Your bike makes the difference between life and death in Days Gone. The work that goes into maintaining and upgrading it accounts for some of the best mechanics in the game. As you explore mountainous areas, rural residential zones, and small-scale cities, you have to keep your eyes peeled for valuable fuel cans and parts to repair your engine.
Engaging hordes or marauder camps could leave you stranded in some cases. Ensuring the motorcycle is properly taken care of, at all times, is the secret to beating the game on its hardest difficulty. Days Gone is about making choices on a moment-to-moment basis, regardless of the situation. You always want to have a way out of dangerous scenarios — that’s what the drifter bike is for.
10 Drive Fast On Open Roads, Slowly Everywhere Else
Driving safely is the obvious way to keep your ride in good shape. Avoid any unnecessary crashes whenever possible. You can feel free to rev the engine on wide highways or paved streets, but you should exercise caution on dirt roads.
Days Gone makes good use of its environments to throw curve balls your way. You might see a ramp and think it’s a good idea to jump. You might want to put your drifting skills to the test. Whatever the case, keep in mind that almost every collision damages your bike.
9 Avoid Water (Even Puddles)
The game doesn’t tell you that water is actually bad for your drifter bike. Naturally, you don’t want it to end up in the bottom of a river, but even shallow puddles damage its durability. The more you ride, the more environmental damage stacks up without you noticing.
To ensure this type of damage is reduced, drive around any body of water whenever possible. The game does a good job of placing plenty of bridges around, providing you with a safe path to ride through most areas.
8 Approach Marauder Camps On Foot
Engaging a full marauder camp require some degree of planning. Even if the game’s AI isn’t top notch, hostile NPCs can still hit pretty hard if you are not careful. To keep the element of surprise up your sleeve, you should leave your bike some distance away before even reaching any given camp.
Doing so has two advantages: the enemy won’t hear you coming, and your bike won’t get caught in the middle of a gunfight. Since the game uses the metric system to measure distances, a good rule of thumb is to leave your bike about 100 meters away from a camp.
7 Never Use It As Cover
Days Gone can be unpredictable. You could be scavenging around when suddenly, a group of squatters pops out from the middle of nowhere and starts shooting at you. When that happens, never use your bike as a shield. It’s far better to spam the roll button or even run for cover and take damage.
It’s much easier to come around healing items than it is to find scrap to fix your bike. Moreover, Deacon can take considerable punishment before kicking the bucket, unlike the motorcycle.
6 Refuel Whenever Possible At Gas Stations And Checkpoints
The starting fuel tank capacity is meager at best. In the early-game, fuel runs out so often that a bicycle would be a preferable alternative. It’s a good idea to learn where fuel cans and gas stations are located. Tow trucks always spawn a jerry can, so make sure to stop if you see one.
Nero checkpoints also spawn fuel without fail. Even if your tank is almost full, you should always refill it whenever you get a chance to — you never know how long your next ride is going to be.
5 Take Advantage Of Hills To Conserve Gas
Days Gone makes good use of verticality. Although the map is not as big as a Minecraft world, the hills and mountains sprinkled around add a feeling of authenticity to the game. You can take advantage of these environments to conserve a considerable amount of fuel.
Your bike always gains plenty of momentum as long as it can idly roll downhill. In the long run, this handy tip can prevent you from having to walk all the way back to your safehouse to grab a fuel can.
4 Keep Your Scrap Maxed Out
Scarp is, arguably, the most important resource in the game. Without it, you can’t fix your bike, craft melee weapons, and make throwables, among other things. Since you constantly need it for virtually everything, try to keep some spare in case a sniper shoots your engine — this completely disables the bike until you fix it.
Sniper ambushes are uncommon, but not impossible to run into. The last thing you want is to look for scrap at night, when hordes roam the open world, just to fix your bike.
3 Unlock “Carry That Weight” Early On
Days Gone has a rather generous skill tree capable of making your life significantly easier. One of the most valuable skills to invest your time into is “Carry That Weight,” because it lets you store significantly more crafting materials.
That applies to scrap as well, which your bike needs in order to function. The quickest way to obtain some skill points is to take on hordes. The ones in the Cascade region are not too difficult to beat as long as you have max ammo and some explosive.
2 Unlock “Monkey Wrench” If You Crash Often
Although you can pay mechanics to repair your motorcycle, the “Monkey Wrench” skill is invaluable if you prefer fixing things yourself: it doubles the efficacy of scrap when repairing the bike’s engine. In fact, it’s best to do your own repairs, since camp credits are better spent toward the best ranged weapons, ammo, or consumable equipment.
If you manage to avoid crashing consistently, you can prioritize other skills for unlock. However, if you like to try dangerous jumps or run over Freakers, then you really should get this skill.
1 Level Up Camp Trust To Obtain New Parts
Maintaining your drifter bike becomes much easier as the game progress and you unlock new custom parts. These upgrades are both visual and performance-oriented. Certain camps have better bike parts than others, so do some window shopping before making any decisions.
Regardless of the vendor and camp you choose, the best upgrade parts are available at trust level 3. Doing jobs for people in a given settlement, burning infestation zones, and fighting hordes helps you rack up lots of trust quickly.
NEXT: 10 Post-Apocalyptic Open-World Games To Play If You Like Days Gone
