Best upgrades to make game easier on later levels in normal difficulty.

[OMGWTFLMAO]

Hello. I'm currently in Chapter 5. So far, I've been reading best upgrades to prioritize to make the game easier. I've been conserving ammo and exploring every nook and cranny while stealth killing enemies up to this point. I've been reading guides and posts on what upgrades are good to use and prioritize. So far, I have 18k gels on me waiting to be spent. I'm playing on normal difficulty.
So far, here are the current upgrades I have:

Sprint Level 3
HandGun critical lvl 4
Handgun ammo lvl 3 (can hold 20 bullets so far)
Shotgun ammo lvl 2
Matches capacity lvl 4

I was planning on getting Handgun critical to lvl 5 and I am 2k gels away from that goal. But I'm wondering if the 50% handgun critical is worth it? Is 30% enough to critical normal enemies? Is the 18k gel worth using on the other upgrades instead? I was thinking of upgrading the harpoon bolts as I was reading how good they are especially when dealing with the spider lady. Or is the flash bolt more worth it?
Right now, I want to be able to finish the game decently without any difficulty especially on the later chapters where I'm sure to meet more intimidating enemies, so I can start looking forward to Evil Within 2. Putting the game on easy difficulty is out of the question as the easiest I want to play all games is under normal difficulty.

[Earth.Is.Flat]

on normal difficulty you can spent however you want, and you will always have enough ammo to blast every single enemy.

[OMGWTFLMAO]

Originally posted by Earth.Is.Flat:

on normal difficulty you can spent however you want, and you will always have enough ammo to blast every single enemy.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to reply. but it's not exactly what I"m looking for >_<. The truth is, you can call this as my 2nd playthrough. I read the same thing on other forums and websites. By the time I reached the boss on chapter 5, I had barely any ammo or even matches (plenty of healing though). Thankfully, I still had an early chapter 3 save file that I continued and from there I started conserving ammo, taking the locker keys I missed, and going on a different upgrade path. The big difference is that I spent the gels upgrading Handgun critical right away instead of putting sprint to lvl 4, maxing agony bolts capacity, etc.

So I don't make the same mistake anymore, I'm going to treat this as if I'm on hard difficulty and kind of prepare for later chapters by prioritizing upgrades that will help me in the long run as I encounter newer enemies.

Edit: I read somewhere were people were talking about being able to kill things and bosses with 2-3 bow shots. I could not find the posts anymore and what websites I read them from. There was even a post where they were saying the spider lady can be killed with 1-3 bow shots. I didn't pay attention much on it but now I wish i did.

[Outlaw Kas]

Hi, I just recently went through TEW in order to prep for the sequel, so here are some tips that I found useful:

Just about every enemy is weak against fire, the best way to capitalize on this, especially for bosses, is to upgrade the harpoon bolt to level 5 where it gets a bonus fire damage ability that will ignite most enemies on fire and even Laura. The harpoon bolt only takes two crafting material so it's easy to have a good supply of them.

What Holychair said about matches is wise, it's best to conserve ammo when possible by downing enemies in a group and lighting them ablaze, even enemies who were not initially set on fire can still be caught up in it if they walk through their burning comrades. Now I had a problem conserving matches throughout the early to mid game, and ended up being in a sticky situation in dealing with Laura(Spider Lady) at one point, she kept respawning from corpses that I couldn't destroy because no matches....

So a tip to conserve matches is to not use them unnecessarily, enemies that you stealth kill will remain dead, enemies that drop loot are dead and do not need to be burned, enemies that have been killed with a critical headshot remain dead as well.

Hold off on unnecessary upgrades like lvl 5 ammo, TEW is pretty good at keeping you under pressure by being slightly stingy with ammo, so it's doubtful you'll ever need that much capacity. Instead focus on skills that make weapons more impactful, like criticals and damage.

Don't be stingy with the medical kits you find, it may be tempting to save them for when you think you really need them, but they have a debilitating effect and should not be used in combat. More importantly they give you a slight increase to your overall maximum health, so keep one just in case but always use any extras.

[Earth.Is.Flat]

you should not upgrade from 0 to 4 at once, you upgrade one level at the time, maximum 2 levels, then go to the next category. example you increase pistol damage, and critical and sprinting at once. dont go full sprint and ignore everything else until you maxed it.

[Earth.Is.Flat]

Originally posted by holychair:

Originally posted by Earth.Is.Flat:

you should not upgrade from 0 to 4 at once, you upgrade one at the time, maximum 2 levels, then go to the next category. example you increase pistol damage, and critical and sprinting at once. dont go full sprint and ignore everything else until you maxed it.

I agree. Basically, the cost of upgrading something tells us alot. On my last run on nightmare, no upgrades (and no keys) I still collected all the gel to see how much it would actually be in the end. It was about 200k. So, given that we get about that much on a run (plus what would be in the lockers), it is not cost effective to invest into upgrading e.g. the harpoon bolts to max.

