7 Things You Should Know Before Starting Deathloop

It’s time to kill, sneak, die and repeat with the release of Deathloop on PS5 and PC this week. Filling the boots of Colt, you’ll be tasked with killing the various Visionaries of Black Reef island while figuring out how to escape the deadly time loop he finds himself trapped in. Oh, and did we forget to mention there’s an assassin by the name of Julianna constantly hunting you down? Well… yeah, there’s that, too. To help you get started in your opening hours, we’ve compiled a list of things you should know before starting Deathloop.

It’s fair to say that things can feel pretty overwhelming when you first start out on Colt’s adventure, so this aims to help serve as a bit of a primer to help you hit the ground running again, and again… and probably again several more times, too.

It’ll Take a Couple Hours to Get to Grips With

Things You Should Know Before Starting Deathloop

If at first things can feel a little overwhelming in Deathloop, you’re certainly not alone. There’s a lot to take in in your opening hours from the ‘Leads’ that essentially work as main and side quests, the various weapons, Trinkets, weapon perks and Slabs, and just the general layout of the game.

Those leads, in particular, are what you’ll want to spend some time figuring out. Each lead needs to be thoroughly investigated until you either get a new waypoint or you’ve discovered what you need to know to progress the Lead, and, in turn, the story onto a new region of Black Reef.

Being put off by the first hour or two is completely normal, but don’t let it stop you from pushing on. Our very own Senior Editor, Alex Gibson, who reviewed Deathloop for the site recommends pushing through the opening two hours — ideally in one single playthrough — before making a verdict on whether the game’s for you or not.

That may sound like a lot of time, but if you’ve been hyped for Deathloop and feel a little disappointed to begin with, just push on. Things get so much better when you’ve got to grips with the various mechanics and systems at play.

Dying Is All Part & Parcel of the Experience

Things You Should Know Before Starting Deathloop

You’re going to die in Deathloop. You might even die a lot if another player is particularly good at hunting you down as Julianna, but that’s all part of the fun. The intense game of cat and mouse that’s constantly at play while you go about trying to take down the various visionaries in a single loop.

Dying also serves as a mechanic to help you learn the best ways to take down these visionaries, and forces you to experiment a little bit more with the various Slabs, weapons, trinkets, and perk combinations you can come up with.

If a player Julianna really does start to get on your nerves, you can always switch this option and deal with an AI-controlled version instead. It’s not quite as intense but gives you a little more leeway to help you achieve your goals.

Weapon Trinkets & Perks Are Really Important

Things You Should Know Before Starting Deathloop

There isn’t a huge amount of different specific guns in Deathloop, but there’s a ton of different Perks and Trinkets that can make things a whole lot more interesting.

Trinkets are essentially weapon attachments, and — depending on the rarity of your weapon — you’ll be able to equip a varying amount to reduce reload speed, improve accuracy, or even pack more punch to each bullet you fire. Perks, on the other hand, are exactly what they sound like. They grant your weapons unique abilities, such as exploding bullets, which, well, is a massive gamechanger.

While that low rarity Vopat Trencher shotgun may not seem all that, a high rarity version with a Trinket to reduce reload times and a Perk with exploding bullets can make it one of the very best close-range weapons in the game.

As you’ll be dying a fair amount, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to play around with these and find your preferred combinations. Just don’t ignore these thinking that the weapons on their own is enough. It’s certainly doable, but you’d be missing out on part of the fun!

You Can’t Play as Julianna Right Away

Things You Should Know Before Starting Deathloop

As much as you might want to dive straight into torturing other players by relentlessly hunting them down as Julianna, you won’t be able to do that the first time you load up the game.

Instead, you’ll need to progress at least a little bit of the way through Cole’s adventure — the main Deathloop campaign — before you can focus your sights on the multiplayer portion.

This is just a quick one, but we thought you best know sooner rather than later!

There Are Multiple Ways to Take Down Each Visionary

Things You Should Know Before Starting Deathloop

As we mentioned above, you’re going to end up dying quite a bit. Each time you do die, you’ll need to take down the same Visionaries you did previously, as the time loop has started all over again.

But therein lies another incredibly fun mechanic that forces you to experiment in Deathloop. Each Visionary may visit the same place at specific times of day, but nobody’s forcing you to go in all-guns-blazing, or skulking around in the shadows waiting for the perfect time to stealth kill them and disappear before anyone notices.

You’re free to try different methods and figure out the best approach for you. Then, when you do have the most efficient method of assassinating your target down to a tee, you can quickly dispatch them whenever you die before moving on to the next one.

By the end of the game, you’ll be able to breeze your way across Black Reef, dropping Visionaries in the blink of an eye, feeling like a true bad-ass. It sometimes feels a little monotonous, but it’s all building to some seriously satisfying gameplay further down the line, so go ahead, try dropping through the ceiling on that target. See what happens!

Don’t Worry About Shiny Objects Right Away

Things You Should Know Before Starting Deathloop

One of the first things that completely baffled me in Deathloop was the weird, multicolored shiny objects littered throughout its opening sections. A tin can in Updaam literally had me staring at it for a good few minutes, repeatedly hitting it with Cole’s machete in case it did something. It did not… yet.

These shiny objects will eventually be very useful, but the game makes it clear when they are and everything will eventually make sense.

These glowing objects are a source of a mysterious resource known as Residuum. You can collect large amounts of this by killing and absorbing Visionaries, but you can also collect it by locating the aforementioned Residuum-infused items. Yes, those glowing items.

These can then be used to infuse your weapons, Slabs, and Trinkets so you can carry them between loops so you don’t have to lose your favorite weapon because you got a little too ballsy with an assassination attempt and failed miserably.

Don’t be like me, machete’ing a can for minutes. It’s not worth it!

Go Ahead & Kill Visionaries Right Away

Things You Should Know Before Starting Deathloop

While it may seem a little counter-intuitive after everything we’ve just said to go in and kill some of the Visionaries right away, it’s exactly this that we recommend you do amidst all the other wrangling you’ll be doing with various mechanics and systems.

By making a beeline for a Visionary or two, you’ll get to grips with the process, the region they inhabit (and the various secrets each one holds), and you’ll get to harvest a Slab, some Trinkets, and Residuum as a reward for taking them down.

Another few words of wisdom from our Senior Editor and reviewer, Alex: “Think of it like a roguelite where you want to do a few runs powering up before you ever even think about trying to dig into the main quest.”

Have you got any tips or words of advice for your fellow Deathloopers if you’ve been able to play already? Share them with our readers down in the comments below.