Hey there! I'm sure you've noticed by now that Death Skid Marks is as hard as it is fun, so having beaten the game more than a few times on normal, I'd like to share a few things I've figured out that may help a fellow player out.

...is how I began this guide on the Discussion forum on Steam, having enjoyed the game quite a bit - not ashamed of purchasing this game on day one before my work shift ;3 - and having noticed that a lot of people were having trouble doing well in the game, I decided to write a guide detailing a few things I'd been picking up on. I figured I'd noticed that a lot of people liked the game but were having a lot of trouble with various bits of the game, and I've written a few guides in my time (if you liked Dead Rising back in the day, you might've caught a Saint Achievement Walkthrough that I'm particularly proud of) - so, I got off my normally quite lazy duff and decided to help out! =3

Judging by the feedback I got, including from the developer himself (I'm not even kidding!), it's been helpful to quite a few people - it's even a sticky topic over on the forum! Anyway, someone suggested I try submitting it to the 'guides' section, and here we are! Hopefully this guide will help you like it's helped a few others.

I will not be able to help you with a direct walkthrough because the game isn't set up that way, but hopefully the tips and tricks inside this guide will be the next best thing for you. Again, seems to have helped a few others. Can't hurt to give it a try yourself, right? =3

--Most important thing first: THIS GAME IS ALL ABOUT LONG-TERM PLANNING. You may be a bunch of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ morons in a car where you're just as likely to huff nitrous as shove it into your car's systems, but if you play like one, you're as good as dead.

--The game is over as soon as either one quadrant of your car reaches zero health, or once your entire crew is dead (oh, and if the latter's happening, the former's probably not far behind). However, the same rules apply to your enemies: destroy ONE quadrant of their car, or kill their entire crew, and the vehicle's done for. This applies to bosses, as well - you can make fights a lot quicker if you concentrate on specific sections of enemy vehicles. Don't focus fire at the expense of leaving yourself wide open or by standing right in the line of fire yourself, though.

--Just in case you're not sure of how to do it, you attack enemies using the following methods:
*You're using a melee weapon*: Pull alongside the enemy you want to attack. Anyone on the side of the car that's closest to the enemy's vehicle will attack automatically - you don't need to punch in any commands to make things happen; just stay close. Your characters will not reach across the car to hit enemies with their melee weapons if they're not on the correct side of the car to do so.
*You're using a ranged weapon*: Point at whatever you want dead and hold down your personal 'fire' button. Any crew member armed with a ranged weapon will fire at that location regardless of where they're seated. If you happen to be close enough to the enemy's car for a melee attacker to do their thing, they'll attack as well, so don't think you're limited to using only one weapon type at a time.

--If you're trying to blow up the cars, aim where the crew isn't. On most cars, this is the extreme upper and lower left and right. If you're trying to kill the crew but leave the car itself intact, aim toward the middle.

--If you kill a driver, another crew member will go for the steering wheel (with exceptions for cars where crew members can't reach that far). This crew member will immediately and permanently stop attacking you, so it's a good way to take problem crew members on the side of the car the driver's not on out of the game.

--You really, REALLY want to have both a Wrench and Medkit in your inventory ASAP. You CANNOT heal on the road otherwise and there's both no guarantee that any shop you stop at is going to have healing items (or enough of them), nor is there a guarantee that the next stage branch is going to HAVE a shop. Slap them on whichever crew members (NOT the driver) you've deemed the least necessary to your combat strategy, as they can't attack while they're using the wrench or medkit. Be sure to cancel the specials once your crew and car are back up to respectable health levels so they can attack again!
(Important: The wrench and medkit DO cost money to use, so always try to keep at least a few hundred bucks on hand so that you have the means to keep yourself alive on the longer stretches if you're not killing enemies fast enough to keep pace with the healing - it happens!)
(Related: Once you DO have these items, consider killing everything in a section EXCEPT for one car's driver to give yourself some free time to heal on the road.)

The game is not kidding when it says that your characters will not be able to absorb nor inflict much damage late in the game if you don't upgrade their stats. Problem is, drugs are damned expensive and they don't get any cheaper the farther you go - and you need to save some money for weapons and other upgrades. So, try all this to help your money stretch:

--Put new crewmembers through the Russian Roulette test as soon as it's possible to do so - winning gets you a free eight stat points (which saves you $4,000-$8,000 on the drugs you'd otherwise need to buy to get the same stat gains), and losing doesn't affect you much when your new crewmember didn't have any stats to lose in the first place.

