Money versus patience

There’s nothing you can pay real world money for in Let It Die that you couldn’t also get with enough patience and time. You’ll pick up a few Death Metals every day from login rewards or Uncle Prime gifts and, if you’re very careful in spending them, you’ll eventually accumulate a bunch of them. Or you can spend $4.99 and get 10 of them right now. The same goes for materials and blueprints.

Some of the game’s most expensive purchases will get you late-game blueprints and materials by substituting actual money for all that time and energy. These are things that you’ll happen across in the tower eventually, but probably not for a long, long time. Is that worth the price in real-world money to you? That’s the question you have to answer.

What can I buy?

These are the two main types of purchasable items in Let It Die — late-game items and bulk currency. Late-game items are a shortcut — they give you access to blueprints and materials you won’t encounter in the game for some time. Bulk currency is just a way to convert your real-world money to in-game currency. The third type of add-on is the Direct Hell Express Pass, which is something else entirely.

Late-game items

We’re not going to tell you how to spend your money. If those sweet, sweet rare metals are what you’ve decided you need to get ahead and you don’t feel like waiting until floors in the thirties to find them, we’re not going to judge. We just can’t recommend you pay for those particular shortcuts, especially early in the game — those metals are just going to sit in your storage chest taking up space until you figure out what blueprints need them.

Our advice becomes a little hazier when it comes to things like the $5.99 Dev Support Pack: Steel Axe. Sure, it’s a blueprint and materials you’ll pick up somewhere in the teen-numbered floors (which is less than halfway through the game), but Grasshopper Manufacture put "dev support" right in the item’s name. If you want that shortcut to a mid-game weapon early in the game, go for it, but maybe keep reading to make sure this is where you want to spend your money.

Bulk Currency

Here, we’re specifically talking about Death Metals. Yes, you can buy Kill Coins as part of a couple of packs, but your bank probably isn’t big enough to hold it and chances are you’re not hurting for Kill Coins. Don’t buy an add-on just for Kill Coins. (If you’re low on in-game cash, remember that you can convert Death Metal to Kill Coins at a rate of 1:5,000.)

Death Metals are how you pay for continues. They speed up R&D at Choku-Funsha and can expand your storage chest. Death Metals are kind of everything in Let It Die. Like we said at the top, you’re probably going to pick up a few every day you log in to play. Assuming you never use them — maybe you never die and need to continue or maybe you treat all of your fighters as entirely expendable — you’ll end up with a bunch given enough time. But those are some big assumptions and it’s going to take a lot of time. This is where we’ll tell you to go ahead and spend some cash.

The no-brainer is the First Time Only! 30 Death Metals pack for $4.99. Sure, you can only buy it once, but if you’re careful, you can milk those 30 Death Metals for quite a while. After you use those, it’s your call. Death Metal packs run from $4.99 for 10 to $99.99 for 280. This works out to a range of $0.49 to about $0.36 per Death Metal — you get more Death Metals per dollar the more you spend. Pick the price and quantity that make sense for you (don’t buy 280 Death Metals if you’re only going to play for a weekend) and keep working your way up the tower, senpai.

That said — and despite what we said in the previous section — compare the price you’re willing to pay for just Death Metals with the bundles that include both blueprints and Death Metals. They might be worth it. If you’re already spending a chunk of change on Death Metals, why not get a boost from a late(r)-game blueprint while you’re at it.

We’d be careful the bundles with just materials (as opposed to those with blueprints and materials), though, especially early in your game. Materials take up valuable storage space unless you already have the corresponding blueprints.

What to do with Death Metals

Obviously, the first thing you’ll use them for is continues. But if you’ve got a few extra Death Metals laying around, you can use them to expand your storage chest. Two Death Metals will add 10 slots to the chest (with no upper limit that we’re aware of). Like we said in our beginner’s guide, storage space is your enemy. This helps to alleviate that limitation.

Direct Hell Express Pass

The $14.99 per 30 days Express Pass is something else entirely. With it, you get access to a nicer (and free-of-charge, in game) elevator while climbing the Tower and a nicer train during Tokyo Death Metro (TDM) raids. Neither of these gives you any noticeable benefit during normal gameplay, so they alone don’t make the Express Pass worth the money.

Where the Express Pass becomes interesting is the other benefits. Every day, you’ll get a Limited Decal that will grant you some boon on your journey up the tower. Our first day with it got us a decal that speeds up weapon mastery by 40 percent. Considering that weapons mastery levels apply to all of your fighters, this is kind of remarkable. A sticker like that every day makes the Express Pass pretty tempting.

The final benefit of the Express Pass are the Royal Slots — 10 extra storage slots in your Death Bag, each marked with a crown. In a game where storage is at a premium — and it’s very difficult to want to leave anything behind — it’s really hard to pass up that extra space.

So, should you pay for the Express Pass? It depends on how you want to play. Raid and elevator comfort aside, it’s a question of efficiency. Without the Express Pass, you’re probably going to be making more trips up and down the Tower with worse returns on the investment of your time. If you’re just playing a fun (and delightfully weird) free-to-play game that maybe you’ll finish some day, it’s probably not worth it. If you’re playing to master the tower and make your Uncle Death proud by becoming the very best senpai you can be, we say go for it.

Try it out

We should also note that you’ll occasionally pick up Direct Hell Express 1-Day Pass. If you’re on the fence about signing up for the Express Pass subscription, keep an eye out for these in your Rewards Box and try it out.

PlayStation Plus Exclusive Direct Hell Booster Pack

The name’s a mouthful, but if you’re a PlayStation Plus member, it’s a free add-on. This pack’s a convenient boost to your early game — you get four Death Metals, two 1-Day Express Passes, 10,000 Kill Coins and SPLithium and some powerful healing consumables. Get it.