Deathloop Beginner's Guide - Tips and Features
Welcome to IGN's official Deathloop Beginner's Guide and Wiki. In this section, we'll cover the basics before you jump into the story and highlight some of the important features to ensure you get the most out of your playthrough.
For helpful tips and guides for common questions, check out our additional sections by clicking the links below.
Deathloop's Story
Set in what appears to be an alternate universe in a time period reminiscent of the "Swinging Sixties", a man named Colt Vaughn wakes up on a beach, with no memory of who he is or how he got there. It will soon become apparent that he's woken up on this beach before - in fact, every day he will wake up on this same beach, located on an island known as Blackreef.
Blackreef is home to a temporal anomaly, one that has been rigged by the mysterious AEON Program to replay the same day over and over on a loop - which has become known to the members of the AEON Program (called Eternalists) as "The First Day". The leaders of this group, known as The Visionaries, have ensured that Blackreef will be a self-sustaining center for cultural enlightenment.
However, as The First Day progresses, it becomes increasingly obvious that both the Visionary leaders and their Eternalist flock are destructive, violent, depraved, and otherwise ill-equipped to live out this day over and over. Colt makes it his mission to find a way to break the loop, armed with the knowledge he can learn and retain between loops - unlike the rest on this island. This task will involve finding a way to locate and kill all of the Visionary leaders on Blackreef in the span of the single day, but he'll be constantly hounded by Julianna Blake - the only other person on this island who remembers events between loops - and she's made it her personal mission to hunt down and stop Colt by any means necessary.
Besides Julianna, your targets will include the following Visionaries and founders of the AEON Program:
- Aleksis Dorsey - Cutthroat Businessman and extreme party-thrower
- Charlie Montague - Computer Genius and Live-Action Game Creator
- Egor Serling - lead scientist and founder of the AEON Program
- Fia Zborowska - Spacey Artist and supplier of funds
- Frank Spicer - Singer, Musician, and paranoid of Slabs
- Harriet Morse - Spiritual Guide and speaker
- Wenjie Evans - lead scientist and creator of Trinkets and Residium harvesting
How the Loop Works
Each day, Colt will wake up on the beach, gather his gear, and prepare to investigate up to four different parts of the island over four different periods of the day:
Time of Day | Morning | Noon | Afternoon | Evening |
Districts | The Complex | Fristad Rock | Karl's Bay | Updaam |
While you may only have limited chances to explore Blackreef each loop, you can spend as much time as you like in an area without worrying about any time limits. When you are ready to move to the next time period, you can take one of several tunnel exits to slip back to your "home base" and prepare for your next outing.
You are only able to visit up to four places in a single day, and much can change over time. You'll find that many Eternalists prepare for large celebrations in the evening, becoming increasingly rowdy and destructive as the day goes on. A relatively quiet street in Updaam in the morning may become a crowded celebration in the evening, with debris blocking paths, and newly opened windows or doors creating new ones.
At the end of a tutorial section, you'll learn that each of the Visionaries will try to lay low for most of the day, but will be vulnerable at a certain point in the day in a certain district. It is at these points you'll be able to track down and eliminate your targets, but don't expect things to always go the way you plan them.
If Colt is killed, or you conclude your explorations in the evening, you'll be forced to start a new loop, and Colt will once more wake up on the beach. You'll lose any weapons, trinkets, or magical abilities tied to Slabs you found over the day - retaining only the knowledge of your discoveries that have been made. In this way, discoveries are key to advancing Colt's quest - as learning the code to a safe, or way to easily locate and kill a target will still hold true on the next loop.
How Long to Beat Deathloop
On average, you can expect Deathloop's main story to take around 14-15 hours to complete, and around 19-20 hours to complete it alongside extra quests, and up to 25-26 hours for completionists.
How to Keep Items Between Loops
Thankfully, Colt will be able to learn a way to harness a substance called Residium, and once gained, will be able to infuse a weapon, trinket, or slab found to keep it on his person after a loop or getting killed.
By completing the final tutorial, Colt will be able to harness Residium by infusing it from random glowing objects found all around Blackreef - and by infusing the bodies of Visionaries. Before a loop is finished, you can spend Residium to infuse an item that will always appear in your loadout in future loops. Excess items can also be sacrificed for more Residium, but sacrificed items will not appear in the next loop (unless its one of Colt's starting items).
