The Anacrusis survival guide — The Pulse, revives, and healing

Each episode in The Anacrusis takes you through various levels or maps. Since you’re up against hundreds of alien foes, it’s imperative that you stay alive. Here’s our survival guide to help you with the Pulse mechanic, team revives, and healing items in The Anacrusis.

Note: For more information, check out our guides and features hub for The Anacrusis. Likewise, please be reminded that this guide is based on the Early Access version of the game.

The Anacrusis survival guide – Reviving dead teammates, using healing items, and pushing with the Pulse

Pushing with the Pulse

The Pulse action is a very important mechanic in The Anacrusis. When the button is pressed, it creates a field around your character, pushing most regular enemies away. Basically, this is the game’s melee (even though you don’t actually damage opponents unless you acquire a perk).

The Pulse has three uses represented by medium-sized dots at the bottom of your screen. If you’re playing with friends, make sure you cycle and coordinate Pulse usage during horde attacks to ensure that hostiles are kept at bay.

Note: When playing with AI bots, watch out because they tend to Pulse liberally. They’ll even use it against a Brute, a special alien that’s immune to the action.

Using healing items

There are three kinds of healing items or healing mechanics in The Anacrusis:

• Health Scanner – Each player can pick up a Health Scanner by using the terminal at the start of an episode, and additional drops can be found randomly while exploring. When equipped, you can press left-click to heal yourself or right-click to heal a teammate that you’re targeting. You should be able to restore 50-70 HP.
• Health Booster – Health Boosters can be found randomly as you explore levels, and they work similarly to Health Scanners. The difference is that they don’t replenish as much HP.
• Healing Terminals – When you reach the end of each level, you can interact with the terminal to regain HP.

Helping up downed teammates and reviving those that died

There are two critical states that allow for revival in The Anacrusis:

• When players lose their HP, they’ll be in a downed state. Interact with them to help them get back up. Players that get downed will still be able to use their pistol to shoot enemies.
• If a downed player is damaged further without being aided, they’ll die. To revive a dead teammate in The Anacrusis, you need to press and hold “H.” I suggest doing this when you are in a safe spot that can be defended easily, as this action will cause a horde of aliens to spawn.

The Anacrusis is available via Steam, the Epic Games Store, and the Xbox Game Pass. For more information, check out our guides and features hub.