Dying Light 2 Stay Human Guide: Beginner's Tips And Best Tricks

Dying Light 2: Stay Human builds on its predecessor, sending you into a new city and putting you into the shoes of a new hero but maintaining that focus on first-person parkour mechanics and a setting best explored during the day. The game sees you face off against zombies and other human survivors, all while trying to stave off your own infection. It can be a lot to take in, but we've rounded up a few tips that should help.

Below, we go over 12 tips and tricks to keep in mind when first heading into Dying Light 2's open world. These include building classes, how to most easily level up, where to best spend your hard-earned skill points, and more.

In GameSpot's Dying Light 2: Stay Human review, Mark Delaney writes, "Dying Light 2 is a perplexing game. Its story and characters are headache-inducing, and it appears to lack polish in many areas. But even a dozen hours after I rolled credits, I've found myself going back to the game to do another parkour challenge, rummage through another abandoned science lab, or just see if I can get from Point A to Point B without ever hitting the ground. It's rough around the edges and it asks players to invest a lot in its weakest element, but once you realize the story, like gravity, is only going to pull you down, you can begin to defy it and enjoy the things Dying Light 2 actually does well."

Best skills for the job

Similarly, having the right skills for the job can be crucial for success as well. You really can't go wrong with Dying Light 2's two skill trees--both the combat and parkour skill trees are filled with eye-catching abilities, and most of them are useful in their own way. However, there are a few you should strive to unlock early on if you can.

On the combat side, Perfect Dodge and Perfect Parry are really good. Both will help you keep enemies staggered longer and more often, which is extraordinarily helpful when dealing with groups of enemies. On the parkour side, Active Landing and Dart are strong skills to have. The former will help ensure you don't die as often when you miscalculate a jump (which has happened to us more times than we care to share) while the latter will assist you in gaining the necessary speed to make longer jumps or dodge past zombies trying to grab you during a chase at night.

Watch your step

Dying Light 2 invites you to explore its open world--and you should! There's plenty to see and do. Just be mindful of where you're going. Similar to plenty of other open-world RPGs, Dying Light 2 features suggested player levels for each of its regions. Wandering into an area when you're not at or above the suggested level can spell disaster, especially on the higher difficulties at night.

If you do happen to wander into an area that's above your paygrade, the game will give you a warning to let you know. For a good indication of whether you're about to walk into a dangerous place, check the suggested player level for the campaign or side mission that you're tracking. That's a good indicator of the type of areas you're probably about to explore.

Follow your inhibitions

In Dying Light 2, you have to inject three Inhibitors into your body in order to level up your health or stamina.. Inhibitors can be collected in the world, though you'll be put on the path of quite a few just by following the story. They're worth prioritizing, especially since you need to earn more health and stamina in order to unlock some of the cooler combat and parkour abilities in the game.

You'll get a small alert whenever you're close to a container hiding Inhibitors. When close to a container, a small tracker will appear in the corner of your screen, detailing how close you are. This will help you narrow down your search area and know whether you're moving towards or away from a nearby Inhibitor.

What's theirs is yours

Though it's not as crucial on the easiest difficulty, you should be scavenging everything you can in Dying Light 2. Find a backpack? Search it. Discover a locked crate? Open it. See a chest on a rooftop? Climb up to it. Kill a man? Loot his pockets.

Having ample resources can make all the difference during a tough mission--you can use them to craft healing items if you're hurt, explosives if you're facing a massive horde of zombies, noisemakers to distract guards during stealth encounters, and lockpicks to get access to good gear. Scavenging can also yield valuables or extra weapons that may be useless to you, but are worth something to others. Looting these items can lead to big payouts with traders, which leads into our next tip.

One man's trash can be your cash

Whenever you enter a hub to start your next campaign mission or turn in a side quest, be sure to swing by the local trader and sell off your excess gear and useless valuables. Having money on hand isn't very important early on, but it will come in handy later into the campaign when resources are harder to come by and you'll have to buy items to stay stocked up. Extra armor might be the one thing you want to hold onto, which goes into our next tip.

Clothes make the man

If you look at the descriptions for different armor, you'll notice that they're each designed to fit specific playstyles--Brawler, Ranger, Tank, or Medic. As such, some are geared towards healing and freerunning, while others make you stealthier or increase your abilities in open combat. Unless you plan on really focusing on one single playstyle, it's good to create a variety of armor sets for handling different tasks. You never know when a campaign mission might force you into a lengthy stealth encounter or make you go through a combat gauntlet, so being able to switch up your armor as the mission demands is incredibly helpful.

Prioritize proficiency

In Dying Light 2, you gain experience towards unlocking new parkour abilities by chaining together parkour moves (like climbing, jumping, and sliding), and you gain experience towards unlocking new combat moves by fighting and killing enemies. Basically, the game rewards you for doing what you like to do. So if you enjoy freerunning, maybe try to skillfully flee from a combat encounter when you run into enemies. And conversely, if you love fighting enemies, maybe take more time to bash more skulls instead of looking for ways to run past them.

Plan your night out

Much like its predecessor, things get a lot more dangerous for you at night. Zombies prowl the streets, forcing you to take to the rooftops if you want to avoid being chased. All the while, your own internal clock is ticking down for every second you spend out of UV light or direct sunlight--the second it hits zero, you'll turn into a zombie yourself and then it's game over.

Given these considerations, aimlessly walking through the city at night isn't a great idea. When the sun goes down, open your map and make a plan--figure out which rooftops you need to take to get to wherever you need to go. The less time spent outside, the better. If you want to sightsee, find a safehouse and go to bed until the sun comes back up.

Become a Nightrunner

That said, if you are out afterhours, be sure you don't die. Every action taken at night nets you extra experience, allowing you to quickly level your combat or parkour proficiencies. But you only bank that bonus if you survive the night. You can survive the night in one of two ways: Either wait out the night until the sun rises or reach a safe house and sleep until morning.

Sometimes, just wait it out

In Dying Light 2, a few of the buildings in the world are important to certain story-related missions. As such, the game will not let you climb and/or enter them until said mission. So if you're someone who must climb everything and see all 500 hours of content that Dying Light 2 has to offer, just know you'll be locked out of certain places upon entering the open world. If you're trying to get somewhere and it's just not working out, leave it be and come back later--chances are, that building is related to the story and you're not supposed to be able to climb it yet and get at the loot inside.

Quick fix

Whenever you modify a weapon, you'll partially fix it too. Prior to confirming the modification, the game will tell you how much the weapon will be fixed. This is a quick way of keeping your favorite weapons viable a little bit longer. Dying Light 2 is designed in a way where you're tossing out old gear as quickly as you're finding new (and usually better) stuff, but sometimes you'll stumble upon a weapon that remains exceptionally good for a while, and modifying it can help you keep it from breaking too early.

Right tools for the job

Not all weapons are created equal. When looking at them in your inventory, you'll notice that some can be wielded with one hand, while others require two. Some bludgeon, while others cut. Most are close-range melee weapons, but there are a few mid-to-long-range weapons too. Try to equip a healthy variety of weapons if you can--it will help you better adapt to a variety of situations.

Weapons that require two hands are better for crowd control, for example. So having one on hand is great for when you're being cornered by a group. Weapons that cut are better reserved for the undead--their sharp blades can slice through unprotected flesh with ease but can't as easily stun or knock off the armor of most human enemies. Always use the right tools for the job.