LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is finally here, and as you dive into its ample offerings, it won’t take you long to figure out that there’s a surprising amount going on here. With as much to do as there in this game, to help streamline your experience and let you get the best out of it right off the bat, here, we’ve compiled a few beginners tips and tricks that you should keep in mind as you play the game.
BREAK STUFF
If you’ve played a LEGO game before, you already know this, but given how central this tends to be to the core gameplay loop, it’s worth mentioning anyway. Environments in LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga are full of objects that can be smashed into pieces to collect studs, and our advice is to do that every chance you get. Of course, breaking every single thing you see could quickly get boring, so don’t do that, but if, say, you enter a room that’s got lots of furniture that’s just begging to be smashed, smash all of it. You’ll net plenty of studs, and those are always valuable.
EXPLORE
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga places a surprising emphasis on exploration, with story missions being separated by large sandbox maps that you can traverse freely. Exploration is completely optional, and you can blow through story missions without ever deviating from the critical path, but you’ll be missing out on a lot of fun stuff if you do that. The Skywalker Saga’s sandbox maps are densely packed with well-designed and enjoyable activities that reward you with Kyber bricks for progression, collectibles, characters, and much more. All of this side content is some of the most fun you’ll have in the game.
REVISIT LOCATIONS
Once you’ve unlocked a location in The Skywalker Saga, you can go back to it anytime you want- and you should definitely do that regularly. Why? Well, because you’ll be unlocking new characters at a pretty quick pace as you progress through the game, many of whom come with abilities that can help you reach areas that were previously inaccessible. Go to older maps with these newly acquired characters to collect more Kyber bricks, studs, and collectibles.
UPGRADE FOR STUDS
Studs are a central currency in LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, not unlike its predecessors, and given the sheer abundance of these in every nook and cranny of the entire game, it’s not like you’re ever going to fall short. You can never have too much though, so in your core upgrades menu, make sure you use your Kyber bricks and studs to prioritize the upgrade that attracts studs in the environment to you from further away. That, of course, has obvious benefits, and that specific unlock can then be upgraded twice more, making it even more effective.
UPGRADE FOR COLLECTIBLES
Most upgrades in The Skywalker Saga tend to feel rather unnecessary, but there are a few in there, like attracting studs from further away, that are genuinely useful. Another useful upgrade will highlight Kyber bricks in your surroundings with faint blue outlines, while another one will do the same for other collectibles like minikits as well. Like the upgrade for studs, these two are not available right off the bat in the core skill tree, so make your you’re working towards unlocking them as quickly as possible.
FORCE LIFT
Often you’ll find areas in The Skywalker Saga’s maps that you can’t reach, and while many, as mentioned earlier, are only accessible with certain character classes, playing as a Jedi or a Sith opens up some workarounds as well. Using Force lift, for instance, you can not only stack crates to let you get to higher-up spots, you can also lift characters themselves and send them floating to distant ledges or walkways.
COMBOS
Combat has seen various improvements and overhauls in LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, and where melee combat is concerned, that comes largely in the form of combos. While you can, for the most part, button mash your way through fights, if you keep things varied and string together combos of many different kinds of attacks, defeating enemies will award you with more studs. It’s also a lot of fun to do and simple to pull off, so there’s that as well.
THE MAP
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga’s sandbox maps can be surprisingly large and dense at times, and they’re absolutely littered with optional activities and collectibles, to the point where it can sometimes be tricky to keep track of them. Our advice? Easy- just keep an eye on your map. It marks Kyber bricks, characters with something to say, and most other stuff of interest, and comes in particularly handy in some of the larger locations.
KYBER COMETS
There are well over a thousand Kyber bricks in all of The Skywalker Saga, so there’s no shortage of places you can go looking for them. There are, however, some ways to speed up that process. One way is to head into space with a ship and seek out Kyber comets. Destroying one of these will net you five Kyber bricks, and these comets aren’t too hard to find, which makes them a pretty good source for collecting those bricks.
PURCHASE RUMOURS
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga doesn’t necessarily require you to trigger a side activity by talking to characters first- you can just chance upon it and engage with it at your leisure. If you do get wind of activities that way though, you can track them in your log and set them as active for waypoint markers and whatnot, which can cut down on some of the busywork and downtime of trying to figure out where to go. Another way to do that besides talking to characters is by directly purchasing rumours with a sum of studs from the quest log itself. That sum is always pretty small, so if you’re looking to save some time, don’t hesitate to buy those rumours.