How To Play Dead Rails – A Beginner’s Guide

It’s 1899. You’re in a fortified town out West, and around you is miles of desolation and hordes of the undead. If you want to survive, you need to make it to Mexico, and all you’ve got is one steam train, one carriage, and something heavy to swing. Welcome to Dead Rails. Now you know what you’re getting into, let’s teach you how to become a certified train-hopping zombie hunter with our beginner’s guide on how to play Dead Rails.

You can get right on the Dead Rails over on Roblox. If you want to get started with another piece of Roblox horror, maybe take a look at our guide on how to play MEG Endless Reality.

How To Play Dead Rails

When you start a game of Dead Rails, you can choose multiplayer or single player by selecting the number of players. Multiplayer can be easier, just so long as everyone knows what they’re doing and what their job is.

Starting Out

You should start out in a fortified town. Inside it you should find a gold bar at the Trading Post, and a tutorial that shows how trading and refueling works in the game. So let’s get to the rest. You’ll find your train in the center. This will be your main mode of transport, and main way to stay alive. You need to take care of it, and keep it fuelled.

There are various things you can use as fuel.

• Coal – Bought at General Stores
• Dead Enemies
• Junk – Found in buildings out in the world.

You should spawn with a shovel, axe, or hammer which work as a melee weapon. You should also get a sack. You can use this to store up to ten items, which is very useful for holding fuel or valuables.

Forts

Forts appear around every 10km along the track. These are towns surrounded by walls, and they have robust defenses against the undead. Anything hostile that gets into the fort will take massive damage very quickly. As well as protection, they usually have several different facilites.

• Trading Post – Here you can trade in valuables for coin bags that add to your overall wealth.
• General Store – You can buy various different items here to upgrade your train. The stock might change from fort to fort. (You can weld things like wire, barriers, and chairs to the train body with the ‘Weld’ command.)
• Gunsmith – You can buy different weapons and ammunition here.
• Doctor – You can buy bandages here to restore your health.
• Sheriff – You can turn in Outlaws you take down for a cash reward.

Travelling

Outside the Forts you’re off into dangerous territory. The landscape in between the checkpoints is dangerous, but there’s treasure waiting if you’re brave enough.

You should see buildings along the way. These may have valuables or fuel inside, though they’ll almost certainly have zombies, too. We can’t recommend charging in unless you’re armed with something a bit more dangerous than a shovel.

You might also see whole infested towns. Don’t even think about engaging with these unless there’s a few of you and you’re armed to the teeth.

Enemies

The West is crawling with the undead. There’s a number of those, but it’s not all supernatural enemies out there. Let’s run over some of the major threats.

Zombies

You’ll run into these green-skinned undead menaces a lot. They aren’t a big threat on their own, but they can be devastating in groups.

Wolves

These guys are weak, but fairly fast, so don’t get caught out.

Outlaws

Sometimes seen riding horses out in the desert, these guys will fire on your train if they get the opportunity. Still, you could turn them in at the next fort for a nice reward.

Vampires

These spawn at night under a red moon. They’re pretty dangerous to take on, but they have one beg redeeming quality, their bodies are quite valuable. You can turn them in at any Trading Post for a pretty good $15 each.

Werewolves

These spawn at night on full moon. They’re huge, fast, and deadly in a fight. If you can take one out though, burning it does net you a ton of fuel to keep you going. Who would have thought you’d be riding a werewolf-powered train? They sell for even more than vampires, too, at 20$ per body.

Tips

Now you know some of the basics about how to play Dead Rails, let’s give a few useful tips.

• Teamwork Makes The Dream Work – If you’re in multiplayer, have different jobs. Driving the train, keeping it fuelled, looting for money, and fighting enemies off are all useful specialities. Especially once you get the turret it’s useful to put someone on turret duty as you travel.
• Horses! – If you get a saddle you can put one on the horses you find in the desert. Wild horses will run, so you need to herd them back toward the train before putting the saddle on. Once the saddle is on, you can ride the horse. They’re not as well defended as the train, but they’re fast and don’t need fuel. Great for scouting ahead.
• Use Forts At Night – Don’t head out at night. It’s when the more dangerous monsters tend to spawn. They will still spawn if you’re in the fort, but the fort defences should take care of them. This means you can get a bunch of money from vampires, or fuel from werewolves without having to fight them yourself.
• Bank Code – If you find a bank code, make a note of it! You can use these at nearby bank buildings to open the vault for a huge payout.