Dying Light 2 is finally available, and there’s a lot to learn if you want to make the most of this sprawling zombie adventure. Aiden will meet different factions, acquire new abilities, and gather an awful lot of crafting materials. If you want to survive in a post-apocalyptic infected city, you’ll need all the help you can get.

In this guide, we’ve broken down the essential tips that will help you make the most of Dying Light 2, both in the early game and the late game. If you want more detailed tips, make sure to check our list of the best skills in Dying Light 2.

Make sure to check out our other guides to get you started, including a breakdown of all major story choices, the best parkour and combat skills, and the tips and tricks you need to get started.

Hunt down GRE containers

When exploring the open world you will occasionally hear a voice line alerting you that a GRE container is nearby. GRE containers contain inhibitors, and inhibitors are the upgrade materials you need to increase your health and stamina, and get more skill points to spend on new abilities. Needless to say, GRE containers might be the most important collectible in the game. 

Many containers will be inaccessible until you unlock new parkour skills or items – such as the paraglider and grapple hook – but once all the necessary components are in place, cleaning GRE containers up around the map can feel very satisfying, and comes with rapid growth.

Avoiding fighting while you can

Beating in weaker infected creatures can be solid practice for your suite of skills and abilities, but there’s not much in it for you. Wandering around by day cracking skulls sounds like fun, but ultimately it just does damage to your weapon and you won’t find much worthwhile on infected corpses. 

By day, when you can run, there is really no reason to hunt down infected hordes and wipe them out – you can leave all of that to the Peacekeepers. You have very little to gain unless you’re hunting down a special infected. By night, however…

Night hunting

Going out at night and hunting down infected is a very different experience to running around during the day. Yes, you will have to watch your infection level, which must be controlled either with UV light or items like UV Mushrooms, but in return, you will receive a boost to your abilities and earned XP. 

If you really want to grind up a few levels, try running around the city streets at night. You’re much more likely to run into rare infected carrying loot, and you will get a nice XP boost for all of the fighting you’ll do. There are also a fair few places that are best explored at night, such as…

Dark Zones

Dark Zones are indoor areas that are far more dangerous by day than they are at night. As you know, the infected hate UV light, and when exposed to it they move more slowly and act less aggressively, so many of them retreat indoors. If you head indoors during the day, you’ll find plenty of infected. 

If you see curtains billowing out of a window, it’s probably a Dark Zone. These locations will be marked on your map. During the day these places will be vicious, but at night most of the infected will move outside, allowing you to covertly infiltrate and steal any loot for yourself. Just be careful not to get yourself ambushed by the infected that remain inside.

Manage your clothing

You have a limited amount of space to carry gear, and while you may drop your weapons and other items on the ground in a pinch, the same doesn’t go for your clothing. There is no way to drop or dismantle clothes while in the field, meaning if you have too many clothes and you find new gear, you won’t be able to pick it up. If you leave to find a vendor or store gear in your stash, then the gear will likely despawn. 

As a result, you need to make sure you are only carrying the clothing you need when exploring the world, otherwise you run the risk of not being able to pick up and equip high-level gear you may encounter. Save yourself the disappointment and ensure you have all the space you need before leaving your home base. On that note…

Visit home base

Home bases and safe houses usually have a bed, a vendor, and a stash – all of which will become invaluable during your journey. We’ve already outlined why you should be making use of your stash, and the usefulness of vendors really speak for themselves, supplying medicine and gear you need. 

The bed is understated, however. Jumping into bed can enable you to change the time of day, swapping quickly to morning or night. This allows you to swap to morning if you want to tackle main quests and move across the city, or to night if you’re instead looking to do some hunting or engage in some night-only side quests.

Buy medicine

There isn’t actually much worth spending your money on other than gear or medicine, and you are able to find or craft enough of that in the field, usually. However, that’s also a timesink of its own. Crafting medicine is a time-consuming task, just because you have to gather the necessary materials. 

If you’re finding yourself with plenty of cash to spend and nothing to spend it on in particular, stock up on medicine. It’ll save you time farming for materials, and you won’t be left in a tough situation should you ever run out.

Paraglider and grapple hook

Dying Light 2 gets far more exciting once you unlock both the paraglider and grapple hook, and you already imagine why. The paraglider isn’t amazing for covering distance, unfortunately, but it does make soaring down to the streets from a high place – or even scaling a building with help from an updraft – much safer and more efficient. 

The grapple hook gives you access to swinging, and you can swing and grapple onto a large number of things. The grapple hook is far more important in the second map, where scaling tall buildings can be cumbersome without both of these tools – but they’re useful everywhere you will go. As a result, rushing through the main story to pick up both of these items, before going back for side quests, isn’t a bad idea.

Written by Dave Aubrey on behalf of GLHF.