Stranger Things 3: The Game

31 Achievements

1,000

12-15h

Xbox One

Xbox Series

Survivor

Beat the game on New Game+

0.45%

How to unlock the Survivor achievement in Stranger Things 3: The Game - Definitive Guide

Johnny Sinister

TrueAchievements

06 Jul 2019 02:54

New Game + on this title is known as Eliminator Mode, and is not your typical 'New Game +'.

As expected, it unlocks once you complete the campaign for the first time.

Please note that Eliminator mode is a fresh save and won't carry over your progress, parts, gnomes, etc from your previous game. It will create a separate save, so you shouldn't lose your original progress. But to be safe, if you want to mop up gnomes or errand quests, be sure to do so before starting Eliminator mode.

Eliminator mode starts you off with all characters unlocked. You can still pick your difficulty for this mode, so be sure to select the easiest difficulty to make it more manageable.

The catch to this game mode is, each time a character dies, it is a permadeath. Lose all your characters and it is a game over.

Although not dying in the traditional sense is not too big of an issue, there are other ways of losing that can catch you off guard if you are not ready. Examples include the chase scene in the hospital and any section in which you have a time limit to solve a puzzle or turn off an alarm.

It is highly recommended that when playing through the campaign the first time, you pay special attention to these danger areas and either practice them a few times or make some notes.

Also, it be sure to switch to useless characters (whoever you determine those to be) whenever you are in a situation in which you might lose. This way, you don't permanently lose any of your good characters.

You will only lose the character you are actively controlling. The secondary character will not be affected.

Since characters are all available and can be lost in this mode, ALL characters are capable of performing ANY special action. i.e, Hopper can crawl in vents, Max can use the bolt cutters, etc.

My personal strategy was to use Dustin, since his spray attack had good range and did some poison damage as well. As early as possible, I made trinkets that helped with his damage. By the end, I was doing 28 with each spray and 9 poison damage per second. It was more than enough to pretty much fly through the game.

For my second character, I kept Max. By pressing the

button, she would use her special, which spawned about 5 hearts. This prevented me from hardly ever needing to use health kits. However, you will want to keep 5 kits at all times, just in case ($1 at any vending machine).

If you have all other achievements, you can speed through a bit by focusing on the main story quests. Since you have all abilities from the start, and should be familiar with the game, it should take less than 6 hours. You will want to stock up on money and parts though to make some good trinkets to help you out. With the abilities already unlocked, you will accumulate parts much faster than on your original playthrough.

As of now, there is no official guide out for the game, so I can't direct you to any specific area walkthrough, but feel free to as questions and I will help the best I can.

I only lost 3 characters on my playthough, and you have a total of 12.

06 Jul 2019 02:54

25 Comments

I just finished the game on easy mode, and died on Cerebro and the final boss multiple times. I don't think I can finish it without losing all the characters... If I get to the final boss after 6-7 hours of play and it kills my remaining characters, I risk throwing my OneX out the window XD
30 out of 31 achievements in 14 hours. I alone found 47 garden dwarves out of 50. I did not find 31, 35 and 49, I had to look for a solution.

I will try this Eliminator mode to try to complete the game, but I'm scared lol

edit : Noooo !! I saw that today we must equip ourselves with a maximum of 5 objects... So I finished the game the first time without equipment, and there I realized it at 7 hours of play on my 2nd part for Eliminator mode XD

........

I thought that the equipment accumulated in the manufacturers. I found it weird that I always took badly or that I was not so fast with the skates... Holy c--p...
I lost Max on the double boss in the lab, the one that regenerates. It's a tragedy... I am soon in Cerbero now, after 8 hours. I'll try with Dustin and Will. I put 850 more life points and some attack boost, I hope it will pass.

edit 2 : there, it's done. I regret not having known that we had to equip ourselves with aids. Without the squat to move faster and without the protections, I lost several hours, and a dose of stress that I could have avoided.
14 hours for 30 achievements, and 9 more for Eliminator mode. 23h to complete, I would have been below 20 without problem if I equipped myself earlier.
I see guys who are under 10 hours to complete. It's a lie, eh ^^

By Luke444k on 24 Feb 2021 10:10

Hello Luke444k....