--Science labs can be huge crapshoots in regards to what you get out of leaving a crew member out of the game for up to 8 sections, but the longer you leave them there, the more they can get out of it. Always go the full 8 sections; I've had a crew member get the bonus "All Stats Maxed" by doing so. You might want to pass on this if you're late in the game and you REALLY need your full crew available at all times, though (but let's be fair, if you need the stats this badly and you're this late in the game, you're likely screwed).

--It also helps if you figure out IMMEDIATELY what you want a crew member to specialize in, and don't boost his offense stats in anything he's not going to be doing.
(Related: The developer has mentioned elsewhere that a "+" in a character stat effectively gives them a bonus stat point, and a "-" in a character stat gives them a one stat point penalty.)

--Never boost your offensive stats on the guy driving; he's not going to attack under any circumstance, so there's no point in doing so. DO boost his defenses, though.

--You don't necessarily have to keep Mark Skid on driver's duty, but he's probably at his safest in the driver's seat; he'll get hit the least there (you really shouldn't be attacking in melee with only one guy, and he'll have a hopefully-warm body blocking bullets from the right at his right side). This said, if you have a passenger who has worse base stats than him (here I think specifically of the terminal patient), why not let him take the wheel and give Mark a chance to mix it up a bit (hey, if things go particularly badly, at least you'll get the Messiah achievement if you win)? Put simply, give the guy with your worst stats driving duty unless you want to be absolutely sure that Mark survives.

Just like your crewmembers, your car is simply going to get smashed all over the road (and likely into a guardrail) or get shot up into moldy Swiss cheese if you don't upgrade it whenever you can. But just like with drugs, car upgrades start expensive (way more so than the drugs, even) and don't get any cheaper with distance. So, what do you do?

--You really, REALLY want your car to have all of its stats maxed as soon as possible.

--While you want ALL your stats maxed if possible, it doesn't mean you can't prioritize. Upgrade your car HP and steering power first if it's at all possible to do so - the former's helpful for obvious reasons, and the latter's helpful because cars are typically going to try to push you from the SIDES, not the front or back.

--The game's difficulty is tied to where you are on the road, and looking at the road signs at the end of a stage lets you know where that is. Always try to pick the route that takes you a shorter distance (I.E., if you have one route that leads you to 600km and the other leads you to 650km, pick the one that takes you to 650km). Doing so will give you more time and distance to earn money that you'll need to buy what you need to survive later, and the game's not on a time limit, so why shouldn't you take advantage of that?

--This said, feel free to make occasional exceptions for road sections that have enemies or hazards that you don't want to deal with, or if you really want or need a service that one route provides that the other doesn't.

--In addition to the above point, feel free to just haul ♥♥♥ to the end of the game as fast as possible if your characters are kitted out about as well as you think they're going to be. There's no sense taking unnecessary damage or wasting valuable resources before taking on the final boss - the last stop you make beforehand might not have a shop!

--Oh, and just so you're aware, there's no avoiding boss fights. BOTH routes will be marked with a skull and crossbones (signifying a boss battle) once it's time to get your spectacularly dangerous battle on.
(Related: If both routes are marked with a heart, be warned, you're about to have to deal with groupies, who are typically a cut above your average redneck wagon in combat and can pretty handily be considered midbosses.)

--"Heavy Traffic" locations are high-risk, high-reward, and high-probability-of-making-up-a-lot-of-the-late-game. Get used to them. Of note, however, is the fact that enemies can hit each other, and none of them make any effort to avoid killing each other in their attempts to kill you. It's a very good idea to try to let the enemies thin out their own ranks a bit - but be sure to consider the fact that you can either help things along a bit by sandwiching a particularly dangerous enemy between you and the less dangerous ones and letting the bullets fly, or you can hold your fire and let similarly-powered enemies rip each other to shreds and mop up the bloodied surviors in the end. Worried about your earnings getting drained by friendly fire? Fret not - you actually still earn job money if your foes so happen to kill each other in ways that fit your tasks! So, in the words of Harry from Battle Circuit: "Use your brain a little. It's not hard to figure out!"

--With VERY certain exceptions (here I speak specifically of the cars that boost one type of damage at the expense of the other), it's rarely wise to specialize entirely in one type of weapon. You CAN win the game this way - I've beaten the game twice with ranged-only crews, but a battle with the Brain Tank boss on either go likely would've ended my ♥♥♥ immediately if I couldn't get REALLY lucky in giving it a guardrail lobotomy. Similarly, a melee-only crew is going to have one hell of a time with things like the Sawblade boss. This also doesn't take into account certain NORMAL cars that will tear you to pieces if you try to attack them in certain ways.

