Summary
Unlike other boomer shooters, what makes Beyond Citadel so special is its focus on realistic gunplay, particularly highlighting the innate challenges other games forget, like jamming and ammo loss from premature reloading. Beyond Citadel, however, doesn’t shy away from these realities, and incorporates them in such a way that it actually feels rewarding to learn and master.
That said, it can still be a daunting and confusing mechanic for new players. It might even serve as a distraction — when learning these elements, you might overlook other in-game aspects, like searching for weapons or other resources. Therefore, knowing a few key pointers can help you maintain priorities and help smoothen your journey.
8 Reserve Your Alt-Fire Ammo For Specific Weapons
Most weapons in Beyond Citadel have an alt-fire mode, sharing limited ammo across multiple guns in your inventory. In most cases, this alt-fire is much stronger than your primary fire, usually having better damage output, range, and area of effect (or AoE). However, because their ammo is scarce and already shared, you’ll rarely get to use them.
Thus, you should save up your alt-fire ammo exclusively for certain weapons, since some definitely utilize it better than others. For instance, the Machine Rifle’s alt-fire, powered by Energy Cells, can decimate enemies. It’s far better than any energy-based alt-fire, so reserving its ammo for the Machine Rifle is a worthwhile tactic.
Similar to Machine Rifle’s priority with Energy Cells, you should save up your Rocket ammo for the Meta-Magnum MkII sidearm.
7 Use Gold Only For Weapon Modifications
You can generally use gold to buy four things: shields, supplies, weapons, and weapon modifications. Unfortunately, you’ll quickly find that their prices are way too steep, forcing you to choose which to get first. While you can find shields, supplies, and weapons through exploration, weapon mods are far rarer — and that’s where your gold should go.
Weapon-switching is an exciting part of any boomer shooter, but all it takes is one brief vulnerable moment to lose your whole progress, especially in such a fast-paced title. Instead of widening your arsenal, focus on refining it, creating versatile and reliable weapons that’ll remain useful in the long run.
6 Always Go For The Stronger Armor
When looking for armor, you can equip one of three types — Light, Medium, or Heavy — affecting your damage reduction and movement speed. However, these add-ons deplete rather quickly, but you can replenish them via either armor shards dropped from enemies or vests.
However, instead of replenishing, you might be tempted to change your depleted armor for a new one, regardless of type, but you should always favor the heavier armor. Among the three, the Heavy armor is, by far, the most practical set, and, similarly, Medium is better than Light armor, particularly because your base HP is so low. Thus, despite the mobility trade-off, make sure you prioritize damage reduction.
5 Avoid Reloading Prematurely
In Beyond Citadel, you can permanently lose the ammo left in your magazine after a reload unless you quickly pick it up. Although it adds realism, this can lead to a huge ammo deficiency, especially in the late-game phase where most enemies practically eat bullets.
As such, make sure you either only reload if you have negligible bullets left or develop a habit of picking up your magazine shortly after reloading. It’s worth noting that this mechanic doesn’t apply to every weapon, like the Meta-Magnum, Sawn-off Repeater, and the Heavy MG. However, when it comes to weapons like the Whalegun 4X, every bullet counts, so think twice when you’re about to reload.
While a partially spent magazine may disappear if not picked quickly, you can remove that restriction by leveling up your Envy virtue.
4 Use Every Weapon Equally
With so many weapons and ammo types, you’re bound to develop favorites and use one weapon more than the other. However, the game highly discourages this practice — if you find some ammo for a specific gun, you won’t find its ammo again for a long time, rendering it useless in life-or-death scenarios.
To make sure you don’t end up with empty guns clogging your inventory, use each one sparingly and for specific encounters. Use your sidearm and shotgun for -range, your small and large caliber weapons for mid-range, and your sniper rifle for long-range engagements.
3 Focus Solely On The Boss During Boss Fights
At the end of each zone, you get to fight a boss, often using a special weapon. While these may look intimidating, they’re basically bullet sponges, and their damage output is surprisingly weak. So, rather than wasting time clearing the arena, stay mobile and only keep the boss in your crosshairs.
The arenas are fairly straightforward with minimal verticality and tools, so they don’t play a huge role in the fight. Besides that, you’ll find a ton of regular enemies on the far edges, but you can simply ignore them by moving around, completely evading their projectiles. The only thing that’s left, then, is the boss itself, which you take down by just constantly shooting it.
Use the Machine Rifle A2’s alt-fire, the Energy Laser, against bosses since it completely shreds their health.
2 Use Your Food Supply Before The Bloodbag

Food is a vital resource in Beyond Citadel as it affects your Lifeblood, which, in turn, directly caps your maximum HP — the higher your Lifeblood, the higher your max health. Additionally, consuming food grants bonus HP, giving you another incentive to keep your Hunger Meter high.
Meanwhile, Bloodbags are the main way to restore HP, but they’re essentially useless if your Lifeblood Meter is too low. Thus, food not only makes your Bloodbags effective by reducing hunger, but even provides roughly the same HP as one. Using your food supply before an encounter keeps you much safer, preventing wasted Bloodbags that restore minimal HP.
Using Bloodbags reduces your Lifeblood.
1 Invest In The Right Virtues
Beyond Citadel’s leveling system is unique and forgiving, but some stats definitely hold more weight than others. You can find up to one Virtue Point per level and invest it in any virtue (or stat) you’d like, and you can also respec at any time. While each virtue’s importance may depend on your gameplay settings, Pride and Greed are universally the most beneficial to invest in early on.
With Pride raising your maximum vitality, stamina, and Lifeblood, you drastically increase your survivability based on stats alone. Greed, on the other hand, raises your mobility, letting you kill, evade, and escape, far more effortlessly. Regardless of build, these two virtues will aid you in desperate times.
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Beyond Citadel
Indie Action Platform(s) Steam Released January 2, 2025 Developer(s) doekuramori Publisher(s) doekuramori Steam Deck Compatibility Unknown