The Last of Us Part II No Return PC guide: tips & tricks for mastering the roguelike mode
03.04.2025
Di Shaan Joshi, Contributor
Veering away from the franchise’s traditional story modes, No Return instead tasks players with fighting their way through a series of five randomized combat encounters, culminating with a boss fight. Progression doesn’t persist from run to run; any upgrades you made to your weapons or character are wiped, resources and crafting materials you gathered are lost, and the stages you’ll be able to choose from are also re-rolled. While the moment-to-moment gameplay remains largely unchanged from Part II’s campaign, No Return is a different beast all on its own, and often demands a more thoughtful, strategic playstyle in order to make it through alive. Our guide will show you the ropes and offer some tips for making the most out of each run.
Use the planning board to see what’s coming
With nothing in the way of checkpoints, there’s very little wiggle room when it comes to on-the-fly experimentation or taking big risks; if you die once, the run ends, and any progress you made towards getting to the boss battle is lost. As a result, strategizing and planning is perhaps the biggest factor in a successful run.
While each run in No Return is randomized, you do have a few tools at your disposal. First off, you’ll want to fully examine the planning board, which lays out the encounters you’ll be able to pick from. It’s worth mentioning that the encounters themselves are not linear. After completing a run’s first and third stages, you’ll have to choose from one of two branching paths, with the unchosen path in turn becoming unavailable for the remainder of the run.
Thankfully, you can look at the pool of available encounters from the get-go, which means you can prioritize a path that best suits your playstyle and skillset. While you’ll occasionally notice the odd encounter labelled with a question mark (which doesn’t let you look at any of its specifics), every other encounter will plainly list out its map layout, enemy faction, their starting behavior (search or combat), rewards for completion, and any modifiers. For example, those who prefer close-quarters combat might want to prioritize encounters that pit you against human enemies over infected ones. On the other hand, if you prefer staying in stealth and picking enemies off from afar, you might want to focus on stages where the enemy doesn’t spawn in knowing your exact location.
Which character should you pick?
In the same vein, you’ll also want to make sure you choose encounters that mesh well with your chosen character, with each having their own unique skill sets and abilities. At the onset, you’ll only be able to play as either Ellie or Abby, but you can unlock additional characters by completing challenges.
- Ellie (unlocked from the start): Offering up a familiar, balanced playstyle, Ellie is equipped with a pistol and Molotov cocktail, the latter of which she can craft without needing to find a recipe. She also gets 50% more supplements after finishing an encounter, and since she starts with two upgrade branches, you’ll have plenty of options for how you want to improve her skills.
- Dina (complete two encounters as Ellie): Dina is a perfect fit for those who like crafting. She starts with a revolver and some extra crafting material, but she can also craft stun bombs and trap mines without needing to buy their crafting recipes.
- Jesse (complete three encounters as Dina): Jesse’s playstyle centers around resource acquisition. Not only does he get 30% more currency after each encounter, but he can unlock unique items at the Trading Post, the weapon and supply store that you can access in between rounds at your hideout. While the available stock at the Trading Post is itself random, Jesse can also reroll as many times as you can afford; other characters can only reroll once per visit.
- Tommy (complete three encounters as Jesse): A good match for those who like sniping, Tommy starts each run with a custom sniper rifle that can one-shot most enemies without issue. He’s also sturdier in hand-to-hand combat (which means he won’t be easily stunned or interrupted mid-attack), but he’s also unable to dodge.
- Joel (complete four encounters as Tommy): Much like his brother Tommy, Joel is sturdy in a fistfight, but is unable to dodge. That being said, he’s a perfect pick for those who prefer a more aggressive playstyle. He starts each run with a revolver, an upgraded melee weapon, a shiv (along with their crafting recipe and upgrade branch), and a short-gun holster for quickly swapping to another handheld weapon.
- Abby (unlocked from the start): Abby is the undisputed queen of close-quarters combat. Not only does she start each run with a hammer, but she regains health for each melee kill, and she doesn’t need to unlock or purchase the melee upgrade recipe or Brawler upgrade branch. In a one-on-one fight, she’s favored to win; just don’t get ambushed by a group of enemies.
- Lev (complete two encounters as Abby): Lev is the best pick for those who prefer to play it stealthy. While his pistol isn’t silenced, he is also the only character that starts with a bow, and better yet, his comes already outfitted with the Bow Draw Speed upgrade. In terms of traits, he has an Improved Listen Mode for mapping out where your enemies are, as well as access to archery upgrades.
