11 Essential Green Hell VR Tips and Tricks to Survive the Jungle
Green Hell VR (aka Green Hell Quest Edition) is a VR Survival game set in the Jungles of the Amazon available on the Oculus/Meta Quest 2. As far as Virtual Reality Survival games go Green Hell VR is brutal. Just like you would guess from the name the jungle can cut you down to size pretty quickly. Whether it’s by starving, poison, vomiting, insanity, or just plain being eaten, staying healthy in the Green Hell is not easy. That’s why we’ve got 11 Essential Tips and Tricks for Green Hell VR to help you out. So let’s get into it with tip number 1.
A video version of this article can be found on the Reality Remake youtube channel here: https://youtu.be/7O7C4qRMSXM
1. Listen Closely
Danger comes in many forms in the jungle, and some of those are actually pretty easy to see coming if you pay attention. Spiders and scorpions are actually pretty loud, and can be heard clacking as they creep towards you. Listen closely so that you can smash them before they get close enough to hurt you. The same goes for snakes, hearing their rattling from far away gives you the chance to easily spear them or shoot them with an arrow, rather than suffer their venomous bite.
The same goes for the animals that should be afraid of you. A tapir or armadillo makes a distinct noise when running away, and listening closely while hunting for meat can give away where they are, and let you know which direction to chase them in.
Beware though, not all threats are as loud as you think they would be.
2. Watch your Macroelements
In Green Hell VR you can stuff yourself as much as you like and never vomit… but what you stuff yourself with is more important than how much you stuff yourself with. Keep an eye on your macroelements and what foods you need to keep those bars full. Varying your sources of food is vital to survival in this Virtual Reality jungle.
As a rule of thumb carbohydrates (the yellow bar) are easy to fill with fruits such as bananas , and various mushrooms and other vegetables that can be found growing around the Amazon. Fats (the green bar) can be found in the meats of certain animals, like the Tapir, and in nuts and seeds. Protein (the red bar) can be found in meats, preferably cooked or dried to avoid sickness… and insanity. More on that in another tip.
3. Watch your Arms
All sorts of little parasites are going to try and find their way on to your body in the jungle. Who can blame them? Clearly you are very tasty. So it’s a good idea to make a habit out of checking for them, and chucking them off of you as quickly as possible, especially after taking a dunk in some water. Leeches will attach themselves pretty consistently. Injuries and some status effects, like parasites, will also show themselves on your arms as lesions or cuts.
Even worse things can burrow themselves into your arms, especially if you sleep on the ground. More on that in another tip.
4. Knowledge is Power and Eating is Knowledge
Knowing which plants will make you vomit up all of your macroelements is an important trick to have up your sleeve. An even better trick is knowing which plants will cure certain status effects, such as stomach parasites from drinking unclean water. Unfortunately the only way to know what plants do for sure… is to eat them. This will sometimes have bad consequences. Fortunately with this knowledge that can be mitigated by following our next tip.
5. Keep some Medicinal Herbs with you
Keeping an herb or two that will cure status effects can keep a single snake bite, or a vomiting spell from eating a poisonous fruit, from ending in a game over in Green Hell Quest Edition. Tobacco leaves, which are colored a bright pink, cure venomous bites and stings.
Vomiting can be cured, but by plants that are a little harder to find. Water lilies, which can be found on lily pads sitting on top of water, as well as Ficus Leaves, take care of vomiting. Make sure to eat them quickly before you vomit out all of your macroelements and have to eat a massive meal to get back to full health.
None of these plants will go bad over time, so keep a couple of each in your pack in case things don’t go as planned. Stomach parasites can be cured by eating certain mushrooms too, but those go bad over time. Still, if you need to drink unclean water it may help to find a few of the blue mushrooms (Indigo Blue Leptonia) or little brown bowl looking mushrooms (Copa Hongo) first. Both of those naturally kill the parasites in your stomach.
Oh and the same goes for bandages, keeping some of those spare can really help recover from a puma mauling.
