Topic: Returnal

Well, a smidge late to the party, but I’ve finally started Returnal! I have been following along with most of you all but a lot of things have gone over my head and now I’m trying to remember all the tips and nuggets of advice I’ve read, but mostly I’m just figuring things out as I go.

First impressions are great. I was expecting a lot due to the praise I’ve read, but I think it even surpassed expectations. The haptics are phenomenal. There is definitely an addictive nature to playing “one more run.” But I’m already at a wall where I wonder if I’ll ever get good enough. It’s frustrating because I know this is by far the easiest biome and if I’m struggling already I’m not sure if I’ll have it in me for Biome 3 and 5, which are apparently killers.

So I’ve played about 3-4 hours and died 10 times, killed about 90 enemies, hit max adrenaline once, and haven’t even sniffed the end of the first Biome. I’m getting a little better, but when I run into the brute type enemies then I’m toast. I’m taking my time and exploring a lot into every side door. I’m not shying away from taking on malignancies and parasites because I think I read that it’s usually worth the debuffs. I am still a little confused as to what carries over from run to run. I know ether does, but apparently whatever you buy with ether doesn’t 😣. The weapons confuse me a little as to what carries. Apparently weapon progress does carry from run to run, but what does that mean? It seems like the alt-fire and weapon level is just random when I start and when I find a weapon. I’ve only found the carbine on two different runs and the shotgun (I forget what it’s called) once, after which I immediately found a level 2 shotgun in the same room after finding the first one… ? So I’m just confused because I thought the weapon levels carried over with you from run to run, like if you get up to a level 2 weapon then you start with that after death, but I go back to a level 0 pistol at the beginning. Anyways, the stats are all just a mess in my head but I just roll with it and shoot with whatever Gun I’ve been given and when I use alt-fire it’s always just a surprise as to what it’s going to do this time; like opening up a present —“what did I get? Aw man, another pair of socks 😔”

So I’m taking a short break since 10 times of doing the same basic area is just a teeny bit frustrating. I tried one run where I skipped all the pick up and side rooms, just hoping to get progress to the boss, but that didn’t end well. It seems like you have to really invest the time to get good level up items if there’s hope to progress.

Someone talk me off the ledge. It’s going to get easier right? I’ll be able to progress through the game won’t I? 😅

Edit: Oh and I’ve discovered through several attempts that I have no business trying to do the revenge thing on the corpses I find. It’s a quick death for me every time.

@Th3solution Welcome to the party and glad to hear you are having fun. It seems like most people who’ve played it feel the same regarding how it feels to play. It’s truly awesome.

Sounds like you are definitely where I was when I started out, loving it but frustrated that I wasn’t making as much progress as I thought I should. All I can say on that is that it will definitely come, and you will get better.

B1 is quite hard for most people as you don’t have much experience and you won’t have many things unlocked yet. I’ve seen some people say they’ve taken many many more deaths than you to get past the first boss though so don’t feel bad about 10 😉.

As far as carry over goes this is the deal:

1) Ether carries over but things that you use ether on don’t. You can only have a max of 30 but it’s unlikely you will reach that on B1 as you will likely be spending some.
2) Obolites don’t carry over but they are well worth collecting as then you can get some good things from the fabricators. It’s totally worth trying to hoover up as many as you can from killed hostiles because of this.
3) Proficiency doesn’t carry over. Proficiency will allow you to find weapons with better traits and stats but always resets to 0 on death.
4) Weapon traits carry over and also the progress towards unlocking one carries over. If you unlock a trait fully then you’ve got more chance of finding that trait next time you come across that weapon type. These make a huge difference in combat as they can make a fairly bad weapon brilliant. It’s always good to try the different weapons though and do some unlocking to improve them as you never know which ones you will come across. I would say though that the best runs I have are ones where I’ve got a weapon I like. It might also be that you end up preferring different weapons in different biomes.
5) Consumables don’t carry over so good to use them rather than save them.
6) Suit stats don’t carry over. Those are things that might give you certain perks e.g. 10% extra weapon damage so are well worth grabbing when you see them.

