9 Clever Tips and Tricks for The Walking Dead Saints and Sinners
The Walking Dead Saints and Sinners is one of the greatest Virtual Reality games out there, but if you’re having a tough time maybe you’re not enjoying it as much as you could. Well if you’re struggling or just want to dominate the flooded streets of The Walking Dead’s New Orleans even harder, here are some premium Tips and Tricks for The Walking Dead Saints & Sinners.
A video version of this article can be found here on our Youtube Channel.
You Can Outrun Walkers
This tip is the most important for people new to The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners. At first when playing the game you’ll probably be pretty afraid of the Walkers you come across, and hesitant to fight them, though there won’t be many of them for your first few trips into New Orleans.
That’s perfectly natural until you get the hang of braining the undead, and realize that as long as you stay calm and take them one or two at a time, they’re not very dangerous. Just keep in mind that it’s not the end of the world if you get noticed by a few walkers at the same time.
If you do attract a crowd of walkers you can outrun them and break their line of sight to you by getting some obstacles like ruined cars or a building between you and them. If they don’t see you for a while most walkers will get bored and wander in a different direction.
Every once in a while you’ll get a particularly fast walker that chases you very persistently, those you will have to take on, though they are easy to get 1 on 1 as they’ll outpace their slower cousins. Just be careful not to run until your stamina hits zero, you can keep walking and regenerate stamina, just make sure to run in bursts. Running out of stamina will make a bad situation worse.
Also be careful not to run into more walkers while you escape. While running away shouldn’t be your default strategy, but it is the best idea when you are severely outnumbered and inexperienced.
2. Only Eat Food You Make
In The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners, food restores your maximum stamina. You lose maximum stamina when you run and swing melee weapons, basically whenever your stamina bar goes down. So you will have to eat food, but don’t eat any old funky can of beans you found on a street corner where walkers have been dragging their rotting feet all over it.
Eating food that you scavenge will reduce your maximum health, just like diseased walkers do, which means you will then have to use rare and precious medicine to restore your maximum health. Why waste your medicine when you can just make food yourself that restores your maximum stamina and doesn’t decrease your maximum health?
All food that you craft at the Survival Workshop does not reduce your maximum health, and restores quite a bit of stamina. Some food recipes that you find also give you bonuses for the day, such as…
3. Jambalaya is the Most Resource Efficient Food
As we pointed out in our article that shows you how to unlock all of the hidden recipes in The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners, Jambalaya is the best food to eat on a daily basis as it reduces the amount your weapons deteriorate as you use them. So if you eat Jambalaya every day, you won’t have to use as many resources to craft weapons, because they will break more slowly.
You can get the Jambalaya recipe in Via Corolla, the second map the game lets you access, by going to the huge blue house with the “TOWER” banner on the outside and picking it up off of the kitchen stove. Keep in mind that the effect goes away when you sleep, and only takes effect when you eat it, so it’s best to start your day with a heaping serving of Jambalaya.
4. Weapons You Craft Yourself Work the Best
Tired of having to pull the slide back on that Worn FS92M when it jams every other shot? Sick of your scavenged weapons falling apart in your hands after only a few uses even if you ate your Jambalaya in the morning?
Well that’s because this is a game with a crafting system, and so you’re encouraged to use it. Don’t use those scavenged weapons, just like you shouldn’t eat scavenged food. Break it all down in your trash can and craft some brand new weapons instead!
Weapons you craft last a lot longer, jam less, and start off at full durability. When you’ve got four tower grunts doing their best to fill you full of holes, you’ll be happy to have a gun you can rely on. Speaking of guns…
5. Always Carry a Gun
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that a firearm is a good thing to have on you in an apocalypse, but it can be awfully tempting to take as few weapons and equipment as possible when going on a scavenging run in The Walking Dead Saints and Sinners.
You will, of course, need a melee weapon to get rid of walkers quietly, but if you only expect to run into walkers you might wonder, what do I need a gun for? They’re noisy and will just attract more walkers if I use it, might as well just rely on melee weapons. Might as well not bring a gun and save that slot for a piece of loot to turn into parts.
Well dying and losing all of your loot is a hell of a lot worse than having one less slot to keep loot in, so keep a gun on you. Even if you run into nothing but walkers, you might run out of stamina and have to shoot your way out. There are also diseased walkers, who will take a sizeable portion of your maximum health if they bite you or die near you, so killing them at a distance with a gun is the best way to get rid of them.
Guns are always worth it. Even if you’re a bad shot, you’ve still got options, like…
6. Shotguns are the Easiest Guns
Aiming a weapon in Virtual Reality is as close a simulated experience to aiming a real weapon as we’ve got, and The Walking Dead Saints and Sinners has a pretty good simulation of handling guns. They’ve got weight to them, and fire pretty straight out of the barrel, so if you’re not a good shot you might have trouble landing headshots with single shot firearms like pistols or the Hunting Rifle.
Well don’t worry because there are two weapons of choice for the aiming impaired here, the Double Barrel and Nova 1014 Pump Action shotguns. Unlike all other guns in this game, you only need to aim in the general direction of an enemy’s head and let it rip. The spread on the buckshot shells is much more forgiving than the bullets of other weapons.
While the Double Barreled Shotgun only holds two shells, it does have a much wider spread to each shot than the Nova, making it easier to land headshots, but also less effective at range. The Nova is arguably the all around best gun in the game for the amount of destructive power it can put out, and ease of use.
7. Get the Backpack Upgrade First
As we’ve mentioned in our Loot Tier List and Upgrade Guide article, there is one upgrade that stands above all others in The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners. That is the “Deep Pockets” Backpack upgrade at the Gear Workbench.
This upgrade adds 9 slots to your backpack, and a large slot that can hold two handed weapons. The more loot you can carry and then break down at your base, the more upgrades, healing items, and weapons you can craft. The earlier you get this upgrade, the faster you can get other upgrades, it’s really a no brainer.
8. You Can Find Medical Items In the Wild
If you’re out of meds and hurting while out scavenging, you won’t necessarily have to go all the way back to base to heal up. Inside buildings you will often find Dirty or even Clean Bandages in Bathrooms, Kitchens, and Laundry Rooms. You may even get lucky and find one in the street.
So be careful if you are wounded, but check for medical items before going back to base, they might save your life.
9. Turn Off Health and Stamina Bars
This tip is a bit of personal preference. If you prefer to have as few obvious UI elements in your face while playing VR, then go to the Settings Menu and turn off Health and Stamina Bars by deselecting the “Enable HUD” option. Otherwise you will constantly see both of them at the bottom of your screen, and they might get in the way from time to time.
You can still check your health and stamina by looking at your watch. I’d suggest at least trying the game with the Health and Stamina bars off. If you don’t like it you can always switch them back on, and it is even more immersive without those big bars sitting in your view.
There you have it, 9 Tips and Tricks for The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners. This is a fantastic game set in the universe of The Walking Dead, and is overall a shining example of Virtual Reality game development done right. If you haven’t picked it up already there is no VR game on the Oculus Quest 2 (or Meta Quest 2 if you prefer) that I could recommend more highly.
You can find The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners on Steam for 39.99$ and on the Oculus/Meta store for 39.99$.