6. Nonperishables can keep you from Perishing
Canned food is rare in the middle of a jungle, and so are protein and candy bars. Anything modern really, even the simplest machete or axe, is a luxury in this Virtual rainforest. So as in any survival game it is good to keep some spare food and supplies in your pack. Since they never spoil you can keep them for when bad luck or poor decision making has left you hungry and desperate.
It is also important to note that keeping your food from perishing for longer can help you spend less time hunting for more meat to sustain yourself. While meat has a meter which lasts for about a day before it spoils, cooking it resets that meter. Even better, when you get a drying rack you can keep meat from spoiling for almost a week by drying it!
7. Coconuts are Jewels of the Jungle
Coconuts are generally great, and you should utilize them whenever possible. First of all they are a very easy source of clean water. Just bash a green coconut a few times and have a drink! After drinking out of one, cutting it in half reveals the coconut flesh which is an easy source of fats.
Even after you’ve drunk and eaten the coconut, it is still useful. The shells can be used in water collectors, or just left open side up on the ground. When it rains the rainwater will collect in the shell, and rainwater does not contain parasites. Water without parasites is precious in Green Hell VR. Just as coconuts are. Did I mention they also don’t spoil over time? They’re basically the canned food of nature.
8. Sleep Somewhere Nice
Sleeping on the floor of a jungle is as inadvisable in Green Hell VR as it is in real life. Laying directly on the floor of the rainforest for hours is not good for your health, and can lead to all sorts of parasites infecting your body. Also, a bed makes for much better rest, and the less time spent sleeping the more time you can get busy surviving. While a bed of leaves is good, a log or bamboo bed is even better.
9. Save Early and Save Often
Green Hell VR, as an unforgiving game, comes with the same tip that all unforgiving games come with. Save early and save often. You don’t want to lose an hour of exploration when a Caiman slinks out of the water and bites you in half before you even realize it is happening. It’s better to only lose ten minutes or so when the unexpected happens. At a minimum saving every time after you sleep for the night or eat enough to replenish your nutrients is a good rule of thumb.
10. Mental Health is as Important as Physical Health
It’s hard not to have sympathy for the character we embody in Green Hell VR. As immersive as the game is, at the end of the day we are comfortably flailing our arms in an Air Conditioned living room, and they are in a hot rainforest fighting for survival. That’s not an easy situation to be in, and it’s tough on the mind.
For that reason taking care of your character’s sanity is vital. Lose enough sanity and your character’s grip on reality will start to slip. He will hear things, making it harder for you to hunt or listen for threats (as in tip 1). Lose enough sanity and make believe phantoms will attack you as well, and they will actually hurt you.
Keep your character sane by feeding them good food and not subjecting them to too much hardship. Try not to feed them foods they don’t like, like snake meat.
11. Stay Armed and Stay Ready
Sometimes the jungle of Green Hell VR can become too familiar, and suddenly you start to feel safe. You sprint around like you own the place, barely cognizant of the 5 snakes and 3 spiders you passed right by. Secure in your mastery of the game, and then bam, a jaguar eats you out of nowhere.
That is why you always need to have a weapon at the ready, and be prepared to use it at the drop of a hat. Deadly animals with a taste for human explorer are littered around the jungle. This is a survival game after all, and so Green Hell VR will easily punish you for not taking it seriously enough. Spears are great weapons with a long reach. They can keep a jaguar or other big cat far away from you while you poke it to death.
A bow and arrow can work even better against certain opponents, like the Caiman. One arrow to the head and you’re safe again. For really close encounters a bone knife is also a good quick stabbing weapon, though a tool like an axe or machete can also do some damage. Be careful though, even with a weapon, there are greater threats than mere animals in the Amazon…
Conclusion
Thanks for reading. Green Hell VR is a fantastic example of a Survival Game in Virtual Reality. I heartily recommend it for survival game or VR buffs. It can be purchased for 29.99$ on the Oculus Store. Green Hell VR will also be coming to Steam for PCVR in the near future. Happy hunting, and good luck in the jungle.
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