Metal Max Xeno Reborn guide: surviving your first days in Dystokyo

Metal Max Xeno Reborn is finally here! It’s a sprawling open-world adventure in which you take control of protagonist Talis in the ruined wasteland that used to be Tokyo, gather allies, put them in big tanks with enormous guns on them, then go and blow the crap out of big monsters.

Sounds like fun? It sure is, but it can also be a bit daunting to get started. Our Metal Max Xeno Reborn guide should get you up and running with the early hours of the game — as well as getting you through your first few Wanted monster encounters. So let’s begin!

Getting started

The initial area acts as a tutorial. Simply follow the suggestions and you’ll end up with some decent weaponry for fighting on foot, a good starter tank and the knowledge you need to get around in the world.

Once you exit Metal Max Xeno Reborn’s opening mini-dungeon, you’re free to roll around the Tokyo Desert as much as you want before heading for Iron Base. Take the opportunity to get used to shooting enemies with some target practice on the nearby ant-type creatures.

A handy tip is that when you switch to Shoot mode by choosing Attack from the Command menu, the initial facing of the sight will match the third-person camera, not the direction the tank’s turret was actually pointing. To save yourself some time — and to get a shot off before the enemy’s Alert bar fills and starts a full-on battle — line up the camera before taking that initial shot.

Roll around, gather some treasure and blast some enemies. Enemies will eventually respawn, but it takes a long time for them to do so. Debris piles will also respawn over time, but treasure boxes will not. When you’re ready, head on over to Iron Base to get the game proper underway.

Recruiting Yokky

Yokky is pissed as a fart at Iron Base’s bar when you first meet him, but as you succeed in taking down monsters and bringing back new bottles of alcohol for the bar — you can find these in treasure boxes — he’ll gradually have a change of heart and join you. Just keep fighting and tracking down treasures until he responds more positively to you, and he’ll join your team. He’ll even bring his own vehicle with him; it’s a bit of a crap buggy to begin with, but with some upgrades, it can become quite formidable.

Recruiting Pochi

Pochi the dog is hiding in a warehouse in the Toyomi Well area. To recruit him, you’ll need to get out of your tank and head up through a narrow pathway through the rubble, then leave something to eat outside the warehouse. Go off and do something else for another in-game day or two, then return and you’ll find Pochi waiting outside for you. At this point, you can recruit him. In the treasure boxes nearby are a gun you can attach to him as well as some Doggy Chow, the latter of which can be used to add skill points without levelling him up.

Progression advice

Since you spend a lot of time in your tanks in Metal Max Xeno Reborn, character level might not seem all that important initially — but if nothing else, the skill points you acquire are super-useful.

Early in the game, you can level up easily by simply blasting enemies whenever you get the opportunity, but as you progress and need more experience to level, following through on the “mini-quests” in the Map menu is probably the most efficient means of levelling. These simply reward you for engaging with various aspects of the game repeatedly, and in particular they’re a fantastic way of getting underlevelled characters up to the same power as the rest of your party.

Do not forget to spend your skill points — all those levels are no good whatsoever if you haven’t taken advantage of them!

Buffing up your tank

An important thing to remember when customising your tank is that your tank’s SP — their armour rating, effectively their “hit points” — is determined by how much “left over” available tonnage you have after all your weapons are attached. Thus, the more stuff you have bolted on to your tank, the less armour it has. Take care not to create what is pretty much a literal glass cannon!

To counterbalance this issue, one of the most effective upgrades to any tank is a new engine. More powerful engines can carry greater tonnages, allowing them to equip more powerful weapons and have more tonnage left over to devote to armour plating. Note that as well as buying a new engine, you can also upgrade an engine several times simply by paying money — this is well worth doing, as each upgrade carries a significant increase to available tonnage.

When choosing weapons in Metal Max Xeno Reborn, remember that cannon and S-E type weapons have limited ammunition, while machine guns have infinite ammo. Upgrading weapons can also increase their effectiveness considerably, but this usually requires you to have scavenged some specific parts from out in the desert as well as simply paying a fee.

