Returnal Beginner’s Guide: Essential Tips & Tricks To Know Before Playing

Returnal demands exceptional mobility skills from both newcomers and seasoned players. Understanding movement mechanics can dramatically reduce your death count and accelerate progression through challenging biomes.

While Housemarque transitions from their signature 2D shooters to this third-person roguelike, they’ve preserved their core design philosophy: relentless enemy aggression requires constant player repositioning. The combat arenas intentionally feel confined, forcing you to utilize every available space strategically. Each environment contains specific safe zones and escape routes that, when mastered, transform overwhelming encounters into manageable skirmishes.

Advanced movement techniques create tactical advantages beyond simple evasion. Continuous repositioning disrupts enemy AI patterns, causing foes to abandon coordinated attacks and pursue you individually. This fragmentation of enemy forces allows you to eliminate threats systematically rather than facing unified assaults. The most successful players treat movement as an offensive tool rather than just defensive maneuvering.

Your mobility toolkit expands significantly with gear acquisition, particularly the mid-game grappling hook. This device enables chained movement sequences that can extract you from seemingly impossible situations. However, don’t underestimate the fundamental importance of Selene’s sprint capability – mastering this basic movement option provides the foundation for all advanced techniques.

The movement-focused nature of Returnal creates an interesting dilemma regarding aiming down sights (ADS). While ADS reduces your mobility and narrows your field of view, it unlocks critical combat capabilities that hip-fire cannot provide.

Critical weak points on elite and boss enemies remain invisible without ADS activation. These vulnerable zones often determine the difference between a swift victory and prolonged, dangerous engagements. Precision targeting becomes especially crucial with weapons featuring limited magazine capacity or slow rate of fire, where every shot must deliver maximum impact.

The strategic application of ADS extends beyond damage amplification. Successfully striking weak points triggers stagger mechanics on formidable enemies, creating brief windows where you can unleash critical damage without retaliation. This stagger-and-punish cycle proves essential against the game’s most durable adversaries.

Returnal incorporates a sophisticated active reload system reminiscent of Gears of War, but with unique weapon-specific variations. Each firearm possesses distinct timing windows and reload patterns that require individual mastery. In high-intensity combat scenarios, perfect reload execution can conserve precious seconds that determine survival outcomes.

Common mistake: Players often abandon ADS entirely due to mobility concerns, missing crucial stagger opportunities and dramatically extending encounter durations.

Returnal leverages the DualSense controller’s advanced haptic feedback and adaptive triggers to create immersive combat feedback. The default control scheme utilizes L2’s dual-stage functionality: partial press activates ADS while full depression triggers alternate fire modes.

The innovative trigger implementation provides tactile feedback that enhances situational awareness, but requires adjustment period. Most players need 3-5 runs to develop muscle memory for the pressure-sensitive inputs.

For those struggling with accidental alt-fire activation, Returnal offers traditional control alternatives. The customization option remaps aiming to L2 exclusively while assigning alternate fire to L1. This traditional layout sacrifices some immersion but improves reliability for players prioritizing consistency over advanced haptic features.

Optimization tip: Experiment with both control schemes during early biome exploration to determine which provides better performance for your playstyle.

Time investment: Allow 30-45 minutes of gameplay with each configuration before making a final decision.

Once you progress deep enough into Returnal’s initial biome, you’ll permanently unlock a devastating melee attack that should become integral to your combat rotation. The blade not only delivers spectacular visual feedback when perfectly executed but consistently ranks among your most potent offensive tools. Most standard enemies (excluding bosses) will be instantly eliminated with a single slash when their health drops below 50%. As you elevate your adrenaline multiplier, your melee damage escalates dramatically, enabling efficient clearing of clustered enemy formations.

The melee weapon becomes your most reliable ally in close-quarters engagements.

It’s common to overlook melee when focused on projectile combat, but neglecting this capability makes managing Returnal’s increasingly chaotic action significantly more challenging. Shielded adversaries specifically demand an initial melee strike before becoming vulnerable to other damage types, making proficiency with close-range combat essential to prevent premature run terminations.

While avoiding damage seems fundamental in any shooter, Returnal’s Adrenaline mechanic elevates this principle to critical importance. Traditional shooters often condition players to accept some damage exchange, frequently rewarding aggressive play even with careless positioning. Returnal completely subverts this expectation through its sophisticated adrenaline system.

