Transcription
I've got about 70 hours in Death Stranding 2 now and have nearly 100% of the game. So, I figured I'd give you guys as many tips and tricks and things I wish I knew sooner.
If you have any extra tips or if you want to add on to anything that I say here, leave it down in the comments.
So, I did not know this until like 65 hours in, but you do not need to approach and press square on a watch tower. You can pause, go to your map, hover over the watchtower, and just press X to select the watch tower, where it then gives the option to remotely connect to it, as long as you're within like 200ish meters from it.
And if you need to figure out the distance between you and somewhere else, you can just use your sniper scope, aim at wherever you need to know the distance from, and it'll show you how many meters away it is there in the scope. Or open up your map, place a point on you or wherever you want to know the distance from with square, and then hold square to draw a line to wherever you're measuring. Just create that point and hover over it, and it'll tell you the distance.
Blood grenades are useful to bait some of those tiny little crawly BTs into it to quickly defeat a whole group. But I did not know for the longest time that shooting enemies through a blood grenade applies the blood grenade effect to that enemy. You'll see that your shots actually turn red as they're passing through it. So just throw down a blood grenade smoke cloud and then shoot from one side and hit enemies on the other. They're getting blood grenaded.
You probably know that holding L2 and R2 makes it a lot harder to fall. Hitting rocks or uneven terrain will make it easier to stumble and that using a skeleton like the power skeleton makes it much much harder to trip and fall. But you probably didn't know that you can actually tie down your cargo to make it more stable. All you have to do is drop your backpack. Like I said, hold triangle or open up that quick menu by holding up on the D-pad. Then take out your rope, aim it at the backpack, and you can do an elaborate tie down that makes your gear much more stable.
If you hold L2 and R2 and then hold X, you can perform those little hop jumps that are super helpful if you're on a rocky path or something that's harder to move around on, even including water. If you were holding X before crossing the water, you'll move through it a lot faster. I haven't really tested this too much with the sludge and tar, though. Okay, I just went and tested it with the tar and it actually works pretty dang good. Doing this is extremely draining on stamina, though, so just keep that in mind.
You can also tap triangle to readjust your backpack and sort of give you more stability while already holding L2 and R2.
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If you press L1 to scan tar, and it turns yellow, you can drive through it. This is one of the fastest ways to travel through the thick tar areas, like over to the inventor. To get to the inventor, you can do that. Just tap L1 to scan, then just follow the yellow path, preferably driving, but you can also walk there if you really wanted to, or use the coffin. The coffin is an absurd method of travel. It goes so much faster than I imagined because I did not use this thing for the longest time because I figured it's not going to go that fast. But no, it flies. You can also use the monorail to get over there as well. To unlock the inventor, just make sure you pick up some of his lost cargo along the shoreline before you come over here.
Another thing that I totally forgot about was capturing BTs. Once you unlock the metagenomicist facility, I don't know how the heck to say that, they'll give you the EX capture grenade. This allows you to capture the giant BTs after you get them to critical health. You probably noticed they all have a yellow weak point. Generally, it'll always be their face or their mouth. When they go down to critical health, you know, that health bar turns red. At the same time, that yellow weak spot becomes more orange and has like a glittery mist coming from it. That's when you can throw the capture grenade at their face as close to that point as possible to capture them. After the fight is over, instead of the standard Chiral crystals, they will spawn a white like BT crystal. Grab that and now you can summon them. All you have to do to summon and spawn another BT is to get into another giant BT fight, like when the BTs pull you into the ground and throw you at their boss fight. And once you're in there, you can now open up your special items menu to grab the BT and summon them into the fight like a freaking Kaiju Pokemon battle.
So, I tried walking off of a ramp one time and confirmed that it doesn't work for people, but no, it actually does as long as you sprint and jump. And it's actually pretty cool.
There are a ton of wild animals you'll find throughout your travels. If you just tap L1 to scan every so often, you'll see them like highlighted purple. You can tranquilize them by shooting them with any non-lethal weapon, including the shotgun. It's kind of insane, but you can just walk right up to a koala, hit them with a shotgun blast, and they just go into a nice slumber. By the way, something that took me too long to figure out is why I couldn't pick up a captured animal. And it's because there has to be nothing underneath it in your backpack. Sometimes there can be other stuff, but if you're not able to pick it up, just empty out your backpack, dump it all out. You can use the quick menu option to do that and then place the animal in your backpack first. Now you can toss some of the stuff on top of it.
So just some quick shortcuts and time savers that I see a lot of people not knowing. If you're inside of your inventory menu, any type of inventory, if you click right or left on the directional pad, it swaps between categories so that you don't have to sit there and scroll down to each item. If you want to select multiple items, instead of tapping square on each one, you can actually hold square and then just scroll down and it'll mark everything. You can do the same thing to unselect multiple items, but the fastest way to do that is to just press circle to uncheck everything.
