Beginner’s Guide – Polygon

When you want to uncover the creepy space secret at the heart of returnget ready to die. Much. While it may feel unforgiving at first, your many deaths become an experience that takes you further into its history and deeper into Atropos. We’ll do our best to make that happen To die Learning process easier.

Polygons return The beginner’s guide has many of our best tips to help you survive and thrive. We’ll help you understand the cycle of this rogue shooter as you navigate through the game’s randomly generated maps. We’ll also explain how to use some of these returnand choose the right weapons to survive.

Table of Contents

Learn the cycle

return is a rogue action game. That means you’ll jump and dodge through dozens of projectiles in hopes of advancing further into the game’s randomly generated levels.

Every time you die, you lose (almost) everything you won and start over from the beginning. You start the cycle again, traveling the same area over and over as you continue to struggle. However, the layout of the map, the enemies that populate each area, and the items you encounter will change. Ideally, you do it a little better every time.

This is returnCycle.

Image: Housemarque / Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

At first, this may feel daunting and even boring. Once you get used to the game and meet the boss of the region, Phrike, you will almost certainly understand better how return is working. Eventually, you’ll be tearing through this area looking for shortcuts that will get you to the other biomes faster.

Expect death, but don’t be discouraged

Every new division and boss follows the same flow: a bunch of deaths that eventually lead to familiarity and mastery. In some runs you can make it farther than ever. In other cases – maybe even next time – your runs will end up shorter than you think.

This is life (and death) in return.

Getting further takes finesse on your end – but also good luck. Sometimes the right items and weapons line up to give you a great run. Sometimes you die within the first few minutes. Do not get discouraged.

Understand the map, starting with doors

Since every run of return If generated randomly, there is no way to offer a traditional walkthrough with detailed maps and instructions. However, if you want to survive, learn how to read your map – even if it changes every time.

When you start a new run, return Creates a procedurally generated map made up of dozens of different room layouts, possible items, equipment, and enemies. No two runs will be alike. Even if you come across the same rooms in one run, the items and enemies they contain will be different. However, knowing what to look for each time you run will make it more convenient and easier to navigate rooms.

The first thing to understand is the type of Doors that connect every room. Knowing the difference means you can meander through each biome.

Image: Housemarque / Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

All doors are brightly lit before you enter. Once you’ve walked through a door they’ll turn gray. Here are the different types of doors you will encounter:

• Light blue rectangular doors lead to your main path through a biome. When following the orange target markerThese doors lead you to a chef’s room. After defeating a boss, following the target marker will lead you through white doors that lead to a portal to the next biome.
• Dark blue triangular doors lead to side paths or optional rooms. These areas usually contain items, equipment, or small puzzles that contain good rewards. Sometimes these doors are locked and require a key. You may find useful terminals like the Reconstructor behind such doors.
• Doors with a broken circle above them are portals. These will take you to other biomes. You will get the Crimson Key after defeating the first boss in the game, Phrike. This will help you open the crimson gate that leads to the second biome. After defeating the second boss, Ixion, you will find a portal to the third biome in the first area of ​​the game. And you can do this with the grapple hook.
• Yellow doors with a star above are called optional challenge rooms Containment Gates. Entering these areas will lock you in and face multiple waves of enemies. If you survive, you will be given a load of Obolite that you can use to craft or swap in an Obolite repository. The final wave boss also drops a gun.

Parasites are the most reliable risk / reward system

There are different risk / reward systems in Return, and not all are worthwhile. Use the parasite system which, unlike most of the game’s risks and rewards, allows you to see the tradeoff you make before using them.

Parasites are creatures that give you a buff and a penalty. For example, one of them can start healing you when you reach low health, but your melee attacks can also do half the damage.

Image: Housemarque / Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

If you’re lucky, you may find several of these that can lead to a good run with easy-to-manage penalties. Occasionally, you will also find stations that remove parasites. This is helpful when you find that your parasites are doing more harm than good. Note that if you use a station like the Reconstructor that can bring you back to life, you will reappear without your parasites.

Spend ether wisely

Every time you die returnYou start your journey again and lose everything you previously accumulated in the run – except for a resource called ether, one of the few elements that persists between runs.

Aether is a rare resource with many uses, which means that you should consider how best to spend Aether. Your options include:

• The Cthonos, which can be used to unlock new artifacts and items.

• A reconstructor that you can use to create a respawn point (which is especially useful when you’re on a good run).
• An Obolite repository where you can get more Obolite and purchase items to extend your run.
• You can also spend ether cleaning malicious objects, but in our experience the compromise is not worth the cost.

Find the best weapon for you

While you play through returnget access to new weapons. While you’ll always have a low pistol at the start of every run, you’ll discover new weapons like a shotgun, rocket launcher, and more.

An essential aspect of the strength of your weapons is competence Level. There are two ways you can improve this stat: use your weapons more and find Calibrators. The higher your level of knowledge, the more powerful your weapons are. to survive returnyou need to balance gun familiarity and proficiency.

Regardless of how good you are, your weapons get a huge performance boost at the start of each biome. This means that the weapons you find in new biomes will automatically have a higher strength than those with which you enter the biome. Knowing this, you may be encouraged to pick up the next more powerful weapon you can find to deal with the dangers of a new biome. Our experience has shown us that personal familiarity with weapons often outperforms a more powerful weapon.

Image: Housemarque / Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

For example, we had some of the best runs with an assault rifle that we had pretty early on in the run. We’ve come across stronger weapons, but we’ve also learned that any weapon that helps us fight more safely is a better choice – even if a weapon is undeniably stronger.

In your first hours of returnFind out which weapons you like best. From there, focus on using these weapons during your runs. We learned that different weapons force us to play the game differently, which can make challenging encounters like boss fights feel radically different depending on the weapon used.