Hard West 2: Beginner Tips & Tricks (2025)

Hard West 2 pits your posse against the meanest gunslingers, monsters, and demons the frontier has to offer. The game rewards risky, aggressive tactics, but a single mistake or a bad roll can put characters in mortal danger. If you're going to survive the hunt for the Ghost Train, you'll need all the help you can get.

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Hard West 2 uses several systems that make its combat unique among tactical games. If you're having trouble with some of the game's earlier battles (and trust us, your enemies don't pull punches), try some of these tips and tricks to even the odds.

Move, Shoot, Bravado, Repeat

Characters have a very limited pool of AP, meaning that under normal circumstances you won't be able to take too many actions in a turn. Moving more than one AP's worth of distance usually prevents characters from attacking, so it's best to find a defensible position and fire from there until it's safe to move on.

Triggering Bravado is the only real way to get anything done in a timely manner. Whenever a hero downs another character, they'll enter Bravado, completely refilling their AP. This effectively resets their turn, and if you get another kill, you'll enter Bravado again.

An ideal turn involves moving for one AP, killing an enemy to trigger Bravado, and repeating the process as many times as you can. This strategy lets you keep pressing forward while whittling down enemy numbers. Once you're out of possible Bravado triggers, try to use Heads Down with your final AP to enter a defensive position - that extra miss chance can and will save your characters' lives!

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You'll find several stores throughout the Hard West. Each has a unique inventory, so be sure to check all of them to see what they have to offer. In many cases you'll find tools like pickaxes and rope for sale. These usually run around ten dollars, and you should always buy them when you have the chance.

Tools are invariably used as quest items, and having one in your inventory when you find a point of interest on the map will usually unlock new options and rewards. This always means a return well in excess of the ten bucks you originally spent, so visit stores first and clean them out of tools and provisions.

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Look For Ricochets

Most handguns and even some rifles can ricochet off of environmental objects, allowing you to circumvent enemy cover. If a weapon's attack icon shows a bullet bouncing off a wall, that gun can be used to ricochet.

Objects within a character's line of sight that can be ricocheted from are outlined in red, and you'll enjoy much more success if you take them into account when planning your turn. You can even ricochet off multiple objects with the same bullet, though you'll probably need to spend Luck to get a hit in this manner.

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Use Skills Often

Each member of the posse has a unique skill that can completely turn the tide of a shootout if used correctly. Skills generally have short cooldowns, so use them aggressively to gain and press the advantage.

With the possible exception of Laughing Deer's melee charge, Skills won't often result in a kill without considerable setup beforehand, but are amazing for creating and finishing combos. For example, you can have Flynn Shadow Swap an enemy into range of her allies, then have Gin and/or Old Man Bill unleash their area attacks to bring down the primary target and any others nearby!

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Characters Don't Level Up

Gin and his posse are some of the toughest outlaws in the West - they're already at the top of their game, and as such there is no experience system. Characters can be improved by swapping out their equipment and cards, but at the end of the day their capabilities remain the same throughout the story.

This means that you don't need to worry about characters falling behind the rest of the team in terms of leveling up. You have the freedom to always choose the best characters for the job when forming your squad.

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Optimize Before Every Fight

Before entering battle, the game always gives you the opportunity to swap equipment and choose your team. Double-check your loadout every time, and make sure to unequip characters who won't be participating.

This is especially true of cards. For most of the game there won't be enough for every character to have a consistent hand, so be sure that your entire deck is being used by your active team. For best results, unequip every card and build your posse's hands from scratch. This lets you optimize your build for the specific challenge ahead.

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Learn To Use Lazarus

The gun-slinging, demon-hunting preacher is a late addition to the posse, not joining up until well into the game's second chapter. Once Lazarus is on your team, though, he completes your toolbox by providing much-needed healing.

Lazarus isn't your standard RPG healer, though - he's one of the game's most complex characters to use in battle. Learning to utilize his skills effectively is one of the best decisions you can make in Hard West 2.

Lazarus' Transfusion skill lets him swap HP total and status effects with a teammate. Keep him safe behind cover with a good supply of Whiskey and Bandages, and he can keep your frontline characters like Laughing Deer or Old Man Bill out of danger with ease.

As long as Lazarus' hand is a Straight or better, he gains the ability to use Transfusion on foes as well. Have the preacher take on the wounds of an injured teammate, then send them to an enemy that has full HP to set up another character for Bravado!

When he's not juggling HP totals, Lazarus should be fighting with at least a decent handgun or melee weapon; whenever he kills an opponent, he gains Patching Up, which restores four HP per turn until it expires. Since Patching Up is a status effect, he can also use Transfusion to confer the regeneration on a teammate. Once you've mastered Lazarus' playstyle, you'll have little to fear from the creatures of the Hard West!

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