The Last of Us Part I: Complete Guide

Everything you need to survive Joel and Ellie's journey on PC: how combat, crafting and upgrades actually work, a chapter-by-chapter outline, collectible and achievement tips, and the PC settings that matter.

Researched September 2026 — current as of PC patch v1.1.5 (July 2025). Live games change; check the linked sources if something differs.

Quick Start

Stealth first, guns last. Ammo is scarce on Hard and above. Clear rooms quietly with chokeholds and shiv kills, and only go loud when a fight is unavoidable or you are cornered.
Always carry a shiv. Clickers cannot be strangled; without a shiv, a Clicker that grabs you is an instant death. Shivs also open locked "shiv doors" that hide loot.
Pick up everything and open every drawer. Supplements, parts, crafting materials and ammo are hidden in side rooms, especially behind locked doors and inside safes.
Spend supplements on Shiv Master and Maximum Health early. Durable shivs save your life against Clickers, and extra health smooths out every difficulty.
Use bricks and bottles constantly. Throw them to distract, to stun an enemy before a melee kill, or to pull Infected into humans (there is an achievement for that).
Upgrade a few weapons, not all of them. Parts are limited. Focus on the revolver or pistol, the shotgun and the bow, and grab every workbench tool upgrade you find.
Your companions are invisible to enemies during stealth. Do not panic when Ellie walks in front of a Clicker; the AI ignores companions until combat starts.
Save before optional areas. The game autosaves at checkpoints, but manual saves let you retry a messy encounter from a clean point.
Let the shader build finish on PC. The first launch (and any patch that triggers it) rebuilds shaders; playing during the build caused many of the stutter complaints at launch.

What's Included

The Last of Us Part I is the ground-up remake of the 2013 game. The PC version (released 28 March 2023, ported with Iron Galaxy) contains:

The full main story (Joel and Ellie's cross-country journey).
Left Behind, the prequel chapter starring Ellie and Riley, playable from the main menu.
Permadeath and Speedrun modes, plus custom difficulty settings.
A large accessibility suite: audio descriptions for cutscenes, text-to-speech, screen reader, customizable controls, and presets for motor, hearing and vision needs.

Compared to the original, the remake has reworked enemy AI (more aggressive and flanking-aware), rebuilt animations and visuals, and DualSense haptics. The story, level layout and upgrade systems follow the original closely. There is no multiplayer Factions mode in Part I.

Difficulty and Modes

Difficulty	Who it's for
Very Light / Light	Story-first players; generous resources, forgiving enemies
Moderate	Default experience; a good first playthrough
Hard	Resources noticeably tighter; stealth becomes important
Survivor	Very scarce resources; Listen Mode is disabled by default
Grounded	The hardest setting: minimal HUD, extremely scarce supplies, brutal damage

Custom difficulty lets you tune enemy resilience, stealth efficacy, ally toughness and resource availability separately. If you like the tension of Survivor but hate losing Listen Mode, this is where you mix and match.
Permadeath makes death end your run; you can pick how strict it is when you start. Great for a second or third playthrough, terrible for a first.
Speedrun mode adds an in-game timer to your run and skips cutscene friction, for players chasing times.
New Game+ carries over your weapon upgrades, skills and collectible progress, which is the easiest route to finishing achievement lists.

Core Mechanics

Stealth and Listen Mode

Hold the Listen Mode button to "see" enemies through walls as sound silhouettes. It is your main scouting tool on Moderate and below. Movement rules:

Crouch-walk is quiet; running and firing unsuppressed guns is loud.
Chokehold a human or a Runner from behind, then either strangle (slow, quiet) or shiv (fast, costs a shiv).
Clickers navigate by sound. Move slowly around them and never sprint nearby. They one-shot you if they grab you and you have no shiv.
Bloaters are heavily armored. Fire, explosives and shotgun blasts at close range work best; never try to melee one.
Stalkers hide and ambush from cover; they do not show up reliably in Listen Mode because they stand still.