Your adrenaline multiplier escalates with each consecutive enemy elimination without taking damage, capping at level five. Each tier unlocks distinct advantages including enemy detection through environmental obstacles, amplified melee damage (post-unlock), and enhanced currency acquisition from kills. Suffering any damage immediately resets your multiplier to zero. The substantial benefits of maintaining elevated adrenaline levels justify extending engagements strategically rather than accepting unnecessary risks. This becomes increasingly vital as you discover suit enhancements that synergize with adrenaline, such as modules that provide healing proportional to your current adrenaline level.

One of Returnal’s less transparent mechanics involves the crucial relationship between health collectibles and your capacity to expand your maximum health pool. Health items are categorized as resin or vials—resin contributes to a separate meter that, when completed, permanently increases your total health, while vials provide immediate healing. The game doesn’t explicitly clarify that when your health is completely full, all vials function identically to resin, contributing toward your maximum health enhancement.

Maintain constant environmental awareness for health pickup locations.

This creates strategic decision-making scenarios. You can rapidly traverse new combat zones collecting all pickups before potential enemy damage, though this leaves no healing resources post-engagement. Alternatively, you might delay collection until after combat, but this risks progressing deeper into your run with insufficient health reserves. Regardless of approach, never disregard these pickups entirely, even when your health meter appears completely full.

However, don’t feel obligated to make these decisions immediately as situations present themselves—this applies doubly to discovered items, fabrication stations, and other resources scattered throughout each biome. Returnal populates its environments with abundant fast travel portals, encouraging retrospective visits to previously explored areas to claim overlooked rewards. For instance, restorative stone beds can be activated immediately before transitioning to subsequent biomes, or consumables you previously lacked inventory space for remain collectible long after departing their discovery locations.

Returnal’s exceptional mapping system simplifies recalling points of interest, so avoid becoming excessively focused on forward momentum. Instead, periodically assess your situation, backtrack strategically, and verify you’ve acquired all available resources before advancing. This is particularly valuable since defeated enemies don’t regenerate, transforming backtracking into a zero-risk activity that can substantially improve your run’s success probability.

Returnal presents constant risk-reward decisions regarding malignant items, but experienced players quickly learn that the dangers typically outweigh potential benefits. The random malfunctions acquired from contaminated items can severely hinder progression through various biomes, with effects ranging from reduced weapon proficiency to permanent stat debuffs. Since Ether resources for cleansing are limited and malignant chest contents are completely randomized, you’ll generally find sufficient weapons, resin, and health pickups through normal exploration. Reserve malignant item interaction for desperate situations where immediate healing or weapon upgrades become absolutely necessary for survival.

Malignant keys represent the sole exception worth considering despite malfunction risks. Having immediate access to locked areas often provides greater long-term value than avoiding temporary debuffs. When encountering these items, mentally mark their locations for potential return if your current run develops favorably. Strategic key management separates novice players from veterans who understand when calculated risks become necessary investments.

Ether conservation remains crucial throughout your Returnal journey. Rather than wasting this precious resource on random chest cleansing, save it for reconstructors or specific high-value malignant items when your build synergizes perfectly. This resource management approach significantly increases successful run completion rates.

Playing Returnal with high-quality headphones dramatically enhances both immersion and tactical awareness through PS5’s advanced 3D audio capabilities. Beyond atmospheric enhancement, spatial audio provides critical combat intelligence by precisely locating enemy positions and projectile trajectories. This auditory advantage becomes particularly valuable when hunting elusive barrier switches concealed throughout each biome.

There’s actually a sophisticated method to bypass these obstructive gates.

Early encounters introduce translucent gray stone barriers that obstruct progress while teasing visible rewards within. Unlike standard locks requiring Atropian Keys, these barriers demand environmental puzzle-solving through hidden yellow switches. As you progress through Returnal’s increasingly complex environments, switch placement becomes progressively more devious and challenging to detect.

These critical switches emit yellow illumination but transform visually and audibly when targeted.

Aiming down sights triggers distinct audio-visual cues regardless of direct line-of-sight. Switches pulse with red light while emitting rhythmic tones that intensify with proximity. Leveraging 3D audio spatialization allows precise switch triangulation even when completely obscured from view, ensuring valuable contained rewards remain accessible.

Beyond your primary weapon, the mini-map serves as Returnal’s most vital survival tool through continuous environmental scanning and threat marking. This dynamic display provides rotational top-down perspective with expanded contextual awareness, crucially revealing rear-position threats before they materialize into fatal encounters. Constant mini-map monitoring transforms reactive gameplay into proactive domination.

