Blood West - Melee and Speed Explanatory Guide

Guide to Speed and Melee

All credit goes to It's Deerlord!!

Melee Is Pretty Cool

This was going to be a list of general tips that help both when Going Fast and in more casual gameplay, but it ended up just being a list of reasons why melee weapons are awesome. So we’re just going with that.

Press TAB and then your ‘Pickup All’ key to instantly pick up any nearby items in your line of sight, even those outside of your usual grab range. This saves time and helps you pick up items that are hidden in little nooks and crannies you may have missed at first glance.
Your detection meter will not go up while you’re in the air (it seems to only go up on landing), and running jumps maintain your momentum.Combining these two, you can get a lot of very fast and cheeky sneak attacks by running-jumping at someone and hitting them with a heavy attack before you land. This will henceforth be called a ‘lunging attack’.
Speaking of, melee hitboxes persist for a VERY long time. OK, not super long, but longer than you’d expect. If you get two corpses next to each other hit one with a heavy attack and then flick your mouse to the other one – you’ll hit both of them. It’s freaky. With this in mind, you can swing a bit earlier than you’d expect when going for headsmacks and lunging attacks. In fact, this seems to make them more accurate–
Spirits can be dealt with safely and without expending resources by essentially ‘matador’ing them. When they begin to charge at you, wind up a heavy melee attack, then swing while running to the left, mouse tracking them or the area they’re about to be. It takes a bit of practice but it’s satisfying once you get good at it and is very useful in the boss fight.
When you land a headshot on a Vendigo with a melee weapon, or deal heavy damage to one with an axe, they enter hitstun. With the skill that gives you faster melee attack speed this allows you to stunlock them to death, making an isolated Vendigo almost trivial with the right set-up, and even more so if you can open up with a lunging attack.
Coffin zombies can be one-shot by surprise attacks to the limbs. As lunging attacks aim high (obviously) you may want to sneak attack them the ol’ fashioned way unless you feel ballsy.

Speed

Run straight past the first enemy. Make it eat your dust.
1a. You can easily avoid damage by running up and jumping off the ramp on the way there. Remember enemies can’t hear you while you’re in the air, so this gives you a very good head-start on it.
1b. If you want to be safe and get additional healing, go into the side-cave just before dropping to the axe and get the gold.
Grab the axe and go straight for the shaman, picking up the revolver and gold ammo on the way. Also pick up the items on both enemies in your path.
Talk to the shaman. Once we have skill points to burn, we’ll take better gun aiming and faster stamina regeneration while holding a melee weapon. This leaves us with one skill point to spare – there’s nothing good to spend it on right now, so save it.
3a. If you decided to play safe, you can talk to the shaman and sell the gold nugget plus the golden bullets to afford a spare health potion.
Talk to the totem and give away the gold coin you got to get the increased melee damage. This gives us more reliable Vendigo stunlocks and makes killing the boss faster.
Go through the cave the shaman would send you through on his quest. Don’t actually take his quest, though – we only care about the path past the two ghouls, which is a shortcut to the fort.
Calmly walk up to the bridge until you’re just about to be noticed, then leg it across the bridge, ignoring all of these enemies. Run at the ghoul immediately inside, performing a lunging attack on it.
6a. From there, you can TAB+Pickup All in front of the cart it’s next to and quickly take the potion on it. Though this loses time for safety, it takes so little time I usually just do it anyways.
6b. Whether or not you take the potion, we run into the nearest tower and climb the ladder, then crouch in one spot so the heat dies down.
Once the enemies are no longer hunting you, head straight towards the artifact and stealth kill the Prodigal Daughter in the way. Take her shotgun.
Make sure you’re over 75 health as you make your way out the fort through the tower you ascended to get here, then leave out the front entrance. Go hard left to the cliff overlooking the canyon and look down off he edge – you should see an alcove just above the sheriff’s star. Fall onto it, drinking a potion as you fall to save time.
8a. If the Prodigal Daughter’s ammo didn’t have any ammo, or you just want to be safe, on the ground floor of the tower you’re leaving out of there is shotgun ammo in the corner you’re looking at as you enter.
Once you’re over 75 health again fall again right next to the star and sneak attack the Birdman below. Take the star. Kill the nearby Humanpede and take the health potion it’s guarding.
9a. Another safety tactic is to nab the golden cup in the shack just in front of the birdman you kill. It and any items you find with it will pay for a health potion by themselves.
Go into the little cave on the other side of the canyon. Kill the prodigal daughter with two revolver headshots (with the better aiming skill, it’s faster and more reliable than simply waiting for her to move into sneak attack range). Take her shotgun ammo. Clear out the enemies and use the shotgun to help clear out the final cluster guarding the unique axe we’re after. Take the axe, as well as the item that lets you teleport home.
10a. You will probably level up here, or shortly after this point. We’ll spend our skill points on higher melee attack speed and more health, for lack of anything better to really spend it on.
Leave the canyon through the big ramp to your left as you leave, killing enemies that are in your path. Keep walking until you reach a wall and then hug it as you go right. You will soon find a set of big wooden platforms, and a back entrance to the church. If you’re a little short on health, headshot the Birdman below before running through the cavern and making a break for the artifact. Once you have it, use your home teleportation item.
11a. From here, if you sell everything you don’t need, you should have enough for one or even two health potions. For the second one just rest in bed and his shop will reset – if you’re lowish on life you should rest anyway, so it works out.
Make a break for the canyon and prepare to kill the boss, sneaking past the birdmen guarding the entrance. Try to sneak attack the coffin ghoul just before the Vendigo, then bait out the Vendigo with your revolver so you can smack it in the face with your axe. From there, progress past the boss door.
12a. The path leading up to the boss is rife with revolver ammo, and should give you enough to kill the boss with, especially since the majority of our damage to it will be via lunging attack with our shiny axe.
Have your health potions at the ready as you tackle the boss, jumping onto one of the wooden supports to mitigate fall damage (falling through the platforms hurts a lot). The axe, especially with the melee damage buff, will easily one-shot spirits with a heavy attack and make short work of the Vendigos that spawn too. In terms of actually damaging the boss, we’re looking to go for a running jump and a heavy attack when its bark opens up and we won’t be hit by spikes, then run backwards. You take damage FAST if you stay too close to the boss for too long, so play safe and plink away at its health with your revolver if you’re not sure.
Belt out a celebratory ‘yeehaw’ if you won, or a dejected ‘yeehaw’ if you died to the boss.
14a. This part is optional.