There are several types of cannon available. Regular type cannons simply fire a shot. Long cannons are heavier (and sometimes more powerful) and are able to hit targets in the air with the Anti-Air property. Spark cannons can hit an area. And Burst cannons fire multiple times in a single “shot”. It’s good to at least have some Long cannons available in case you come across flying enemies; these can be a real pain to hit, though most machine gun-type weapons have the Anti-Air property required to hit airborne beasties.

Machine guns, meanwhile, are likely going to be your main means of dealing specific elemental damage early in the game. This won’t be a huge issue for most regular enemies early in the game, but it’s helpful to take advantage of when it comes to the Wanted battles. Speaking of which…

The Wanted battles

The meat of Metal Max Xeno Reborn is hunting down the Wanted creatures around the wasteland. Each of these is a powerful boss-type enemy that takes quite a pummelling before being beaten — and more often than not when you first encounter them, you’ll want to keep well away from them!

Once you’ve taken the time to power up your tank and improve your characters’ skills, though, it is very much in your interest to go actively hunting for these formidable baddies. Not only do they reward you with significant monetary bounties when you take them down, they also tend to drop both a very good weapon that you can attach to your tank immediately, plus also often a crafting item that is essential to crafting another excellent weapon.

It is, however, inadvisable to attempt to solo any of the Wanted battles. At the very least, recruit Yokky (and, ideally, Pochi) before even considering taking any of these beasties on.

Death Deliverer

You’ll encounter Death Deliverer just beyond Toyomi Well, as you’re crossing a bridge and heading towards the next waypoint, Tsukiji Ruins.

Death Deliverer will likely be the first Wanted monster you encounter on your travels through the Tokyo Desert in Metal Max Xeno Reborn, and it’s extremely dangerous when you first come across it. As a general rule, Po-M’s reaction to seeing a Wanted monster for the first time gives you a good indication of whether or not it’s a good idea to engage or not — and in this case, you’re best off avoiding an engagement until later.

Thankfully, there’s an easy way past Death Deliverer: it only shows up in the daytime, so simply wait for nightfall (or fast travel back to Iron Base, then sortie back to Toyomi Well in the evening) and you can pass by the bridge safely.

Before taking on Death Deliverer, you’ll want to buff up pretty much everything about your tanks. It’s probably best to wait until you have Yokky, Toni and Pochi on your team — and have found the tank buried in the sand near where Manzappa hangs out so that all three of them have a sweet ride.

Upgrade the engines on your tanks to give them a higher maximum loadout — remember, the more unused tonnage you have, the more SP the tank has for armour — and equip them with anti-air weapons, preferably with an Electric element. Most anti-air weapons are machine guns rather than cannons, so if you have any upgrade chips that allow you to fire multiple machine guns at once, it’s worth using them.

An effective strategy for most Wanted battles is to load up your best, most heavily armoured tank with the weapons that are most effective against the boss, then use the other two party members to provide additional fire support or use items as required. Toni’s Repair skill tree is particularly useful, as it allows her to increase the effectiveness of “Spare Armour” items, which restore tanks’ SP.

Also make sure Pochi has Bark from his skill tree, since inflicting the Dejected status on enemies is a good way of weakening them a bit. Then simply unload on Death Deliverer until you blow it out of the sky!

Gun Taurus

You’ll find Gun Taurus around the far side of the Tsukiji Ruins, as you’re approaching the Big Atrium. On first spotting Gun Taurus, Po-M suggests finding a way around to make a surprise attack, and this is good advice, as Gun Taurus will likely obliterate you at your current power level when you first encounter it.

Rather than heading around the corner of the main path to meet Gun Taurus head-on, look to your left just before the corner and you’ll see some destructible debris. Blast it with a weapon powerful enough to remove it, then exit your tanks and run through on foot. You’ll likely have to deal with a few ants along the way, but these should be no problem for anyone on your team. Keep running to the Travel marker to unlock Big Atrium Exterior, and pop your head into the Big Atrium Interior dungeon if you want — though you won’t be able to go that far, and the poisonous enemies down there can be a pain.