--Take too long in any given battle and the enemies might just give up and leave you alone, but this is not something you should be relying on for a whole HOST of obvious reasons - this mechanic is basically just to ensure you aren't caught up in more-or-less completely unwinnable situations. And you don't want to be mediocre, do you?

--Melee crewmembers typically do best on the right side of the car; this allows you to have two people meleeing a car and crew at once while keeping your driver safe, and simultaneously both mauling the everloving @#$% out of their driver while taking hits from one less person at the same time.

--Again: Focus fire when you can. A car with 50% health in all four quadrants is a hell of a lot less dead than a car with 0% health in one quadrant, and four crewmembers with 50% health are shooting and beating you a lot more than one dead crewmember, two more with 100% health, and one guy who WAS attacking you but isn't now that you've killed the driver.
(Related: I told you to kill the driver first, right?)

--A large number of enemies tend not to specifically aim at you at all times (don't complain, this would be a much harder game than it already is if they did). If you notice that your foes are leaving themselves wide open to being damaged without any real chance of retaliating against you, press your advantage as fast as possible before your enemies decide to start aiming at you again. If you think it's a good idea to dart out of range after your piece has said its piece, do so and give the enemy time to start being stupid again.

--Vehicles with trailers (I am thinking here specifically of the Flamethrower Trailer) can have their trailers destroyed, or rendered nonfunctional by killing the people on the trailer. Or, you know, screw it, just murder the guys driving the truck cab and let the trailer eat pavement if you don't want to deal with the trailer at all (in the case of trailers with no crew members to kill, this last option is typically your best bet).

--Vehicles with special turrets tend to pile on the damage quickly, AND the crewmember in the turret is a hell of a lot harder to hit than your average mook... but he's not IMPOSSIBLE to hit. The option is also there to just kill everyone else in the car or simply blow it up so that you don't have to specifically try to take out the guy manning the turret.

--Some enemies are either naturally resistant to certain attacks (see: the Armored Groupie Car, the trucks with invincible backsides, tanks which are just resistant to EVERYTHING), or will punish you dearly for attempting to attack them in certain ways (see: Harvesters, the Flame Exhaust cars, the Brain Tank boss, that sort of thing). Attack appropriately, and remember - pushing enemies into the guardrail is almost always an option, and one that very few enemies aren't vulnerable to.
(Related: the enemies with sawblades on their car (and ONLY the sawblades) can have them shot into nonfunctional decorations.)

--Robots are a pain in the neck to kill due to their speed, surprising resilience, and in the case of the ones with sawblades, cause frightening amounts of damage in a right hurry. They have one major weakness, however... Crush them between your car and another enemy, and they tend to die more or less immediately.

--Early in the game, ranged weapons aren't that good at taking down enemy vehicles in a timely manner, due to a combination of you simply not having your full crew yet, as well as how early ranged weapons simply don't deal a lot of damage. If you're in a situation where you've only got one guy with a starter pistol in your car, you should take the following actions:
-Ram the other cars into a guardrail; doing so does a lot of damage to any enemy at just about any point in the game and it doesn't require a weapon (just be sure your car's got what it takes to do this; a car with low stats won't push a pencil!).
-Shoot at the PASSENGERS, not the CAR. Generally speaking, taking out the passengers will be faster than taking out the car, especially if you're fighting an enemy that likes to move around and make it difficult for you to hit one quadrant - passengers usually have less health and they're easier to hit from any angle.
-Seriously, dude. Upgrade and get some more crewmembers. They don't even have to be GOOD crewmembers, just make sure it's another body holding a weapon they can use. You can swap crewmembers you don't want later, but early on, just take whatever's available to you.

--Melee weapons require you to get right up in the enemies' faces to get crackin', but they require no effort to aim, cause more damage, and cause it more consistently than many of the ranged weapons. You're likely to suck up a fair bit of damage against enemies who can also melee you (and holy @$%# is your day going to suck if you go all-melee and run up against cars - or worse, BOSSES - that have built-in melee attacks), so you REALLY want to be sure to bring along characters who can suck up the damage. Drug them up to make sure they can take as much damage as possible; they'll be taking a lot of melee AND ranged damage. Try to attack from where the fewest enemies are going to be hitting you back; that's usually the left side of their cars (which is doubly helpful since in most cars, you're going to be causing the most melee damage from your right side).

--Ranged weapons allow you to not have to get up in the enemies' faces in order to deal damage, and you've got infinite ammo, however, you have to aim them, they don't do quite as much damage, and most worryingly, none of the guns work quite like one another. Unlike melee weapons, where Higher Rank = Pretty Much Better Always, it's a serious consideration as to whether or not you're going to want to change the kind of gun you're using. Of special note, the Rank 5 gun is SLOW AS HELL so you'd better be damn sure you're going to hit something when you fire, and picking up a Rank 6 gun is likely going to play hell with your melee game due to its unique trait of having recoil!

