How to "Git Gud" (WIP)

Are you an embarrassment to breakers everywhere? Do you look up to the sky and curse the Abyss King for the difficulty it imposes onto you? Do you want to learn how to become an elite breaker fast? You've come to the right guide!

Forewarning

This guide is made on the very first version of the Early Access Release (ver 0.5.107552) over time this guide may become out of date as updates come in. I will continue to update it as much as I can.

Current guide version: 1.0.2 for v0.5.1.107947, Jan 16th 2025
Changes:

• Fixed outpost NPC names
  
• Additional updates for the new version haven't been added in here yet, I just fixed the NPC names!
  
• Added misc section with a subsection regarding "OPS"
  
• Made parrying it's own section

First and foremost, this game requires you learn through failure, if you don't like that, I recommend refunding now.

Secondly, the game is significantly easier if you have friends, even if it's just one other person you'll find it's a much better experience. That's what it was built around after all!

Lastly, this guide is heavily a work in progress! If you have anything to add let me know!

Currency and Resources

Several types of resources exist in the game, here's a quick rundown of each of them.

Bright Blood

This will be the most plentiful currency you find in the game, you can find it by killing enemies, in chests, and breaking destructible crates. These are used to buy weapons and open certain loot crates.They look like magenta crystals.

Material

These will be your second most plentiful currency, these are used for repairing shops, upgrading, and buying weapons in the Outpost. You'll generally find these most frequently in resource caches around the Undergrowth.

Medigem

Medigems are obscenely important, they're used to purchase more medkits before and during a run. You obtain medigems by picking those yellow glowing cube flowers you see across the Overgrowth.

Key

Keys are used to open structures throughout the Overgrowth, you'll find them occasionally while exploring.

Golden Ration

Golden Rations are used for the upgrades Pherus Bit provides in the Outpost. You'll earn these at the end of each cycle—whether you run out of lives or defeat the Abyss King.You'll see a bar at the bottom the next time a cycle ends when you speak to Pherus showing your progress towards the next Ration. Golden Rations can also be used to purchase new Sycoms (the little drone that follows you around).
I'm not sure what earns you points towards Golden Rations at the end of the cycle, but I presume it's based on how much you've done within that cycle. If anyone has more information please explain in the comments!

Abyss Stone

Abyss Stones are unlocked by defeating the Crowns, they can be used to purchase new characters.

Cores

These are for upgrading your Sycom or purchasing new upgrade tiers from Pherus. To get a core you must find large skeleton corpses throughout the Overgrowth, each one will award you 1 part of a core, you must collect 4 parts of a core to obtain one core.

Basic Gameplay

Like its predecessor, Hyper Light Drifter, Hyper Light Breaker tends to keep its cards against its chest when it comes to giving the player information, letting the player figure things out for themselves. This often leads to some players being confused or misunderstanding key mechanics.

Where's My Healing?

You do not have the medkit unlocked at the start of the game, and I will be first to tell you that's sucks, and is annoying, so if you want to fast-track getting healing just focus on exploring the Overgrowth until you fail your first cycle by losing all your lives, which then you'll more than likely get your first Golden Ration, use this to buy your first Medkit capacity module at Pherus, Tier 1 on the right-hand side.
After this, you'll now need to have enough Medigems to get a Medkit for every run, if you don't have Medigems, get started picking flowers like you're playing Don't Starve Together on the brink of insanity, if that reference makes any sense. One Medkit will heal 75 HP or can be used to revive another player, although I don't recommend using them to revive another player unless absolutely necessary since it's more expensive to refill Medkits during a run. It's cheaper to go to a shrine to revive another player for only 100 Bright Blood instead of using your precious Medkits.

Refilling Medkits at shrines during runs will progressively get more expensive and the price will not reset until the cycle ends. The cost of reviving another player will also increase by 25 Bright Blood every time you revive a player, and will not reset until the end of a cycle.

Dashing

Dashing is great for mobility outside your hoverboard, like if you need to escape enemies. Each dash will use 1 pip of stamina (the bar under your healthbar).

You can use this to also to climb up vertically when you dash against a wall or vertical slope. GIF below shows how dashing vertically is better than double jumping.

Parrying

Successfully parrying an attack will heal any red health you've lost. Meaning if you hit by an attack, and then parry another attack, you will regain the health you lost.
Parrying is omni-directional meaning you do not have to be facing an attack to parry it, if an enemy attacks you from behind you can parry it without facing them.

