Updated
METRO 2039 Guides
METRO 2039 is still months out, but the gamescom builds already punish the same mistakes: treating the watch as flavour, spraying rounds at a nosalis family, and crafting only after you are already drowning. These guides are written from official trailers and published hands-ons, then cross-linked so a survival problem can send you to combat or crafting without a scavenger hunt.
What a guide can honestly say before launch
A pre-release guide that pretends to have chapter maps is lying. 4A has not published a mission list, a skill tree, or a Ranger difficulty breakdown. What we do have is unusually dense: a fifteen-minute reveal showcase, in-engine Hunter and Renegade trailers, and multi-hour preview sessions that all describe the same loop. You wake up inside a living station, take a job, step through a hatch, and the game stops explaining itself.
That is the same loop the how to play page walks in order. Survival owns the mask, the watch and the surface. Combat owns ammo tax. Stealth owns the quiet opener the Renegade trailer actually sells. Crafting owns the backpack, the two common resources and the rare attachment stream. Read them as a set. A filter problem is often a combat problem in disguise.
If you are coming from Exodus, unlearn the Aurora as a mobile living room. METRO 2039 is a return to corridor pressure with pockets of wilderness. The versus Exodus note explains what muscle memory still helps and what will get you eaten on the first street.
How these pages are sourced
Every mechanical claim on this desk is tagged to something public: Deep Silver’s official site, the Hunter gameplay reel, the Renegade trailer, IGN’s first hands-on, Xbox Wire’s two-hour session, or developer comments about blueprints and ray tracing. When a detail is only one outlet long, the page says so. When 4A has not spoken, the page says TBA.
That standard is why you will not find invented code lists or fake “best loadout tier lists” here. Weapons that appeared on camera live on the weapons page. The bracer, helmet and UV lamp live under equipment. Consumables sit with items. Lore questions go to The Stranger and Hunter.
- Play loop and diegetic UI — How to Play
- Radiation, filters, light — Survival
- Stealth, mutants, ammo — Combat and Stealth
- Backpack, benches, blueprints — Crafting
A rehearsal kit while you wait
You cannot farm filters in a game that has not shipped. You can still train the panic. Open the filter timer, set five minutes, and try to plan a “room” of chores before the beeps. Pair it with the controls sheet so the watch check is a finger, not a pause menu hunt.
When the February 2027 build is in players’ hands, these guides will take patches. Until then they are a field manual for the footage, not a spoiler walkthrough of boss names 4A has not shown.
Keep reading in this section
Open guide
How to play
The campaign loop in the order a new player actually meets it.
Open guide
Survival
Filters, watch, surface radiation and light as a tell.
Open guide
Combat
Stealth first, pack hunters, knives you can pick back up.
Open guide
Stealth
Renegade infiltration, throwing knives, occupied stations.
Open guide
Crafting
Metal, chemicals, and why the backpack has to touch dry ground.
Frequently asked questions
+ Is there a full METRO 2039 walkthrough yet?
No. The campaign structure beyond preview slices has not been published. Use the four guides above plus the map notes until chapter pages can be written from a retail build.
+ Which guide should a series veteran open first?
Start with combat and crafting. Veterans already know the mask. They die in 2039 by over-hunting mutant families and by crafting in standing water.
+ Do these guides spoil the story?
They use only publicly named characters: The Stranger, Hunter, Novoreich, Kaban, Sevastopolskaya. No late-campaign plot is claimed.