Deathloop infusion: how to save gear between loops

How can you carry over weapons and powers in Deathloop? Deathloop is a darkly comedic action-adventure game which sees assassins Colt and Julianna attempting to kill each other time and time again over the course of a single looping day. The titular loop resets itself if the day ends before Colt can kill all eight Visionaries (including Julianna), or if Colt dies three times in a single mission. When this happens, Colt wakes up at the beginning of the day with everything reset — including any weapons, powers, and trinkets he managed to pick up during his last trip through the loop.

However, it quickly becomes apparent that there are some items in Deathloop that you need to carry over between loops: for example, if you want to upgrade an ability slab, you need to already have that slab in hand at the start of the loop to pick up the next upgrade. There’s also the matter of Gold weapons, which require you to complete a side-quest to obtain them, something Colt literally doesn’t have time to do every loop. Clearly there’s a way to save some of this stuff, but it doesn’t happen automatically.

In order to carry over weapons, powers, and trinkets, Colt needs to infuse items with Residuum. In this guide, we explain how to learn to infuse items in Deathloop and where to get hold of enough Residuum to hang on to your favourites. Quick word of warning though: this guide out of necessity contains some spoilers for Dr Wenjie Evans’s route, so consider having a pop at the “Ubiquity” Visionary Lead before reading if you don’t want to spoil the surprise.

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How to unlock infusion in Deathloop

In order to learn how to infuse your gear, you need to kill Dr Wenjie Evans — one of Blackreef’s eight Visionaries — and loot the 10,000 Residuum from her corpse which she carries in lieu of a slab. Collecting your first fistful of Residuum automatically unlocks the ability to infuse items.

To take out Wenjie for the first time, you need to follow the “Ubiquity” lead to The Complex in the afternoon and attack at her lab. However, here’s where the twist kicks in (seriously, final spoiler warning) to add a bit of a complication: Wenjie has staffed her laboratory with clones of herself.

You might expect that your job would be to identify the “real” or “original” Wenjie and just kill that one, but in fact you need to take out all 10 Wenjies to complete the mission. Furthermore, with every Wenjie you assassinate, the remaining clones will become more powerful. Only the 10th and final Wenjie you take out will be the one to drop the character’s unique Visionary loot, including the Residuum you need to unlock infusion.

How and when to infuse your gear in Deathloop

Once you’ve killed Wenjie for the first time and got a hold of that Residuum, you’ll have access to a new tab on Colt’s loadout screen: Infuse Gear. Within this tab there are five sub-categories, representing all the gear types you can infuse: Weapons, Slabs, Character Trinkets, Weapon Trinkets, and Slab Upgrades.

Non-infused items in these categories stick with you for the duration of the current loop when you pick them up, but you lose them when the loop resets — whether that’s due to Colt dying too often for Reprise to revive him, or the timer advancing to a “new” day without Colt managing to take out all of the Visionaries.

Entering the Infuse Gear screen will show you what gear Colt currently has access to. Non-infused items are marked with a red hourglass symbol, reminding you that as things stand they’re only with you for the duration of this loop.

Hovering your cursor over a non-infused piece of gear will tell you how much Residuum you need to infuse it. If you have enough, you can press Enter to infuse that item. This adds the selected weapon, slab, or trinket permanently to your inventory, allowing you to carry it over into future loops.

Where to get more Residuum in Deathloop

The initial 10,000 Residuum you collect from Dr Wenjie Evans will be enough to infuse maybe two or three decent items or just one really good piece of kit. So in the likely event that you want to save and carry over more gear, you’ll need to keep a steady supply of Residuum coming in whenever you can.

Residuum isn’t the most abundant resource on Blackreef, and you might have to go out of your way a little to get all you need. It can be collected from the following sources:

• After your first successful assassination of Dr Wenjie Evans, the bodies of defeated Visionaries (including Julianna) will possess Residuum energy that you can harvest.
• If you die and revive using the Reprise slab, Colt’s own body can be looted, though it seems like you can only recover Residuum up to the amount he was carrying when he died.
• Glowing objects in each district indicate that Residuum can be harvested from them. Unlike many of Deathloop’s resources, Residuum objects are randomised and change with every loop.
• In the loadout screen, choosing to delete a weapon instead of infusing it yields a bit of Residuum for your sacrifice.
• A safe in Updaam contains 5,000 Residuum that you can grab every loop when you’re in the area — once you’ve solved the glyph puzzle that protects it.

Just like almost everything else in Deathloop, you lose any unused Residuum when the loop resets. So while Residuum is a precious resource, there’s no sense hoarding it for longer than it takes to save up enough for what you want.

What should you prioritise infusing?

Your choice of what items to infuse should be led by your preferred play style and whatever weapons and abilities you find yourself enjoying while playing the game. Think of infusion as an opportunity to craft your ideal loadout.

That being said, there is a certain element of time constraint in Deathloop: since in order to end the loop you need to take out all eight Visionaries in a single day, Colt isn’t going to be able to re-do every Lead as part of that final run. Therefore, slabs and gold weapons should be prioritised as a general rule, since you can only pick them up at a very specific time and location. However, since they’re the most powerful items in the game, you’ll probably want to do this anyway. Next up, consider infusing high-rarity versions of any basic weapons you particularly like using, along with your favourite trinkets.

That’s everything you need to know to carry over your goodies from one loop to the next! If you’re new to Deathloop, you might like to check out our review of the game, or have a look at our in-depth guide to system specs for the best Deathloop experience on PC.