Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart beginner’s guide, tips, and tricks

In Polygon’s Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart beginner’s guide, we’ve corralled our 10 best tips to help you make the most of your game. We’ll teach you everything from how to make and spend money, to the best way to use weapons, why you should paint your map, how to strategically upgrade your weapons, and more.

Smash everything to make money

Bolts are your currency in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and you’ll need a lot of them to buy every weapon. The good news is that bolts are easy to come by because almost everything you can smash or shoot drops bolts, from enemies, to crates, and lamps, and plants, and more.

Crates are your best source of bolts, and you can find them scattered around every world. Jump and then hit Square to smash all the boxes nearby, which makes collecting bolts easier. While you’re exploring for crates, try swinging your wrench around the world and you may find some bolts hidden in various pieces of machinery or other random places.

Spend your money

Since bolts come from almost anywhere, you shouldn’t need to save them. Spend them. Go wild.

Ms. Zurkon often has new weapons, and if you’re breaking everything around you, you’ll typically have enough to buy at least one. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is filled with wild weapons. Buy them. There’s no real reason to save up your cash in Rift Apart, so spend what you’ve got and use your new toy to collect even more money.

Need Bolts? Revisit the arena

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If you do find yourself poorer than you’d like, you can take on the arena at Zurkies.

The first time you go through each fight in the arena, you’ll earn a hefty amount of bolts or a specific prize. You can also replay these encounters to earn more bolts. You won’t get as many bolts as you did the first time, and there are diminishing returns, but this is a good way to fill your pockets if you’re feeling a little light going into a new planet.

The arena is also a good way to level up your weapons. Speaking of which …

Use and swap your weapons often

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Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart has a lot of weapons — wacky weapons are a series staple, after all. They all work a bit differently and use the DualSense controller in clever ways. It’s important that you use a variety of weapons during your playthrough, as killing things is how you level them up.

The best way to make sure your weapons are keeping up is to pick two or three you enjoy using, cycle between them as needed, and level them up to level five. At level five, they’ll transform into something new and exciting. But instead of using that level five weapon, pick a new weapon and start leveling it up instead.

This ensures that you’ll have a variety of weapons to use when you face down that next boss monster or difficult enemy.

Combo your weapons for powerful attacks and easy upgrades

The weapons in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart serves fall into a few categories, based on their purpose. For example, some guns are better for stunning or freezing enemies than outright killing them. While that might not sound useful by itself, you can combo these weapons with some damage-dealers to really pack a punch.

If you select a stun-focused weapon like the Topiary Sprinkler, and then a damage-focused weapon, you can hit Triangle to quickly swap between them. So use your Topiary Sprinkler to turn an enemy into a shrub, and then quickly swap to a shotgun weapon to blow them away.

This gets both weapons experience, and it can be a great way to stay safe while you deal damage.

Paint your map to find everything

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Rift Apart paints its map every time you walk somewhere new, and it’ll even show you collectibles like Gold Bolts or Spybots when you get close enough. Raritanium, which you need to upgrade your weapons, will also pop up on the map when you pass close by a deposit.

This is a great way to tell where you have and haven’t been in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. As we mentioned before, there are lots of hidden crates and collectible items around the world, so paint that map in as you go.

Pin items on your map

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When those collectibles or Raritanium deposits show up on your map, use the pin feature to make finding them easy. Open your map, move the cursor onto the item you’re looking for, and hit X to pin it. When you jump back into your game, there’ll be a white arrow pointing at what you’re looking for.

This is a great way to find a collectible or more Raritanium when you know you’re nearby but you can’t quite work out where it is.

Don’t sweat what you can’t get

But what about when you know there’s a collectible nearby but can’t figure out how to reach it? Good question!

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There are a few collectibles that are tough to find and many collectibles that you won’t be able to get during your first visit to a planet. That’s OK and by design. If you’re having trouble finding a Spybot, Gold Bolt, or armor piece, move on to your next planet and come back later.

Rift Apart has a very clear point of no return message before its final boss, so you’ll have a chance to go back and find everything before you finish the game.

Check out our Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart collectibles guides to find every item in the game.

Collect those Spybots to get the ultimate weapon for free

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One of the collectibles, the Spybot, contains part of a blueprint for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’s ultimate weapon: the RYNO (The Rip You A New One, which means “mess you up,” if you aren’t up on your Ratchet & Clank lore or early 2000s lingo).

But unlike previous Ratchet & Clank games, you don’t actually need to save up for the RYNO in Rift Apart. Once you’ve collected all the Spybots — which you can do before beating the game — you can return to Ms. Zurkon, and she’ll give you the new RYNO for free.

We won’t spoil what it does here, but it’s something you’ll want to pick up if you enjoy defeating all your enemies with a single shot.

Upgrade your weapons with the bonus perks in mind

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Early on in Rift Apart, Ms. Zurkon will teach you how to use Raritanium to level up your weapons. The idea is that you can buy nodes on a grid for each weapon, with minor stat or ammo increases coming from each purchase (depending on the node). But each weapon upgrade grid also has special upgrades. These orange nodes appear in groups, and you’ll need to purchase all the surrounding upgrades to unlock the special perks.

Focus on unlocking the perks. Everyone else is fine but incidental.

These special perks can really improve your weapons, like causing a weapon that freezes enemies to emit ice spikes every time you shatter a frozen target. Unless and until you’re awash with Raritanium, upgrade whatever appears around the orange nodes to get the perks. It’s a great way to unlock your weapon’s potential without spending a fortune.