Discover everything you need to know about the best beginner tips and tricks for Pragmata, including how to overcome threats.
Pragmata is a sci-fi action-adventure game set on a lunar research station. You play as Hugh, who handles shooting, movement, and weapons. Progressing in this game can be challenging, as most players don’t know the basics and some essential tips. Instead of shooting the enemies to deal damage, you must hack them before firing your weapon. Learning the best beginner tips and tricks helps you overcome challenges and make your progression smooth.
1. Create Hack Combos
Hacking combos in Pragmata is all about building better hacking paths and chaining effects. When Diana hacks an enemy, you draw a path on the grid. The blue nodes mean an extended open state and increased damage. The more you pass through, the longer the enemy stays vulnerable. Yellow nodes are where real combo builds start farming because they increase the damage, reduce the enemy defense, and leave special effects on enemies.
Create Hack Combos
Once an enemy is open, its weak points appear, and shooting them deals massive damage. Special yellow hacking nodes act like combo enhancers. Prefer getting the upgrades like Decode and multihack to turn a simple hack into a setup for burst damage phases.
Decode nodes let you lower the defense, and Multihack improves hacking effects or chain control effects. I recommend avoiding staying in the grid when enemies attack. This combo uses multihack to spread the defense-down effect of decode to all nearby enemies instead of just one.
Hacking Combos
This opens up all the enemies at once to be hit with follow-up weapon damage and applies the defense down debuff. You only need to hack one enemy with this setup. Make sure to combine Multihack with Confuse by passing through both of them in the same hack sequence. This turns the entire group of enemies against each other.
2. Do Not Ignore Bingo Cards
Bingo cards are part of the Cabin reward system, not a combat mechanic. These cards are stamp-style reward boards you get from a friendly robot NPC in the hub. This card has goals or tasks, slots you stamp using Cabin Coins, and patterns that form bingo lines. When you complete patterns like row, column, and diagonal to unlock rewards.
Bingo Cards
Bingo rewards can include new hacking nodes, combat nodes, and ability upgrades that change how fights work. You get the Cartridge Holder designed to protect and carry a Repair Cartridge, which increases the number of Repair Cartridges you can hold by one. Three bingos unlock the freeze hacking node, so you can add it to your loadout at the Tram. Filling the whole card unlocks a new outfit for Diana. Higher-level cards let you unlock special weapons by getting enough bingos.
3. Get the Object Scan
Locating the crucial items like upgrade components and REMs is very important while progressing in different areas. Most of the time, you will just ignore them as you don’t see them clearly. Having the Object Scan upgrade helps you detect important resources. This upgrade is available through the Unit Printer progression, and it adds a visual overlay scan mode to highlight nearby objects.
Object Scan
This makes it easier to get items like Upgrade Components, Lunafilament, and Repair consumables. It does not show absolutely everything, but it helps a lot with resource farming and hidden supply spots. I recommend grabbing Object Scan after core mobility and combat upgrades like thrusters and main weapon upgrades. Purchasing this upgrade is cheap, so get it once it becomes available.
4. Experiment with Weapon Loadout
Pragmata offers multiple loadouts, and playing with the same loadout is the biggest mistake players make. Pragmata is built around a hub-and-mission loop where you dive into the missions, defeat robots, and collect resources. After that, you return to the Shelter, upgrade, and change loadout. Most weapons are limited-use, so you replace or run out of them during missions.
Experimenting Things
Different enemies require different loadouts. Keep in mind that hacking and shooting synergy changes depending on what gear you bring. Prefer experimenting with different loadouts to see what works best for you.
Testing different loadouts allows you to gain better combat flow, faster boss kills, and efficient use of Diana’s hacking combos. Most of the enemies are vulnerable to a specific weapon type, as you can’t kill them with other weapons. This makes experimenting with different upgrades, weapons, or consumables worthwhile.
5. Boost Hacking Damage
Increasing hacking damage in Pragmata is not just one upgrade, as it’s a mix of iana upgrades, hacking node choices, and combat mods. This direct boost comes from Diana’s hacking upgrades at the Shelter. Upgrading the hacking increases damage dealt when a hack completes and improves overload buildup synergy. This also lets you extend open state duration and make weak points easier to exploit.
