Far Far West drops you into a haunted desert with a rusty six-shooter and zero explanation. The gold economy feels broken, the movement system hides its best tricks behind zero tutorial text, and the Joker card system will get you robbed by a speedrunning teammate if you are not paying attention. After putting serious time into the frontier, here is everything you need to know to stop dying broke and start extracting with full pockets.
What kind of game is Far Far West, exactly?
Before anything else, understand the structure. Far Far West is not a pure roguelike. Your character and weapon experience persist through death. The loop works like a cooperative extraction shooter: pick a mission in town, drop into the map, complete objectives, kill a boss, and get out. According to the NeonLightsMedia beginner guide, you keep all your progression whether you survive the run or get dismantled by a skeleton. That changes everything about how you approach risk. You are not starting over when you die. You are just losing the loot you had not extracted yet.
Loadout and fragment tracker
How do you move fast enough to survive?
Standing still to shoot is a death sentence on anything above the lowest difficulty. The movement system has two layers, and most players only use one.
Bunnyhopping with dash and jump
You have a dash on Shift and a jump on Spacebar. Using them separately is fine for getting around. Chaining them together is something else entirely. Dash, then jump immediately after. The moment your boots touch the ground, dash and jump again. This is standard bunnyhopping, and it generates horizontal momentum that completely outpaces slower melee enemies.
Once you start stacking movement speed Joker cards during a run, the gap between you and enemies like the Necromancer becomes almost comical. You can strafe through the air and dodge most incoming damage without ever needing to tank a hit, according to the NeonLightsMedia beginner guide.
Stack movement speed Jokers early in a run. The payoff compounds fast once you have two or three of them active.
The Roach triple jump
Your robotic horse Roach is not just a travel tool. Dismounting Roach pops your character slightly into the air. The physics engine reads that tiny hop as your starting position, so you still have your full jump and dash available while airborne. Dismount, jump, then dash upward. That sequence gives you a triple jump that scales sheer cliffs and bypasses blocked map sections without hunting for a ramp.
How do you farm gold without going broke?
The upgrade costs in town are steep, and the default gold generation feels deliberately punishing until you learn the hidden mechanics. The table below covers every reliable method, ranked by efficiency according to the NeonLightsMedia beginner guide.
Stop blowing up your profits
This one costs new players hundreds of gold per run. Never use fire spells or dynamite on a gold ore node unless you are already sprinting for extraction. Blowing up a node cuts your yield roughly in half compared to hitting it manually with your pickaxe. The difference between a good run and a frustrating one often comes down to this single habit.
Exploding gold nodes yields around 20 gold. Hitting them manually yields around 40. That gap adds up fast across a full map.
Secret objectives do not carry over between runs
Standard side quests track across multiple missions. If an NPC asks you to find ten graves, you can find five, extract, and finish the rest next drop. Secret objectives like the Medallion and the Bells work completely differently. You must collect and deposit every piece within a single instance. Grab two out of three medallions and then extract, and your progress resets to zero. Commit to the secret before you call the dropship, or do not start it at all.
Canyon Medallion secret location
How do Joker cards work in co-op?
This is the most contentious system in the game right now. When a Joker card drops in a multiplayer session, only one player can pick it up. Gold and souls are personal drops, but Jokers are shared world objects. The fastest player, or the one with the highest movement speed, grabs it.
A Steam discussion thread from April 29, 2026 shows the community is split. Multiple players called for instanced drops or a rotation system. One developer (Arno, tagged as developer on Steam) responded directly: random lobby players account for less than 10% of the playerbase, and the current system works well for friend groups who can discuss and split Jokers based on their builds. The developer acknowledged the system is not ideal for random lobbies and said the team does not currently have a solution that improves things for strangers without making them worse for coordinated groups.
Playing with friends? Communicate before each drop about who needs which Joker type. The system rewards coordination when your squad is actually talking.
If you are running with randoms and someone is hoarding every card, your best option right now is to use your movement advantage. Stack speed Jokers early so you are the one with the positional edge when the next card drops.
Targeting the right weapon fragments
Jokers are not the only resource that requires active management. Weapon fragments drop from bosses, but you have to manually select which blueprint you are farming inside your loadout menu. The fragment tracker does not automatically roll over to the next gun once you max out your current one. Check your tracker before every drop. Even after unlocking every weapon, fragments still fund cosmetic skins, so there is always a reason to keep a target selected.
Fragment target selection screen
What's the best way to use elemental damage?
Your secondary weapon runs on elemental damage, and each type does something different according to the NeonLightsMedia beginner guide:
- Pyro applies 2 points of damage per tick
- Acid applies 1 point of damage per tick but slows the target
- Electric applies 1 point of damage per tick with a high chain chance to nearby enemies
Pyro is pure damage output. Acid is useful when you need to kite dangerous targets. Electric pays off in dense packs where the chain reaction does most of the work for you.
Spell experience is tied directly to damage output, but the game also gives you a one-time experience bonus just for casting a spell for the first time. Equip every level one spell at least once and fire it off. That free experience chunk accelerates your spell progression significantly without requiring any extra grind.
When should you fight the boss?
Defeating the primary boss does not end the map. It triggers an infinite escalating wave of enemies. That is great if you have a fully upgraded build and want to grind weapon experience. It is a problem if you still have side quests to turn in and low health.
Before you engage the boss, run through this checklist:
- Map is cleared of secondary objectives
- Secret objectives (Medallions, Bells) are fully completed and deposited
- Your health and resources are in good shape
- You know where the extraction zone is
If you forget which boss you are hunting, look for Boss Sanctuaries scattered around the map. These shrines are visually themed around the current target and serve as a clear reminder. Once that boss goes down, the clock starts. Get to extraction before the wave spam makes it impossible.
Do not pull the boss trigger until your secrets are secured. Secret progress resets on extraction, but the boss kill locks you into a survival timer immediately.
For more on building out your loadout and surviving co-op runs, browse more guides covering the full range of extraction shooters and action games on GAMES.GG.