The new APAS Enhancements system in Death Stranding 2: On The Beach essentially amounts to a passive points-based skill grid. While initially locked behind story progression, you will eventually gain access to APAS and finally make real use of the Porter Grade mechanic.
This guide for Death Stranding 2: On The Beach is all about how to access the APAS Enhancements system, and how to increase your Porter Grade to unlock each of its sub-grids of skills.
How To Unlock And Use APAS Enhancements
APAS Enhancements develop and upgrade movement and combat abilities. The system is unlocked during Main Order 009 ‘Deliver the Chiral Decontaminator to The Government’s Base’, under the Final Preparations menu.
At this point you can assign Memory Points from the Available Memory pool to any of the skills also unlocked at that time. These Memory Points can also be unassigned for a full refund, by selecting the Remove prompt button at the bottom of the screen. This allows you to respec Sam to your heart’s content depending on the needs of the mission at hand.
You can even opt to use the Reset Grid prompt for a completely clean slate.
How To Unlock More APAS Skills
Most of the APAS skills will be locked behind progression involving the leveling of your Porter Grade. There are five distinct skill sub-grids: Porter, Combat, Stealth, Servicemanship, and Bridge Link. Each will have to be leveled individually in order to unlock their sub-skills.
How To Increase Porter Grade
Porter Grade is essentially a rating system for successful deliveries. It appears as a transparent five-pointed star, upon which your delivery performance is graded based on your actions and critically: your earned likes for those actions. In order to level each of the five APAS sub-grids and unlock their related skills, you will have to perform certain specific tasks, some of which might be obvious:
- Porter: successful deliveries, with heavy encumbrance being a factor as well
- Combat: defeat enemies in battle, as well as successfully complete any combat-related orders
- Stealth: successful stealth deliveries, and stealthy gameplay in general
- Servicemanship: successful deliveries, customer service and social interaction, return of lost cargo
- Bridge Link: player social interaction, NPC porter interaction, and both construction of useful structures for other players, as well as use of their constructions
The first four will increase organically through gameplay, but Bridge Link will require some additional effort on your part, especially in online mode. You may find that either Stealth or Combat rises quicker than the other, since those two are closely linked with playstyle and are mutually exclusive.
That is everything there is to know about unlocking APAS Enhancement skills and increasing Porter Grade in Death Stranding 2: On The Beach.
