Unlike games like looter shooters, RPGs, and MMOs, acquiring gear in Dying Light: The Beast is more about survival than it is progression. Each weapon and armor set comes with unique stats and passive bonuses to help players in their battles against infected and the harsh open world of Castor Woods, whether it be by offering them greater defense, better damage output, or an increased chance at finding crafting materials. However, as it is with most gear-based games, Dying Light: The Beast‘s gear implements a tiered system, with common being the least effective items players can have equipped and legendary being the most effective. While gear of any rarity can be acquired naturally, players can also craft gear of higher tiers by finding and upgrading the blueprints required to do so.
Unfortunately, Dying Light: The Beast‘s crafting system hits a major snag in the late game, once players begin crafting legendary weapons. Essentially, it’s incredibly hard to get enough resources to upgrade all the weapon blueprints to legendary, and even craft them. The necessary resources are just too difficult to obtain without farming locations repeatedly, which arguably ruins the game’s pacing. As a result, the possibility of crafting legendaries in the game is undermined, turning the whole system over on itself. However, should Dying Light: The Beast consider implementing a New Game Plus mode, which it does not currently have, those issues could be alleviated.
Dying Light: The Beast's Legendary Grind Suffers Without New Game Plus
Resources Stretch Too Thin for Legendary Crafting
Again, one playthrough of Dying Light: The Beast simply isn’t enough to get the materials necessary for crafting and maintaining multiple legendary weapons without farming locations repeatedly. Even with an armor set equipped that increases the abundance of looted crafting materials, the result is still negligible and requires players to go into the game’s Dark Zones multiple times in order to get enough to not just upgrade blueprints to legendary but also craft the weapon, keep it repaired, and, for weapons like the bow, craft the ammo required to use them.
A New Game Plus mode, on the other hand, would allow players a more natural route for crafting progression in Dying Light: The Beast, as they would then be traveling into those Dark Zones for the first time again, and it would be especially helpful if those areas featured better armor for players to obtain as well. The ability to play through the game a second time with all of their current materials and upgrades intact would also allow them to gather resources organically as they progress through Dying Light: The Beast‘s story.
Gear Progression Feels Capped Without Higher Rarity
It isn’t just Dying Light: The Beast‘s legendary weapons that suffer from the lack of a New Game Plus mode, as the game’s armor system doesn’t really make sense either. Currently, every armor set in the game is of epic rarity, which is strange considering there are no legendary sets available that players could loot or craft. A New Game Plus mode would be the perfect opportunity for Dying Light: The Beast to introduce improved versions of the armor players have already collected, as many modern RPGs have been doing lately, potentially letting them upgrade their armor sets to legendary in the process.
This could be Techland’s way of enforcing difficulty, since doing a second playthrough with legendary armor and weapons would essentially make the threats in Castor Woods far less threatening. But that balance could be ensured if Dying Light: The Beast made its New Game Plus mode only playable at higher difficulties. It’s not that legendary weapons and armor are all that necessary in Dying Light: The Beast, but more so that the potential is there, and yet, for some reason, it’s incredibly arduous to reach it. Dying Light 2 has New Game Plus, however, so maybe it’s only a matter of time before it’s added to the latest entry.