Remnant: From The Ashes is a great horror game with lots of action, nightmarish bosses, and unique weapons. Players that descend into this game will encounter a post-apocalyptic world that’s been overrun by creatures from another dimension.
It can be a tough game at times and many players are thrown by how steep the curve is to become a strong survivor in this miserable world. That being said there are some general tips to get beginners started and make those stuck in the mid-game a little more dangerous.
Updated April 13, 2021 by Ben Baker: A lot has changed about Remnant: From the Ashes thanks to updates and expansions that have added new worlds and enemies to face. Fortunately, many of this article’s original tips are still relevant and a solid way to becoming better at the game. That being said, players may need to consider additional strategies if they find themselves struggling with new content or struggling to exit the early game. Here are some additional pro tips that every player should know.
15 Stock Up On Consumables
This is typically a solid strategy in any RPG but is especially important in Remnant: From The Ashes. Hoarding healing items is an obvious tip, but it is also important to stock up on things like Ammo Boxes and Pristine Essence.
There are a large number of items that can be consumed to provide benefits for all kinds of things. Players can increase their firing rate with Frenzy Dust and Ice Fruit will boost critical hit chances. Players should identify items useful to their build and go on regular farming runs to ensure they have an ample supply for boss fights and other difficult battles.
14 Upgrade Dragon Heart
The Dragon Heart is one of the more important aspects of a character’s gear. For most of the game, it is the primary means of healing and can bring a character near death back to full health with one charge. The problem is the player only gets three charges when it’s first obtained, which is often not enough.
It should be a top priority to upgrade the Dragon Heart as soon as possible. Simulacrums are hard to come by and weapon upgrading is tempting, but they get more bang for their buck when used with Dragon Hearts. The idea is to have at least five charges before even thinking about upgrading weapons; however, players should ideally go for the full upgrade to 10 Dragon Heart.
13 Go Trait Hunting
Traits are the source of much of a character’s power. The right trait can dramatically improve damage, survivability, or provide unique ways of handling enemies. Players will naturally unlock a few during regular play, but some will be harder to find.
Any gamer will be unsurprised to find that the harder to obtain traits are often the best traits to have. Players should dedicate some serious time to completing the requirements to unlock various traits. When farming for experience or consumables, players should consider shooting for a trait.
12 Respec For Bosses & New Worlds
Respeccing is a handy feature that allows players to redistribute their invested trait points into other directions. This can be done to fix a broken build that isn’t working or more importantly prepare for an upcoming boss or realm.
Each boss has unique weaknesses and strengths that the player can take advantage of. Generally speaking, each realm also has enemies that have similar traits or behaviors. For instance, players will want a high fire rate when dealing with Rhom swarms, and armor-piercing for bosses is never a bad thing.
11 Have Loadouts For Each Encounter
A really solid tip for surviving Remnant: From The Ashes is to have a loadout for each encounter the player expects to come across. Players should have setups ready to handle swarms of weak enemies, singular tough enemies like bosses, or a mixture of the two.
This is especially true when playing solo since the player is expected to handle each and every encounter on their own. Some players will even go so far as to have loadouts specific to certain bosses or realms. But even just having three to handle the previously mentioned encounters will go a long way.
10 Conserve Bullets With Melee
Ammo is the difference between life and death in this game so it’s important to learn to conserve it early on for the critical fights against groups or bosses. When encountering weaker enemies it’s best to switch to a melee weapon to save yourself some bullets for those times when melee isn’t really an option.
Obviously you should never put yourself in danger to save yourself some bullets, it’s better to use them on enemies and get to a checkpoint for a refill then die because you didn’t want to waste the ammo for your Ruin. But whenever possible start smashing and slicing to build up your ammo supply.
9 Use Mods Often
Mods are powerful alterations to weapons that grant special abilities for some really cool effects. The Undying mod for instance can bring a player back from death with 33% health, damage reduction, and immunity to status effects.