- Yara (complete three encounters as Lev): The most unconventional of No Return’s playable characters, Yara only starts with a pistol, and she has no additional skills or buffs. Instead, she starts each encounter with Lev by her side, acting as an ally that can attack and defend alongside you. She also starts with the Ally upgrade branch, letting you spend your supplements to further bolster Lev’s sharpshooting skills.
- Mel (complete three encounters as Yara): While a medic class might seem like an odd fit for a single-player mode, Mel’s strengths lie in her ability to outlast and survive. She starts each run with two health kits, as well as access to the Healing upgrade branch. She also gains a burst of speed from healing, which will certainly help when it comes to scavenging for more powerful supplies and weapons during encounters.
- Manny (complete four encounters as Mel): Manny is a walking arsenal of sorts, as he starts with both a semi-automatic rifle and the hunting pistol, the latter of which can one-shot most enemies. He also nets 50% more weapon upgrade parts after each encounter, and he’s able to craft additional ammo for his rifle. His biggest downside is that he cannot craft health kits, which means you’ll have to either find healing items in the wild or purchase them from the Trading Post. To offset this, Manny starts with 50% more health.
How to best use crafting and upgrades
While the temptation to hunker down in a safe spot and take out enemies as they get close can be very strong, you’ll likely find yourself low on resources before long. Whether you choose to sneak around silently or sprint around like a madman, you’ll want to explore when the opportunity presents itself. It’s not uncommon to find ammo on enemy corpses and crafting materials for health kits, Molotovs, bombs, and more strewn around each map.
If you happen to be playing through an Assault encounter, you’ll want to spend every second in-between enemy waves scavenging for resources or beelining to the supply cache, which is usually filled with ammo and crafting supplies. You can certainly craft additional ammo and weapons during or in-between combat, but it’s best to do that back at your hideout after an encounter, when you won’t feel as pressured for time. You’ll also have the added benefit of maximizing your resources this way. For instance, if you have the currency to spare and the Trading Post has health kits in supply, you might want to use your spare rags and alcohol to make molotovs instead.
Don’t rush
While No Return does score you on each encounter (based on damage taken, your weapon accuracy, number of enemies killed, and time taken), this doesn’t impact any rewards or unlocks during your run. Except for Capture encounters (which feature a safe filled with ammo and resources that has to be unlocked within a time limit), you shouldn’t feel pressured to play aggressively or quickly; the more careful approach is often the safest one.
You can even take advantage of this to gather more resources or complete optional objectives during an encounter. While they aren’t available during your first run, players will eventually unlock Dead Drops, pre-set areas on a map that allow you to trade in molotovs, shivs, health kits and the like in exchange for a reward (typically a crafting recipe or extra weapon) that you can collect the next time you return to the hideout. The same goes for Gambits, bonus challenges that show up once per encounter. These run the gamut from landing headshots and attacking enemies with specific weapons to feeding enemies to clickers, and completing them rewards you with extra ammo, consumables, and currency.
Completing Dead Drops and Gambits isn't always an easy task, but for wave-based encounters, you can often leave one or two enemies alive before advancing to the next wave and simply ignore them while you sprint around the map to either collect resources or set yourself up to complete that encounter’s Gambit. This is much easier if you are pitted against Infected, as Clickers and Shamblers move rather slowly compared to Runners and Stalkers.
Use custom runs to practice
As you've probably figured out by now, The Last of Us Part II’s No Return mode is far from a walk in the park, but there are plenty of settings and accessibility options at your disposal for those who need to fine-tune the experience.
For starters, there are a half-dozen difficulty levels to choose from, ranging from Very Light to Grounded, and you can also choose a custom difficulty setting that lets you individually adjust things like player health, resource scarcity, and how well enemies can spot you. Separately, the game’s accessibility settings let you make adjustments to combat. There are a bevy of options at your disposal here, but disabling enemy flanking, toggling on "Invisible While Prone," and reducing enemy accuracy and perception can have a noticeable impact.
There’s also the option for Custom Runs, which let you choose which enemy factions, bosses, game modes, and mechanics (Gambits and Dead Drops) can show up in any encounter. You can also disable or enable mods, which are randomly selected gameplay modifiers that can drastically alter an encounter. There are over two dozen to choose from, but the ones we recommend keeping an eye out for are Melee Attacks Set Enemies On Fire, Time Slows on Headshots, and Temporarily Unlock All Recipes. For those of you who want to make things more difficult for yourself, there’s the Invisible Enemies mod (which does exactly what you think it does).
There’s a wealth of content to explore in No Return (including unlockable costumes, additional challenges, and Daily Runs), but that does it for this guide. Hopefully, these tips will help you make some progress with The Last of Us Part II’s roguelike mode.
The Last of Us Part II Remastered is available now on Epic Games Store.