--If you're going with ranged weapons, the Assault Rifle is probably the best weapon you can pick up due to its reasonable firing spread, VERY fast firing rate, and respectable damage - unless you're REALLY lucky and get to pick up a Premium Machine Cannon (hint: you're probably not that lucky), you won't find a better all-around weapon of choice.

--Take jobs that fit whatever playstyle you're going for, and keep in mind that some attacks that are based on your car's natural abilities count as certain types of kills. If you want to play it really safe, take jobs that don't require specific methods to kill any given person/vehicle; just be aware that they do pay slightly less in exchange for you not having to get very specific with your rampage. It helps when, well...

--Sometimes you've just got to say "hell with it" and kill an opponent in a way that your job won't pay you for; some enemies REALLY don't like it (or just plain won't die, period!) when you try to kill them in certain ways and up to $200 is never, ever worth your life (or at least heavy, heavy repairs).

--Jobs where you have to kill crewmembers typically pay more total than jobs where you have to blow up cars but leave at least one crewmember intact (it still counts if the entire crew is dead but you were able to blow up their vehicle before it rolled off the screen - this is not a thing to rely on). It won't be long into the game before you find that most cars have a full crew complement, and it gets surprisingly hard to kill the car without killing the entire crew first as you progress. In fact, for that reason, I'd personally avoid taking jobs where your goal is specifically to destroy the VEHICLE beyond about the first quarter of the game, and even then I'd probably pick another job unless you don't have any other good options.

--If you DO take a job to blow up vehicles with either melee or ranged attacks, but leave at least one crewmember alive, this actually counts robot murder... VERY handy if you plan on fighting robots a lot (which I wouldn't recommend otherwise, those suckers are speedy and dangerous), since robots are somewhat uncommon encounters that really aren't worth taking a job specifically to deal with. Don't try to do this with the "kill with melee" job. You will be frustrated and dead.

--ALWAYS try to have your crew stocked up with jobs that synergize well with each other. If you're decked out to consistently complete one kind of job, you'll earn a hell of a lot more when four people are all getting paid for the same job than you will if only one guy in your crew is getting paid for four completely separate and incompatible jobs.

--Reaper jobs tend to be VERY situational and in my opinion aren't worth taking. While it does allow you to pick up money from sources you usually don't (pedestrians, motorcycle riders, suicide bombers, and of course, crewmembers count), the problem is that you don't run into any of this sort of traffic enough for it to be worth it in most instances (additionally, the pedestrians in particular aren't around forever when you DO), and even so, you need a ranged weapon with heavy spray potential to rack up any sort of respectable kill count, WHILE you're still up against an enemy who will happily attack YOU while you're focusing your fire everywhere but at him. Maybe it's just me, but I'm usually lucky to have a kill count in the 1,000-person range on a full run, and with the low pay-per-kill you get with this job, you're best off picking something with a more consistent (and higher) payout.

--Upgrading a weapon requires both the weapon you want to upgrade, and another weapon to sacrifice with which to boost its stats. You don't have to sacrifice a weapon you're actually using: have your driver (or your turret guy) hang on to a weapon (he won't be using it, after all) and use IT as your sacrifice.

--Premium weapons will give you boosts to two stats, and they're pretty significant boosts, so keep that in mind if you see a cheap weapon that so happens to be a premium!

--Keep in mind that since weapons can be pretty expensive, you should probably try to save the weapon lab for when you KNOW a crewmember's going to be using a particular weapon for the rest of the game. You won't be able to afford too many sacrifice weapons.

One thing's for certain, if you read enough commentary about this game's difficulty, one thing seems to be a common thread - the bosses in this game are some NASTY pieces of work that can wreck your day in a hurry. Still, I've seen them all, and I've beaten them all, so I think I just might be able to help you out! Just, ah, be advised that there's only so much I can tell you about the big bad final bosses you meet at the end of your run, seeing as getting there in the first place is nowhere close to a guarantee, and even so, the odds of you seeing any specific one is a bit low by design.

GENERAL TIPS:
--Remember: Everyone's subject to the same damage rules that you are. If you destroy one quadrant/section of the boss, the boss is done for. Some bosses are tricky and rotate around so that the damaged part moves around, but the rules still apply.


