Tips for Role Playing Disco Elysium

Disco Elysium is a one of its kind, role playing game. It is very different than other RPG. To better enjoy it, you must discard your normal mindset, which you use in playing mainstream RPG. You are not playing to win, but role playing. Min-Max is absolutely the wrong way to do it.
In this guide, I would offer tips for you to better understand and enjoy the game.

Foreword

• In this game, there is no combat but there are lots of texts. In this regard, DE is similar to an AVG, Adventure game, but DE really is a RPG in its purest form.
  
• It is possible to die, but it is very easy to finish the game. You don’t need to worry about your build. Any build can carry you into the end.
  
• There is not true or official ending. You just play the game in whatever ways you like. You do not need to find a perfect build for this game. Every build has its own merits.
  
• Instead of combat, there are lots of skill checks in dialogue. The chances of success depend on your stats. White Check can be tried again after you increase your corresponding skill, while Red Check can only be tried once.
  
• It is ok to fail a Red Check and you will find another way around it. It is also fine to fail a white check, which you have a very high chance of success. After spending one skill point, you can try the white check again. There is no need to save scum. You still need to save often, just in case.
  
• You should not actively try every check, just because you can and you can work around a fail check. Your character is the sum of things you do and do not do. You refuse some checks because it does not fit your character.
  
• DE doesn’t have a very high replay value, IMO. You just unlock different dialogue and information by using different characters, but the main story is somewhat similar in different play through. Due to this, you really need to make your first play count.
  
• The advice which I offer is to play a character you feel like yourself. This character does not need to be perfect and powerful and it is ok to make mistake along the way.

What are you?

DE is truly a role play game. Most RPG has a very good system to simulate our interaction with physic world. For example, DND’s system mainly build around how combat work. FPS game is another example of simulating how shooting work. DE tries to simulate how our minds work.

In DE, you are playing a cop, who forget everything and still have to solve a murder case. You character stats consists of 4 attributes, 24 skills and a dozen thoughts.

Attributes

Attributes define your character in a general way. Attribute equal the initial level of skills and cap to increase your skills.
For example, you have one initial point on Physique skills and you can only increase these skills once, if you have just 1 Phys. Some thoughts can raise or remove the cap. Attributes cannot be changed during the game. In contrast, you can change your skills and thoughts by spending skill points.

• Intellect: Raw brain power, how smart you are, and your capacity to reason.
  
• Psyche: Sensitivity, how emotionally intelligent you are, and your power to influence yourself and others.
  
• Physique: Your musculature, how strong you are. How well your body is built.
  
• Motorics: Your senses, how agile you are. How well you move your body.

Skills

Skills are the bread and butter in this game. It has two different roles.

Skill Check

First, skills are tied to skill checks, which come in two flavors: Red checks and White checks. It represents how good you are at overcoming obstacles. Clothes, drugs, and the Thought Cabinet provide a combination of bonuses and minuses, allowing you to bridge the gap and make checks easier.

Personality

Second, skills represent your varies aspects of personality. During the game, your personality would offer suggestion or even talk with you. Sometimes different personality would offer contradicted suggestion. When this happen, think of it as a process of decision making inside your brain. You do not need to listen to your personality every time, since some personality is not necessary what you would like you to be. Think who you would like to be before making decision. Choose what you feel it fit your character.

PS: A signature skill, selected at start, receives a +1 to that skill and also increase cap of all other horizontal placed skills.
Thanks _Kostas 2 for pointing it out.

Thought Cabinet

There is already good resource about thought cabinet, so I just put them together here.

“The Thought Cabinet is a special feature in Disco Elysium, giving a glimpse into the head of the Cop and the thoughts swirling within. The choices you make during the game can unlock different Thoughts to "Research", basically allowing you to choose what your character's ideals are.” – quote from discoelysium.fandom.com

Ideas can be ideologies, personality traits, world views and hobbies.

Political alignment

“Disco Elysium has a robust alignment system, tracking your cop's alignment across four ideologies of the world: Communism, fascism, moralism and ultra-liberalism.

Ideologies are developed over the course of the game, not picked at character creation. There are always little integers in the background, counting everything you say and after a certain threshold - usually four remarks - one of your skills will pop up, suggesting you make it official. The opportunity to espouse your agenda usually comes in the form of “political forks”, that is: dialogue choices usually consisting of four political options. Try to remain impartial and you will drift toward moralism (Elysium's centrism).