Generally at first I found it paid to take it slow and edge through the rooms making sure to clear them all and maximise the integrity. I always buy the 25% extra integrity and the large health pack from the fabricators. Don’t be afraid to dash forward as that’s usually the best way to avoid projectiles and definitely use melee as well as it’s very powerful and will allow you to grab lots of obolites.

There’s probably loads more advice others can give as well but I’ve tried not to give you too much so you can find your own way with it.

I’m interested to see how you get on so have fun and report back 👍

@Th3solution The most important tip for now would be probably that avoiding taking damage is more important than hitting things. Remember that the dash makes you invulnerable to most things (all enemy attacks at this stage). The "brutes" have some fast and powerful attacks but they always indicate them by extending their tentacles and glowing red just moments before - when you see it, get ready to dash out of danger at the right moment.

And yeah, probably avoid those scout corpses until you find some upgrades.

As for the weapon progress - you gain weapon proficiency by killing things and collecting calibrators. Your weapon proficiency determines the level of weapons you find. It does not carry over to the next run.
What does carry over is your progress on unlocking weapon traits and alt-fire upgrades.
Each weapon you find will have a trait, locked at the beginning. Traits change the behaviour of the weapon in some way (usually making it more powerful|). You unlock the trait by using the weapon. Once you unlock it, the next time you find a weapon with the same trait, it will be already be unlocked, and it can have a 2nd trait to unlock.
Weapon traits are specific to a weapon type and some of them only start appearing at a certain weapon level.

As for "things you buy with ether" - if you mean the stuff you get at the thing near the crash site (I don't remember how early in the game it becomes active tbh), every time you use it, you get a new item, and getting a new item always adds it to the pool of items you can find randomly in the world, dropped by enemies or at fabricators.

Anyway, the game mostly gets easier because you learn how to play it - it matters more than the permanent unlocks, really (but they matter too).

Forgot to add:
There are 2 reasons why not getting hit is important:
1. Getting your adrenaline level higher does make things better.
2. You'll notice there are 2 types of health items: silphium, which heals you, and silphium resin, which is used to upgrade your max health. The thing you might not have noticed, is that collecting silphium while at full health, makes it have the same effect as collecting a silphium resin - filling one of the slots towards the upgrade.

@Voltan @render Thanks a bunch, friends! That is all very helpful. I feel like I probably need to focus on taking things slower, playing more defensively, and finding upgrades.
I don’t have melee yet, that I know of, and I think it will be nice when I unlock that because I often lose my obolites because I’m shooting enemies from a distance and they disappear by the time I get to them.

I have tried to cheese the enemies by hovering near the door and then dashing back into the adjoining room/space for cover behind the door… until I came into contact with the dudes that throw sticky stuff at you and apparently can teleport through doors. 😓 So that technique isn’t going to work all the time.

It appears though they enemies do not respawn — is this correct? However I have revisited earlier areas and found new items it seems… unless I had just missed it the first time through, but I’m pretty sure I went back to an area and found a key that wasn’t there before.

I do love the exploration aspect, and am happy that the game features plenty of time away from combat to roam around trying to find things and soak up the beautiful (yet creepy) environment.

@velio84 Thanks for the tips - I had considered doing the always on sprinting, but haven’t tried it yet. Is the R1 dash useful because it’s easier to dash and melee? I might try that but my muscle memory may already be kicking in for the circle dash.

I had a really decent run, at least for me — made it all the way to the boss. I had built my integrity up by probably an extra 30-35% (bought the 25% and then got quite a few resins) I had the astronaut and the reconstructor - so basically had 3 shots at the boss and still couldn’t get him down. I had him within about a fourth of his second Health bar. I have no idea if there was another third form but I sure hope not. I had a malignancy where I had 30% reduction in all my weapon damage when at low health, so that might have cooked my goose there at the end. Ugh. The run took me like 2 hours at least. I think I was also a little tired at the end, it having dragged for a while and it was super late and reflexes were getting tired. Aw man... 😪 Well, at least I know I can get there. And maybe I made a little permanent progress on weapon tactics, but I spent all my ether on that reconstrictor thingy. I feel pretty defeated. ….yet, I somehow want to play again, if it wasn’t so late. 😅

Wait, what????

