Last of Us 2: Survivor Difficulty Tips & Tricks

Even on its default difficulty setting, The Last of Us 2 isn’t exactly an easy game to play. You’re constantly forced to scavenge for resources and ammo, and more often than not, getting into an all-out gunfight with enemies will result in you getting killed. All of that intensity is cranked up even further with Survivor difficulty, which is currently the highest difficulty setting in the game.

Here are some tips to help you survive Survivor difficulty in The Last of Us 2.

Consider Survivor + Instead

Both Survivor and Survivor + difficulties will give you a tough challenge, but with one crucial difference: + lets you carry over all your weapon and character upgrades once you reach Seattle with Ellie. If you’re worried that this might make things too easy, you’ll be glad to know that Survivor + is harder than regular Survivor to make up for the carried over items.

This difficulty allows enemies to deal double damage to you, and they’ll also spot you much quicker and easier than on the lower settings.

We recommend going with the + difficulty setting as you won’t have to worry about collecting the training manuals as well as the scavenged parts and supplementary pills as much. You’ll still have a challenge on your hands even with max upgrades, so there’s no harm in going with the Last of Us 2’s Survivor + setting right from the beginning.

Use the Bricks and Bottles

Just like in the first game, bricks and bottles are extremely useful in The Last of Us 2’s Survivor difficulty setting. They’re decent as distractions, but that’s not all they’re good for.

Whenever you’re caught in a fight, throw a brick or bottle at an enemy, then go in for a melee strike with the square button. Striking a stunned enemy lets you deal increased damage, and this lets you save some hits on your melee weapons.

The brick/bottle strike method also works on Clickers and Stalkers, and this makes them much easier to deal with in an open fight. Bricks and bottles can be found basically everywhere in the world, so always use them to your advantage during combat.

Learn How to Deal With Infected

Whereas you could easily sneak around Clickers on Moderate difficulty and take out the Runners quietly, things are much, much harder on Hard and Survivor. Clickers will be able to detect you once you get close enough in front of them, and you cannot get a stealth kill on them from the front either.

With Clickers, you need to be right behind them for the stealth kill to work, and you also need to be slow while crouch walking to avoid detection. This makes Clickers even more of a threat, so if you’re planning on taking out infected stealthily, take care of the Clickers first.

While Runners still have the potential to completely mess up a stealth attempt, at least you don’t need to crouch walk slowly, and they can still be grabbed from the sides and even the front if you’re fast enough. It’s best to try to take out Clickers first while not in the line of sight of a Runner, but regardless of how you want to approach a fight, always kill Clickers first.

Stalkers are much trickier as they’ll hide until your guard is down. Your best bet is to try to lure them out with distractions, then shoot or melee them. Stalkers can evade melee attacks easily, but just be patient with your hits and dodges and you’ll be fine.

Finally, Shamblers are easily the most dangerous infected type in the entire game. Again, it’s possible to sneak around them but if you absolutely have to fight them, make use of your molotov cocktails and proximity mines as Ellie, or the pipe bombs and shotgun incendiary shells as Abby.

You Can Run From Most Encounters

The Last of Us 2 is an extremely long game with many zombie and human enemy encounters. The good news is that you can actually run from quite a few of them. As long as you can see the way forward, you’ll usually be able to head straight there –whether you’re sneaking or running away– and avoid combat altogether. Just be sure to pick up as many resources as you can first.

Not only that, if an encounter goes awry or if you’ve wasted too many resources on a single fight, you can restart the fight itself. From the options menu, choose the Restart Encounter option to start again, and you’re good to go. Depending on how familiar you are with the level layouts and enemy encounters, you’ll likely be using this option a lot.

The Bow Is Your Friend

Just like in the first game, Ellie’s bow is the best weapon you can get your hands on in The Last of Us 2. It instantly kills enemies with body shots as long as your bow is fully drawn, and it’s quiet.

Not only that, you have a chance of retrieving arrows from fallen enemies, which helps you save up on ammo. In this game, you can now craft arrows with resources you pick up in the world, and you can also unlock the ability to craft explosive arrows, which makes the bow a very viable option even in a gunfight.

Explosive arrows are great for clearing out groups of infected, and they also deal a ton of damage to Shamblers, Bloaters, and other boss-type enemies. You’ll want to use the bow stealthily as much as possible, but if push comes to shove, it can be handy in open fights as well.

Be sure to check our guide wiki for more tips and information on the game.