Black Friday is still weeks away, but retailers are already trying to pull shoppers into their stores with enticing discounts, and Target's preview is worth checking out for anyone considering a cellphone upgrade. On November 8th and 9th, it will throw a Target gift card in with several smartphones purchased and activated with either Verizon or AT&T. You may be able to find deep discounts via bill credits on activated phones elsewhere, but that's going to be immediately useful for the rest of your holiday shopping.
Prefer Android? There's a $300 gift card waiting for you upon the purchase of a Google Pixel 4 or Pixel 4 XL, available now through Sunday.
Finally, you can get a $400 gift card waiting along with Samsung's Galaxy S10, S10+ and Note 10+, or $200 if you prefer the cheaper Galaxy S10E, all available from now through Sunday.
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We’ve spent hundreds of combined hours in Death Stranding, and now it’s your turn to become Sam Porter Bridges. So, in the spirit of a game about helping others, we’ve corralled our 15 best Death Stranding tips in this guide.
Multiple trips are better than one heavy slog
Death Stranding is a game about carrying cargo over long, treacherous distances. Early on, you’ll do this on foot. Overloading Sam’s backpack will drain his stamina and make him prone to falling over. Don’t make the game harder than it has to be. Swallow your pride, and make multiple, small trips.
Put your faith in other players
“But Polygon,” we hear you saying after reading that section above. “What if I need that third ladder? I’m emotionally attached to this fourth climbing rope strapped to my leg!”
Some of us (ahem, Dave) spent our (his) first several hours using the two is one, one is none rule. It seemed prudent, by which we mean that crossing a river without a ladder seemed terrifying. Hey, what if we had to descend more than one cliff? Might as well pack in triplicate!
And yet, looking back, here’s what we know: We’ve never once used all of the crap that we packed. We spent hours plodding along and tipping over, thanks to unnecessary cargo on our back, sure that we’d need that damn ladder eventually. We didn’t. One of each is fine. Two is arguably pushing it. Three is just silly. Don’t be silly.
Why? Because of other players.
Other players placed ladders, and we benefit.
Kojima Productions/Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon
Death Stranding director Hideo Kojima calls this a strand game, and with good reason. Other players who’ve gone before you left behind ladders, ropes, and bridges that are now in your world — and (as the sign says) free to use. Trust that they’re there to help you along, and leave behind all that extra equipment. And if trust isn’t your thing, open your map (or just look around) and search for green things. If it’s green like the text in the image above, then another player left it for you to use.
Literally the worst case scenario is that you might need to backtrack, and given that this is literally a game about traveling, that’s not bad. Also, even this wildly theoretical backtracking will be much easier and faster when you’re not lugging the weight of a rhino on your back.
Build what you need where you need it
A lot of the time, someone else already placed the ladder you need before you got there — but not every time. Maybe you’ve forged a new path, maybe timefall has eroded away a useful ladder, or maybe other player’s stuff just hasn’t shown up in your game.
While you should rely on other players’ structures whenever possible, you’re still going to have to make stuff on your own. There’s no particularly bad place to, uh, place a ladder. Even better, there’s an excellent chance that someone else will run into the same problem you did, use your ladder in their game, and send some Likes through the multiverse.
Understand your backpack
Hey, you know how we’ve spent the last few hundred words talking about using cargo? Well let’s spend the next few hundred talking about what to do with the cargo you’re not using.
Arranging cargo on Sam’s backpack and suit is a minigame of its own. In a game with so much luggage, luckily there’s an auto-sort button (Triangle). That takes care of a lot of packing — but understanding cargo and your backpack will make you a better porter.
What you’re carrying, where it’s attached, and how it’s attached all have an effect on Sam’s balance and how likely things are to fall off when you take a tumble or run into MULEs. For example, if you attach something to Sam’s arms or legs, it won’t fall off if you fall down. It absolutely can fall out if it’s in your backpack.
Kojima Productions/Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon
Cargo comes in four sizes: small, medium, large, and extra large. Sizes correspond to weight. Small cargo is the only size that Sam can attach to his suit. You can see what size something is when you look at it in the world or in a menu: Check for the S, M, L, or XL next to the description.
When you’re managing your cargo, always hit the auto-sort button (Triangle). Auto-sort puts the heaviest things are on the bottom, and it moves small cargo to logical places. Trust the auto-sort to get you started.