I genuinely didn’t know this

@Th3solution On weapon levels, you may or may have not noticed that at each level you get some points added into other stats with a point for each level. Each weapon also has different stats that can be enhanced like that too; increased weapon damage is on all of them. So picking up a higher level weapon might be slightly more powerful but you’re sometimes better off sticking with a weapon you like.

There aren’t many weapons to start with so play around with them all and try and get the bonus abilities of weapons unlocked to make other runs easier. There are loads of different alt fire modes to try too.

As said above, melee is great once unlocked, for one hitting smaller enemies. But the larger enemies also stagger and can often be killed with a couple of melee hits once they are.

@Th3solution Everyone's already given you lots of great tips, but one thing that really helped me with the bosses was to have a look at a good video of the boss fight on youtube.

I generally wouldn't look until I'd had a couple of goes at the boss, but after that, watching it in a video let me take in what the boss is doing while not under the pressure of trying to stay alive

Here's a guide to the Phrike boss fight: https://youtu.be/Dp7-RCaSBQs

@Th3solution I remapped dash to R1 quite late into my playtime. At first muscle memory did kick in, but that is not permanent and can be re-trained. I soon got used to it. I wouldn't say it suddenly made me invincible or anything, but I definitely prefer it.

@JohnnyShoulder Another thing that I found helped me was reducing the dead zone on the left stick so Selene more responsive. Your mileage may vary on that one though as you might find with always sprint you make some very bold dives off of platforms. I found it really helped me though especially where quite often you can avoid things just by sprinting rather than dashing, meaning you don’t have as many awkward moments waiting for dash cool down. Boss fights are especially bad for dash cooldown as you can spam it a bit too much and then just get stuck right in the firing line.

@Thrillho @JigsawPieces @velio84 @JohnnyShoulder @render Cheers guys. This feels a little like when I played Bloodborne and I needed a little encouragement and advice in the early hours to keep me from jumping ship. I fell asleep thinking about the game and woke up thinking about the game, so I think it’s a good sign.

As for mapping dash, I’ll definitely give it a go but I’m also fighting the muscle memory of 60 hours spent recently in Control where there is a similar kinetic combat with a lot of dashing and it was the same circle button there too. As far as jump, that’s an even deeper ingrained response to rewire, given X has been jump for almost every game from the beginning of time 😅. I do think the always sprint tactic would have helped a lot in the boss fight where there’s this constant circling around trying to stay ahead of the bullet hell barrage.

I’ll post an update after a trial today. If you don’t hear from me, it means I lost my mind and am probably committed somewhere. 😅

@Th3solution Control is definitely very similar and another great game. I do like the different abilities you get in that game as they give you a chance fighting in the smaller confines of the rooms there. I definitely would have died lot going between the two 😆

@Th3solution Also not sure if anybody else has mentioned it, but if your Proficiency (shown in the bottom left of the screen, indicated by a star icon) is close to the next level try and avoid opening any chests, as they will likely contain weapons guaranteed to be at that level once you have levelled up. You can upgrade Proficiency by killing enemies, picking up the blue Calibrators and some artifacts will boost it.

Argh #2!

I found one of the two remaining ciphers that I need, and spent all afternoon doing top-down runs of biome 2 to try and get the last one (unsuccessfully). Then when I closed the game, the ps5 crashed again - it didn't corrupt my save this time, but it didn't save that I'd found that cipher

I've played a few more rounds since then and I got lucky and found the other one . So I don't have the platinum yet, even though I've done everything for it - just not in one continuous save - and I've got to keep my fingers crossed I can find that one cipher again ...

