If you’ve been playing Laika: Aged Through Blood, and you want to get upgrades, shop items, and other things, you’ll need a ton of Viscera.
You can get this naturally by just playing the game, but due to the frustrating way the game’s Viscera Sacks work, you’ll probably be losing money more often than you gain it, and you’ll need a quick way to get more.
In this guide, I’ll detail a few methods for gaining a bunch of Viscera. However, it should be noted that hoarding a ton of it isn’t the best idea since you can very quickly lose it all the second you come across a few rooms full of enemies with very few checkpoints. I’ll go over some money-grinding methods and some passive ways to increase your income.
Bottom Line Up-Front
There are a few methods of gaining extra Viscera, the currency in Laika: Aged through Blood. You can cook up Bloody Spirits with Vending Juice for a 30% Boost, then go and kill enemies for a ton of it. Or, you could choose to gamble Where Others Forget, as well as using save points outside the bar to guarantee a good outcome.
What is Viscera?
Viscera is the currency in Laika: Aged through Blood, and to get just about anything from any shopkeeper in the game, you’ll need a lot of it. You can get it by killing enemies, so basically, you’ll get a bunch of it just by playing the game, especially whenever you kill a boss or tear through a bunch of enemies quickly with a combo.
However, if you die anywhere outside of bottomless pits and boss fights, you’ll drop a sack containing 50% of the Viscera you had on you.
This drops at the exact location where you died, so if it’s in a particularly rough spot, you can kiss all your money goodbye. This makes getting Viscera sack upgrades pretty important, but guess what? Those cost Viscera to get.
Every shop requires Viscera in some form; for ones like buying Ingredients or things from the Gas Station, you’ll exclusively pay in Viscera, but for stuff like Upgrades, new weapons, or extra Viscera sacks and ammo rounds, you’ll need different materials on top of an added Viscera cost. Basically, if you want anything, you need Viscera, so here’s how you get a lot of it.
Cooking
If you want a way to passively increase your Viscera gains without necessarily having to commit to grinding for a long while, then cooking up certain dishes is the way to go. Some of them can give you extra Viscera in general, but others will provide you with a few buffs that are just nice to have if you want to grab more and more guts.
The first of these meals gives a straight percentage increase of the Viscera that enemies drop, and I’d highly recommend cooking these up before a boss fight or a long sequence containing a bunch of enemies. They’ll probably not be the best idea to pop at all times, though, since most enemies only drop 5 Viscera.
- Rice Sausage – Made with 3 of any ingredient marked “filler,” it gives you 10% extra Viscera.
- Bean Stew – Made with Vending Juice, a Filler ingredient, and another of either ingredient, gives 20% extra Viscera.
- Bloody Spirit – Made with 3 of any Vending Juice, gives 30% extra Viscera.
These next few will give you a better item pick-up range, which primarily applies to materials, but will also help you pick up your Viscera sack whenever you lose it. I’d recommend cooking this one up if you’re going through a challenging area that’s relatively dense with enemies, as it can help ease the pain of losing a sack in the thick of them.
- Vegan Omelette – Made with a Flavor Bomb, a Filler ingredient, and another of either ingredient, gives +15 Magnet radius.
- Soup and Stew Leftovers – Made with a Flavor Bomb, Military Supply, and another of either ingredient, gives +15 Magnet radius.
- Jackfruit Arepa – Made with any Filler, any Vending Juice, and any Military Supply, it gives a +15 Magnet radius.
These will give you higher multipliers on your combos, and if you didn’t know, you can combo enemies by shooting a bunch of them quickly without missing or dying. These combos reward more and more viscera the better you get at them, and these dishes will make your combo modifiers up to thrice as efficient as usual.
- Rice Noodle Soup – Made with any Flavor Bomb, Filler, and Vending Juice, gives 1.5x Combo Multiplier.
- Grandma’s Meatballs – Made with Flavor Bomb, Vending Juice, and Military Supply, and gives 2x Combo Multiplier.
- Sardines Al Ajillo – Made with, specifically, Oily Sardines, Lemon, and Red Garlic, and gives 3x Combo Multiplier.
These dishes can help, depending on what kind of money farming you’re gunning for. I’d recommend specifically making a bunch of Bloody Spirits since you can buy a lot of Vending Juice from gas stations, then cook ’em all up for a clean 30% bonus to your money gains. Otherwise, go for whatever you can make; it’ll probably help.
Enemy Grinding
The most accessible method of grinding that can be done almost anywhere in the game is just killing some enemies. The easiest way to do this is by acquiring a skill issue, and getting to a room full of enemies, dying, getting your bag back, killing them, dying again, and repeating constantly. You’ll be gaining Viscera by doing this.
