Weird West: Ultimate Beginner’s Guide: Tips for New Players

by Mike Alexander / Articles, Misc. Guides / 01 Jan 2023

The makers of Dishonored and Prey are back with a new game studio and a brand new game to add to their collection of awesome immersive sim titles. Their new development team at WolfEye Studios has just released Weird West, an isometric immersive sim with a very interesting premise.

Over the course of the game’s story, you will embody several different adventurers, each with a unique tale and set of abilities. The dialogue choices and decisions you make as you cross this supernaturally infused old west landscape will determine the course of the story and the individual character’s fates.

If you’re just starting Weird West, or you’re planning on picking it up, you might like some guidance on how to best make your way through this haunted, dusty world. In this Weird West Beginner’s Guide, I have several tips to help you do just that. If you’re ready to make peace with your decisions and fight some specters, let’s get started!

Woes of Limited Inventory Space

Weird West will constantly throw items at you that you will want to pick up and hold on to in case you need them later, but let me tell you now that this is folly. All of the food, weapons, junk, and gear you come across will never fit, and you’ll be forced to make some tough decisions about what you decide to keep.

But, here’s a little hint: don’t bother picking up food or melee weapons. The game will give you plenty of opportunities to heal, so you won’t need food very often, and melee weapons don’t stack, so if you have more than one, you’re wasting precious inventory space. Instead, you might consider picking up junk and vests, as you can sell them for a profit and use that money to buy the supplies you need.

Increase Inventory

If you just can’t help yourself and need to hold on to everything you come across, there is a way to increase your inventory space pretty significantly. Early on in the game, you will be able to purchase a horse for $250.

This helpful steed will enable your sticky fingers with an additional 32 inventory slots for you to fill with whatever garbage you couldn’t live without. Additionally, it will also increase your travel speed, making a double benefit purchase. If you bring a companion into your posse, that will give you an additional 32 inventory slots!

The More the Merrier

You’re going to want to recruit a second companion as soon as you can. It will cost you $100, but you’ll quickly make that money back with bounties and side quests. Also, the benefit of having a third-party member to draw fire and better strategize in fights is priceless.

Additionally, going the stealth route with three party members isn’t any more difficult, as your companions will always stay out of the way and avoid triggering enemies. There’s basically no downside, so be sure to pick up a new team member when you have the money for

Primo Perks

Once you start gaining skill points to unlock perks, there are a few that you should prioritize. Lockpicks aren’t very common, so you’ll want to maintain the ones you do find. To do this, you can unlock the Locksmith perk, which gives you a high percentage chance of keeping a used lockpick instead of breaking it.

You might choose to sneak through encounters, dropping enemies silently rather than triggering them and dealing with a shootout. If this is your path, you can unlock the Ambusher perk to get a huge damage boost when attacking unsuspecting enemies out of stealth.

However you choose to play, you’ll probably take damage at some point. If you’d like to increase your max HP, you can unlock the Healthy perk, which increases your health by 25% each time you upgrade it.

Wanderlust

When you’re traveling between points on the overworld map, you should take some time to wander. Traveling in between main locations will often reveal hidden locations and secret events that add to the Weird West experience. You’re never under any kind of time constraint, so wander the West like a real adventurer and see what you find.

You can also travel freely over the map, you don’t have to exclusively go on the paths between locations. Going off the beaten path will sometimes give you new objectives to accomplish as well.

Miscellaneous Tips

Go into the Options/Settings and map Tactical Mode to something like an extra mouse button. The tutorial doesn’t even tell you it exists, but it slows down all combat to about 25% regular speed, and you can use it anytime. It really helps to make up for the clunky aiming system.

Do the bounties. The best way to make money as the game progresses is to do bounties at every stage.

Get a horse as soon as possible. Horses will do a few good things for you. For starters, they will make traversing the map much easier as you will travel around the world map much faster. Additionally, horses are essentially a free ticket out of random encounters, so if you get ambushed along your road, having a horse means that you start combat directly next to that horse. You can use your horse to immediately escape the encounter.

Saddlebags are another useful feature that comes with a horse. As you might expect, saddlebags are storage, but there are a few things to keep in mind about the storage for starters. If your horse dies and you go out and buy a new one, all of your stuff from the old horse will be transferred to the new horse. So you don’t have to be concerned about losing your horse.

For 30 gold chunks, you can upgrade your pickaxe and shovel to a gold version. This makes them unbreakable, and the gold shovel is the best melee weapon in the game.

Make sure to revisit previously cleared places like outposts and caves. The world changes over time, and this might unlock some quests, rewards, and new fights.

Dynamite can be used to blow up rock piles in mines, revealing chests and other goodies. The shotgun’s explosive shells function similarly and can be used to blow up objects.

Conclusion

I hope these tips are enough to help you survive the strange, surreal world of Weird West. You never know what eldritch horror you’ll find on your next mission, but always be prepared for the weird. Good luck!

Weird West PC Controls

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Mike Alexander

Mike has been playing video games since he was able to hold a controller, having been fascinated by Sonic 2 on his mom’s Sega Genesis. That fascination and passion for the art form has grown exponentially nearly 30 years later, and he doesn’t see that fading away anytime soon.
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