There are several other places cargo can attach, though, and it’s worth knowing what your options are:
Carry on back. This is the main backpack. It’s the default for where cargo goes and the only place medium or larger cargo fits.
Attach to suit. Sam has four points (shoulders and hips) where small cargo can attach. The important thing to note here is that cargo attached to Sam’s suit won’t fall off if he takes a tumble.
Utility pouch. You don’t have to carry blood bags on your back or suit. You have a special utility pouch that holds up to four blood bags. Make sure you’re using this extra space instead of filling up your back.
Tool rack. The tool rack on the right side of Sam’s backpack is a special slot. It’s where whatever tool (or weapon or PCC) you have equipped lives. Just be aware that equipping something else will move whatever was on the tool rack onto your back.
Carry by hand. Finally, Sam can carry things by hand. It’s not ideal, and we certainly wouldn’t suggest it for a long trip, but it’s an option.
For a lot of the early game, you’ll be able to auto-sort your cargo and forget it. But take the time when you’re not carrying much to understand the options you have available. That will make your life later in the game (when you’re juggling hundreds of kilos of cargo, multiple weapons, ladders, and dozens of grenades) much easier to manage.
Drop and recycle empty items
Using up a box of grenades, all of the ammo in a weapon, or a can of container repair spray doesn’t automatically remove it from your cargo. Empty containers take up valuable space and add weight to your inventory.
If you need to free up weight, check in your Cargo menu for empty containers (their text is red, so they’re easy to see) and select offload. In the equipment wheel, hit the Circle button to drop them.
The other option is to hold onto them until you can recycle them at a facility terminal. Doing that will return materials to that facility’s stores, but don’t overburden yourself and slow yourself down just to recycle a few extra metals.
Make connections with other players
We should talk about the Bridge Links option in your menu. This is a list of all the other Sams you’ve had some interaction with. It’s also where you can form strand contracts.
Creating a strand contract is like favoriting another player. It makes their stuff more likely to show up in your world. This is a way to play (indirectly) with your friends, and you can also use it to latch onto popular people. Someone with a lot of Likes probably built really useful structures, so making a strand contract with them will make your life easier when you find their perfectly placed bridge 20 hours later.
You’ll have access to PCCs (portable chiral constructors) pretty early in Death Stranding. They’re basically special cargo that you can transform into postboxes, generators, and bridges — and watchtowers.
Watchtowers give you the ability to survey large areas of land from a comparatively great height. Use a watchtower, and you’ll highlight cargo, enemies, and chiral crystals in the surrounding area. They’ll also give you a much better perspective on the landscape around you. Build them while you’re planning treks across unfamiliar terrain. Build them to avoid (or raid) MULE camps. Build them to help your fellow Sams.
Focus on the main story first
There’s a rhythm to Death Stranding where you put in a lot of work to deliver cargo across difficult terrain, and then reap the reward of a slightly better way to carry cargo. You’ll get everything from floating cargo carriers to reverse trike motorcycles (and more). So the longer you play, the easier it’ll be to make deliveries.
Every facility and prepper you visit will have standard orders — non-story-related deliveries — for you to complete. As you deliver more and more cargo, you’ll increase their connection levels and get rewards, so it’s easy to get caught up in ferrying cargo back and forth, but consider delaying that desire for a bit. This is particularly important during Episode 2, where there are approximately 400 billion things that you might want to do at any given moment.
Instead, focus on the main story until you get a better way to move cargo. We won’t spoil anything here, but we’re confident that it’ll be clear when that happens. When you do, you’ll be able to move more goods faster than when you arrived, and that’ll make all standard orders way easier to complete.
Increasing connection levels earns you rewards
That isn’t to say you should ignore every prepper you bump into until you’re the best damn porter in the world. Completing orders and increasing connection levels (each place’s stars) will earn you rewards — and they’re often very good.
Some rewards are hologram data for customizing structures, or new sunglasses colors, but you’ll also earn blueprints for gear and vehicles. The Junk Dealer in the Central Region, for example, will provide you with three different exoskeleton blueprints, and a new kind of grenade.
It’s a balancing act, really. The longer you wait, the easier it’ll probably be to complete an order. But the farther you get away (in time and physical space) from wherever you are, the less you're probably going to want to return and finish the job. What’s a porter to do?
