How to play guide for ELEX

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This page serves as a basic **how to play guide for *ELEX***.

## Basic gameplay

The early game can be quite challenging for players unused to the ethos and gameplay of other Piranha Bytes games. Many of the enemies are very difficult to kill for low-level players and avoiding them is often the best strategy; always carefully watch your surroundings as you travel so you don't accidentally blunder into a group of strong enemies. Remember, you can always run away and come back to fight another day. If you draw a ranged weapon and simply aim it (holding down the RMB) at an enemy in range, ones that are considered too far above your level will have a skull symbol next to their health bar.

Finding and equipping the High-tech Sunglasses as soon as possible can help you detect enemies from much further away and prevent you from wandering into them by accident.

Ranged weapons are particularly useful early in the game as more challenging enemies can be killed by finding a safe place higher up where they cannot reach you and shooting at them from a distance, though beware that some enemies that seem like they would be melee-only may have a type of ranged attack that will be able to reach you. One extremely important ranged weapon to consider and that can be obtained early is the Flamethrower Mark B; its standard Flameball attacks do good damage, the ammo is cheap from The Hort and most importantly the shots can knock down many opponent types, making a lot of fights a good deal easier.

It is possible to equip a One Handed Weapon as well as a Shield, but the process is not obvious. A Shield cannot be used by itself. You need to have both the weapon and the shield in Quickslots, then select the one-handed weapon quickslot first, then the shield. If you then sheathe the weapon without deselecting the shield and do not switch to another weapon, the next time you select the original weapon's quickslot you will draw both it and the shield. It is also worth noting that the attack patterns with a shield are different; with a one-handed weapon by itself the swings are a bit wider and perhaps slightly slower, but with a shield the attacks are tighter and more focused, and the Heavy Attack switches to a shield-bash instead of a stronger strike with the weapon. These typically do less damage but have a good chance of causing a Knockdown to the opponent.

Getting a companion quickly is also very helpful and they will help you fight enemies you encounter.

Joining a faction is also helpful, but can take quite some time. Do not depend on joining a faction for early help in the game. Loot, buy or steal whatever weapons and armor you can.

Aside from stealing, training up in Animal Trophies can also develop into a good income source as this will let you pull both higher quantities of baseline resources/trophies as well as rarer more valuable types; this at the highest level is the only source of certain key Recipe items.

## Stealing and how to do it

Whatever your moral stance may be, regular stealing is almost critically necessary in the game not just for the extensive amount of vital money and resources you can gain from it, but multiple quests only start if you manage to steal a key item from a location. The basic principles of stealing in ELEX:

* Theft is considered a capital crime in civilized areas such as Goliet. If you are caught stealing everyone in the immediate area will immediately attack you in a fight to the death.
* Not all items available to be picked up will be considered stolen if you take them. The crucial ones have a red Forbidden tag next to their popup name when you are near them.
* To be caught stealing, someone needs to be awake and looking at you within a certain distance of you while you take the item. You could take a forbidden item in broad daylight right next to a person if they are looking away from you and no one else is around.
* You can get into a Sneaking stance (with the Capslock key by default on PC). This does nothing to change how easy you are to see, and nearby characters who see you doing it will give quite crass commentary as you do it; however, what sneaking does do is make your footsteps silent. This becomes important if you want to steal from someone while they are sleeping; if you enter a building/home with sleeping occupants using normal movement, your footsteps will wake them up and they will stay up watching you until you leave, preventing safe theft. However, if you enter the home while Sneaking they will stay asleep, allowing you to loot everything in the building and potentially Pickpocket the occupants as well as long as no one awake sees you from outside. For many places such as most of the buildings in Goliet this is practically the only way you can steal everything in the building: sneaking thefts at night while everyone sleeps.
* In order to Pickpocket, you need to learn at least one level in Pickpocket and then be close to any character in the Sneaking stance to open up the option. Characters will initially be Unsuspecting and the easiest to steal from (though you can still rarely fail). You can attempt thefts from the same character multiple times (provided they have that many things to steal), but as you do more attempts they will gradually become more and more aware, providing a higher chance that a theft will fail. Characters also appear to be more protective of high-value items like equippable gear and theft attempts of such items at anything other than Unsuspecting state has a higher chance of failing. Also, while a stack of Elexit can be stolen all at once, nearly any other item type will get stolen one at a time if they have multiple (with all the stacking difficulty penalties accordingly). As usual, if anybody awake sees you they will all attack you. Finally, you can only steal from humans; monsters and mechs have nothing to steal.

## Tips and tricks

* The world is permanent, so the same items will be found in the same place every time
* You can sleep any time to heal yourself and replenish mana/mental energy
* Items labelled as "Junk" really are junk and should be sold for the shards, with a couple of key exceptions:
	+ A Magnesium Torch, while labelled as Junk in its info window is actually a Tool/Key, and can be equipped on your Hotbar. It will briefly act as a light source which can be handy in very dark areas like caves.
* Many of the items labelled as "Valuable" are also just better junk and can be sold for higher amounts than regular junk items, with some exceptions:
	+ An Old Coin, in high enough quantities, can be used to buy supplies from vending machines in The Hort
* While items labelled as "Trophy" like Bone looted from monsters may appear to be simple sellable junk, they are in fact also Materials needed for various crafting and, more importantly, Weapon Upgrading recipes, so be careful before selling them.
* Once read, documents can also be sold. It's really only useful to keep documents which contain important information you may need to refer to later, for example, safe codes, photographs with visual clues and Map pieces.
* Mission-critical items cannot be sold, so there's no chance of accidentally selling something plot-critical
* Companions cannot be killed by enemies. If they appear to be dead, they are simply stunned and will get up once the danger has passed. **Note**: Jax, depending on plot circumstances, can kill at least one of his companions.

## See also

* Release date
* System requirements