Days Gone guide: Nine tips to help you survive

Stop the hordes

Days Gone is a long and arduous game. Survival is more of a focal point than most of the other open world projects in recent memory, so conservation is key.

Here’s some tips to help you with that sometimes confusing process, with some very vague non-story spoilers.

• In order to fast travel you need to have cleared all of the Freaker (zombie) nests along that route with fire-based weapons like molotov cocktails: they’re denoted by a red hazard symbol on the world map. Always clear nests the first time you see them, period. You can find them by wandering around or if you clear out an enemy human camp you’ll be able to locate a bunker that has a map of all nearby nests. Seriously: go eradicate them, it’ll make traveling that much easier.

• You only have a certain amount of crafting items you can carry at any given time. If you happen across a crafting reagent like a bottle and can’t pick it up, always try to craft an item with your existing supply first. Then you can pick up the item to craft something else later. It matters when you’re taking on an unexpected horde or boss-like enemy and need to make powerful items on the fly.

• Camps each have their own trust (item tier) levels and their own currencies. Doing missions and completing turn-ins (more on that in a moment) will boost both levels for each camp. It’s advantageous to get to at least level two for most camps. Often times you’ll go back to previous areas or get stuck, and it’s useful to be able to buy the items you need to progress rather than go out on a supply run.

• With that said, make sure you pump up any camp that has weapons available, as those are the most important upgrades. After killing zombies and many infected enemies, you can donate ears to a camp to raise your trust level. Bank them and spend them at weapon camps. Alternatively, near the conclusion of the first campaign storyline you have the option to briefly favor Copeland (bike upgrades) or Tucker’s (weapons) camp. Choose the latter.

• If you’re traveling out in the wilderness and are at roughly 50% fuel, keep your eyes open for red gas cans. Stop your bike, go grab the can, and refuel it so you have enough fuel to fast travel when you need to. You can also look for fuel pump icons on the map at any time for gas stations, which allow you to pull up and restock.

• That said, if you’re really low fuel (less than 20%) fuel cans will pop up on-screen to make it easier to get back on the road. If you’re stranded try to run toward marquee locations on the map, they usually have trucks with fuel cans in the back of them or buildings with fuel lying around. It’s very rare to get completely stuck.

• Just found a cool item? Go to your bike, hold Triangle and quicksave. Seriously, this is the most important tip, get used to it.

• More bike tips! Make sure your bike is always propped up for a quick getaway. There’s nothing worse than running from a horde and slowly picking your bike back up only to get overwhelmed and die. Hopefully it’ll be at a good checkpoint as a result of the last tip.

• Melee is insanely powerful early on mostly due to how low ammo supplies are at that point in the game. Try to tech into the melee skill tree first, then build into ranged and survival.