How to Access Your Inventory
Due to the nature of how Loops work, Colt will be unable to equip trinkets or carry more than three weapons when exploring Blackreef. You also won't be able to see the name of the trinkets you pick up - only their rarity and associated image. This is likely to prevent people for exploiting loops by finding and equipping trinkets then restarting the loop mid-mission.
Instead, you will only be able to access your list of Trinkets, Slabs, and weapons in between districts when managing your loadout and choosing your next location or time of day. Since you can't see the name or the number of trinkets you've accumulated during an outing, you'll need to rely on being able to remember what the icon for a trinket means when you pick it up, and think about if you want to risk getting killed and losing the trinket, or head back to the tunnels to keep your new gear.
Trinkets and Slabs
Most of Colt's progression in power will come down to the Trinkets and Slabs you acquire over the loops you experience, and which ones you infuse to keep with you.
Trinkets are much like the Bonecharms and Runes from Dishonored that invoke passive bonuses, and some can be applied to your weapons, while others you can equip on your person. They come in three rarities: Crude (Grey), Sleek (Green), and Exemplar (Purple). You may find that in every loop, many trinkets will be located in the same place, but some will randomized in what the trinket does, while others - especially hard to get trinkets or rewards - will always be the same. Despite this, there is also the chance that a trinket located randomly, held by Eternalists, or located in the same spot - may increase in rarity as your progress your Visionary Leads and the story.
With Trinkets, you can use these bonuses to bolster your playstyle, and find a mix of buffs that help you get the job done, like faster stealth movement and takedowns, better health regen, or the ability to detonate hacked items.
Slabs are special magical artifacts that work much like some of Dishonored's powers. Colt will find one early in his journey that will be locked to his person - allowing him to resurrect up to two times while exploring an area (and killing Julianna can reset the limit). Colt can equip up to two other Slabs at a time, and all of them can be found by killing specific Visionaries, or killing Julianna - who will carry random Slabs each time she ambushes you:
- Shift - Warp across short distances to reach distant platforms or get through laser alarms.
- Nexus - Link together targets, making all react to whatever happens to one.
- Aether - Turn temporarily invisible, becoming harder to see when you remain still.
- Havoc - Become an unstoppable destructive force that deals additional damage while taking less.
- Karnesis - Make gravity your ally to raise up enemies and fling them away.
Much like Trinkets, certain Slabs can equipped to bolster your chosen playstyle - like using Shift and Aether to quietly infiltrate an area, or Havoc and Karnesis to obliterate whole squads of Eternalists.
Once you have obtained a certain Slab and infuse it with Residium, you can kill the target who has that Slab to gain new upgrades to further bolster the power of your ability - much like equipping trinkets to a weapon.
Julianna Blake
The only other person on Blackreef aware of what happens in previous loops, Julianna will be your primary antagonist in Deathloop. She can be controlled by another player if you choose to play using the Online Mode, or will be an enemy NPC if you turn this mode off.
Once you complete the tutorial, Julianna has a chance to randomly invade your game once per district exploration - but only when there is another Visionary already present in the area. Her goal is to protect the loop at all costs, which means stopping you from eliminating Visionaries.
Much like how Colt has made the Reprise Slab his own, Julianna has exclusive access to the Masquerade Slab, allowing her to take the form of other Eternalists to hide in plain sight. She can combine this with other random Slabs, and when combined with her random loadout of weapons and trinkets - she can becomes an unpredictable powerhouse.
To make matters harder for Colt, she'll lock access to the escape tunnels when she appears, forcing Colt to either sneak to the jamming signal and hack it to regain access and escape, or kill Julianna and then hack the signal.
Fighting against Julianna is a true risk vs reward scenario: She has the power to end your loop early and forcefully, causing you to lose all your progress. However, she'll always drop good loot when defeated, as well as a random Slab that can help you gain the edge over your target. Defeating her will also replenish your Respite Slab resurrections - and she only has one life to live.
When playing as Julianna, you have several tactics open to you: Do you hunt down Colt relentlessly, try to sabotage his attempts at assassinating a Visionary, guard the signal jammer, or masquerade as an ordinary NPC until Colt drops his guard?
Julianna earns upgrades and weapon on a different path, and Colt can earn new outfits for defeating another player.