Stellar Blade tips and tricks to breeze through the game

Tips and tricks for Stellar Blade to help you hack and slash your way through everything in your path

Stellar Blade / Sony Interactive Entertainment

Stellar Blade is the latest PlayStation exclusive action adventure and soulslike game, which straddles genres like no other game on the market. As such, not everything you need to do to change genre, or get the most of the game is obvious. Beyond that, there is one nasty pitfall you won’t want to fall foul to. Here’s everything you need to know before you start playing Stellar Blade.

How to switch between action adventure and soulslike

Stellar Blade / Sony Interactive Entertainment

When you boot up the game for the first time you have the choice between Story difficulty and Normal difficulty. If you want to play it like your standard action adventure game you should select Story difficulty. In this setting you will find yourself easily able to make your way between most waypoints, though bosses will likely still require some trial and error. If this is too easy for you, you can take off your Diving Suit, and change the settings so that the action won’t slow down when you need to dodge and parry. 

If you love the challenge that soulslikes offer, then you should select Normal difficulty. When you enter Eidos-7 for the first time you will be able to take off Eve’s Diving Suit leaving her with just the Skin Suit. This removes the shields and gives you more of a soulslike experience. At this difficulty you will have to master your Perfect Dodge and Perfect Parry if you want any chance to make it through the Wastelands unscathed.

No matter how much you change the settings, Stellar Blade isn’t designed for the true soulslike experience. You’ll still be able to pause during battle and other luxuries most soulslikes don’t afford.

How to build Eve

Eve / Sony Interactive Entertainment

Eve has a huge number of gear and skill tree options, and if you want the easiest time with the game you will want to focus on just one thing. When unlocking the skill tree, you’ll want to spec into the abilities like Ambush and Blink first, but after that you can focus more intentionally on your attack type.

Personally, I found the Beta Skills the most valuable for me, but Burst or Tachy could also work. When building out your skill tree, focus on the skills you use the most, and don’t worry too much about the others. There are also Exospines and Gear that will help you deal more damage, and more quickly charge up these special attacks. It’s far better to try and match all of these parts into one skill than spread them thinly, as if you spec everything in one skill you’ll be able to consistently use it without relying on your normal attacks.

How to quit the game

Stellar Blade / Sony Interactive Entertainment

Stellar Blade auto-saves at certain points, and there isn’t an option to save manually. The most reliable way to save is by sitting down at a camp. However, if you want to check that your game is up to date, you should quit the game by going through the menu and choosing quit. This will tell you how long ago your last save was, and you can see whether you need to go back and save or not.

The point of no return

Stellar Blade / Sony Interactive Entertainment

As mentioned, Stellar Blade doesn’t have a manual save system, and your game saves every time you sit down. This means that you can’t save and go back to certain points. The point of no return really is just that. After the Great Desert a screen pops up and tells you to finish everything you want to before continuing. What it doesn’t tell you is that after you finish the game, you won’t be able to return. Absolutely everything needs to be completed before this point.

In fact, when you save in front of the final boss you are stuck there forever. You cannot leave that area, you can only fight the boss and finish the game. You can begin New Game+ and this will delete your old save file. This is probably the most important point to impress. You can choose either exploring the world OR finishing the game, so make sure you’ve done literally everything you want when this screen comes up. The important thing to remember about this, is that there are more collectible cans past the point of no return, so you’ll have to make sure you’ve scoured the rest of the map to get as many as you can before this.