Also, if you hold up on the D-pad, you might realize how it brings up everything that has to do with your backpack. You can auto-sort your backpack. You can open up your cargo menu a lot faster than pausing. But don't forget that if you open up your cargo menu and you're nearby your vehicle and any loot on the ground, you can see all of that in this menu. So, say something like uh BTs put all of your loot from your truck or your backpack onto the ground. The fastest way to put all of that back into your vehicle is to just not be in your vehicle, open up your cargo menu, just hold square, select it all, and then put it into your truck.
Also, when you're building or upgrading something like a road or monorail and don't want to slowly scroll to the necessary required Chiral crystals, just press left to max it out.
A lot of people probably already know this part, but you can skip the ship landing animation when it's in the air. Like, whenever you complete a main quest and you're Magellan sits there for 5 minutes waiting to land, you don't have to wait for that. Just get close and hold square. You can board it. I was actually waiting for it to land every time. The same goes for skipping all of the animations while you're getting into your private room, as well as doing anything in your room, like drinking the teas for extra stamina. Just skip it by holding X. You can alternatively pause the game and then skip it that way, but holding X is the fastest way to go with those. You can also skip dialogues from everyone that isn't a cutscene by just spamming X. So, like the dialogues with all the facility people, just spam X. That's the fastest way to go about skipping those. But occasionally, some of these are semi important to the story, especially if you're here not for a side job, but the main mission. So, be careful skipping all of the ship animations as well, like leaving your room, because sometimes those are cutscenes. As long as you're supposed to be in the ship for the story. So, if your objective is in the ship, it told you to go to the ship. Do not skip as much, if at all. A lot of the time, if it's an important cutscene, it'll take more time holding X to skip, which tells you, hey, you might want to not skip this.
By the way, you refill ammo just by entering your private room. I did not know this for the longest time and I was just crafting new weapons because I didn't realize that entering any private room refills the ammo for every weapon on Sam or in his backpack.
Just entering your private room while your vehicle is parked on the Magellan or inside of a facility on the parking garage door fully repairs it, but you can also park it in the Magellan and hold circle as well as any facility that has a garage.
If you didn't know how to drop your backpack, you can just hold triangle. This is helpful if you're about to get into a sudden fight or just need to move faster. But for the longest time, I did not know how to remove my backpack. And once I did, I was holding up on the D-pad to use that shortcut. But you can actually just hold triangle. Either place your cargo into a private locker like the ones you can build with the PCC or just drop the entire backpack underneath the Timefall shelter if it's raining. Same goes for parking a vehicle full of cargo before a fight. You can fit an entire truck under it where it'll keep your vehicle safe and cargo containers repaired.
Oh yeah, for big deposits of Chiral crystals, you can just hold triangle. You don't have to keep tapping it. If you hold triangle while driving, it'll literally just pick up every Chiral crystal whenever you pass one.
Okay, so all of the best gear that I always carry. It's always beneficial to carry a PCC, if not multiple. You also need a skeleton. They come with all sorts of buffs and allows carrying cargo to be so much easier and lets you hold more weight. I lived with the Power Skeleton in my inventory for the longest time, which you get through story progression. And getting Level Two and then Three for reaching levels three and four with the Western Environmental Observatory for completing their orders is just amazing. It also allows you to double jump, but the Boost Skeleton speed is just crazy. The speed buff that it gets is hard to look back on. You get the Level One through story progression and Level Two and Three for leveling up your connection with the MULEs. As you can see, the Boost Skeleton also allows you to jump really far. Combining that and its running speed just makes it so dang good to move through the snow. I wish I would have known this sooner because I was using the Battle Skeleton for like 99% of the game, and I never really touched this.
If you'll be running through mountains, the Bipedal Skeleton is super helpful as well, and you unlock all of its variants from West Knot City. Back in Mexico at the Bokeh, there's an optional facility that you can completely miss. Don't worry, you can still come back to Mexico later. But to open up the Bokeh facility, you'll have to find lost cargo lying around the map, not too far away. It's generally like everywhere. If you just scan around, you'll find it. Getting that facility to just Level One gives you the Trekking Boots, some climbing shoes that make you feel a lot more stable. And I wish I had these sooner. I didn't get these till like the end of the game. If you use the Boost Skeleton's jumps or even the Battle Skeleton's double jump in combination with the Absolute Boots, these things are freaking crazy, man. You have to have these. They nerf a lot of the fall damage and the cargo damage that you take from falling, and you get them through story progression. There is never a reason to not carry extra shoes. There's a boot clip on the side of your bag specifically for them. So, always have an extra pair of shoes on you.
