Getting more likes in Death Stranding is vital to success in the original and Director's Cut. For reasons, winning the game as a post-apocalyptic postman hinges on getting likes for delivering things, building structures, helping both NPCs or other players in Death Stranding, and plenty more.
Death Stranding likes aren't a currency as such but they do help you level up and improve stats which is vital - more likes mean improving your cargo carrying as you become steadier, get extra stamina and more. In a game that's 90% carrying heavy boxes from A to B, that's really important. Likes will also increase your rank, letting you work towards the title of ‘Great Deliverer’ as the ultimate goal.
But it is obviously a strange system - how can building a piece of road that another player uses in the asymmetrical multiplayer improve your personal stats exactly? And how do you get more of whatever that is? Read on then to get a better understanding of the Death Stranding likes system, and how to get more.
1. Forge Strand Contracts
Making friends in Death Stranding doesn’t actually require the other person to like you back, so it’s really easy. Once you’ve upgraded your Bridges Link stat enough by delivering and connecting new preppers to the UCA network you’ll be able to form Strand Contracts. To do that you'll need to head into your start menu, hit left to open up the sidebar and select Bridges Link. Tap R1 and you you'll see a list of people who you’ve connected with so far on your journey, mainly by liking each others structures. Once you’ve got a solid contender for friendship, hit Triangle to form a Strand Contract. Now when you come into contact with your structures you’ll get more likes and vice versa. Keep the limit maxed out at all times for the best results.
2. Upgrade structures and build roads
Materials in Death Stranding are bountiful right from the start, and you’re never really in danger of running out, especially if you improve the star rating of the preppers in the Eastern Region. As well as taking on cargo deliveries, consider a run where you just claim materials from one of your more-visited stations and use them to level up structures in the vicinity. It doesn’t have to be those of others either, you can construct your own and level those up too. Better structures equal more likes, and you’ll get a cut of the owner’s likes when their structure is used if you help level it up. Once you get to the Central Region in Chapter 3, you can then start to build roads via the auto-paver systems, which is really the easiest way to get likes in Death Stranding. If you construct a road players are all but forced to use it if they want to make their lives easier, and every time they ride along it they will dole out points to the team of people who helped construct it, whose PSN IDs are burned into the paving. You can check if you’re a contributor by accessing the structure menu of the auto-paver in question.
3. Kill BTs and please your BB
The infant bound to your chest that gives you a window into the afterlife? It can also help you build your social media reach. Whenever you enter a BT encounter, if you manage to run away and escape the situation you’ll get likes from BB for keeping it safe, and the same result is achieved if you actually kill the BT. This means that you can voluntarily enter combat with BTs, plan an escape route or wipe out the danger and receive some free likes. You’ll also gain likes for pleasing BB, whether that means playing your harmonica, singing to it in one of the game’s bathing spots or simply soothing BB by shaking your controller. Going fast, either by running or using zip lines, as well as doing big jumps, also seems to make it smile...
How to start the new Death Stranding Director's Cut missions | Death Stranding PS4 to PS5 upgrade guide | How to transfer a Death Stranding PS4 save to PS5 | Death Stranding tips | What is aphenphosmphobia in Death Stranding? | Death Stranding fast travel | Every Death Stranding cameo | Death Stranding holograms | Death Stranding EX grenades | Death Stranding Weapons | Death Stranding DOOMs birthday | Death Stranding Preppers, gear and upgrades | Death Stranding ending
4. Read your emails
This one is very straightforward: throughout the game, as you please the preppers and deliver tons of cargo, they’ll start sending you emails thanking you and waxing philosophical. Open up your in-game menu, navigate to the Data tab and then read your emails to pick up the number of likes that they’ve left at the end of the email as a small reward for your efforts. Easy peasy. Watch out for the bits highlighted in gold for more context about the world of Death Stranding and sometimes hints to the location of Memory Chips.
5. Fill up the garage
Another simple strategy to receive more likes is to fill up the garage at the delivery stations. This is a useful way to help other players and a very easy way to get likes in tandem. Given that players will use a single vehicle for a long time, if you drive and leave vehicles that you’ve either fabricated or found on the blue circle you use to descend into the private room you can then make them available for other players to use. Head into the garage menu at the station terminal and choose to store your vehicles for other players to use. This is especially useful in the early game where lots of players will be begging for a vehicle to use before they’ve been unlocked in an official capacity. Likes are accumulated as the vehicles are used by another player, so if it becomes their main trike for delivering tons of cargo you’ll be Like-rich in no time.
6. Max out your chiral bandwidth
Another easy way to guarantee Likes is to make a habit of maxing out your chiral bandwidth. This means placing as many structures as possible in useful locations on the map so that you can earn lots of likes when you’re not playing. It may seem silly to haphazardly drop as many structures as possible, but you never know when or where a group of players are going to really take to a specific building. At launch, everyone will be guessing, so take that chance and hopefully, you’ll wake up the next day with tons of likes even though you haven’t had to work for them. You should also use leftover chiral crystals to increase the durability of your structures so they don't become unusable overnight!