A common mistake players make is save their mods for harder fights. While keeping a mod charged for a boss fight is certainly a necessary strategy, many players fail to realize they could have been using and recharging their mods the entire time. With all the enemies you’ll be facing your mods will recharge rather quickly so use them, it’ll conserve your health points and your ammo.
8 Take A Minute To Explore
Each level of Remnant: From The Ashes is randomized and contains a number of randomized loot and enemies. It’s important to take a moment to explore side paths and track down straggling enemies to give yourself some potentially useful items.
At the very least it’ll give you experience points to level up your character and resources to craft things. If you find yourself struggling against bosses it’s probably because you aren’t exploring enough and you need to go do some wandering.
7 Hunt Down Boxes
Speaking of exploration, an important thing to keep an eye out for are boxes. These wooden boxes can be destroyed with melee weapons and will often contain crafting materials and scrap.
This may not sound like a big deal, but there is a lot of crafting you’ll do in this game so making sure to have enough resources for crafting will mean the difference between almost always being able to upgrade weapons or construct new ones, or going on tedious farming runs because you don’t have enough.
6 Learn Weak Spots
Every enemy in this game has a weak spot, from the lowly critters to the massive bosses everything has a weakness that can be exploited for greater damage. Learning and remembering weak spots can be critical for quickly taking down tough opponents, conserving ammo, or just removing annoyances a little faster.
For the majority of creatures the head is a weak point but take a moment to safely and carefully experiment with weak points until you’re confident you know what to aim for on each enemy you encounter.
5 Upgrade As Soon As You Can
A big part of your strength as a character is reliant upon the strength of your weapons. You might have lots of health points and great stats, but if you’re going into later dimensions with a level three shotgun you’re going to have a rough time.
It might be tempting to conserve resources for better weapons, but this is largely a mistake and a waste of time. This game is lousy with scrap and iron which is what many of the basic weapons need for upgrades. Instead of stockpiling a ridiculous amount on a latter weapon that will only need a little for the first few levels anyway, beef up your beginning guns and get the high end resources you need sooner and easier.
4 Become Familiar With Ward 13
Ward 13 is the hub for survivors, it’s where the merchants are, upgrade weapons, stash supplies, everything. Many players make the mistake of just going there for what they need and not giving it any more thought, this game incentivizes exploration so it only makes sense that Ward 13 would be designed to be explored.
Players who routinely explore this area throughout the game will uncover helpful secrets and useful weapons. If you’re having trouble on a level take a moment to check this place out and you may find something that’ll give you the boost you need.
3 Rerolling Is Usually A Trap
The game presents the opportunity to reroll a world to create a new environment and populate it with new enemies. In other games, it’s often a viable strategy to reroll a difficult level in hopes of getting one that’s a little easier. Unless you’re an experienced player and have already beaten the game, don’t do this.
The rerolled world will increase the difficulty of the enemies to match the equipment you have with the highest level. This means your world could end up being even more difficult than it was before. Take your time, farm some items, and patiently find a way to beat the world before resorting to a reroll.
2 Prioritize Vigor
Arguably every trait in the game has it’s use and should be part of the leveling up process, but special consideration and the majority of your trait points should go to Vigor. Vigor will increase your health pool which will allow you to take more hits from enemies and you will get hit a lot in this game.
Sure it’s also important to level up Endurance for added stamina, Scavenger for more scrap to cut down on farming, and so on. But Vigor is the best use of your Trait points early on and for a large part of the game.
1 Learn To Love The Randomness
Players coming in from similar games like Dark Souls or Monster Hunter World will be surprised by the randomly generated levels and some will be horrified to find that walkthroughs are essentially useless when each player has their own custom levels.
Be prepared for this and embrace it. Yes it may complicate things, but this randomness and the unknown is part of what makes this game so fun. One of the greatest experiences is beating the game and then hopping into a friend’s world and having an entirely different experience with different bosses. Embrace it and things will go a lot better for you.
Next: Remnant: Where Is The Root Mother
