Dying Light 2 is finally here and the city of Villedor is ready for an onslaught of freerunning, zombie-slaying survivors.
It’s a huge game, with developer Techland proudly boasting that diehard fans will be able to squeeze more than 500 hours out of the sequel with multiple playthroughs and different narrative choices. Whatever approach you take, we’ve devised a handy beginner’s guide containing some essential Dying Light 2 tips.
There are no story spoilers here, but if you want to go into Dying Light 2 completely fresh, without knowing anything about the game’s various systems, we recommend avoiding this guide. Or any quickstart guide for that matter.
Dying Light 2 Tips
- Parkour everywhere
- Hunt for Inhibitors
- Repair powerful weapons
- How to unlock fast travel
- Infected trophy hunting
- Say yes to every quest
- Avoid challenges (to begin with)
- Open world activities
- Complete your map
- Staying human
Parkour everywhere
Dying Light 2 has a fantastic parkour system – this is easily a gameplay highlight. However, you’ll find that Aiden’s moves are fairly limited to begin with. You should try and earn as much parkour XP as possible. Add finesse to your traversal whenever and wherever you can instead of simply running and climbing.
Hunt for Inhibitors
Inhibitors are among the most coveted collectible items in Dying Light 2. For every few of these you find, you can upgrade either your max health or stamina, building out their respective skill trees to unlock more powers. A prompt will appear on-screen when you’re near Inhibitor containers – actually finding them takes a bit of searching.
Repair powerful weapons
You may not realise at first, but there’s a way to repair your damaged weapons. Well, some of them. Every time you add an upgrade to a weapon, it will partially restore its durability. Be sensible with this, as the crafting resources spent on upgrades can be better used elsewhere.
Infected trophy hunting
When the sun sets on Villedor, you may be tempted to hole up indoors and rest until morning. You should really be doing the opposite, exploring the streets at night. Not only will you find abandoned buildings teeming with craft supplies, this is also when you’ll encounter tougher Infected. Make sure you search any that you kill as they all drop trophies which, in turn, can be traded for improved crafting recipes.
How to unlock fast travel
Something else you may have missed is fast travel. Getting around Villedor is easy enough, though you’ll get to a point where you’ll want to instantly hop between checkpoints. This is where Dying Light 2’s metro stations come in. Scattered around the city, each one is like a small dungeon, tasking you with completing fairly simple puzzles to get them powered up and enable fast travel.
Say yes to every quest
Quests are everywhere in Dying Light 2 – say yes to all of them. Marked by exclamation points on the HUD and world map, some quests can be completed at any time of day whereas others force you to wait until night time. Whether or not you should complete every quest is another matter. Once accepted, check what the XP rewards are and whether they’re worth your time.
Avoid challenges (to begin with)
Parkour and combat challenges are easily the most enjoyable gameplay set pieces Dying Light 2 has to offer. They offer some pretty big XP payouts that can help you fill out your skill trees, but they’re pretty tough when starting out. Make sure you have at least a few good parkour and combat moves under your belt before attempting challenges as this will save you time and frustration.
Open world activities
You shouldn’t always be in a rush to get from A to B when out patrolling Villedor. Dying Light 2 is populated with emergent random encounters that pop up around the city, marked as blue diamonds on your HUD. These vary from killing thugs and advanced infected, to saving friendly NPCs and offering them aid. The potential XP pay-outs make these open world activities mostly worthwhile.
Complete your map
Charting every point on your map is just as powerful as wielding the strongest sledgehammer. Whenever you find yourself at a vantage point overlooking the world, grab your binoculars and try to highlight structures, hideouts, and other points of interest. This method can be a little tricky – we’d also recommend scouting these locations on foot, too.
Staying human
Night-time excursions can be risky. Not only are the streets flooding with more lethal Infected, your own humanity will fade the longer you stray from a UV light source. The easiest way to combat this is by liberating windmills, Nightrunner hideouts, and other structures around Villedor, each offering a safe haven when darkness falls. Make sure you buy and upgrade the immunizer crafting recipe, stockpiling UV Shroomz instead of wasting them.
With these Dying Light 2 tips, you’ll get a nice headstart going into the game. So far we’re enjoying our time with Dying Light 2 though it’s perhaps not as revolutionary as some overhyped fans may have been led to believe. Here’s what we said in our review:
“Dying Light 2 expands and refines a formula Techland has been peddling since its breakout success with Dead Island. This sequel learns a lot from modern open world video games, its massive, zombie-infested sandbox rarely feeling empty, especially as you breeze through city blocks with a Mirror’s Edge-like finesse. However, Dying Light 2 inherits the same problems – a dull story, tiresome combat, and character progression that’s a tad too sluggish.”