Every time you die, as long as you get your bag back, you will never lose any of the Viscera you gained, meaning you can kill a few enemies and die repeatedly to get some viscera, just not very quickly. So, every time you’re struggling, give the excuse that you’re farming for money so it looks a lot better on your part.
This is how you passively earn Viscera throughout playing the game, but the best way to make Viscera is absolutely by killing bosses.
They drop somewhere in the ballpark of hundreds of Viscera, even more, if you’ve cooked up a meal to increase those gains even further. But in general, killing enemies gives the stuff, and if you’re out of bosses to slaughter, regular enemies will have to do.
To farm Viscera properly by killing birds, find a big cluster of enemies next to a checkpoint (I’ve found this is pretty common near Where our Ancestors Rest). Then, shoot all of them, making sure to get a combo going (preferably with a combo modifier dish active), then fall flat on your face and die, repeating to get 10-25 Viscera every try.
I’d say, if you’re frustrated about losing some Viscera and just so happen to be near a few birds who have it coming, then go ahead and try this.
Unfortunately, though, it can be dangerous, given you’ll often be riding into a place where a bunch of bullets will be hurtling toward you. Still, as long as you learn exactly how to deal with the situation you’re riding into, you’ll be fine.
This method is easy enough to do, and you can get in a rhythm with it, but it’s not the fastest way of grinding a ton of money quickly. This is mainly because it takes a while to respawn, and the gains you get from killing enemies aren’t too great (especially without a modifier), but at least it’s the best one that doesn’t feel a bit cheaty.
Gambling
Finally, we all return to Where We Forget, and do a little bit of Blackjack. Gambling your money away on this is the easiest and fastest way to get a ton of Viscera, though it’s also one of the easiest and fastest ways to lose a ton of Viscera, occasionally at no fault of your own and because the game just hates you.
This game of Blackjack is rigged, and I don’t have the numbers to confirm that necessarily, but I know that I and everyone I know who’s played the game has said this feels like a Gacha game. I see the dealer constantly pull out 19s and 20s off the bat when I get 15s and 14s that are instantly followed up by a ten that lose the game immediately.
Anyways, if you don’t know how to play Blackjack, then bet a reasonable amount of money so you don’t lose everything immediately, then try to hit when you have a number under 17 and stand when it’s 17 or above. In real Blackjack, there’s also doubling down, but Laika doesn’t present the option for some reason.
If you’re like me, you probably saw that the odds were stacked against you and wanted to find a way to get around this dumb gambling game and just get your money and get out; then, boy, do I have a fun strategy for you. Just be prepared to wait through many loading screens, though this will be faster the better your storage device is.
You can do an infinite money glitch by playing Blackjack. I’d recommend doing this in the van just outside the mines, but it works wherever you can gamble. Save outside the room, go in, and bet everything you can. If you win money, leave Blackjack to save again, but if you lose, you can force quit the game so it doesn’t hold.
This guarantees you can never lose money while gambling. This might be a bit slower than just gambling and getting lucky, but it guarantees success and a ton of money, and you annoy your friends on Steam by stealing the bottom right of their screen. Given the odds feel so heavily weighed against you, I don’t feel bad.
After 20 minutes of this strategy, I went from 5 Viscera to over 1500. I’d recommend not hoarding a ton of it, though, since you can quickly lose it all by dying. However, with all this Viscera, you can quickly grab a ton of Viscera sacks on the left side of Where We Live, so you don’t have to sob every time you die three times in a row.
Questions and Answers
Question: What is the Quickest Way to Get Money in Laika: Aged through Blood?
Answer: To get money quickly, try playing Blackjack, doing the maximum amount, and quitting the game if you lose.
Question: What is the Easiest Way to Get Money in Laika: Aged through Blood?
Answer: Killing enemies and dying repeatedly will gain you more money than you lose, as long as you grab your Viscera bag each time.
Question: What do you Need Viscera for in Laika: Aged through Blood?
Answer: Pretty much anything. The shops for materials, guns, upgrades, and ingredients require it, so if you’re buying anything, it’s with Viscera.
Conclusion
The way Viscera works in Laika: Aged through Blood had me constantly upset and frustrated, more often than not cursing out the game’s strange decision to add a Hollow Knight-style death system in a game that is far more fast-paced where you’re expected to die constantly, rather than deaths being a big, dramatic thing where you take a bit to recover from them.
So, imagine my relief when I discovered an easy way to gain all that money I’d lost right back. This came right after I’d beaten a boss, immediately got stuck on my way back, and lost half the Viscera I had just gained, which felt like a right kick to the face. Being able to gain all that back within a few minutes is quite lovely, even if it can get pretty annoying.
Continue reading:
Laika: Aged Through Blood Review
Laika: Aged Through Blood demo now available on Steam
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