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Metal Gear Survive can be an unforgiving experience, to put it lightly. Between grueling combat, unforgiving exploration, and resource-heavy base building, the first steps of your journey into the Dust are fraught with peril. Despite an abundance of tutorializing, there are a few things Survive could explain just a little bit better. From vehicles to clean water worries, you can find plenty of tips to help you survive in our beginner’s Metal Gear Survive Starter’s Guide
You Can Change the Appearance of Your Avatar
Character customization has become a pretty common occurrence in modern games. Unfortunately, being able to change your character’s appearance after creation isn’t quite as common. But as you boot up Survive for the first time, be not afraid to go wild with your character’s design because you can change your appearance once you establish a base camp.
Clean Water Will Come in Time
The opening hours of Metal Gear Survive can be rough, especially when trying to keep your thirst and hunger meters full. While food can be hunted and cooked from the beginning, clean water is a bit harder to come by. Until you reach Chapter 7 in Survive‘s campaign, the only way to get clean water is to scavenge water bottles. You might have to drink some dirty water to get by, but once you’re able to clean water in the base camp, you should always be able to have a stable supply on hand.
Don’t Dismantle Your Weapons
You will do plenty of resource hunting in the early hours of Metal Gear Survive. As you slowly begin to amass an arsenal, you may be tempted to dismantle your current equipment in order to build better gear. However you should always keep your second-best weapons and armor handy because once you unlock the ability to send out teams to scavenge for resources in The Dust, you will need to outfit them with weapons and gear of their own. Keeping a few spares on hand ensures that you’ll be able to send out teams at higher power levels, thus earning better rewards.
Save Time by Opening All Cases At Once
As you make your way through the game, you will receive special cases as rewards for completing various objectives. Filled with weapons, resources, and other helpful objects, you can only access these cases through the A.I. pod at base camp. However, the rewards you get in these cases are often random and small in number. To save time, let the cases pile up a bit before opening them. You can open all the cases at once from the A.I. pod menu, so you don’t have to wait for the game to load in between each case.
Heal Camp Allies From the Base Management Menu
Building your base is a very resource-intensive endeavor. Early on, you will have no choice but to feed your base staff contaminated food and work them to the bone. This will inevitably result in some of them getting sick, which is indicated by an orange-hued marker that appears when you approach them in the base. To heal them, you will need to go to the staff management section of the A.I. pod, and scroll all the way to the end. There you can see their ailments, what’s required to treat them, and if you have the medical supplies on hand. If you do, you can get them back in fighting shape right away.
Don’t Forget About Medkits
Getting hurt in Metal Gear Survive can either be a minor impediment or a grave mistake. You’ll have to heal wounds individually to regain health, and without the proper medical supplies you will have to wait for the wounds to heal on their own. Thankfully, early in the game you can get the recipe for a Medical Spray that will heal a chunk of health on demand. The recipe is in a camp to the northeast of your base, by a wormhole teleporter that needs to be activated.
Don’t Waste Resources on Fences for Base Camp in Main Campaign
At several points in the story of Metal Gear Survive, you may be under the impression that you will need to fortify your base camp against attacking hordes of Wanderers. This is not the case. For every major fight in the campaign, you can simply rely on the same wave-defense strategies of smaller battles and get by relatively unscathed. Unfortunately I didn’t realize this and constructed dozens of high-quality fences around the camp, dwindling my treasure trove of resources to a mere pittance for no reason at all. Don’t be like me.
Keep an Eye Out for Bottles and Canteens…But Mostly Bottles
Aside from wood, screws, and other basic crafting materials, the most precious resource in Metal Gear Survive is bottles. Not only do you need bottles and canteens to gather water and clean it, but also for some of the game’s most useful gadgets, namely Molotov Cocktail’s and Lures. Molotov Cocktails in particular can be devastating when thrown against a fence collapsing under the weight of a Wanderer mob. Just be sure to ration the bottles between gadgets and water, as they never get easier to come by.
Don’t Rely on Vehicles for Travel
Metal Gear Solid V has some rad ways to get around. While the Jeep was a reliable classic, the D-Walker was fast and deadly in a firefight, making it an ideal choice. Both vehicles return in Metal Gear Survive, but they are far from the reliable workhorses they once were. Weakened by wormhole travel, the vehicles that you see in the Dust have a very limited lifespan. Walkers can be useful for taking out nearby Wanderer swarms, and Jeeps can be good for quickly getting survivors back to teleporters, but if you’re not careful they will break down and explode, taking you with them. You’ve been warned.
While there are plenty of secrets to uncover, our Metal Gear Survive Starter’s Guide should help you last a little longer on your journey through the Dust. Be sure to check out our Metal Gear Survive Review right here, and stay tuned to Rely on Horror for any future updates to the game.