Do the best that you can. Don’t get bogged down trying to complete every delivery as soon as it pops up, but don’t forget about the little people, either. (Seriously. They tend to have awesome rewards.)
Premium deliveries get more likes
While you’re filling in those connection levels with standard orders, you’re earning likes from the NPCs you’re delivering to. Most orders have requirements — Deliver this quickly! Don’t damage this cargo! — and they usually aren’t burdensome.
At a certain point, you also have an option to make orders a premium delivery. Just hit right on the thumbstick or D-pad when you accept an order. Premium deliveries have stricter requirements, but they get more Likes. And more Likes increase connection levels faster. And more connection levels means more goodies from NPCs.
As you get comfortable with an area’s delivery routes and quicker at traversing a region, take on premium deliveries as often as you can.
Follow found footprints
Whether you’re backtracking or running through areas other players have visited before, you might see digital footprints along the ground. If you do, follow them. Run along those paths as you make your deliveries, and over time, those digital footprints will be converted to hardened dirt pathways. It’s cooperation!
At the very beginning of the game, you’ll have to trudge over miles of rocky roads, but these dirt paths will slowly make those trips a lot smoother. Death Stranding is all about making connections and helping other players, and you can do that as easily as tracing others’ footsteps.
Always leave a sign
In Death Stranding, you can leave signs that will alert fellow players of danger, show them the best path up a mountain, or call out the existence of collectibles. These digital signposts are one of the many ways players can connect and help one another throughout their long journey across the country.
To leave a sign, hold the L1 button, and then press Triangle. The game will freeze time and bring up several lists of signs you can leave. These signs are incredibly helpful in the early game, especially for players who aren’t familiar with the land yet. Help your fellow Sams, Sam!
We’ve used other players’ signs to avoid BT encounters, cross dangerous rivers, and find easier routes to travel through. Some signs can even replenish your stamina and give you a speed boost, as we discuss in our guide to the best signs in Death Stranding.
You can defeat BTs pretty early
You’re not going to have many tools at your disposal in the starting area. This makes BTs (the invisible ghost guys) super problematic. But there’s an easy solution: Bring boxes of hermetic grenades wherever you go.
Once you enter an area with BTs, start scanning while standing still, and the BTs will appear as black clouds. Hit a BT with a single hermetic grenade, and that’ll send it to whatever Death Stranding’s version of heaven is.
Each box comes with five grenades. With a bunch at your disposal, you can skip the hardcore stealth in favor of blowing up these ghosts.
It’s OK to get into a fight
If you stumble into a fight with some BTs, it’s OK. The characters in Death Stranding make BTs out to be these impossible enemies, and your earliest experiences all leave you gasping for air as you run away from them.
But BTs aren’t impossible to take down, and you can start killing them way before the game suggests you do so.
As we mentioned above, you can use hermetic grenades to take down BTs before they even spot you. But if you get swept up (literally) by the BTs, don’t panic. When you enter full-on combat (the current drags you away and a giant, black whale leaps into the sky), find a safe spot, and pull out your hermetic grenades. Be patient, wait for the whale, and throw as soon as it surfaces.
These early items pack a serious punch against the BTs, and if you can kill the whale, you’ll eliminate all the BTs in an area for a bit. This can save you a lot of time, rather than trying to sneak out of an area and sneak back in to get any cargo you’ve dropped. And you’ll get a ton of chiral crystals as a reward for eliminating a Giant BT.
AMD has unveiled its 3rd-generation Ryzen Threadripper CPUs built with its 7-nanometer "Zen 2" architecture, and the performance looks impressive. As before, there are 24- and 32-core variants, the TR 3960X and TR 3970X, respectively, with base clocks at 3.8GHz/3.7GHz respectively and a max boost speed of up to 4.5GHz. Both chips will run using AMD's all-new TRX40 chipset with 72 available PCIe 4.0 lanes and 12 USB-C 3.1 gen2 10Gbps SuperSpeed ports.
These chips and motherboards are aimed at content creators, because the extra cores and higher PCIe 4.0 bandwidth won't help gamers much. In fact, Threadripper chips almost always perform worse in games than its Ryzen desktop chips like the new Ryzen 9 3950X.
