Far Far West Beginner Guide

Phase 1 — First 30 minutes in the Saloon

Before you ever load into the Far West, the Saloon hub does the heavy lifting. Walk every counter — spells NPC, loadouts NPC, hero upgrades, gambling, the firing range — and read every dialog tree. Most of these aren't flavour text; they're permanent stat upgrades, free Joker slots, or one-time XP windfalls. Every guide we audited puts "skip the Saloon NPCs" in the top three rookie mistakes.

Once you're ready to load in, do three things in this order:

• Open the Fragments panel and track a target weapon. Far Far West will not roll your fragments forward to a new unlock automatically — every fragment you pick up after a finished unlock vanishes into a weapon you already own.
• Lock in a starter spell pair: Fireball + Voodoo Drain. Fireball covers crowds; Drain is your panic heal. Swap to Boing once you have it if your deaths are coming from getting cornered, not from chip damage.
• Open the map and tag side objectives before plotting your route. They are the most reliable early gold source and several of them gate gear that pays forward through the rest of the run.

Two background habits separate first-night players from second-night players: keep your ammo topped up at every supply point (press Gto drop excess so you don't hoard the wrong calibre), and drink healing potions the moment your bar dips. Health potions don't bank well — a full bar wastes the perk-drop heals you're going to find anyway.

Phase 2 — Surviving your first bounty

The bounty fight itself is rarely what kills you. Killing the bounty triggers an extraction timer and an escalating wave system that scales hard the longer you sit on the corpse. Every guide flags the same loop: clear side objectives first, pull the boss last, and start sprinting toward extraction the second the bounty drops.

Three habits that turn a wipe into a clear:

• Cast at least one spell from every school you have unlocked, every run.Each school's first cast in a match grants a one-time XP bonus. Skip the rotation and you cap your spell progression for no reason.
• Reload before you initiate the boss, not during.Reload animations eat your dodge windows, and the bounty's damage spikes are timed to punish stationary players.
• Pick up Soul Orbs as soon as they drop. They drift, and the wave mobs will run them over before you do.

For the Marauder bounty specifically, shoot the generators powering the shield — the shield bubble itself is a damage sink and you'll burn an entire mag for nothing. The generator is on the underside of the shield arc.

Phase 3 — Your first week — fragments, gold, weapon XP

Once you can clear a bounty, the game becomes a question of whatto farm. Difficulty doesn't just scale enemy HP — it changes which currency drops fastest. Pick one goal per run, not three.

Two map-specific detours pay back fast: the Canyon medallion hunt unlocks a hidden cavern with seven gold mines (worth 252–378 gold depending on difficulty), and the Far West hidden room reliably drops the Bell Shot Joker — a sustain pick that survives well into the mid-game.

On the Soul economy, spend on survival upgrades before the 250-soul Gamba machine. A failed gamble in a fragile build is a wiped run; the same gamble in a stable build is a free Legendary swing.

Beginner traps the top guides all warn against

Five mistakes the four guides we audited all warn against:

• Skipping any Saloon NPC. You leave permanent stat upgrades in the dirt.
• Forgetting to retarget your fragment tracker after an unlock finishes.
• Triple-farming in a single run. All three rewards land mediocre; better to grind one well than three at half-speed.
• Lingering after the bounty dies. The wave scaling is exponential and there is no skip-to-extraction button.
• Treating spells as decoration. Skip them and your spell tree, your school XP bonuses, and most of your reaction-matrix damage all stagnate together.

None of this is playstyle — it's pure efficiency. Once you have a stable bounty clear, jump to the Best Builds page or test loadouts against the Build Plannerbefore you spend Souls on a Joker you can't un-pick.