Returnal beginners guide: Starter tips to get the most out of each life

Death, and how to make it pay.

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Exploring alien worlds is not for the faint of heart, but with thisReturnalbeginner’s guide, I can offer a bunch of tips to help you avoid some of those unfortunate deaths. Returnal doesn’t let you keep your gear when you die, but I can at least equip you with knowledge and help you survive your next challenging encounter. So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the most important things to remember when you’re dashing around the surface of Atropos.

Don’t save your resources or consumables

The main resource in Returnal isObolite, which you’ll find littering the surface of the planet and exploding out of enemies like the neon-tentacled piñata’s they are. You can use it to buy consumable items or temporarily upgrade your suit for the current run. Since every death kicks you back to square one, make the most out of your Obolites and consumables while you’ve got them. While there’s wisdom in saving important consumables for the boss of the biome you’re in, it won’t matter if you die before you get to them. And the longer you survive, the more opportunities you’ll have to gather more resources.

The only resource that carries over after death isEther, which you can use on the Cthonos—the weird machine covered in eyeballs—back at the start, which allows you to unlock random consumables or artifacts. Each time you do, the new item will be added to the pool of items that spawn throughout the game. There are a few other uses for Ether, like establishing a one-time respawn point or removing malignancy from items, but largely it’s best to use it to unlock new stuff.

Move and dash aggressively

Returnal doesn’t hold back with the speed, and right from the get-go you’ll move more like a scared roadrunner in a hamster ball than a concussed spacewreck survivor. That speed is essential, as enemies aren’t shy about spitting out a vast number of deadly glowing projectiles that you’ll need to outrun. Unlike some other third-person action games, you’ll be spending a lot more time running and jumping at top speed. Staying stationary and hugging cover is mostly going to get you needled to death from multiple angles—instead, dash behind cover to absorb bursts of fire or beam-style attacks, and then quickly get back on the move.

Your dash ability isn’t just quick—it also gives you a brief window of invulnerability while you jet forward. While it can be useful for getting across gaps or dashing away from enemies that rush you, it can also let you dash straight through projectiles or attacks that would otherwise be difficult or even impossible to avoid. With such a brief cooldown, it’s smart to get used to using it frequently so you have a good sense of when you can count on using it again. Establishing this muscle memory will see you dashing in between strings of plasma fire in no time.

If you didn’t have enough incentive already to be on the move, remember that the Obolites enemies drop will disappear pretty quickly—so dashing in to get them is important.

You don’t have to explore and complete everything

The many randomized rooms of Returnal’s biomes change up every single run, and sometimes they’ll be downright unfair. If a particular room looks like a death trap, ask yourself whether or not you can just sprint through or otherwise bypass it. On your map, darker blue doors indicate the main path, while lighter blue ones are optional. This should give you a good idea of where you need to go, but you can also scan the area (‘T’ by default on PC) to get a better sense of what’s in the room you’re in and highlight doors you may have missed.

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Similar to dangerous rooms, malignancy can also put the squeeze on your runs. Each time you grab an item with malignancy, there’s a chance of a suit malfunction. Each malfunction is a negative status—like falls causing damage, losing Obolites when taking damage, or disabling overload—that can only be removed by meeting the random conditions it gives or using a consumable. It’s tempting to want to maximize your run by grabbing malignant items or opening containers, but consider whether malignancy is worth the risk. Most of the time it’s simply not, since every third malfunction will destroy one of your artifacts and some suit malfunctions are bad enough on their own to kill you before you can remove them.

Watch for the (usually glowing) signs

There are a bunch of locked or hidden cues throughout Returnal, all of which are easy to miss the explanations for, or are lacking cues entirely. In some cases, simply knowing what they mean will be enough to let you take advantage of them, but others require specific tools first. Here’s what to look out for:

If you’re frustrated byout of reach platforms with orange lights on the edge, you aren’t the only one. Eventually you’ll get permanent access to a grappling hook that will let you swing up to these, so until then just ignore them.

Don’t forget the rest

While they may not be as important as the above, there are a few other things that can be helpful to know early on in Returnal’s bullet hell:

Sarah is a contributor for PC Gamer, formerly of TechRadar Gaming. With five years of experience writing freelance for several publications, she’s covered every genre imaginable and probably a few she made up. She has a passion for diversity and the way different genres can be sandboxes for creativity and emergent storytelling, and loves worldbuilding. With thousands of hours in League of Legends, Overwatch, Minecraft, and countless survival, strategy, roguelike, and RPG entries, she still finds time for offline hobbies like tabletop RPGs, wargaming, miniatures painting, and hockey.

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