Summary
Unlike other boomer shooters, what makesBeyond Citadelso special is its focus on realistic gunplay, particularly highlighting the innate challenges other games forget, like jamming and ammo loss from premature reloading. Beyond Citadel, however, doesn’t shy away from these realities, and incorporates them in such a way that it actually feels rewarding to learn and master.
That said, it can still be a daunting and confusing mechanic for new players. It might even serve as a distraction — when learning these elements, you might overlook other in-game aspects, like searching for weapons or other resources. Therefore, knowing a few key pointers can help you maintain priorities and help smoothen your journey.
8Reserve Your Alt-Fire Ammo For Specific Weapons
Most weapons in Beyond Citadel have an alt-fire mode, sharing limited ammo across multiple guns in your inventory. In most cases, thisalt-fire is much stronger than your primary fire, usually having better damage output, range, and area of effect (or AoE). However, because theirammo is scarce and already shared, you’ll rarely get to use them.
Thus, you shouldsave up your alt-fire ammo exclusively for certain weapons, since some definitely utilize it better than others. For instance, the Machine Rifle’s alt-fire, powered by Energy Cells, can decimate enemies. It’sfar better than any energy-based alt-fire, so reserving its ammo for the Machine Rifle is a worthwhile tactic.
Similar to Machine Rifle’s priority with Energy Cells, you should save up your Rocket ammo for the Meta-Magnum MkII sidearm.
7Use Gold Only For Weapon Modifications
You can generally use gold to buy four things:shields, supplies, weapons, and weapon modifications. Unfortunately, you’ll quickly find that their prices are way too steep, forcing you to choose which to get first. While you can find shields, supplies, and weapons through exploration,weapon mods are far rarer — and that’s where your gold should go.
Weapon-switching is an exciting part of any boomer shooter, but all it takes isone brief vulnerable moment to lose your whole progress, especially in such a fast-paced title. Instead of widening your arsenal, focus on refining it, creatingversatile and reliable weapons that’ll remain useful in the long run.
6Always Go For The Stronger Armor
When looking for armor, you can equip one of three types —Light, Medium, or Heavy— affecting your damage reduction and movement speed. However, these add-ons deplete rather quickly, but you canreplenish them via either armor shards dropped from enemies or vests.
However, instead of replenishing, you might be tempted to change your depleted armor for a new one, regardless of type, but you shouldalways favor the heavier armor. Among the three, the Heavy armor is, by far, the most practical set, and, similarly, Medium is better than Light armor, particularly because your base HP is so low. Thus, despite the mobility trade-off,make sure you prioritize damage reduction.
5Avoid Reloading Prematurely
In Beyond Citadel, you canpermanently lose the ammo left in your magazine after a reloadunless you quickly pick it up. Although it adds realism, this can lead to a huge ammo deficiency, especially in thelate-game phase where most enemies practically eat bullets.
As such, make sure you eitheronly reload if you have negligible bullets leftor develop a habit of picking up your magazine shortly after reloading. It’s worth noting that this mechanicdoesn’t apply to every weapon, like the Meta-Magnum, Sawn-off Repeater, and the Heavy MG. However, when it comes to weapons like the Whalegun 4X, every bullet counts, so think twice when you’re about to reload.
While a partially spent magazine may disappear if not picked quickly, you’re able to remove that restriction by leveling up your Envy virtue.
4Use Every Weapon Equally
With so many weapons and ammo types, you’rebound to develop favorites and use one weapon more than the other. However, the game highly discourages this practice — if you find some ammo for a specific gun, youwon’t find its ammo again for a long time, rendering it useless in life-or-death scenarios.
To make sure you don’t end up with empty guns clogging your inventory,use each one sparingly and for specific encounters. Use your sidearm and shotgun for close-range, your small and large caliber weapons for mid-range, and your sniper rifle for long-range engagements.
3Focus Solely On The Boss During Boss Fights
At the end of each zone, you get to fight a boss, often using a special weapon. While these may look intimidating, they’rebasicallybullet sponges, andtheir damage output is surprisingly weak. So, rather than wasting time clearing the arena,stay mobile and only keep the boss in your crosshairs.
Thearenas are fairly straightforward with minimal verticality and tools, so they don’t play a huge role in the fight. Besides that, you’ll find a ton of regular enemies on the far edges, but you cansimply ignore them by moving around, completely evading their projectiles. The only thing that’s left, then, is the boss itself, which you take down by just constantly shooting it.
Use the Machine Rifle A2’s alt-fire, the Energy Laser, against bosses since it completely shreds their health.
2Use Your Food Supply Before The Bloodbag
Food is a vital resource in Beyond Citadel as itaffects your Lifeblood, which, in turn, directly caps your maximum HP — the higher your Lifeblood, the higher your max health. Additionally,consuming food grants bonus HP, giving you another incentive to keep your Hunger Meter high.
Meanwhile,Bloodbags are the main way to restore HP, but they’re essentially useless if your Lifeblood Meter is too low. Thus, food not only makes your Bloodbags effective by reducing hunger, but even provides roughly the same HP as one. Using yourfood supply before an encounter keeps you much safer, preventing wasted Bloodbags that restore minimal HP.
Using Bloodbags reduces your Lifeblood.
1Invest In The Right Virtues
Beyond Citadel’s leveling system is unique and forgiving, but some stats definitely hold more weight than others. You canfind up to one Virtue Point per level and invest it in any virtue(or stat) you’d like, and you’re able to also respec at any time. While each virtue’s importance may depend on your gameplay settings,Pride and Greed are universally the most beneficial to invest inearly on.
With Pride raising your maximum vitality, stamina, and Lifeblood, youdrastically increase your survivability based on stats alone. Greed, on the other hand, raises your mobility, letting youkill, evade, and escape, far more effortlessly. Regardless of build, these two virtues will aid you in desperate times.
