Techland embraces the game’s RPG elements by introducing a large skill tree. With over 48 parkour and combat skills, it will take a while to find out which are the best perks in Dying Light 2.
For one thing, the advanced perks require the basic version in order to learn them. Another obstacle you also need to pass is a health (combat) or stamina (parkour) threshold in order to unlock the desired perk.
Experience points are hard to come by in the game, and it’s difficult to level up fast. This guide aims to suggest the best perks in Dying Light 2, along with their effects and applications, so you won’t waste your precious skill points.
Best Parkour Perks
At the beginning of the game, you start out with low stamina, with only the High Jump perk unlocked in the prologue. As a result, it’s common for traversal to feel arduous when you lack options. Other times, it’s downright dangerous because simple gaps are death sentences without these tools.
All the 24 parkour perks in Dying Light 2 grant a new movement ability to Aiden. Some of them can completely change the way you explore through Villedor and redefine how you view the obstacles in the world. These are the best parkour perks you should choose first:
Active Landing
Prerequisite Skill: High Jump
Required Stamina: None
Active Landing is one of the best perks in Dying Light 2 because of how often you’ll use it. This perk reduces your fall damage while also keeping your forward momentum. You have to activate it by hitting the crouch button right before you land (but it also works if you hold it).
It is not as flashy as the other perks, but it is pretty much needed to ensure your survival. I can’t begin to count how many times Active Landing has saved me from a failed jump. Having this skill also allows you to jump from higher places and live without the need for an atomizer or a car roof.
Its upgrade, Safe Landing, increases the height which you can land without taking any damage. So make sure to get that as well so you’ll no longer be vertically impaired.
Far Jump
Prerequisite Skill: High Jump
Required Stamina: 120 Stamina
While vaulting over a low obstacle like a small fence, you can press a key to use that object as a spring, launching you further away. The Far Jump perk can be unlocked early on, and you owe it to yourself to rush it. This perk can vastly improve your forward momentum so you can reach your destination much quicker.
You’ll feel like you’re soaring through the skies when you have the Far Jump perk. The boosted leap can take you far away, fast. There are so many opportunities to use this perk, especially when you familiarize yourself with what obstacles you can use in the environment.
Sleek Runner
Prerequisite Skill: High Jump
Required Stamina: 120 Stamina
Another subtle but essential parkour perk; you’ll immediately feel the difference once you activate Sleek Runner. Sleep Runner allows you to passively navigate trickier obstacles much faster. These tough obstacles include the standard wall openings and balance boards near construction sites.
Without Sleek Runner, Aiden takes such a long time to cross through obstacles that it’s just better to find a way around it. But with your new perk, you can just charge right through it, and it barely breaks your momentum. Meanwhile, the Virals chasing you will be left fumbling through the debris.
Dart
Prerequisite Skill: High Jump
Required Stamina: 140 Stamina
Aiden’s default running speed is already fast, but it doesn’t increase your jump distance even at top speed. Dart adds a temporary sprint which increases your movement speed at the cost of stamina, allowing you to jump further.
Dart is the best parkour perk for you to get across wide gaps between rooftops. The extra movement speed even helps you jump a bit higher if you need the boost. You can even use Dart to run along walls further.
It’s good practice to amp up your speed with Dart before a difficult jump. Once you get it, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.
Dart’s upgrade, Dash, allows you to sprint indefinitely while your stamina lasts. Unfortunately, though it sounds good on paper, it isn’t that useful since you only need a few moments with Dart to boost your jump. Furthermore, Dash would only eat up your precious stamina when your default run speed is already fast enough.
Wall Run
Prerequisite Skill: Tic Tac
Required Stamina: 200 Stamina
Wall Run is an important parkour skill in Dying Light 2. This perk allows you to run upwards on walls and other flat surfaces. Without it, Aiden can’t go for the ledge that’s just barely out of reach as he’ll just slide right down.
The best part about Wall Run is that it doesn’t need momentum. If you’re backed into a corner by the infected, you can turn around and climb the wall. You start running upwards once you come in contact with the surface, which means it can act as a pseudo jump extended if you hit the wall at a high angle.
This skill becomes even better once you unlock the next upgrade, Wall Run Jump. After climbing up a vertical surface, you can jump behind you or to the sides.
Enemy Jump
Prerequisite Skill: Dart
Required Stamina: 180 Stamina
Enemy Jump is both a hilarious and useful parkour skill. While darting or dashing, you can jump on top of an enemy, whether they’re human or infected. Doing so will cause you to soar high into the air while staggering the enemy in the process.