Friends Are Your Best Friend

I've said this before, but this game is balanced around multiplayer, if you have other people with you, your chances of survival go up drastically. If you're able to find other people to play the game with I highly recommend it, you can more than likely find people in the official Discord and there are plenty of voice channels made specifically for teaming up.

Durability

Just about every item you'll obtain in the Overgrowth will have durability, every time you die you will lose one segment of durability from each item you have equipped. The amount of durability an item has is indicated by the amount of segmented bars on the bottom of it's icon in your loadout menu.

Durability loss can be easily prevented provided you don't die. Extracting during a run in the Overgrowth instead of dying will not result in any durability being lost.

Danger Level

Underneath your minimap will be your current "danger level" a bar that will progressively fill with yellow as you progress in a run, the higher this bar fills the more dangerous enemies you'll begin to encounter, if you've played Risk of Rain 2 before you'll be somewhat familiar with this idea. However, the bar does not fill up based on how long you've been doing a run, but how much you've done during a single run. Such as opening crates, equipping Holobytes/weapons, and so on, the bar only fills up for your current run, meaning if you die or extract the bar will return to 0 for your next run.

I recommend keeping an eye on this bar, and extract as soon as it starts getting too high for your liking if you want to avoid death. Remember: you can extract as many times as you'd like during a cycle! A cycle will only end if you lose all your rezzes.

You can't swim, but your hoverboard floats!

If you attempt to jump into the water you will zone-out, however, you're able to use your hoverboard to traverse across water! Just be sure to watch how much hoverboard stamina you have left while doing so.

Miscellaneous Things

What The Hell Does "OPS" Mean

OPS stands for "Odds Per Stuff" which is essentially your luck stat, it determines loot rarity and the likelihood of hitting max damage with your weapons.

NPCs

There are many NPCs you'll encounter in HLB, here is a rundown!

Pherus Bit

Breaker Captain Pherus Bit is your go-to guy for permanent upgrades you'll see em' right where you spawn in upon opening the game. He's also where you can decode the fragments you get from monoliths found around the Overgrowth for some extra lore.

Rol Bestifhurnis

Bladesmith Rol Bestifhurnis is where you can buy and sell blades. You're able to gift him Golden Rations to be able to upgrade weapons you have.

Cobra Balta

Rail Mechanic Cobra Balta is where you can buy and sell rails. You're able to gift her Golden Rations to be able to upgrade rails you have. Her shop must be repaired before she appears in the Outpost.

Skeksis

Tinkerer Skeksis is where you can buy and sell holobytes, armor, and amps. Their shop must be repaired before they appear in the Outpost.

Overgrowth Vendors

Vendors can appear in the Overgrowth and are indicated on the map, they can sell various goods such as Medkits for Bright Blood

[Mumbzi]

great job dud

[D00mnoodle]

If anone reads this please take this advice, you don't have to kill crowns on your first run. It's perfectly fine to do a few extractions while you find synergistic holo's, farm meds and improve your gear. I highly recommend checking the blacksmith and gun merchant for purple weapons as these make a huge difference. Upgrading them will make seemingly impossible challenges such as crowns into addictively fun fights. I went from dying within my first 5 minutes each run in my first hours to killing my first crown solo today. And i'm not good at games, just keep at it and don't give up :)

[TrixxedHeart]

@the_xlk I asked around in the official Discord and you should receive the Medigems no matter what if you pick up the flowers.

The only situation where you wouldn't receive Medigems is if you're in a multiplayer session and the host picks up a Medigem flower, which does not get shared to the team. However if a non-host player picks up a medigem flower all players will receive one. Likely a bug.

[the_xlk]

Don't you ALSO have to be at full health when collecting flowers to get medigems? I was getting +5 health from them when not at full health... Which was way too often.

[Crxssroad]

Thanks for this! Cleared up some things I was confused about.

[ezra]

Commenting for a boost to this. Good stuff!

[SAVE THE GIBBONS]

Great starter guide

[adambjones]

There are some hidden vendors in the overgrowth that sell med-kits, keys, and core segments for blood. They seem pretty rare though.

[crossing blades]

should add to the guide that the cost to revive another player with brightblood goes up by 25 each time

[Val, who wants the ducks back.]

You can *refill* medkits during a run at any shrine during a run using medigems you've collected this cycle, the cost increases every time you do so in the same cycle, as far as I can tell, not run. To use medkits in the first place, like it says in the guide, you have to unlock them with a golden ration. Pherus is the character normally at the desk right next to where you spawn in, you can also buy upgrades to things like hoverboard energy there.