and buy the Bright Steel Ring.
To have the easiest time in Root Earth, you have to make sure to have the lowest world levels when you get there, to have this only upgrade weapons before World Bosses and make them -2 compared to the world lvl, 1st World Boss will be lvl5, make your long gun lvl3, 2nd World Boss lvl9 updrage to lvl7, 3rd World Boss is also lvl9, Cancer will be lvl12 so be lvl10, Venom lvl13, and Final lvl14.
Buy Iron from Cass everytime you return, she can also sell useful rings. N’Erud is probably the most annoying zone, so you can try rolling for Forgotten Prison to get Tal’Ratha, so you only have to fight either Abomination or the Primogenitor
You don’t have to do every Side Path, you can mostly just stick to the Main path and pick up Tome’s and items, there’s one of each in every zone. You can sell literally every material you get from bosses or you pick up, only things you need is Iron, Lumenite Crystals.
If you can have a friend join it also makes many fights much easier, you can have someone sit outside of bosses/sieges to get ressed if you fail, you can only do this at normal bosses, not World Bosses they pull everyone in, for example Abomination, Cube in the lab, Mother Mind etc.