Death Stranding guide: The best places to build structures

At the start of Death Stranding, you’ll enter a desolate and lonely world. In time, you can build structures to fill in the void, and structures from other players can appear in your game, too.

Whenever someone uses your structures, you get Likes. Well-placed structures may get even more Likes from players, which can make you feel like you’re making a difference and will help with your porter grades.

If you want to help out your fellow players the most while receiving tons of Likes in the process, then you need to build structures in the most beneficial places. This guide will tell you the best places to place the most critical buildings.

There are many more structures to explore, but in the first few dozen hours of the game, these structures will be the most critical.

Watchtowers

Kojima Productions/Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

One of the first structures you come across in the game is a watchtower. These massive structures help you get the lay of the land and tag any items out in the world. The vantage points they offer are helpful if you want to identify lost cargo in a new area or to find hidden collectibles.

One of the best places to put them is near enemy camps. Place a watchtower near one of scanner relays outside an enemy camp. Once set up, scan over the area so you can tag all of the items being held by those who would cause you harm. This is great in the early game, especially when you don’t have too many tools at your disposable to fend off attackers or speedy ways to maneuver around them.

Generator

When you finally get vehicles and powered exoskeleton suits, you’ll quickly learn how much having energy becomes a commodity. As much as these items will help you traverse the map with speed, their battery lives are disappointingly small.

That’s fine because you can always craft a generator. These thin, vertical towers quickly recharge anything electric when you’re nearby.

While you may be tempted to put one near a facility to recharge after a long trek, consider crafting them at halfway points instead. Don’t waste putting a power station near a facility because resting in your private room recharges all of your vehicles and electronic items.

Generators are more valuable when they are near nothing — places where everyone’s batteries are almost certainly low and when having a boost can keep you going to your destination.

Bridges

In the early game, bridges are a big help for both getting over rivers and crevasses on foot and even on vehicles, but they take lots of materials to construct.

If it takes a few seconds to run left or right to get around a hazard, consider putting a bridge elsewhere. When planning routes, look ahead and make sure placing a bridge makes sense. In any case, you also want to find spots to make bridges near facilities or enemy camps as you’ll need a short route between the under construction bridge and somewhere to get resources to finish it off.

Postboxes

Postboxes are small lockers in which you can place your items in private lockers or in shared lockers for other players to use. These are particularly useful in the early game when transporting large amounts of materials for bridges and other structures is difficult.

When you’re first starting out, think of postboxes as item waypoints. Place them between a place where you can easily get resources, like a facility, and somewhere that needs items like a bridge under construction. That way, you can relay items in batches so you can finish larger construction projects.

Timefall shelters

There are certain parts of the map that always seem to have rain. That’s the perfect place to put a timefall shelter. The tree-like structures let you wait out the rain, so you can pass through that area without damaging your gear. Standing under one also repairs your items — not your vehicles.