That said, AMD claimed that the Ryzen TR 3970X will boost Adobe Premiere CC 2019 encoding by up to 47 percent over Intel's similarly priced 18-core Core i9-9980XE. (Intel's new i9-10980XE has roughly the same performance as the i9-9980XE, but is half the price.) The cheaper 3960X version will still deliver a 22 percent speed bump over Intel's chip, though. As for the power consumption, both chips have a 280W TDP, so the i9-9980XE has a big advantage there with a 165W TDP.
For gaming, Intel's chips might still beat the Threadrippers, especially when overclocked. It's also notable that the two 3rd-gen Threadrippers use AMD's new "Socket sTRX4," so they aren't pin-compatible with the 2nd-gen models and thus can't be used on older sTR4 socket motherboards. AMD did say that the new socket would allow for "scalability," without providing more details.
We were very much hoping to see a 64-core version, as rumored, but it has yet to materialize. These Threadripper chips won't come cheap, but they do cost significantly less than any Intel chips with 24 cores or more. AMD hasn't given an exact release date yet, but the 24-core Ryzen RT 3960X Threadripper CPU will cost $1,399, and the 32-core version will be $1,999. By comparison, Intel's 18-core i9-9980XE still costs around $1,979, while the 18-core i9-10980XE is $979.
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Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 mixed reality headset is shipping today after being announced earlier this year. The HoloLens 2 headset, which costs $3,500, will be delivered to preorder customers in around a half-dozen countries. It’s an upgraded version of the device first released in 2016, featuring a wider field of view and more complex gesture controls.
The HoloLens 2 is shipping in the US, France, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom. As my colleague Dieter Bohn detailed earlier, the HoloLens has gotten a redesign for better ergonomics, so its weight sits more comfortably and it’s less difficult to find a good viewing angle. Its field of view has substantially increased, from 34 degrees to 52 degrees diagonally — Microsoft has described the overall area as “more than doubled,” and while you can debate the specifics, it’s a dramatic improvement.
Microsoft has also added full-fledged gesture tracking, not just the “air tap” option from the original HoloLens. You can do things like pinch and drag objects or pull up menus by tapping a holographic button on your wrist. These new gestures are an important draw for companies that might want to upgrade from the earlier HoloLens, since they open up a new range of app options.
Microsoft prototyped some games and art apps for the first HoloLens, but the HoloLens 2 is aimed purely at business customers — especially people working in manufacturing or repair jobs where a hands-free heads-up display would come in handy. Buyers can pay an additional monthly fee for Microsoft’s Remote Assist software, which is designed for live, hands-free troubleshooting. Consumers aren’t meant to buy these headsets, but they may still interact with them in situations like product showrooms. And a custom US military version of the HoloLens is being built as part of the controversial Integrated Visual Augmentation System.
Microsoft communications director Greg Sullivan says the original HoloLens will still be supported, but some developers may start building apps that require the HoloLens 2’s gesture controls. And the preorder customers, he says, are a blend of new buyers and people who want to replace their first-generation devices. “The first time it was like, ‘What is this thing?’” says Sullivan. Now, there’s an existing base of customers — albeit a relatively small one — already sold on the idea.
While December 25th is still a ways away, the holidays begin now for Nintendo; today, the company announced its Black Friday plans, which include steep discounts on games and a Switch bundle that includes a free copy of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Ahead of the announcement, I had the chance to talk to Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser about the Switch Lite’s early success, the future of the 3DS, and much more. Here are the most interesting tidbits.
On the Switch Lite expanding the audience for the platform
“It’s not only raised the sell-through for the overall family, but importantly it did so without any negative impact on our flagship system,” Bowser says of Switch Lite sales. “Said another way, Nintendo Switch Lite sales have been additive to the overall Switch business.”
Meanwhile, during Nintendo’s most recent earnings report, the company revealed that 43 percent of Switch Lite owners were buying the device as a second system. That’s an important part of Nintendo’s stated goal of having multiple Switches in family homes, but Bowser also looks at it from a different perspective.
“I’ll talk to the inverse, which is 57 percent of the consumers are new to the Nintendo Switch family, and that’s equally important to us as we continue to expand the audience,” he says. “One of the important trends we’re also seeing with Nintendo Switch Lite is a higher percent of female consumers are buying a Nintendo Switch Lite, which is a strong indicator of the appeal to a broader audience.”