BUMPER CAR GROUPIES:
This is one of the easier bosses. It's really only got two forms of attack, neither of which is all that dangerous.
--Fire a submachine gun out the window more or less constantly. This doesn't cause a particularly threatening amount of damage, but there's nothing you can do about the person firing it despite there clearly being a person in the car firing.
--Bump against you in a way that's fairly hard to resist, but as long as your stats are high enough and your car powerful enough to resist, you SHOULD be able to just push right back against them with no real issue. It's gonna push you pretty damn close to the side of the road, but you should be fine. If you notice that you're not pushing back hard enough to avoid sucking a guardrail... you might want to move out of the way, and fast.

--Melee attacks are practically useless against this thing. As far as dealing damage goes, the bumper itself is mostly an obstacle that prevents you from getting close to the car in the middle - the part you can actually damage. Which melee weapons can't reach. Hope you've got some guns or can hold out for quite a while. All told, though, again, this is a pretty easy boss and you can breathe a sigh of relief if this thing's your opponent in most circumstances.


FLYING SAUCER GROUPIES:
This one's pattern is easy to figure out but actually dealing damage can be tricky thanks to that shield it's got, which reflects gunshots. Know when to hold your fire. It'll typically do one of the following things.
--Dart to a random location at the top of the screen and fire a laser straight down four times, then get to the top-middle of the screen and sweep the laser across the bottom, bottom-left and bottom-right of the screen. As long as that's laser's firing, you can damage the boss. You can sneak a couple of shots in during the 'straight down' shots (Stay away from the top of the screen during this part because it WILL smash you right into a guardrail if you're between it and whatever position it feels like firing from!), but your big opportunity comes during that laser sweep, which lasts a few seconds, is easy to avoid if you know it's coming, and leaves the boss WIDE open (this part, you WILL want to get to the top of the screen during, but know when it's time to move back!).
--Go to the middle of the screen and slowly sweep its laser in a circle. It is not necessarily going to complete a full circle but it's wide open to stress-free attack while it's firing. You might not want to attack from the top of the screen since the boss will go right back there once it's done with this attack, and it doesn't telegraph when it'll do so.

--Guns are the way to go. That shield will mess you up if you get too close (it's spinning not unlike a sawblade) but if you're CAREFUL, you can still get pretty close during one of its "stay in place and not care where you are while firing" moves. Keep in mind, the saucer part itself is the part that takes damage, and it spins CONSTANTLY, so don't bother trying to focus fire on any given part too hard. Just keep attacking anything that's leaving you a safe spot!




END BOSSES (They're gonna waste you? We'll see about that.)

--Word of warning. Every end boss gives you a short stretch during which burning, wrecked cars coast backward. Avoid them, of course, but take the opportunity you're clearly being given to use your wrench and medkit NOW. You might not get too many chances during the fights themselves.
--Unlike regular bosses, the bosses have fairly distinct phases that they go through as they suck up damage. Like regular bosses, you know the score about focusing fire. You didn't come this far to die now - fight smart to make sure you don't, because trying to take one quadrant down from 100% to 0% during the bosses' most dangerous moments will likely end exactly as well as it sounds.


DEATH PROPHET

PHASE 1:
--He'll settle in one area of the screen, then fire two flamethrowers in a sweeping motion that covers the area in front of them, to the two 45-or-so-degree angles to that location's left and right. Easily dealt with as long as you don't suddenly decide to stay in front of the flamethrowers.

PHASE 2:
--He'll stay at the top of the screen, moving side to side, and occasionally fire a volley of tank shells straight downward - or occasionally sweep them around just a bit, but not very severely. Just don't stand still directly downward from him and you should be fine.

PHASE 3 (possibly 4; the phases aren't that distinct from here on):
--And this is the big one. Here's where things start getting tricky. He'll start spewing out robots one after another, up to about seven, and he'll start firing his flamethrower again, typically straight downward or close to it as he randomly wanders around. Also, he'll occasionally have sawblades come out of the sides of his vehicle. The robots will block a lot of your shots and now you're gonna have a lot more firepower to deal with - and he WILL replace the robots once they're destroyed, even though he's not all that concerned about keeping them alive (he'll ram into as many as you will, most likely). Dodge around as best as you can; you've got no safe spots here, but if you've been concentrating your fire before now, it shouldn't take a whole lot to take him out from here!

--All those "Brought ???? to the concert" achievements will ONLY unlock if you were able to buy EVERYONE in your crew a ticket over the course of the game (if Mark Skid ends up getting killed, your remaining crew members will still unlock their respective achievements, but again, only if EVERYONE still alive has a ticket!), so make your choices wisely if you also want to get those "bad ending" achievements!

Thanks for reading and I hope I've helped you out! You can always feel free to suggest a tip or two if you think there's something that'll help out. And hey, I'm still playing myself, so maybe I'll have more for you all someday! =3