Increase Hacking Damage
Your damage is not fixed during hacking, so you increase it by routing through blue nodes. The specific mods that directly buff hacking are Digital Dominance, Critical Response, and Untapped Potential. Some yellow nodes amplify a single hack if stacked well. Hacking also opens the enemy, indicated by this blue icon above their health bar. You can tell they’re open when their blue bits are physically exposed.
Open means that they’re vulnerable to weapon damage during that time. While you’re in the hack interface, if you want to reset the path that you’ve drawn, just hold the touchpad down on PS5 or the view button on Xbox. Another thing to know about is when you get Diana’s overdrive gauge down here on the bottom left. When the full circle is charged, you can consume all of that gauge to do a powerful overdrive attack that deals area damage and inflicts shock.
6. Find Holographic Walls
Object Scan can help you reach the items, but you can’t find a path to grab them. Holographic walls are the normal solid surfaces, but are fake hologram projections hiding secret paths. They offer secret entrances to hidden rooms or side areas that connect to loot, upgrade materials, or collectibles.
Holographic Walls
These hollo walls contain upgrade components, rare resources, and mods. Holo-walls usually appear as slightly too smooth or flat metal surfaces. When you get close, the wall may highlight or flicker, and a prompt appears to interact.
7. Upgrade the Thrusters
Thrusters in Pragmata are part of Hugh’s mobility and suit system. They are basically used for dodging enemy attacks, quick bursts, and air-adjust movement. You become slower and less mobile or even lose the ability to dodge or reposition quickly when the thruster gauge runs out. Thrusters are considered a core defensive upgrade because more thruster capacity means more dodges in a row.
Upgrade the Thrusters
It offers better escape options during AoE attacks and a lower chance of getting caught. Some areas require repeated dashes and Jump + boost movement, making thrusters more crucial. Go to the Shelter hub, open the Unit Printer, and select Suit upgrades to spend resources like Upgrade Components and Luna Filament. Thruster upgrades increase maximum gauge capacity and recharge speed. Early upgrades already give noticeable improvement, especially in boss fights.
8. Use Critical Shot
Critical Shot ability adds a chance for a purple node to appear in the hacking matrix when bots are at low health. If you pass through that purple node for your hack, it instantly takes down the bot and lets you do a really powerful hit. For my testing, low health seems to be anything below about 40%. Plus, critical shots will stun surrounding bots for a moment, which is a nice crowd control mechanic.
Critical Shot
It’s definitely worth spending Pure Lunum on any upgrade in the attachments tab. When an enemy’s health is low, a Critical Shot node appears. Passing through it during a hack can take down enemies, letting you press R2 to perform a point-blank shot.
9. Use these Attachments
To really make that aim dash trick effective, you need more thruster charges. Make sure to prioritize upgrading the thrusters under the attachments tab of the printer back at the shelter. You must prioritize maxing out every attachment on this tab because they’re all really useful. I must say the thrusters, repair up, mod slot, and the hacking gauge are the most important. Keep in mind, as you progress and upgrade the shelter, you not only unlock more attachments, abilities, hacking upgrades, and weapons at the printer, but the max levels for each of these things will keep increasing, too.
Best Attachments
Make sure to check the printer often and the upgrades for Diana and Hugh’s suits and primary weapons at the firmware updater. Those max limits will increase as well. And you should know that once you unlock the pulse carbine weapon, upgrading Hugh’s primary unit will upgrade both the carbine and his default grip gun together.
10. Return to Shelter After the Mission
Revisiting the Shelter is crucial to upgrading everything while completing the mission on Pragmata. You repeatedly return to it to get stronger, change builds, and unlock progression systems. The Shelter is where you turn materials into real power using Firmware Updater and Suit upgrades.
Visit Shelter Frequently
Firmware Updater increases weapon damage, survivability, and Diana’s hacking strength, while Suit upgrades better thruster recharge and more mobility. At the Shelter, you use printers to unlock and manage gear. Weapons that you get in the field become permanent unlocks, and you can re-equip before each mission.