I don't usually post on here, and I had to this time because of what you said about people unable to finish this game under 10 hours. Just like the others that said they did, I too finished this game under 10. Both in normal mode, and in New Game+ ... it's not that hard, and as long as you upgrade the characters with the trinkets that you want to during the game, then you can easily coast through it, even on New Game+

I completed it on New Game+ under 6 hours in fact, and that was also doing many of the sub quests that you did not need to complete the game. Also, I did not lose anyone. I had a chance to when I accidently pressed the wrong button and switched to a character I wasn't familiar with, and I was already low on health, but I exited out before that happened.

Really enjoyed this game, and would recommend it to anyone. It was quite enjoyable and I liked the gameplay. Hoping for another one!

By DK1MonkeyMan on 01 May 2021 21:33

Nancy makes bosses a joke. I used her on the final boss block and executed 3 times and he was dead.

By Bazingator on 20 Aug 2021 23:30

I don’t have the game yet but I’m pretty sure you can delete your local copy and resync from the cloud to undo a death. You would generally lose 10 minutes or so, but your character would be back alive. Obviously if you lose someone you don’t care about there’s no need to go through that rigamarole.

By Palesius on 07 Jul 2019 23:52

I suppose that is plausible. Honestly though, it shouldn't be a huge issue. You will have already played through the game once, you can play New Game + on easy, and you get 12 lives to get it done. But there is one puzzle in which you have to open two switches at once that is a bit of a pain.

By Johnny Sinister on 08 Jul 2019 05:22

What Palesius said is correct. You can delete your local save and resync it. But you can lose more than 10minutes! Especially at the end of the game, when the dungeons are very long.

By Tenreth on 10 Jul 2019 09:40

I felt the save feature on this game was weird. It had autosave, but seemed time based, not due to actions such as going to menu or changing locations.

By Johnny Sinister on 10 Jul 2019 10:47

If you are on the verge of dying or running out of time, can you just force close the game or even just quit to the main menu and reload to essentially get a do-over without losing a character? Also, how does the permadeath work on the last boss since it seems like you're forced to be two specific characters for the fight?

By dshaw88 on 22 Jul 2019 23:30

I never tried quitting out, but other players say that it works. As for the last fight, you were required to play as Joyce and Hopper during the original playthrough; On this mode, you will continue playing with whichever characters you were using and are free to switch to any characters you want (have left).

By Johnny Sinister on 23 Jul 2019 06:04

You can force the game to sync by quitting out and restarting the game. (Works with any game.) That way if you're about to go into a boss area and want to have that backup just in case, you shouldn't have to go as far.

Suggestions on which are the best trinkets to use?

By Sashamorning on 28 Aug 2019 22:20

I guess it depends on your play style, but I tried to use one of best armor trinket to increase life then made Dustin's attack as strong as possible. Since I was already familiar with the game, I just wanted to kill enemies as quickly as possible.

With Max's special and the ease of getting first aid kits, I wasn't needing to play too defensively.

By Johnny Sinister on 29 Aug 2019 07:21

Really good guide. Personally I preferred Will with his rocket launcher, buffed by the projectile Sharp Shooters trinket which adds 20 per attack, Child's Play which added 10% to kids's attacks, and for a while used Belching Champion to add to that chem lasting effect. The Belching Champion, plus REO Skates and something else were on the second floor of the mall behind the scenes. I got them right at the beginning of the game.

Max was spot on. She's a beast.

Also, for the hospital chase, I used Joyce. Her Whirl attack crushes the barriers on the way out so that you don't have to break them down. I died a few times on my first run, found that Joyce was far and above everyone else. Just a suggestion for your solution.

By Sashamorning on 29 Aug 2019 16:01

Good/Great Characters:
Will
Max
Steve
Dustin
Joyce

Ok characters:
Johnathan
Hopper
Lucas

Bad characters
Eleven
Mike
Nancy
Erica

Just my opinion but most of the bottom characters didn't do anything for me.

By RealistIdealist on 15 Jan 2020 18:23

After picking Eliminator... I get a game difficulty setting choice. Wonder if story works, rather than standard/exp diff.

By Twigleaf Twigs on 20 Sep 2020 03:38

Dustin with that robot trinket (+50 dmg) and Max, plus any Chem bonus dmg and Kid dmg boosters are OP. I died once when protecting Cebero or whatever it's called, but I wasnt paying attention.

And yeah, you can play Story, I believe. But if you wanna hold off, i can verify that for you later today.

By Leo Ascendent on 20 Sep 2020 17:42

Story does unlock it, I can vouche

By Leo Ascendent on 21 Sep 2020 03:19

Can confirm (even though I haven't started Eliminator Mode yet) that Will is by far the best character, he can kill way quicker than Dustin can with the trinkets Sasha mentioned along with Firestarter once you have access to them. Mostly one or two-shot enemies pretty much.