Your tactical display reveals comprehensive battlefield intelligence including enemy movements, resource locations, teleportation points, and environmental hazards. Maintaining peripheral awareness of this interface should become second nature throughout every biome exploration.

Returnal’s bullet-hell combat demands visual focus on immediate threats, yet significant damage often originates from off-screen attackers. Master players mitigate this through rapid repositioning to prevent flanking situations, supplemented by strategic map consultation to assess enemy locations marked in distinctive red. The mini-map enables precise enemy tracking for evasion tactics, ambush anticipation, and cover integrity assessment during intense firefights.

Advanced mini-map utilization involves predicting enemy patrol patterns and identifying choke points before engagements begin. Seasoned operatives combine this intelligence with audio cues for complete situational awareness, turning potential ambushes into tactical advantages through prepared positioning and escape route planning.

When navigating Returnal’s alien landscapes, adopt a systematic approach to environmental destruction. Any unusual flora—whether egg-shaped green pods or bulbous purple blossoms—should be immediately eliminated. This isn’t just random vandalism; these organic structures frequently conceal valuable resources and game-changing parasites that can dramatically alter your run’s success probability.

The probability of discovering upgrades varies significantly between plant types, with some species offering better drop rates than others. While you might clear dozens of plants before finding anything substantial, the potential payoff of additional Silphium Resin or a beneficial parasite makes this thorough environmental clearing absolutely essential. Advanced players recommend methodically checking room perimeters, as the most valuable specimens often spawn in overlooked corners.

Common mistake: Many players underestimate the long-term value of consistent plant destruction, focusing only on immediate combat threats. This oversight costs them cumulative resources that could mean the difference between surviving a boss encounter or restarting their run entirely.

Locked doors represent some of Returnal’s most rewarding exploration opportunities. While these secondary paths occasionally lead to straightforward biome navigation, they more frequently contain specialized upgrade chambers housing consumables, artifacts, health enhancements, or Obolite clusters—sometimes offering multiple reward categories simultaneously.

The strategic allocation of Atropian Keys demands careful consideration. Although locked chests can provide decent returns, the superior investment consistently lies with door access. Locked rooms typically present higher-quality loot tables and the potential for several distinct rewards versus the single item from a chest. Experienced players recommend hoarding keys, including contaminated variants, as they typically justify the inventory space and risk.

Crucial insight: Specific late-game biomes contain sealed chambers housing permanent suit enhancements, but these remain inaccessible unless you’ve planned ahead by carrying a key. This permanent progression element makes key conservation critically important for long-term advancement.

Optimization tip: Always maintain at least one key in reserve when exploring unfamiliar biomes, as you never know when you’ll encounter these game-changing upgrade rooms.

Following your initial biome completion in Returnal, you acquire the Atropian Blade, enabling you to slice through enemy shields and orange-colored barriers. However, you’ll soon encounter distinctive yellow force fields blocking access to valuable side chambers that resist your standard blade attacks.

New players often assume these obstructions require additional permanent equipment similar to the grapple hook, but they’re actually vulnerable to your existing sword with one crucial temporary enhancement: the Blade Balancer artifact.

This specialized equipment serves dual purposes: it generally amplifies your close-quarters damage output while specifically enabling yellow barrier destruction. These shielded pathways almost invariably guard exceptional items and artifacts, making the Blade Balancer one of the most consistently valuable purchases available.

Strategic acquisition: Monitor fabricator stations closely, particularly the substantial units positioned near biome boss chambers. The artifact regularly appears in these locations, and its acquisition should be prioritized whenever possible.

Secondary benefit: Even if you encounter minimal yellow barriers during your expedition, the augmented melee damage proves invaluable against aggressive enemies that pursue you across combat arenas.

Among the most crucial investments within any biome is the Reconstructor—the circular apparatus featuring an alien silhouette impression. Upon discovering one, expend six Ether units to activate it, particularly when tackling unfamiliar territories or struggling with specific environmental challenges.

This device fundamentally operates as a run checkpoint within that specific biome—upon death, you resurrect at the Reconstructor location. This resurrection opportunity transforms the Ether expenditure into an exceptionally worthwhile survival safeguard.

Strategic implication: You must maintain continuous awareness of your Ether reserves and stockpile accordingly. Each Reconstructor demands six Ether for activation, with one available per biome, but their protection remains strictly localized. A Reconstructor activated in the Crimson Wastes provides no protection if you perish within the Derelict Citadel.