The Enemy Jump perk is best used as a defensive maneuver when you’re stuck at street level. Sometimes when you’re running at night, you can’t help but avoid a Howler. Suddenly, an overwhelming amount of Virals start ganging up for a piece of you. What’s worse is that they can interrupt your slow ascent up a pipe or a ledge, throwing you away from safety.
With Enemy Jump all you have to do is find a nearby street lamp or ledge, then vault over an enemy to get a substantial vertical boost. If you want to get creative, this can also be used as an offensive tool in open areas. The boosted jump is high enough to combo into an Air Kick or Ground Pound.
Best Combat Perks
Combat encounters are a miserable affair at low levels in Dying Light 2. Without good combat perks, it’s a dance between attacking and blocking, like a turn-based JRPG. There’s also your low stamina in the beginning, so you’ll be backing away after a few swings.
But with more options to your toolset, you’ll find that fighting is expressive and creative. The best perks in Dying Light 2 are the ones that fundamentally change how you approach combat, and there’s a buffet of moves for you to choose from.
Your enemy’s health bar is the problem, and your expansive move set is your solution. Try these combat perks to dominate your enemies:
Windmill
Prerequisite Skill: Power Attack
Required Health: 160 Health
The Windmill perk performs a strong attack where you swing your weapon in an area around you. It’s a valuable tool when you’re in an enclosed space and can’t escape, lifesaving even.
The Windmill perk is the best combat perk to help get infected trophies or farm valuables. Unfortunately, when you’re doing activities like grinding for infected trophies, you’ll attract a lot of infected. Windmill gives you a stamina efficient way to dispose of a group of infected.
Dropkick
Prerequisite Skill: Air Kick
Required Health: 180 Health
The Dropkick perk was the most fun combat skill in Dying Light 1, and that sentiment is even better in the sequel. Dropkick is the answer to everything, a swiss army knife for post-apocalyptic beatdowns.
The damage on Dropkick is way more explosive than it has any right to be. Try using it on a mini-boss like a Revenant or Goon to see how much it chunks from their health. Also, the pushback on it is comically strong. So when a heavy human soldier is giving you trouble, simply dropkick him off to the edge of the universe.
The Dropkick perk is stylish, hilarious, and undeniably overtuned; what’s not to love?
Grapple
Prerequisite Skill: Perfect Dodge
Required Health: 140 Health
The Grapple perk performs a classic Judo move where you use the attacking enemy’s momentum to throw them to inputted direction. Why block, parry, or dodge, when you can knock them off feet and follow-up while they’re vulnerable? The Grapple perk is a great defensive as well as offensive combat perk.
Since you can throw enemies behind you or to the sides, you can introduce them to environmental hazards. For example, stand near edges and throw enemies off the roof for an easy kill, or you can camp near spike traps and pin them to their doom.
Its upgrade, Grapple Throw, increases their momentum so you can throw them ever further.
Block Charge
Prerequisite Skill: Perfect Parry
Required Health: 160 Health
The Block Charge perk is a unique combat perk because of its situational use. With this skill, you can throw yourself at an enemy while pushing them on the ground. However, this skill really shines when you’re at the edge of a tall place because you’ll take them down and use their body as a safe landing.
During a chase, you can grab the nearest zombie and take a shortcut all the way to the street level. This perk even works against the lethal Volatile if you manage to position them at the right place. You don’t need to fall several floors to use this skill, though, as you’ll still break the enemy’s guard and still send them flat to the floor.
Stab Followup
Prerequisite Skill: Stab
Required Health: 200 Health
The Stab Followup is an excellent combat perk for stealth segments in Dying Light 2. After performing a Stab takedown on an enemy, you can hurt a knife at another enemy, killing them instantly. This move is invaluable in tight, crowded spaces, perfect for completing GRE quarantine zones.
The range for the knife throw is impressively far, so you can even use this to clear bandit encampments. Additionally, the damage on the knife throw is lethal to most enemies, bar the ones with big health pools like the Goon.
Power Shot
Prerequisite Skill: Precise Aiming
Required Health: 200 Health
For the Rangers out there, you need to rush down the skill tree to get the best ranged combat perk in Dying Light 2.
Power Shot is a straightforward stat upgrade that boosts all your ranged shots damage. But, it also adds a piercing effect to it, which means you’ll be able to use your bow to deal with the crowd.
If you take the time to learn how city alignments work in Dying Light 2, you’ll find out that assigned four faction structures to the Peacekeepers grants you the almighty crossbow. Who needs guns when you have the crossbow and the Power Shot perk?
With full ranger gear and the Power Shot perk, Volatiles will be afraid of you. You can freely hunt Volatiles at your level, and they’ll still die with ease.