On the future of the Nintendo 3DS
“We continue to look at the 3DS family, both hardware and games, as a strong entry point for some consumers. And we’re seeing that. As long as consumer demand is there, we’ll continue to provide both hardware and software on the front.” When asked when it will be appropriate to say the 3DS is dead as a platform, Bowser says “We’re certainly not going to say it today. I think time will tell. We will continue to support 3DS this holiday and into 2020.”
On the difficulties of sharing Nintendo accounts across multiple Switch units
“There’s nothing to talk about at this point,” Bowser says of plans to make the process easier. “There is the ability to transfer data and to designate which is your primary device and which is a secondary device, and those instructions are available on nintendo.com. But we’re also looking at the experiences our consumers are having, and we’re always looking for opportunities to improve and enhance those experiences.”
On how the company dealt with the plague of “Joy-Con drift”
“Our goal is always, always to create quality products, and products that ensure gamers are having a great experience,” Bowser says. “We are continuously looking at ways to improve our products as we go forward, but in the end we want consumers to have a great experience. And if in any case they’re not having that experience, we encourage them to contact our customer support groups and we’ll do our best to help them through that. That has been how we’ve been handling our consumers over the last few months as issues like this have arisen, and we believe that consumers are finding their way back to great gameplay experiences.”
On whether we’ll ever see another tiny plug-and-play retro console
“Our focus right now is absolutely on our dedicated platforms such as Nintendo Switch Lite and our flagship Nintendo Switch,” Bowser explains. “I think with the gameplay experiences you saw with some of our classic consoles that we launched a few years ago, they’re now available on Nintendo Switch Online, and this is where our focus will be.”
Google is finally making moves to tackle the menace that is Android malware.
To this end, the internet giant has officially announced a partnership with cybersecurity firms ESET, Lookout, and Zimperium to catch sketchy apps before they end up on your devices.
Called the “App Defense Alliance,” the initiative aims to reduce the risk of app-based malware, identify new threats, and protect smartphone users from bad actors leveraging the platform for their gain.
To do so, Google is integrating its Play Protect malware detection systems with each partner’s scanning engines, thereby generating valuable risk intelligence that can be carefully scrutinized before making a third-party app available on the Play Store.
Introduced in 2017, Google Play Protect combines a mix of on-device protections and a cloud-based infrastructure to routinely scan over 500,000 apps to keep tainted apps off Google Play and out of users’s devices. It also leverages machine learning to detect malicious apps faster and at a larger scale without any human supervision.
The Play Store malware trouble has been accentuated in part due to the open nature of the ecosystem.
Although Google has employed Google Play Protect as a means to secure devices from potentially harmful applications (PHAs), it’s been powerless against what appears to be a steady pattern of nasty apps bypassing its scanning process, highlighting the scope of the issue.
Last month, Lukas Stefanko, an ESET security researcher, compiled a list of 172 apps on Google Play with upwards of 335 million installs that were found to engage in ad fraud, credit card phishing, and serve other kinds of malware. And this was just for September.
Android Security Monthly Recap #9
Review of harmful apps found on Google Play in September 2019
Complicating the problem is the counter-mechanisms devised by Android malware authors to obfuscate their true colors.
The apps have been found to engage a number of sneaky workarounds to get past Google’s security checkpoints — including making use of remote command and control servers to download second-stage malicious payloads after going live, incorporating encrypted code, and even adding time-based activation delays to bypass detection barriers.
In its annual “Android Security & Privacy Year in Review” report released earlier this year, the search giant said only 0.08 percent of devices that used Google Play exclusively for app downloads were affected by PHAs in 2018.
Yet Google’s failure to rein in malware-laced apps has raised concerns about its supposedly vetted store. Increasingly, what should its job of proactively catching bad apps has been passed on to users, who must carefully inspect every app they intend to install on their devices.
More troublingly, even after Google removes a PHA from Google Play, the users who installed the app on their devices continue to remain at risk.
In forging this new alliance, the intention is to better screen apps before they are approved for download, and prevent users from accidentally downloading an offending app.
The fact that Google sought outside reinforcements to beef up Android app security is an acknowledgment of the seriousness of the situation. As they say, better late than never.
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