West of Dead – Common Questions About Mechanics

On release, it seemed like West of Dead wasn’t a very good game by its mixed reviews. If you looked at them, most of these were gripes about nearly insignificant quality of life changes that needed to be made, and game mechanics. This addresses the game mechanic complaints.

Mechanics FAQ

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How to Position, A.K.A. the Basics

Remember how everyone says this is a cover based shooter? They mean it. Quit trying to run about in the open using nothing but your dodge. Against most rifle enemies, this will get you killed within an instant.

• Why though?
• Because the roll has a decently cooldown and most enemies have either persistent hitboxes or multiple attacks.

• Okay, then tell me how the hell I should be moving?
• Of course, you should immediately push a squishy gunman off the cover you want while mitigating damage as best as possible. This can even be in the form of retreating back into the tunnels if there’s simply too many to handle at once. Once you’ve done that, try to continue pushing other gunmen off cover near the edges of the room. This allows you to use the ‘slide’ reset you get by rolling near cover to quickly close the gap with lots of i-frames. Rinse and repeat as you run around safe spots in the room.

• But isn’t running back into the tunnels cheating?
• No, it’s cheesing. Nothing in the game explicitly prevents you from doing this aside from boss and outlaw fights. However, it does have its own drawbacks.

These are:

• Little to no light, making seeing enemies and shooting them difficult.
• Narrow walkways that multiple gunmen could annihilate you in if you don’t train them properly.
• No cover, causing you to lose bonuses from cover-based items among other things.

Aiming Feels Like Trash

No it doesn’t. You just don’t know what’s constantly throwing your aim off. Let me preface this by saying the auto-aim in this game is incredibly strong. It will yank and pull your cursor around five ways from Friday if you don’t put the reins on it.

• My aim keeps snapping to enemies that I don’t want to shoot!
• Auto-aim is enabled on any enemies that are within the light. This can sometimes cause your aim to snap to an enemy hiding right next to another in a dark patch. Make good use of those hanging lanterns. They’re there for a reason and you can dodge immediately as the ‘lighting’ animation begins to play.

• The aim of some weapons is intentionally ♥♥♥ too though.
• While you are correct, this is only true for rifles. This is because they have the same range but higher potential damage output than pistols. In other words, a whole room. When you take a rifle, you use it to nuke from long range from behind some cover.

• Shotguns projectiles don’t have any range.
• That’s the point of a shotgun. They have the highest immediate damage output to spam at melees or crowds of gunmen that don’t know any better. If you really want a stupidly long-ranged shotty you can unlock one. Don’t screw yourself into a double-short range pairing though and whine that it won’t reach.

Unlocking Items Efficiently

Something that made me laugh upon thinking of it when I saw the sin costs in game was when someone cited grinding The Crypts/Stage 1 for taking too long….No ♥♥♥ dude, if you want big rewards, you gotta progress to the harder levels.

• But on to the specifics, you’re not here just to read about me ragging on newbies.
• Clear levels in their entirety, and you will get 20+ sin every time. This is more than enough to unlock some of the mid-tier items over a couple of runs.

Take outlaw fights. Killing one gives you 5 sin and a memory.

Lastly, spend sin obsessively on the items and upgrades that you want. Constantly spreading it around gets you nothing but a lower average of sin costs.

Progression in this form is no different from dead cells, that had similarly few cell drops in the early stages. This was especially the case when you didn’t fight elite monsters. Its equivalent to our outlaws.