I think the idea behind the last upgrade level is often that you get it in a NG+ (where you get the double amount of gel anyway).

There's lots of very cheap upgrades making life easier, so I think it might be a good idea to always look through all the options and then chose the most cost effective ones.

There's exceptions, though. For akumu, it might be a good idea to solely focus on sprint and flashbolts just to have an easier time at the burning house in level 6. (And of course you wouldn't upgrade your health and syringes on that difficulty.)

hey holychair, how is it to play the game 100+ hours, i mean its not a pleasant environment to stay that much longer than nessessary... what did you get out playing it for 240h, mentally? you must have truly discovered the evil whitin yourself by now! did you defeat it? XD

[Earth.Is.Flat]

Originally posted by holychair:

Originally posted by Earth.Is.Flat:

hey holychair, how is it to play the game 100+ hours, i mean its not a pleasant environment to stay that much longer than nessessary... what did you get out playing it for 240h, mentally? you must have truly discovered the evil whitin yourself by now! did you defeat it? XD

While it’s not an exactly pleasant environment to stay in, it actually has some places of exceptional beauty – like the vista over the lake in chapter 6 just before we get to the burning house fight. I always stay there for a minute and savor the peace and quiet before going on.

Survival horror is my most favourite genre of computer games since RE1. I’m not one of those guys who either like RE1/2/3 and hate RE4 or the other way around. To me, all of Mikamis games are masterpieces in their own way. I even like RE5/6 for what they are – actually, only RE7 left me surprisingly cold.

“The Evil Within” is the perfect spiritual RE4 successor to me. Together with REmake and RE2 it’s probably my most favourite game. I also love the story – even after three years I never skip a single cutscene. Part of why I still play the game is its incredibly good pacing, something I miss in the sequel. In “The Evil Within” you start out weak and injured, then you have to get by with stealth – until you finally get the firepower to fight back. There’s lots of people who don’t like arena fights and zombies with guns in survival horror games. I however do appreciate how Mikami deftly mixed them with the other gameplay elements and I think they bring additional variety to the table. And of course the epic bossfights are legend.

I guess even with all the hours I have in it, the game is still interesting for me to play because even as I already know how to deal with every situation, there’s so many ways to do things differently or set new challenges for myself. My favourite run format is “nightmare, no upgrades, no keys”.

About the evil within oneself … well, defeating it is a lifelong challenge I’d say. ;)

that no upgrades and no keys run sounds like quality. not having to worry about picking up gel all the time, must be nice and you keep focused on the journey and environment without searching all the time. i will try that if i play it again. im playing it on nighmare right now. im where you jump down to meet joseph and juli where she was trapped in the water). i feel i have the same amount of ammo as i did in survival. and i dont have to be stingy with it either. i shoot everything that moves.

yeah the game has its beautiful and peaceful places. when im done with the game i will have that empty void, then i need another quality game but they are hard to come by. im really picky. it´s like chasing the dragon for heroin junkies LOL... i hope they could produce more games like this! many people say it is bad, so if it`s bad it also should be quite easy to make more of it. but they only come along ever once in a while....

[OMGWTFLMAO]

Thanks all. I read all about the conserving ammo and when to burn or not to burn corpses. The big problem on my first play through was at the end of Chapter 5 where you have to deal waves of enemies. I didn't upgrade pistol critical so I spent more bullets than necessary. When I restarted fresh from Chapter 3, I was able to get all the locker keys I missed and from then on, spent every locker key I got getting gels exclusively from lockers. By the time I reached the same part in chapter 5, I was able to fully upgrade pisotl ciritical to max and it made a huge difference with head shots exploding and conserving matches. By the time it was over, my stock is still easily at full capacity espcially the matches so upgrading pistol to max critical really helped out as almost every head shot was a kill shot and I was able to use those dead bodies to burn others.

The problem for me with burning bodies while enemies are still around was the animation. I wait for the enemies to be near the corpse before burning it but because of the animation, I would get hit and get interrupted. Same thing for when I shoot down enemies. They would flail around while they're down and hit me interrupting the animation.

But so far, so good. I'm in the middle of chapter 6 atm and had no problem on the wave after wave of enemies the chapter throws at you because of pistol criticals. I was also able to upgrade the harpoon to level 4 and it was extremely good. I killed the sadist with the chainsaw easily with just 3 harpoons to the head. I'm definitely going for the last level of the harpoon for fire. I'm currently at 30k gels so 20k gels to go! I never used the harpoon at all so I still have about 60 parts. Plenty enough to make bolts for when I encounter enemies that are not able to be killed fast with the pistol and shotgun.

I'm also hoping the lvl 5 harpoon will make future bosses easy enough. I'm playing the game for story but I refuse to play on easy mode just like other games I play. I play on normal and never on easy difficulty.

Edit: I also play for the exploration and atmosphere.

[AdityaLightRex]

nd I just have wayy tooo muchhhh ammo can't even pick more ...just do headshots make em count ...or shoot on knees and burn enemies best way shotgun is best for that