This is not an instant commitment, but rather, it unlocks a Thought Cabinet project that you can internalize to gain bonuses and define the cop's political standing. The four major thoughts are supported by a number of other thoughts, and the game will respond to any combination of those. Your political beliefs have mechanical implications. They're not just for role playing. As said, each is a thought, which you can develop in your Thought Cabinet, revealing some rather dramatic effects. Thus, ideologies strongly affect the way you play the game.” – quote from discoelysium.fandom.com

One thing to hold in mind is that the political alignment above is not necessary exactly the same as in our real world. It is quite similar though.

"Important to note - You don't have to internalize a thought in order to access the associated dialog. However - just adding the thoughts to your inventory, without internalizing them, affects the way you think and speak.

For example - once your Endurance proposes you try out Fascism, you either discard the thought outright, or you'll have fascist dialog options as long as the thought remains in your thought cabinet (unless you internalize and erase it). So consider carefully which thoughts you want to pursue" Quote from guide below.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1894736429

Map

A Potential Map of Elysium

It is done by using in-game descriptions / context clues / real-world analogues and weather.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DiscoElysium/comments/h97hvq/potential_map_of_elysium_climate/

Better City Map

City map with notes

A Full Map of Disco Elysium

A Full Map of Disco Elysium [SPOILERS][www.google.com.hk]

Other resources

Below is a guide book in great detail. I would strongly suggest against min-maxing and I don’t think you need to worry about skill points and money.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1948691016

[Unseenmole]

this game has replay value up the wazoo, idk what your talking abt. istg im gonna play this game at LEAST 3 times.

[JundlandBanshee]

ENCYCLOPEDIA: Save Scumming reloading a game from save files to achieve preferable results. If used frequently it will likely result in your total number of Loads to significant out-ratio your Saves.

LOGIC: Saving a lot, but not loading game except to continue play and to fix glitches could be the considered the opposite of save-scumming.

[pustboxer]

man i was THIS close to dropping the game entirely and just thinking, "why am i not enjoying this game? am i just an idiot who can't understand the dialogue? is my gamer brain so rotted that i can't enjoy a game that doesn't have guns and explosions constantly?"
but after reading this, i guess i passed a skill check in my brain because i'm gonna try it again. and this time, i'm just going to make the harry dubois the best detective he can be, and i'm not going to worry about mid-maxing and efficiency and having the 'correct' outcome.
get in tune with the game. ride the wave. feel the life.

[bamboozled]

Real men live with their bad dialog choices! Nah, I get it. God the writing in this game is so damn good.

[Vecho]

Well, I save often in case of bug or misinterpretation of the dialogue, but I do not load just to get the result I want from RNG. The later is save scum.

[bamboozled]

"There is no need to save scum. You still need to save often, just in case."

Bit of a contradiction there

[ElfSelf]

>It is ok to fail a Red Check and you will find another way around it. It is also fine to fail a white check, which you have a very high chance of success. After spending one skill point, you can try the white check again. There is no need to save scum. You still need to save often, just in case.

Incorrect. I NEEDED Kim to dance with me and the 50x save scumming was worth every second of reloading.

[Bohan]

I wish I would have read this before my first playthrough, because I did play it like any other RPG. Not that I was trying to get the perfect build, moreso that I tried to do everything the game had to offer and picked whatever options made the most sense to me personally. Now I'm on my second playthrough and trying to roleplay, but I did a substantial amount of the side quests my first time.

[Glorious Greebo]

The 'alternate' endings are the different paths you can take along the way, as failing or being picky often unlocks more than you'd think.

[Moriturhus]

This game is definitely replayable, if you are willing to play different roles. Wanna be a Dirty Harry-style hardass cop on the first playthrough? You can and should definitely RP that. I will admit, if you try to replay the game again as the same hardass cop it won't be that interesting. So try a different role: how about a broken-down, drug-obsessed failure whose only ambition is to hit rock-bottom in his life as fast and hard as possible? There's another replay for you. How about an analytical detective obsessed with solving cases using intelligence and observation?Or an over-sensitive, emotional empath who concentrates on the feelings and psychology of people? I am on my second playthrough and so far it's been great. Of course, nothing can duplicate the intense rush of being plunged into this alternate universe for the first time; it is truly a unique experience. But the different roles you can play in this game make it worth going back to.