The best weapons that I always carry is, for one, the shotgun. You get the very first Level One variant of the shotgun, the MP version for completing Order Number 11 in the story. You get the Lightweight Shotgun and the Level Two Shotgun from leveling up with the Musician. At Level Four with the Musician, you even get a Lightweight Level Two Shotgun. Plus, you'll find some Level Threes lying around with rubber bullets or different variants of the Level Twos and Level Ones from the MULEs. But any of these shotguns, just use the best one you can find and you cannot go wrong. Ever since I got the shotgun, especially once I hit the Level Two, and even more so the red variant that has less recoil, that's all you really need. That's my most reliable weapon for anything except maybe long-range combat. I didn't even know for the longest time that it also goes burst and full auto. Burst is good for the MULEs that take three or more shots to kill. Full auto for everyone else is the way to go since it doesn't fire that fast. For MULEs, I use the sniper and if they push me hard enough or I need to get in close, I use the shotgun. For MULEs and BTs and bosses though, I just use straight shotguns. If the little lost soul guys are throwing me weapons during a boss fight or there are some on the ground nearby, I might pick up the rockets or grenade launchers and quickly use those. But mostly it's the shotgun. Ever since I got the shotgun and the sniper, I don't even try for stealth anymore. I can take out a 14 person outpost or at least have most of them dealt with by the time I have to go in with my shotgun. If you are seen, they're at least defeated before they even get to you most of the time.
The drop on the sniper takes some getting used to, but once you do, it is really, really good. Headshots are almost always a one-shot in the head unless you hit a helmet where you'll then need to hit them twice. Two to three body shots for most people and they're out. As long as another MULE doesn't come along and wake them up, these guys will stay asleep for a really long time. The sniper is so dang loud that it alerts everyone, but it doesn't even matter. Once you eliminate an enemy, it'll go slow motion and you can quickly aim at the next one within that time. Otherwise, it gets a little tricky when they're hiding or juking your shots like a dang super soldier. I swear half of these guys are wearing a damn Sandevistan. You unlock the sniper rifle from the Lone Commander. At Level Four, you get the Lightweight version. And at Level Five, you get the Silenced Lightweight Sniper. And with the extreme loudness of the non-silenced variants, I mean, it was still pretty dang OP, but holy cow, dude. The silenced sniper is just insane. Nobody hears any of your shots. You could just go ham.
And for the pistol, since it has its own holster, I barely use this, but I still carry one because regardless, like it doesn't really take up much space. It has its own spot for you to carry it. The shock pistol is really, really dang good for stealth. Regardless of how far into the game you are, this thing is insane. Most of the time, it's going to one-shot anyone, but like I said, I don't stealth a whole lot anymore. And the grenade pistol is just crazy. I really mostly use this for the MULE outposts whenever there's a guy hiding on a tower. I just lob a grenade up there and they're toast. Just be careful 'cause the grenade pistol will destroy any nearby cargo.
All of those weapons that I mentioned, by the way, are non-lethal. If you look on the menu, it'll actually tell you if that weapon kills humans. If it has an orange skull, that means death. Killing humans is bad. You'll have to take their bodies to a facility to get rid of them, otherwise it's game over. MP bullets and rubber bullets make humans unconscious. The turret upgrade on the cargo truck is non-lethal and does good damage, but also hitting humans with your vehicle surprisingly only knocks them unconscious and you can usually do it in one tap.
If you reach Connection Level Two with the F5 East Distribution Center in America, you know, pretty easy to do. You will get the Sticky Cannon that you can mount on your vehicle on the cargo truck. This is one of the most useful upgrades in the game. It allows you to just infinitely pick up any nearby loot excluding the Chiral crystals. You know, sometimes I'm able to grab Chiral crystals from my truck and sometimes I'm not. I'm not sure why that is, but leave it down in the comments if you know. If you reach Level Three, three stars with the F5 East Distribution Center, you also get the Heavy Machine Gun for your vehicle. I think this thing is also totally worth it because it absolutely shreds enemies. And then I also just have batteries on the side of the cargo truck as well as the off-road wheels. If you're only going to grab a single upgrade for your off-roader, uh, this is probably the most must-have. Or maybe it's just in my head, but it seems like it damages cargo significantly less if you have these wheels on. But the most important part is that it becomes a monster off-road. You can pretty much go up vertical walls as long as there's something for your wheel to grip onto. Like if there's a rock nearby along the wall, you're pretty much good. You can go up the wall. But that sticky upgrade also makes it easy to grab every weapon and every piece of loot that you find.
