The 2022 reboot of Saints Row takes you to the city of Santo Ileso, a small open world filled with skyscrapers, dilapidated buildings, rival gangs, and deserts. This new Saints Row feels like it was ripped straight out of the 2010s, but it has some modern touches to add some complexity.
In this beginner’s guide, we’ll take you through eight key tips for becoming the best possible boss for your growing saints.
Focus on the campaign
Saints Row is a great sandbox game, and part of the fun is running around and doing stupid things with ridiculous toys. But to get some of those ridiculous toys, you’ll need to unlock new tools, weapons, vehicles, and customization options for your gang.
These upgrades mostly come from game story progress, so hold off on your sandbox shenanigans for a few hours and beat a few quests first.
save your money
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Image: Volition/Deep Silver via Polygon
You will eventually be able to spend a lot of cash in Saints Row to buy or upgrade cars and weapons. But you’ll be a bit strapped for cash when the game starts, and each individual quest or side activity will only net you a couple thousand bucks.
Save your money as much as you can until you unlock the Empire system, which allows you to place Ventures all over town. These Ventures passively raise the money for you, eventually allowing you to spend as much money as you want on fancy duds or an upgraded car.
Keep your game running while you sleep
Upgrades vary wildly in cost in Saints Row, from just a couple hundred bucks for an early weapon to nearly $2 million for late-game Ventures. So if you want to have it all and live like the Chief Saint, you’re going to need a lot of cheddar cheese. Fortunately, you can effortlessly make money using the Venture system we mentioned in the tip above.
Passive Ventures money is deposited directly into your Cash Transfer app every few seconds, but only accumulates when you’re in-game and not in a menu. If you have the means, you will greatly benefit from leaving your game running overnight or when you are unable to play. So the next time you grab the driver, you’ll have a full bank account waiting for you.
You can then take that cash and invest it in more companies, increasing your passive generation much more.
Start working on car and weapon upgrades early
Every vehicle you drive and every weapon you fire comes with a little side quest that, once completed, will increase the effectiveness of that item. However, these missions can be very specific, such as killing a certain enemy faction twice or shooting the wheels off specific cars, making them difficult to complete.
Try to memorize the missions of your current team and favorite vehicle early on, so you can work on them steadily as you play. Upgrades are almost always worth it (like an unlimited boost on a car), so you want to unlock as many as possible during your playthrough.
Focus on your team first
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Image: Volition/Deep Silver via Polygon
When you first set up the Saints, you’ll gain access to various quests to help upgrade your crew. However, one of these missions will be the “main” mission and will have some unlock requirements. To unlock these quests, you will need to place more Ventures and then complete those Venture questlines.
Completing these main quests is how you upgrade your gang to the next level. A higher level gang can have more money in their Cash Transfer app and place bigger and more expensive Ventures. Focus on these missions first to increase your cash earning potential.
Grab fast travel points all over the map
Shortly after Saints Row, you will unlock subway points in some places on the map. Before continuing with the campaign, drive to the nearest one. Take a photo of the area with your phone (if you look on the map, you’ll see a preview of the item you want to take a photo of) and it will unlock the point for fast travel, allowing you to instantly teleport there for the rest of the game.
Unlock all of these fast travel points as soon as you discover them (you can follow our guide to find them all quickly), as it will really speed up your adventure and save you a lot of time as you go.
Watch your challenges
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Image: Volition/Deep Silver via Polygon
As you progress through Saints Row and unlock new activities, you’ll unlock more and more challenges (which you can see by tapping on your mission app). These challenges ask you to do a variety of things, such as buy specific items from stores or defeat enemies with specific weapons. Completing these challenges offers XP and a small amount of cash.
But the real reason you want to complete these challenges is to unlock new perks, for which you can buy slots and equip them in the perk app. Perks unlock in a specific order each time you complete a challenge, but are not tied to specific challenges. That means you can still get a long list of great perks if you only focus on the things you want to do.
Check the list of Challenges from time to time, as it is always growing, so you can try to passively complete them while wreaking havoc on Holy Unharmed.
Source: www.polygon.com