By Tendoman77 on 19 Oct 2020 03:39

Eleven and Nancy in your bottom list.
They are top tier characters, particularly with damage boosts related to them.
Nancy is a powerhouse of damage, and with 5 special attacks pretty much wipes Tom/Bruce.
Eleven and her special (once cheap) wipes whole groups easily too, and her normal damage attack has a push back..

By Drazer76 on 19 Jan 2021 07:43

"You will only lose the character you are actively controlling. The secondary character will not be affected."

That's entirely false. Just lost Max and possibly fudged my whole playthrough because the boss in the hospital killed her while I was playing Will.

By GoyetteQC on 22 Aug 2021 15:59

Goyette,

Sorry to hear it. Not sure if anything has changed since the solution was posted, but that is definitely how it worked when I played. I did a bit of research online (specifically Steam version) and it all seems to corroborate what I posted.

Maybe it was just some bad programming? Did you perhaps switch characters at the last second?

Regardless, I hope you are able to successfully finish your run.

By Johnny Sinister on 22 Aug 2021 18:05

Can confirm that you can do this on Story difficulty.

Can also confirm that if you lose a character, just hit Menu quickly then go to Dashboard and close the game. Upon loading up the game and hitting continue you'll be at the previous checkpoint with the character alive again.

By Lockie on 23 Aug 2021 04:34

Just did the achievement also and I can confirm that if the 2nd character dies (the one controlled by the CPU) its a game over, you loose this 2nd character and you restart the fight. But when I lose Max in the hospital boss fight, I was able to finish the game in about 4h in story / easy mode.

The last boss is clearly very easy if you still have Nancy, with her trinket, the trinket to rise the critical chance for women… use her special ability 3-4 times and it’s a win !
Steve can also be nice as a 2nd character since his ice cream slow down the monsters and even bosses.

By Talhynor on 23 Aug 2021 13:14

Must have been updated. I played it the week it was released and lost 2-3 characters during the hospital part, and only lost the character I was controlling.

I will try and update the solution accordingly.

By Johnny Sinister on 23 Aug 2021 13:45

All I did was use Eleven and whoever it was that has the medic ability. Bosses go down fast when you spam Eleven's special and have upgrades for her. Less than 4 hrs just rushing the main missions, 0 characters lost.

By Sipuli91 on 26 Aug 2021 04:36

As mentioned above, if you do get game over, hard closeout will keep you from losing any characters.

I don't know if second player can drop out and just jump in at the end to unlock. Played this game with my wife, but left her controller connected when she wasn't actively playing Eliminator Mode just to be safe. However, there are points that can't really be run with an inactive controller.

By Edward Antonym on 29 Aug 2021 23:42

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themindisacity

PlaystationTrophies

Once you beat the game, Elimination Mode will unlock on the main menu. Playing the game on Elimination Mode is exactly the same as playing the game on regular mode, except permadeath is involved – once a character dies, they're gone from your roster forever.

This isn't nearly as bad as it sounds. You will start with all twelve characters from the beginning of the game and all characters possess the needed navigational field skills (bolt cutters, vent travel etc.). You can also play the game on Easy to help you out. Additionally, it seems that if your AI-controlled character dies, it doesn't count against you; besides, it's pretty difficult for the AI character to die. Finally, you can make use of save backups and also abuse the game's autosave – namely, when you die/game over, the game does not autosave so you can just close out of the game and relaunch it to try again from the last autosave you made.

The best advice I can give you is to keep Max as your AI-controlled character, as her Medic ability will help you out quite a bit. I got through the majority of the game just using Joyce, because you can craft her massive damage increase trinket relatively early in the game. Equip as many health and attack up trinkets as you can and you should be fine.

cooldudematt has an alternate strategy:

I'd recommend using Will and Max. Equip 2 decent body armour trinkets and 3 Firestarter trinkets. Then just allow set Max as your CPU partner and let her take the damage while as Will you deal strong fire attacks from a ranged distance. If you see your health going down but not enough to use a medkit just use your partners medic skill to heal.

If you've banked enough money, you can buy the Roman Candle from Pan-O-Rama for $50 and craft the wizard staff trinket for Will, which will up his dealt damage. If you plan to craft this trinket, you will need to run through Will's sidequest again to unlock access to that trinket.