'Cause something I think a lot of people sleep on is just grabbing every weapon you find and then donate a couple to like the requests you see from other players, but really just to recycle 'cause extra weapons give us extra resources that a lot of people won't get because they just pass those extra weapons up. This doesn't mean a whole lot late game 'cause as you level up facilities, that's really where you get your main resources from. But after some of the boss fights in this game, there will be like 20 different weapons on the ground. Grab all of those, recycle them, free resources. I think resources are the most must-have thing because what you want to do ASAP is restore travel methods like the highway, but especially the monorail system. I wish I had started working on this a lot earlier because eventually you will keep getting tasked with traveling back and forth across the map without the ability to fast travel and at the very least having the monorail system is a game changer. The roads are super helpful, but they take a lot more resources. Granted, you can do both since the monorail takes resin and special alloys while the road takes metal and ceramics, but the monorail is what I would make my main priority if you only pick one.
Having zip lines set up in the mountains can be really beneficial, too. But having this monorail down here alongside the mountain makes up for a lot of that if you don't. Having each monorail system set up just saves so much dang time, dude. You can get vehicles, an unlimited amount of cargo, and yourself to the other side of the map in a minute. And if you're actually using this as a zipline, it definitely travels slower than if you were starting at the actual facility that you can select it through in the menu. But if you're using it as a zipline, use right and left on the D-pad to make sure you're actually on the right spot. 'Cause once this thing actually gets going, you can't stop it and turn around. So if you pick the wrong direction, which I've done a ton of times, 'cause I think it's aiming straight, but for some reason it's aiming at the one behind me, you have to wait until you get all the way to the next target.
By the way, place your zip lines on high peaks. The best way to have them reach each other and have them reach other zip lines in other players' worlds is to place them in a non-blocked area. I mean, of course, you have to place some zip lines in between those once in a while, but I see zip lines all the time that are placed like right under the tippity top of the peak, especially from like other players' worlds where now I still have to kind of like put my own zip line even though that one's right there.
Another really good way to get resources fast are MULE outposts. A lot of these, especially the bigger MULE outposts, are absolutely loaded with different resources, as well as lost cargo and pretty much anything you can think of. There's also really good weapons at some of these. You'll find Level Three shotguns.
You can also fast travel by using the Magellan after progressing through the story by holding X on the map and moving it up to a nearby landing spot. Then you can get inside of the Magellan and fast travel anywhere. However, any cargo inside will now give a rating to the Magellan instead of Sam, which basically means a lot less XP and rewards, making turning that cargo in almost meaningless. I kind of wish I would have done this more during the story since the ratings in there don't really matter as much. But for standard orders and lost cargo, I definitely would not do that.
To get back to Mexico, by the way, all you have to do is open the map, hold X to open up the ship travel screen, and then press R1 and L1 to switch between the different maps between America and Mexico.
On my backpack, I use the large spare ammo container. This is probably my favorite upgrade to use on the backpack. You get all the different variations of it for leveling up with the Porter's Base. You know, he's right next to the Lone Commander, and you come to these like super early into the game. So, I would try to level up with these guys as fast as possible because the Lone Commander, like I said, gives the silenced sniper rifle and the Porter's Base is right nearby to give you the extra magazines, which makes the sniper and every other weapon just 10 times better because it feels like you have infinite ammo sometimes. When I had the Level One spare magazine, all I had on it was the solar charger and some of the anti-gravity devices because you don't really have much room. But once you hit the Level Two spare ammo container, it gets slightly smaller, so you can also fit some other stuff. If I just threw a grenade pouch on there. Uh, you could also put like a small battery if you wanted to. Also, if you wanted to, even with the Level One spare magazine, you could also get on a large battery with it if you just rotate them horizontally. You do that with L2 and R2 to rotate them. You get the large battery from Hartman's Lab, but I really love the solar panel, which keeps us charged, and then anti-gravity devices for the rest. You get the solar generator from hitting Level Two with West Knot City. The spare magazine. Uh, you won't realize that you have it until you run out of ammo for a weapon where then once you hit zero rounds in your weapon, it'll pull a magazine out of the backpack. It does this like what, two or three times just for the Level One. You know, it almost doubles the ammo capacity on most weapons.
Also, I didn't use this for most of the game, but you can also get the backpack cover from the F5 East Distribution Center to protect some of your cargo from Timefall. You cannot test out backpack upgrades and see if they fit before you craft them. But if you recycle that item just before you get off of the customization screen, which you have to do to any spare upgrades anyways, if they don't fit on the bag, it gives you a full refund. So you don't have to stress about, oh, I have to buy this before I can even see if it fits. You don't lose any resources for recycling it as long as you don't get off of this menu. So, if I craft a battery to see if it fits or see if I can fit another upgrade but decide I don't like it, I can refund it and get all of the resources back. Same with vehicle weapons and attachments like batteries.
But yeah, that is pretty much it. Leave a like and subscribe for more Death Stranding 2 videos. I'm not sure if I'll cover more, but leave a comment down below if you want me to and let me know if the video helped. See you.