(While all this is frustrating, I'm still having a blast playing the game, so it's okay!)

@JigsawPieces You are having an unlucky time with the crashing. I thought 1.4 had taken care of a lot of that but there must still be a few issues around. Soon it will be rock solid but probably after we are all done with it.

Fingers crossed for you that you get the last one 🤞

@render Thanks! Hopefully I'll find it again soon.

Yeah, I couldn't believe it when it happened again. The game itself seems to be rock solid when running, these days (it's always been fairly stable for me); this is only when going back to the PS5 UI and trying to close the game down.

@JigsawPieces Yeah, weird that there is no exit options from the game itself and I guess the only way to stop a run is closing the game down from the PlayStation UI. But I will say, that even after another 3-4 hours today (so I’ve probably played about 7-8 hrs… still in Biome 1. Yay!) that I’ve not had a single crash or technical hiccup. There are plenty of RNG quirks in my 15 or so runs — sometimes I have a parasite to choose from in every room, and sometimes I can go for hours without seeing a single parasite.

I do think there is some code to help players who are struggling like me - it seems on the latter runs I’m getting better equipment faster. Not that it’s done me much good. 😔 Still haven’t even made it back to Phrike again.

@adrianthealchemist Thanks, and yes I think you’re right about melee helping. Not only does it give me an option now for when I find myself up close and personal with an enemy, but also I have access to health and obolite stashed behind the vines that I didn’t have before. Im still not good at judging the area of effect though, and I had some trouble when rush toward an enemy to melee them and get too close and take damage when I bump into them. But it has been very nice to get rid of the shielded turrets.
I just unlocked the homing missile and it is quite brilliant. I think I’ve about unlocked every trait available to me so far. There’s about 2 on each of the 3 weapons available to me and I believe I’ve unlocked them all.

One thing I’m having trouble with is remembering to use my consumables. So many times I’ve died with something useful that I forgot to use because I hoard them. I even purchased the large health pack (selenium?) and died with it still in my inventory earlier today. I keep thinking I need to save it for the boss, but it does me no good when I’m dead. 😅

@Th3solution Melee is a bit random as it’s auto aim so if there’s a few things nearby it doesn’t always get the thing you were aiming for. It sometimes works for you as well though as you don’t always need to be directly next to things to use it, it will bridge the gap and connect you with the hostile.

I’ve got the same problem with the consumables, I just totally forget to use them. About the only ones I remember are the health packs and when I’m down to low integrity in a fight I’ll just start hammering the L1 to use whatever I’ve got left. It’s a total lottery 😆

@Th3solution The first area after the crash site is good one to practice to use your blade, as the enemies are usually really easy, especially if you get a load of those blue lizard-y tentacle things. Use dash-blade -jump/dash to get into a rhythm. Pretty soon you will be clearing it without taking any hits and picked up the majority of the obliges dropped.

Also those tentacle things that hang from the ceiling, you can use them to reach some of the higher platforms.

@JohnnyShoulder I was wondering about the tentacle plant things and using them to get to the upper areas — I haven’t had the guts to leave myself in them long enough to try yet, fearing I might take damage over time. Each of those higher platforms has a little light that I assume is for the grappling hook thingy later on, so I figured I wasn’t supposed to get up there.
I just realized that I can find a lock to shoot to get behind those barred doors. 😅

And that reminds me — a word on the 3D audio. Initially I hadn’t noticed a huge difference between the usual stereo audio I get from my headphones, but I do think now I’m starting to appreciate the localization advantage the 3D gives. My headphones are standard non-gaming ones and may not be capable of taking full advantage, I don’t know. But I have noticed if I just aim my gun near the barred doors, I can hear a faint beep of the lock trigger mechanism and fairly easily track its location by sound alone. There has been a few times the 3D audio has saved my bacon when an enemy flanked me. Especially those green teleporting zombie acid sticky guys.