What does your Death Stranding 2 birthday do?

Setting your Death Stranding 2 birthday is one of the first thing you have to do in the game, but it doesn't seem to affect much, despite what the game says. Exactly like in Death Stranding 1, your birthday apparently affects your DOOMS abilities, the mysterious condition that characters like Sam and Fragile suffer from that also gives them the ability to sense BTs, amongst other things.

More importantly, playing Death Stranding 2: On The Beach on the date you set leads to you getting some minor gifts. Of course, there's also a weird birthday celebration cutscene in this game too – it's not quite Mads Mikkelsen's Cliff giving you a bouquet of flowers but it's nice nonetheless. I've laid out everything you need to know about what your birthday does in Death Stranding 2 below.

Death Stranding 2 birthday and DOOMS explained

Your Death Stranding 2 birthday is, ultimately, not that important of a choice as it has no obvious, lasting gameplay effects from our experiences playing the game.

As in the first game, Death Stranding 2 says that your date of birth can "determine a person's experience of DOOMS", which is the condition that allows Sam to sense BTs and Fragile to teleport. After setting your birthday, you'll also be told that "those born under constellations with a great connection to the Beach – including Cancer, Pisces, Cetus, and Delphinus…" are more likely to have DOOMS. This doesn't appear to be reflected in the game at all, especially since Cetus and Delphinus aren't real-world astrological signs and therefore have no corresponding dates – but if you are interested in trying anyway, the date range for Pisces is February 19 to March 20 and for Cancer, it's June 21 to July 22.

The overall point is that any gameplay changes resulting from when you set your Death Stranding 2 birthday to are very minor and not worth worrying about. My advice is to set your in-game birthday to match your real birthday to make it easy to remember or, if you're desperate to witness the special birthday cutscene, set it to a few days after you start playing the game.

Death Stranding 2 birthday cutscene and rewards

We won't spoil what happens, but in classic Hideo Kojima game fashion, you can witness a special cutscene that occurs on your in-game birthday in Death Stranding 2.

To unlock it, you must have access to the special hub area that becomes accessible in Episode 3. How long it takes you reach this point will depend on how much side content you do, but it shouldn't be very long at all.

Then all you need to do is head down to your private room using the lift and the cutscene will start. We assume that this event will repeat on the same day in the following year, though obviously it's a little hard to test that until 2026 rolls around.

Once the cutscene is over, you'll wake up in your private room with a couple of nice gifts. Here's everything you get after the Death Stranding 2 birthday celebrations:

• 900 likes from Drawbridge
• A slice of birthday pizza on your bedside table which increases your stamina by 10% when eaten
• Heartman's Star-Shaped Glasses which you can wear by accessing the Customize Look menu

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