When you’ve buffed yourself up enough to take on Gun Taurus — you’ll want to bring powerful Cold weapons and plenty of SP, so upgrade your engine if you haven’t already — simply fast travel to Big Atrium Exterior and you’ll conveniently end up behind Gun Taurus, enabling you to get the jump on it with your most powerful weapon in Shoot mode. Once the battle begins, repeatedly unload your best Cold attacks on it until it explodes, and be sure to keep your main attacker(s) up and running as much as possible!

Manzappa

Manzappa appears as you proceed past the Big Atrium Exterior en route to your next waypoint. Po-M seems less hesitant to discourage you from fighting it when you first encounter it than she was with Death Deliverer and Gun Taurus, and this is good advice — Manzappa is a good choice for your first Wanted monster to engage with, as it can be taken down with just Talis, Yokky and Pochi. Good job, too, because you won’t find Toni until you get past it!

Before you leap into the fray, though, make sure you’ve bought a Metal Detector — sell off some tank parts you don’t need and you’ll have the 25,000 G required in no time. Near Manzappa’s location, you’ll find a buried treasure guarded by a large broken robot. Destroy the robot — it’ll likely take a few cannon blasts — and search the buried treasure signal to get a new tank.

You might want to swap Yokky’s buggy for this tank, but you’ll need to head back to Iron Base to get it fixed up and equipped before you do that. Either way, having a third tank ready for when you recruit Toni is what you want.

Battling Manzappa is pretty straightforward. You’ll want to bring fire weapons, as not only is Manzappa weak to them, it also inflicts the Burn status, applying additional damage over time. As always, make sure you’re using upgraded engines for additional SP and available tonnage for weapons, and unload on Manzappa until it’s scrap waste.

One additional consideration during the Manzappa fight is that there are a lot of additional enemies nearby, so it may be in your interest to either use one or two of your party members to deal with them, or make use of weapons with areas of effect to hit multiple foes at once. The adds themselves aren’t all that dangerous, but in numbers they can beat you down quite quickly when combined with Manzappa’s power, so eliminate them sooner rather than later. Keep your main attackers in a good state of repair and Manzappa should go down without too much trouble.

Zamza

Zamza lurks on the side of a building in Spider Gully. Rather than letting it get the jump on you, take a look at the pile of rubble at the entrance to the area. If you look at the map, you’ll see there’s a route up to the west you can take. It’s blocked by a debris pile, but you should be more than capable of smashing through that with a cannon by this point.

Climb up the rubble, gathering the treasures along the way, and be sure to rescue Toni at the top of the pile. Head back to Iron Base to get her taken care of, go off and sortie for a bit to gather some materials and blast some baddies, then return to Iron Base again to find her fully recovered. Talk to her a few times until she agrees to join you, then give her the “spare” tank you should have and upgrade it as much as you can. If you can’t recruit her, head out and sortie for a bit again, then return and try again.

Before heading out to take down Zamza, buy at least one RPG from the Sortie Shop. Head back to Spider Gully and climb the pile of crap to where you found Toni. Move to the edge of the building and you should be able to see Zamza waiting to ambush anyone who passes underneath. Let Zamza have it with an RPG, which will knock it to the ground and onto its back, completely vulnerable.

Quickly rush back to your tanks and engage Zamza. Make sure your initial shot while it’s writhing around on its back is a powerful one — preferably either Cold or Electric type or, ideally, both. Then continue to blat it with your best Cold and Electric attacks — ideally making good use of chips that allow you to fire weapons simultaneously or let off multiple shots — and it’ll go down after you’ve given it a good hammering.

What next?

It’s up to you — though you’ll likely want to continue following the main scenario quest in order to unlock new areas and explore the world in more detail. Continue scavenging for new parts, tanks and treasure, blasting enemies and hunting for Wanted monsters — and who knows, maybe you might even save the human race from complete extinction? Gotta be worth a try, at least…

Metal Max Xeno Reborn is out now for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Windows PC via Steam.

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