Resource allocation: Avoid spending Ether on Reconstructors in biomes you’re merely traversing or feel confident navigating, reserving it instead for boss confrontations or unknown regions. Similarly, refrain from using Ether for malignancy purification unless you possess substantial surplus. Ether represents a precious commodity specifically because it can preserve your run progress, so always consider Reconstructor availability when making item acquisition decisions.

Never bypass Reconstructor activation when concerned about potential death before biome completion.

Certain artifacts obtainable from fabricator units should never be overlooked once unlocked. The Astronaut figurine and Child’s Watch fall into this critical category—their functional applications may not be immediately apparent from descriptive text, but if available, accumulate resources and secure them immediately.

Similar to Reconstructors, these artifacts possess life-preserving capabilities, but operate through fundamentally different mechanics. Both the Astronaut and Child’s Watch will resurrect you upon death, unlike Reconstructors that transport you to different locations—they revive you precisely where you fell approximately two seconds later.

Game-changing implication: Carrying an Astronaut figurine during a boss confrontation grants an immediate second attempt, awakening abruptly with completely restored health. These two artifacts essentially function as additional lives, making their acquisition absolutely mandatory when encountered.

Purchase strategy: If insufficient Obolites are available when initially locating them, return later with augmented currency. The investment consistently justifies the effort.

If you encounter these in a fabricator, obtain them immediately.

While navigating Returnal’s treacherous biomes and defeating initial bosses, you’ll encounter mysterious Data Cubes scattered throughout the environment. These enigmatic objects don’t provide immediate combat benefits for protagonist Selene, but serve as permanent progression keys that expand your available equipment pool. Essentially, specific artifacts and gear remain inaccessible until you locate their corresponding Data Cube counterparts. Once secured and processed, these items enter the randomized loot tables, appearing at fabricator terminals and within treasure containers during all subsequent expedition attempts. This unlock system fundamentally transforms your long-term survival prospects.

Processing Data Cubes through decryption terminals permanently integrates new equipment options into your available arsenal. When you discover one of these specialized stations, immediately document its precise location using the game’s mapping features or external notes. These decryption points maintain consistent positioning across every cycle iteration, making them reliable waypoints for future strategic planning. This location consistency becomes increasingly valuable as you progress deeper into Returnal’s challenging narrative.

Data Cubes require specific decryption terminals for processing, which present unique navigational challenges. Fortunately, these specialized devices maintain fixed positions within each biome’s layout, allowing for systematic route planning. Upon encountering a decryption station, commit its location to memory or utilize the game’s screenshot function for reference. Station accessibility varies significantly—some occupy easily reachable central hub areas or starting zones, while others hide deep within biome extremities or beyond boss encounter thresholds.

When you acquire a Data Cube during exploration, prioritize delivering it to the nearest decryption station rather than continuing your current run. The newly unlocked equipment could provide crucial advantages in upcoming cycles, potentially transforming difficult encounters into manageable challenges. Understanding the spatial relationship between cube discovery sites and decryption terminals streamlines this process considerably, especially during advanced gameplay segments where efficiency becomes paramount. For comprehensive gameplay guidance, consult our Complete Guide to master fundamental mechanics.

Common mistakes include postponing cube decryption for later runs or failing to document station locations properly. These oversights can cost valuable progression opportunities and extend your overall completion time. Instead, adopt a systematic approach: immediately process cubes when possible and maintain detailed location records for future reference.

Seasoned Returnal players should implement sophisticated Data Cube management tactics to maximize progression efficiency. Begin each run by checking known decryption station locations if carrying a cube, and adjust your route accordingly. Weigh the risks of diverting to a station against your current health and resource status—sometimes preserving your current run takes precedence over long-term unlocks. However, the potential power spike from new artifacts often justifies the detour.

Advanced optimization involves creating mental maps of biome layouts that connect cube spawn locations with their corresponding decryption points. This spatial awareness saves precious minutes across multiple cycles and reduces unnecessary backtracking. The investment in learning these locations pays substantial dividends during endgame content where every advantage matters. For weapon-specific strategies that complement your cube unlocks, explore our Weapons Unlock guide for detailed loadout recommendations.

Time investment for cube collection and decryption varies by biome complexity, but typically requires 5-15 minutes per cube when incorporating efficient routing. This temporary time expenditure consistently rewards players with permanent gameplay enhancements that accumulate across their entire Returnal experience. Understanding this progression system’s nuances separates competent players from truly dominant ones. To further enhance your tactical approach, consider our Class Guide for specialized role optimization.

No reproduction without permission：SeeYouSoon Game Club » Returnal Beginner’s Guide: Essential Tips & Tricks To Know Before Playing