The Evil Within 2: Tips and Tricks for Beginners

Get the Bottle Sneak Skill and Upgrade Stealth

The Evil Within 2: Tips and Tricks for Beginners

The Bottle Sneak skill is one of the most useful character upgrades you can get in The Evil Within 2, and you should definitely make an effort to save up enough Green Gel to purchase it right from the start of the game. This skill allows you to break free of a stranglehold with no health penalty, and one bottle will be automatically removed from you inventory. You can hold up to five bottles, which means you basically have five free enemy grabs with no damage to your health.

In fact, just upgrade the whole stealth tree for Sebastian while you’re at it. The combat tree isn’t really all that essential, considering how weak melee attacks are in this game. Unless you’re having a really hard time adjusting to the weapon sway, the combat tree isn’t a very good Green Gel investment. On the other hand, the stealth tree improves your sneak kills, lets you move faster while crouching, and also reduces the amount of noise you make while crouching. The early hours of the game are also the toughest because you don’t have a lot of weapons, so you’ll need to rely on stealth to be efficient.

Explore Union

The Evil Within 2: Tips and Tricks for Beginners

While you can skip over the open world aspect of The Evil Within 2, it’s highly recommended that you take the time to explore the residential and business areas in the game. Resources can be found almost everywhere, and if you explore the first area thoroughly and complete the side mission, you can even obtain a sawed-off shotgun early on in the game. Continue exploring, and you’ll also find a broken sniper rifle (which can be repaired relatively quickly as well), and you’ll have a good arsenal of weapons before you even tackle the first main mission.

Not only that, the few side missions available in the game also offer up very juicy rewards in the form of high-grade weapon parts, Red Gel, and other materials you’ll need for crafting. If you take the time to eliminate the regular enemies in the open world, you can also amass enough Green Gel to potentially max out a character skill tree of your choice.

Look for Locker Keys and Use the Shooting Gallery

The Evil Within 2: Tips and Tricks for Beginners

Locker Keys make a return in The Evil Within 2, and these can be used to open the wall of lockers in Nurse Tatiana’s office. These lockers house an assortment of useful items including ammo, health items, crafting materials, and Green Gel. Locker Keys can be found in the small grey church statues that you’ll find randomly lying around in the open world. Again, that’s another good reason to take your time to explore. Also, if you don’t have space to take anything from the lockers, you can always leave them there and come back to grab them when you need to.

Sebastian’s room also gives you access to the Shooting Gallery, which becomes available at the start of chapter four. This is a good chance for you to practice your shooting skills, but also serves as an opportunity to earn some rewards. You can check the list of rewards for each mode and difficulty tier, and if you get a high enough score, you can get even more upgrade materials and ammo.

Unlock All Safe Houses ASAP

The Evil Within 2: Tips and Tricks for Beginners

There are two safe houses each in the residential and business areas. As soon as you arrive in these environments, check your map to mark their locations and unlock them as soon as you can. Some safe houses have NPC allies that you can talk to and receive side missions from, which is always good for you. These places also usually come stocked with tons of materials for you to loot. But even more importantly, they’re a good place to retreat to whenever you take too much damage out in the field. The enemies can’t follow you into the safe houses, so you can always run back to the nearest one to take the heat off you.

Every safe house also comes equipped with a coffee maker (which restores your health every 20 minutes), as well as a mirror that takes you back to Sebastian’s room.

Make Smart Upgrades

The Evil Within 2: Tips and Tricks for Beginners

The crossbow is one of the best and most useful weapons in The Evil Within 2. While it can be tempting to just pump all your weapon parts into the trusty shotgun, I recommend investing some resources into the shock bolts and harpoons. The shock bolts can be upgraded to shock multiple enemies when they’re standing near each other, and this knocks all of them down, giving you the opportunity to stomp everyone to death. It’s perfect for when you’re caught in an ambush. The harpoon can only hit one enemy at a time, but it also knocks them down, which opens yet another window for you to stomp them. This is way more efficient than wasting multiple handgun shots or precious shotgun ammo on regular enemies.

The smoke bolts are great for disorienting enemies, and the explosive bolts can be fun to use as well, but I never really found the need to make use of these during my playthrough. The freeze bolts, which are unlocked late in the game, are also extremely useful, but focus on the shock bolts and harpoons first.

Between the handgun and shotgun, I’d say that the handgun is worth upgrading over the latter. It’s much easier to find and craft handgun ammo, and the firepower increments are also way higher as you reach the better upgrade tiers. Not to mention the fact that you’ll be finding better shotguns along the way, so you’ll never have to worry about it being underpowered. The sniper rifle is also worth upgrading, but it largely depends on your personal play style and how often you use it.

For more on The Evil Within 2, be sure to check out our wiki.