I’ve experimented with all the weapons and abilities throughout my Atomic Heart play through and there are some that I found to be much more useful than others. The correct answer is bucket. Just use the bucket. But just in case that doesn’t work, I’m going to break down all the active abilities you can use. Instead, I’m also going to give you some of my personal picks for the best upgrades to slap onto yourself and give a few combat tips along the way.

Ability: Polymeric Jet

What is slightly more deadly than vanilla soft serve? It’s the Polymeric Jet. This will spew out its fluffy globules wherever you aim it at and those can adopt any properties of elemental effects.

You can use other abilities or elemental cartridges. You can slap onto your weapons to ignite these spots with either electricity, fire, or ice. Enemy attacks can also influence the effect that these take on. Usually, that’s purely by accident, though Polymeric Jet is a favorite of mine since there are so many other gameplay mechanics that synergize with it.

You can use it to create tactically placed barriers that daisy chain the effect along the path or spray it all over the place. Hoping someone just wanders into your death trap. There’s no enemy around for this place, so use your imagination.

In the upgrade tree, there are a few things I highly recommend you focus on, which will improve the potency of the Polymeric Jet. Mixture Efficacy will make those elemental effects applied just overall more effective. Environmental Resistance will increase the time that will stay active and Neuro-polymer Air Defense will make it. So, you can instantly take down those annoying flying bots that are kind of all over the place.

I almost always had Polymeric Jet equipped during my play through and it’s one of the more fun ones to just mess around with and not practical ways. The Polymeric Jet combined with elemental effects is one of the best abilities, since it handles crowd control defense and offense.

Ability: Mass Telekinesis

The next ability is Mass Telekinesis, which lets you dangle your victims up in the air. While holding this effect, you can still be one-handedly firing your guns since, thankfully, your right hand is a beefcake.

You can also unlock the ability to slam airborne enemies back down into the ground by hitting the telekinesis input again after you see your hand do this. If you don’t wait for that, you’ll just let the enemies nicely fall back to the ground and they definitely don’t deserve that upgrade for Mass Telekinesis.

I suggest grabbing Forced Fall Acceleration, and that’s the ground slam. Move Amplified Modulator will increase the Telekinesis’s area of effect and increased power, which will let you levitate even the larger chunky enemies.

Weapon: Zvezdochka

Now, let me shift for a moment and talk about a weapon combo real quick.

After you get the blueprint to craft the Zvezdochka, I recommend seeking the reverse shot attachment, which can be grabbed out of a gold chest in the Polygon 1 area. This will make the alternate attack for this weapon arrange swirly blade thing. But if you also grab yourself the Lower Blade attachment, this adds what you might just assume is visually another blade to the weapon.

However, that synergizes with the reverse shot attachment to launch two blades out at a time. You can find that extra blade attachment in a bronze chest in the Polygon 8 area. Also, adding an elemental cartridge slot is worth putting on this, as well.

Now, back to the Mass Telekinesis ability combined with this strong weapon build and you can pop even the larger tanky enemies into the air.

Juggle them with those blades electrified ones in this case and take them down without expending a single bullet. Normally, these guys will drain your resources because they can take quite a beating. If you’re playing on the highest difficulty, you’re going to want to be saving ammo wherever you can.

Ability: Polymeric Shield

Next is the Polymeric Shield, which turns you into a safe little Bubble Boy. When this is active, it will block some incoming attacks and after a few upgrades can even reverse incoming damage back onto the attacker. This is pretty useful for mitigating damage while running and gunning. But if you’re adopting more of a melee play style, this ability is nearly required. It’s one of the more basic abilities. But being able to attack and be redirecting incoming damage at the same time can make things drastically easier.

If you go this route, I recommend you also get the Kinetic Reflector that doubles the melee damage that’s reflected back. Neuro-polymer Reflector will also reflect back ranged attacks and Med Unit Feedback will regenerate your health when the shield absorbs damage. They are pretty useful.

Ability: Cryo Jet

With all that, you can turtle a ton of damage and greatly increase your overall survivability. Next is the Cryo Jet, which is primarily a crowd control ability that can popsicle enemies.

Mostly, this is more of a combat deterrent rather than offensive ability. If you’re going with the Cryo Jet, I suggest grabbing Intensive Spraying, which will freeze enemies faster. Absolute Zero will deal with some damage over time while they’re frozen and Careful Disassembly will increase the materials you gain from killing frozen enemies.

Overall, the Cryo Jet is another pretty straightforward ability. But if the Polymeric Jet from before isn’t enough crowd control for you, this one can more immediately limit the amount of things that actively trying to rip your face off.

And for the last main active ability, it’s actually one that you don’t have to equip at all since you’ll have it at all times. Shock will send out a short-range electrical arc, which can stun and continually damage most of the robotic enemies. This has a pretty quick recharge and is a lot more useful with a few key upgrades. I recommend you get Chain Lightning, which bounces that Shock to another nearby target Extended Topology.

Now, you’re Palpatine and Resistor Malfunction, which increases the damage enemies take while they’re electrified. Since you’re always going to have Shock on you at all times, you might as well focus a few upgrade points into it as soon as you can.

Role Upgrade

Now, before I close this out, here are a few upgrades I recommend from those other two skill trees under Character and Energy Management.

The skill Born Marksman is a must-have since it flat out reduces the spread while firing from the hit. The one on the left is without that perk and on the right is with it active. It’s a pretty big difference in that pattern. So, you should definitely get this one.

There’s a lot of scooting around on foot in this game and with no traditional sprint, you’re going to need the movement boost from Morning Exercise, which might not seem like much. But it adds up in the long run.

In Energy Management, I suggest getting both Energy Densities, which give you an extra energy bar each and Thrift, which reduces the energy drain from certain weapons.

Weapon: Dominator

The Dominator gun, for example, can become much more useful with a higher energy capacity. Its alternate fire combos really nicely with the Telekinesis ability since it can arc some extra damage to nearby enemies before it collides with something.

I love the energy weapons because they don’t cost any ammo to fire, so always feel like royalty-free murder. They’re all just a bunch of feral Amazon Alexa, though. So, it’s all good.

Those were just a few of the combat tips I had for you today, just in case the bucket didn’t do the job already.