Have a Nice Death Beginner’s Guide: 5 Essential Tips for New Players

by Mike Alexander / Game Guides, Tips & Tricks / 16 Jun 2023

There’s a brand new hero in the underworld, and their name is Death! Have a Nice Death is a brand new, hand-drawn, 2D Metroidvania Roguelike that is taking the gaming world by storm. Created by Magic Design Studios and published by Gearbox, Have a Nice Death follows a little Reaper as they try to regain order and find out what’s come over their employees at Death Inc. Since its release on March 8th, players have been working to crack the tough-as-nails gameplay to find the best way to get to the end. If you haven’t started Have a Nice Death, or if you’re having trouble making progress, I have a few tips in this Have a Nice Death Beginner’s Guide that should help you restore order to Death Inc. Is your scythe nice and sharp? Good! Let’s get started!

Check The Fridge

As you play the game, you will sometimes pass through the break room. In this break room, there is a fridge that you may have just walked past. This fridge can be an incredibly useful tool if you know you’re heading into a difficult area or boss encounter. All you have to do is interact with it, and you will find that it has some kind of buff-giving food inside of it. The buff you get will depend on the particular food item, and you can unlock many different food items for the fridge in the upgrade store. Each item will cost a different amount of currency, but more importantly, it will require that you kill a specific number of different types of enemies. The item from the fridge can only be taken once per run, so make sure you really need it if you’re going to take something!

Make Use of the Bleed Status Ailment

Like in Elden Ring, the Bleed status ailment can be incredibly powerful. When using a move or skill that does Bleed damage, you will do progressively more damage per hit, up to a specific maximum. If your regular attack does 15 damage, and you hit enough times to get your Bleed damage up to 35, each attack after that point will do 50 damage. That’s a huge boost, and much better than the damage you could get with a different status ailment like Poison, which does a static amount of damage with a trickle of extra damage over time.

In Between Missions, Pick Your Next Floor Wisely

Every time you beat a floor during your run, you will be given the option of the next floor you want to go to. There are several different floors you could pick from, and they all have different possible threats and benefits. For instance, if you’re given the option to go to the Equipment Storage or the Thanager’s Office, you will be presented with a choice of getting a new weapon or spell, or facing a mini-boss. Getting a new weapon or spell can be a good thing in general, just to spice up your run, but successfully beating a mini-boss will give you a bunch of souls and a new curse for your run. There are many other rooms available, and the best one for you to go with will depend on your style and how well your run is going.

Master The Combat

Have a Nice Death’s combat system is very deep and truly satisfying to learn. Besides your standard scythe, you will pick up other weapons throughout the game, which will be assigned to your off-hand. You can use your “cloak weapon” to introduce mix-ups and extra hits to your basic 4 attack combo. Each weapon you pick up will have a randomized set of bonuses or buffs as well, so keep an eye on that. Spells can also be helpful in combat as they are often very powerful, but they rely on the Mana bar to use them, which is quickly depleted. The curse system gives Death a way to randomly spice up his abilities, with different sets of bonuses and penalties that will build up for every curse you obtain.

Learn How Healing Works

You will inevitably take damage as you explore the different floors of Death Inc. and continue to fight enemies and bosses. Every time you take damage, Your white health bar will be depleted, and you will have both grey and black segments in your bar. The grey portion of your health can be recovered using animas, health steal, or health recovery weapons. In order to regain the black portion of your health bar, you will need to find a “full heal”. These can be found sometimes on different floors, usually in the form of a mug of coffee. Sometimes the item in the fridge will also provide you with a full heal. Full heals are kind of rare to come by, so keep your eyes peeled for them if you’re in a tough spot.

Conclusion

There you go, new reapers! I hope these tips help you on your path to becoming the best Have a Nice Death player you can be, and that they help you when the game starts to show its fangs and become more difficult. There’s a lot to discover and experience in the game, so good luck!

Mike Alexander

Mike has been playing video games since he was able to hold a controller, having been fascinated by Sonic 2 on his mom’s Sega Genesis. That fascination and passion for the art form has grown exponentially nearly 30 years later, and he doesn’t see that fading away anytime soon.
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