I’ve spent a good chunk of time messing around in the playtest/demo, and there are a lot of small things that make a big difference once you start using them properly. This is mostly aimed at lower difficulties, not Nightmare+, and I’ll keep adding stuff as I remember more.
This is more of a practical tips list than anything else. Just things that help smooth out gameplay and make life easier while you’re learning or just playing casually.
Far Far West Beginner Guides Wiki – Spells, Levelling, XP Gain
Movement
Basic controls first. Shift is your dash, Space is your jump.
Now here’s where it gets interesting. You can combine them to effectively double jump. You can either jump first then dash, or dash first then jump.
Jump then dash gives you more height. Dash then jump gives you more distance. You’ll start to feel the difference pretty quickly once you try both.
The real trick though is chaining them. Dash, jump, and right as you hit the ground, dash again, then jump again. Keep repeating that and you’ve got bunnyhopping.
Once you get some movement bonuses from jokers or hero upgrades, this becomes insanely strong. You move faster, stay harder to hit, and overall just survive longer.
You can actually make some bosses feel way easier just by moving properly. Something like the Necromancer becomes a lot less threatening if you’re constantly bunnyhopping sideways. If you’ve played Risk of Rain 2 before, it’s that same idea. Keep moving and most damage just won’t hit you.
Another small trick. When you dismount your horse, it pops you slightly into the air. You can use that to jump and dash again, basically turning it into a triple jump. Really useful for getting up places you probably weren’t meant to reach, especially without jump bonuses.
Spells
Spells are obviously great for damage, crowd control, and buffs, but they also interact with the environment in ways that aren’t always obvious.
Thrower is one of the best tools for clearing soul camps. Those buildings where enemies keep respawning have skull targets, and Thrower can hit them through walls. So instead of going inside, you can just wipe everything out in one cast from outside.
Fireball is also handy for utility. You can use it to instantly break gold pillars instead of pulling out your pickaxe.
Combos
I don’t know every combo yet, but here are some that stood out.
If you want to test things yourself, go to the shooting range at the Saloon. No cooldowns there, so you can just experiment freely.
Thrower into Fireball reignites acid pools and causes extra explosions.
Thrower into Strikes does something similar but with lightning, triggering extra strikes.
Thrower into Drain creates purple candles that heal you when you walk over them.
Fireball into Thrower makes the target keep exploding with each tick of acid damage.
Fireball into Strikes didn’t seem to do anything noticeable, at least from what I saw.
Fireball into Drain also gives you those healing candles.
Strikes into Thrower keeps triggering lightning repeatedly based on acid ticks.
Strikes into Fireball didn’t seem to have a clear effect.
Strikes into Drain again gives healing candles.
Drain only really works when used on enemies standing in some kind of elemental field like acid. If you try to combo it first into something else, nothing really happens.
Levelling and XP Gain
Weapons
From what I’ve seen, weapon XP is tied directly to how much damage you deal. During the playtest, overkill damage counted too, which meant you could get a ton of XP very quickly.
For example, using something like Lone Ranger with strong headshots could push levels really high in just a few runs, especially if you had jokers boosting weakpoint damage.
Spells
Spell XP also seems tied to damage, though I haven’t fully figured out the most efficient way to level them yet.
Best advice here is simple. Use your spells constantly and take advantage of combos. That’s where most of the value comes from anyway.
Collectibles, Quests, and Secrets
I won’t go deep into each one here since they all need proper guides on their own, but there are a few important things to know.
Things like bells and medallions have to be completed in a single run. You can’t partially finish them and come back later. You need to collect everything and turn it in during the same instance.
On the other hand, general collectibles and quests do carry progress between runs. Stuff like gathering graves or progressing quest steps will save.
Also, graves get marked on your minimap once you’ve found or pinged them, which helps a lot when you’re tracking them down later.
That’s all I’ve got for now. If you start using even a few of these, you’ll notice the difference pretty quickly.