Beginner's Guide

For returning players who played Joel and Ellie’s journey in the first game, they’ll immediately be at home with the game’s controls and combat system. However, for new players, there might be a lot to learn at once. Don’t worry, since we got this beginner guide available to help new players start enjoying the game at their own pace and comfort level.

Toggle the Accessibility Options!

Aside from the standard options offered to you when starting a New Game+, the game offers a hefty load of gameplay-related options that can help a wide range of players (including physically-challenged ones) to adjust to fit their experience. You can freely toggle these on/off by accessing the game’s Options menu. For a quick list, here are some of the settings that you should check out:

* High Contrast Display: This setting “cleans” up the environment textures and adds distinct color contrast to allies, enemies, items, and interactive objects. This setting is especially helpful in finding collectibles or just navigating your way around dark areas. You can toggle this on/off by swiping Left on the Touchpad.

* Alternate Controls > Assistance: Recommended for players who find themselves struggling with the aiming and throwing in combat. Even if you don’t need the aim assist, it’s still a good idea to turn on Auto Weapon Swap and Auto Pick-up for convenience.

* Enhanced Listen Mode: While Listening, this option allows you to scan for items using Circle and enemies by pressing Square.

* Combat Accessibility: This option has a lot of minor options that will allow you to directly adjust the settings to make combat easier for you. While we suggest not turning this on for immersion and moderate challenge, it’s still worth noting that you have this set of options to make the game a lot of manageable for you if you find yourself struggling in combat.

* Hud > Gameplay > Awareness Indicators: Recommended for players who haven’t played stealth games before, setting this option to Stealth will display an indicator if an enemy is about to spot you.

Always search for supplies

For a game about survival, you’ll have limited supplies and ammo so it’s imperative to explore as much as needed so you’ll be stocked with valuable ammo and crafting materials. The availability of ammo and material pick-ups will depend on your chosen difficulty of course.

Open Safes!

There’s a lot of locked safes that you’ll encounter during your journey. All of them will locked and the code to unlock them can be found by checking out clues in the immediate areas (or skip the search entirely and just check our Safe solutions page for the combinations). safes usually contain valuable items like ammo, manuals, supplies, even new weapons. There portions of no return in the game so if you’re keen on finding the clues yourself, it will be a good idea to create a manual save and avoid proceeding to new areas, especially those that require a button prompt.

Save Manually Often

The game offers convenient checkpoints and auto-saves. However, it will still be a good idea to create your own manual saves so you can always go back at certain points especially if you’re trying to collect all items (or Trophies) in one playthrough.

Bricks and Bottles

These one-use throwables are scattered in the environment and can be used primarily to distract enemies or stun them, allowing you to follow-up with a one-hit kill melee attack. These are also essential items especially in higher difficulty where ammo and supplies are very scarce. It’s recommended to learn incorporating these in combat whenever possible to conserve your supplies, health, and ammo.

Avoid Combat if necessary

Use stealth often! There are several encounters in the game where you can just avoid combat altogether by sneaking past enemies or running towards a safe spot. This is essential as well in higher difficulty where you have to conserve ammo and resources for engagements that are required for story progress. Stealth kills are pretty much the best way to dispatch some enemies as you can kill them easily without alerting nearby enemies.

Running at the right moment

Running allows you to cover large distances in a short time but is also loud and will certainly get the attention of enemies. However, running is a great strategy especially if you want to temporarily lose heat by breaking the enemies’ line of sight. This will allow you to reposition and use that opportunity to flank enemies or escape completely altogether. Running is also essential if you want to rush towards enemies, especially those temporarily stunned by a brick or bottle throw.

Sorry, dogs have to go

As a dog lover myself, this pains me much to write this tip. The only real "good boy" you'll encounter is the very first dog back in the survivor's camp in Jackson. Unfortunately, dogs owned by hostile survivors are one of your biggest threats to your stealthy approach since they can pick up your scent and follow your trail. If you see a dog, unfortunately, you’ll have to kill it immediately to avoid further complications. Sure you can temporarily stun it with a brick or bottle throw but dogs are usually accompanied by handlers and other enemies so expect them to react and check out the commotion, in which the dog will already recover and start tracking you down.

Sorry, digital good boys and girls, but you guys have to go (at least in this game).