5 Things to Do First in Death Stranding

Learn to Balance Properly

Death Stranding doesn’t waste much time in getting you acquainted with Sam’s delivery operations. Almost immediately, you’ll be tasked with carrying cargo towards a distribution center, and you’ll be given an opportunity to get used to the balance mechanics in the game.

Our advice is to spend a bit of time getting a feel for it. That may sound obvious, but you’ll yourself a massive favor by mastering the basics as soon as possible because a heck of a lot of Death Stranding is about balancing huge amounts of cargo on your body.

If we were to dish out some “pro-tips” to set you on your way we’d say keep your turns as smooth as possible and when you do start to tip, don’t be afraid to really hammer on the trigger buttons to get Sam upright again.

Also, keep in mind that holding L2 and R2 down to “grip” your cargo pretty much saves you from falling every time. Once a tip goes too far, just quickly straighten yourself up and press those two trigger buttons down.

Basically, although being smooth in your turns is key, you’ll definitely have to wrestle the triggers a bit to get Sam stable from time to time. Being too soft will cause you to fall.

Another vital tip is that when you finally start undertaking your first delivery missions, use triangle in the menu screen to “optimize” your loadout. This will make walking much easier.

Interact with Sam in the Private Room

Private Rooms offer Sam a chance to rest and recuperate between his travels, and they’re found all over the open-world of Death Stranding. It’s important that you’re familiar with all the systems within each Private Room, so when you’re given that first opportunity, do take the time to explore everything.

Thankfully, that’s no hardship, since the activities in the Private Room are all pretty fun. Yes, it’s amusing to take a pee and a poop, but there’s other stuff there, too. Sam can look in the mirror and take selfies, you can drink copious amount of Monster Energy (later, beer), inspect Sam’s collection of toys, try on different apparel, check your equipment, and all sorts more.

Not everything is available right at the very start, but it’s worth checking out what’s there so that when new features are introduced you’ll notice them immediately.

Knockout Some Easy Achievements

This one won’t be for everyone, but if you’re at all into trophy hunting then you might as well use the first few hours of Death Stranding to knock out some of the game’s easier achievements.

And there are plenty of them. The first time you shout, sleep, pee, and change your boots all yield very easy trophies. Basically, anything that involves using one of the game’s mechanics for the first time will get you a trophy.

The bottom line, then, is to make sure you’ve sampled all of Death Stranding’s systems (at least, the ones you have access to) during the early portion of the game.

Get Maternal and Soothe BB

You and BB are going to spending a lot of time together. Sometimes it’ll save your life, other times it’ll annoy the hell out of you — but you’re both in this for the long haul, so it’s wise to get familiar as soon as possible.

Specifically, you’ll want to get used to soothing BB. While this isn’t strictly necessary, effective soothing of your BB will better your chances of surviving onslaughts from rogue BTs you encounter.

In brief, BB is extra sensitive around BTs, and if you fall over when you’re surrounded by them then its screaming can cause some unwanted attention. Moreover, its heightened stress levels can render it useless if you don’t manage to calm it down quickly.

Soothing your BB is an on-the-field maneuver you can use to calm its crying. To do so, press L1 to bring up the compass. On the bottom left of the screen, you’ll see a prompt to look down at BB. Press down d-pad, and once you do, hit square to “soothe BB.” You can shake the controller to speed up the soothing.

Note that to fully replenish BB you’ll want to head to a Private Room and give it a chance to properly rest.

You can read a full tutorial of how to soothe BB here.

Learn to Pee and Pee Everywhere

Of course we were going to suggest that you make use of Death Stranding’s most absurd gameplay mechanic. Why? Firstly, because you can and it’s funny — if you didn’t know already, the mushrooms that grow from the ground after you pee can be seen by other players, which makes strategic placement all the more amusing.

Secondly, there’s actually a tactical advantage in learning how to pee properly. You’ll likely have heard that bodily functions can be weaponized, and that’s true — peeing produces EX Grenades No. 1, which can be used against BT enemies.

But there’s actually a second and less talked about use for peeing which is equally as effective against BTs: peeing directly on them. That’s right, you can actually use your call of nature in the middle of those scary encounters with BTs. Unleashing a stream of piss will have them running for cover.

See? Tactical. Advantage.

You can read a full tutorial of how to pee here.