Dead Space 3

Overview of pure survival:

Pure survival is a game mode where you cannot find ANY weapon parts, upgrade circuits, med packs (other than a few medium size packs) or ammo. In this mode you have to craft everything you use. The exceptions to this rule are medium med packs, the original plasmas cutter & sub machine gun from level one and any DLC items you may have.

I actually found this difficulty quite easy. The reason is because of a few factors:

1. Good quality circuit upgrades are available to build right from the start.
NOTE: This may be because of previous game completions etc.

2. Even though you have to create all of your own ammo, med packs etc you can upgrade your RIG much quicker than usual. This is because you get lots of resources, and more than you would by selling actual items.

NOTE: Going for armour and health are obviously the most important ones to start upgrading. Air in this game isn't needed much so you could leave it, and the same really for TK. Therefore I'd suggest then moving onto stasis upgrades.

3. As the only items you can pick up are components and medium med packs you can easily sell the med packs for somatic gel and make large ones. Also if you have the max inventory you can have say 10 Large med packs and 10 ammo boxes and you'll be sorted for most encounters with 5 slots spare for any medium med packs you find.

NOTE: An easy way to unlock all inventory spaces is to equip the 'legendary engineer suit' from DS1. You unlock this after completing the game once, so if you're doing this mode you should have it. Once the spaces are unlocked you can switch back to whatever suit you prefer.

4. If you only use the plasma cutter or as I used the Evangeliser (Pre order DLC weapon) you can quickly upgrade it right from the start. My evangeliser had 8x 2+ 2+ cuircuits by chapter 7, and I had a fully upgraded RIG by Chapter 9.

5. Also save up your ration seals till you get 60; always sending your bots out to get resources from resource spots (you'll hear a noise chime). You can then go to a bench, select downloadable content (Y button) and buy an Epic weapon & resource pack with the seals (X button). This will give you more resources than you'll ever really need on top of what you find in the game.

1x Epic pack contains:
240 tungsten
800 semiconductors
2000 scrap metal
400 somatic gel
200 transducers

Keep your health and ammo stocked up and this is no-where near a hard achievement.

Follow the above guide as it pretty much has everything you need to know but 1 thing I can offer is a trick that you can do if you choose to, it will make the play through a lot easier.

You can actually get the Devils Horn (Hand cannon) in this play through.

Firstly you must have finished Classic Mode, then you need to go to the dashboard and clear your memory cache, after this is done disconnect from Xbox live so the game can't offer you updates.

When you get back onto dead space pick your classic mode save and choose new game +. From here pick Pure Survival. Now play through the game offline until you hit chapter 3s bench, BAM you'll have the devils horn, after getting it you can re connect to Xbox live if you so please.

If you are running low on med packs something I did was load up ch 8 because in the very beggining the game offers you the only medium med pack that you dont have to create. Just pick it up save and quit then reload. It should only take ten minutes to fill up your inventory by doing a little farming, this really helps if you are hurting for resources at the end of the game.

Ok doing this is a work around to the recent patch brought on by the Awakened DLC. If you have already beaten classic mode and unlocked the devil horns, then you're going to want to delete the DLC off the hard drive. This is where it becomes a slight pain in the ass. You will have to start a new game under a new save slot. Thankfully enough, because classic mode has been cleared already, all the endgame bonuses will transfer over. Set it to casual and blaze through the main game again to unlock new game+ (theres no need to play through classic mode again). After doing that, you can continue on like before with clearing the system cache and playing until chapter 3 to get the devil horns in pure survival mode and hardcore mode. Hope this helps

Just in case this helps anyone...

I'd completed the game on Normal in June 2012 WITHOUT the DLC being downloaded (it wasn't available at that time).

I started a New Game+ from the above save WITH the DLC installed on my Hard Drive and completed the game again in November 2013 on Classic to unlock the Devil's Horns.

I cleared the cache (as per the other guides) and started Pure Survival offline, got to the bench on Chapter 3 and no Devil's Horns.

I deleted the DLC, cleared the cache again (just in case) but then couldn't access the Pure Survival save or the Classic save because the DLC was missing. I could however access the Normal save from 2012 and start a New Game+ on Pure Survival, again offline. The Devil's Horns were waiting from me when I got to Chapter 3.

I've yet to try this for Hardcore mode but will update when I do.