Evil West perks guide: best perks to buy first

In the opening hours of Evil West, you’ll gain access to a perk tree that allows you to augment many of your abilities and gain new ones. Each time you level up, you’ll gain one perk point that will let you buy a single perk in the tree, so prioritizing the best ones is important to ensuring your success. While you can certainly play around with builds by resetting these points at will using the device at Virgil’s workshop in Calico, we’ve still compiled the five best perks we think you should pick up first to make taking on the Sansuisuge hoards a bit easier on yourself.

Chain of Command

Combat in Evil West mixes gunslinging with flurries of gauntlet punches, and making the most of the latter will require a bit of an investment in the perk trees.

The first perk you should grab for your gauntlet is Chain of Command, which allows you to dish out 30% extra damage with each subsequent punch after the initial one – provided you can nail the timing. Simply hit the Attack button just as the last punch is landing to ensure that you get this bonus, which should help you to wear enemies down considerably faster in melee combat.

On the Spot

Enemies dish out some pretty hefty damage, and your healing dispenser cooldown can take a while to come back up. As such, you’ll often be reliant on health pickups from killing your foes, so you’ll want to maximize how many of these you can find around the battlefield.

One way to do this is to grab the On the Spot perk, which will give you a 15% chance to make an enemy drop a health pickup upon shooting them in their weak spot – the glowing circle that appears when they’re charging up attacks. A meager 15% may not seem like much at a glance, but considering how often you’ll be shooting those weak spots, you’ll see health pickups pop out more than you’d think.

A perk tree with the On the Spot perk highlighted

Aftershock

If you have enough energy to use it, your Quake Punch is an AOE slam attack that can be an invaluable tool when dealing with groups of foes, as it deals substantial damage and can knock smaller enemies down. This makes the Aftershock perk a must-have, as it will allow you to chain another AOE slam behind the first one to dish out an even more powerful attack that can help ensure that your opponents get sent to an early grave in a gory explosion.

Additionally, make sure you pick up Final Touch at level 14 to round this all off with a third even more powerful attack that can absolutely decimate everything around you.

Bait and Switch

Evil West‘s many showdowns can be extremely fast-paced and require constant movement to ensure you’re not being hit by the onslaught of enemy attacks. This makes the Bait and Switch perk a very useful one to have as soon as you hit level 7, as it will make you much more viable in melee range. Once you’ve purchased this perk, you’ll be able to dodge rapidly in combat without interrupting your melee combo while also earning some extra AOE range on each punch.

This makes taking down groups of smaller enemies a lot more fun as you dash about and beat their faces in, letting you feel like an unstoppable force of nature.

Wider Audience

Your Zapper Pull allows you to yank an enemy to you and electrocute them so that you can then pummel them senseless with rapid melee attacks. Since it doesn’t have a cooldown, this makes it immensely helpful for removing foes from packs as you work to thin out a hoard. But what if you could grab multiple enemies at once with this attack?

You can do just that with the Wide Audience perk.

While you have to be level 9 to get this one, it’s worth saving a point for and buying it as soon as you possibly can so that you’ll be able to pull groups of baddies to you, giving you the chance to either melee them or use your energy reserves for some Quack Punches for that devastating AOE bloodshed.