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Dead Space isn’t the world’s hardest survival horror game, but it certainly isn’t the easiest. Lucky for you, I’ve logged dozens of hours in the original and have been playing the remake on hard to get an idea of how well my strategies for upgrade priority hold up. Let’s find out together.

Focus on one gun, and make it the Plasma Cutter

Dead Space has a legitimate strategy that the community calls “One Gun Runs.” There’s a funny reason for this — if you only carry one gun, you only get ammo for that gun. So if you spend, say, all your upgrade points on the game’s best gun, the Plasma Cutter, and carry nothing else, every ammo drop becomes way more powerful and economically important. You’ll be drowning in ammo, and it’ll take fewer shots to kill enemies, which makes the One Gun strategy even better.

Suit Upgrades

When upgrading your RIG, I’d stray away from Oxygen and Stasis Duration upgrades, at least to start. Inventory upgrades are the most important, by a longshot, because of all that Plasma Cutter ammo you’ll be hoarding (and likely selling in bulk). Next is HP and Stasis Capacity. Stasis Capacity means more value from free refill stations, and HP is just nice to have for a little comfort.

Most important is upgrading your RIG from Standard to Miner and onward. If this means you need to sell some junk, do it. This is the single most important upgrade path in the game — that of your RIG’s overall type. Not only does it buff your damage resistance, but it also increases your inventory capacity.

I hope these tips help you on your journey through the USG Ishimura, but be sure to formulate your own Dead Space gameplay style as well when the game drops on Jan. 27, 2023. Who knows, you may even find a novel strategy nobody’s even thought of yet!