Infected at a Glance

Infected	Threat	Best answer
Runners	Fast, swarm in groups, can see you	Melee, chokehold, shotgun when grouped
Stalkers	Ambush from cover	Keep your back to a wall, shotgun or melee
Clickers	Blind but lethal grab	Sneak and shiv, or molotov a group
Bloaters	Armored, throw spore sacs	Molotovs, nail bombs, shotgun, keep moving

Crafting

Crafting happens in real time (the world does not pause), so craft before you open a door. Main recipes:

Item	Use
Health Kit	Restores health; slow to apply in combat
Shiv	Instant stealth kill, Clicker grab escape, opens shiv doors
Molotov	Area fire damage; excellent against groups and Bloaters
Nail Bomb	Proximity trap; place it in a chokepoint and lure enemies
Smoke Bomb	Breaks line of sight so you can reposition or escape
Melee Upgrade	Adds blades to a melee weapon for one-hit kills

Several recipes share ingredients (for example, alcohol and rags feed both Health Kits and Molotovs; blades and binding feed shivs and melee upgrades). Decide what you need most before crafting, and remember that items in your backpack have carry limits.

Skills (Supplements)

Supplements (pill bottles and loose plants) upgrade Joel's skills from the backpack menu. The skill categories are Maximum Health, Shiv Master, Healing Speed, Crafting Speed, Weapon Sway and Listen Mode Distance.

Suggested priority for a first playthrough on Hard or above:

Shiv Master — more durable shivs, fewer resources wasted on Clickers and doors.
Maximum Health — directly reduces how often you die to surprise damage.
Weapon Sway — steadier aim with pistols and the bow.
Healing Speed and Crafting Speed — nice, but you can play around them.
Listen Mode Distance — skip on difficulties where Listen Mode is disabled.

Weapons and Workbenches

Workbenches let you spend parts on weapon upgrades (damage, rate of fire, reload, clip size, range) and on holsters that let you swap long guns faster. Some upgrades require a higher workbench tool level; tool upgrades are separate collectibles hidden in the world, so explore to find them.

Reliable upgrade targets:

Revolver / 9mm pistol — your bread-and-butter sidearm.
Shotgun — the answer to Runners, Stalkers and close-range emergencies.
Bow — silent, and arrows can often be recovered from bodies. A top-tier stealth tool once upgraded.
Hunting Rifle — strong against long-range human enemies in open areas.

Upgrade one sidearm and one long gun fully before spreading parts out. The "Combat Ready" achievement only asks for one fully upgraded weapon.

Chapter Outline

The story is split into chapters with named sub-sections. Without spoilers beyond locations:

Prologue — Outbreak day. Tutorial for movement and hiding.
The Quarantine Zone — Boston QZ, meeting Tess, stealth and crafting basics.
The Outskirts — Downtown ruins, the museum and the Capitol building; first real Clicker encounters.
Bill's Town — Traps, the high school, and a Bloater encounter. Bill teaches improvised explosives.
Pittsburgh — Hunters, the hotel basement generator, and dense human combat.
The Suburbs — Sewers and the neighborhood sniper sequence with Henry and Sam.
Tommy's Dam — A breather chapter with horses and a big defense fight.
The University — Large open campus; lots of optional loot.
Lakeside Resort — Winter; you play as Ellie for much of it. Opens with Ellie hunting with the bow, then scarce-resource stealth as Ellie and a tense climax.
Bus Depot — Spring; big emotional set piece and hard fights.
The Firefly Lab — The finale.
Jackson — The epilogue.

Left Behind is separate and takes roughly two to three hours. It alternates between Ellie and Riley in a Boston mall and Ellie searching for supplies during the winter.

Collectibles, Missables and Achievements

The PC version has 29 Steam achievements. The collectible categories are:

Artifacts and notes ("Chronicles")
Firefly pendants ("Look for the Light")
Comics ("Endure and Survive")
Training manuals ("Something to Fight For")
Workbenches ("Prepared For the Worst") and workbench tools ("Sharpest Tool in the Shed")
Safes ("Sticky Fingers") — each safe has a code written somewhere nearby, usually on a note or scrawled on a wall
Shiv doors ("Master of Unlocking")
Optional conversations ("Getting to Know You") — look for the speech prompt when Ellie is near something interesting

Missable-style achievements to watch for:

Achievement	What to do
In Memoriam	In Bill's Town, pick up Frank's note after it is discarded
Lights Out	Turn off the spotlight generator in Pittsburgh while staying in stealth
Waterlogged	Ride the sewer contraption with Henry and Sam
Left Hanging	Leave Ellie hanging when she offers a high five
That's All I Got	Keep triggering Ellie's joke book conversations until she runs out
Who's A Good Boy?	Pet Buckley the dog when you find him
Live Bait	Throw a brick or bottle so an Infected attacks a human
Build Em Up, Break Em Down	Upgrade and then break one of every melee weapon type
Geared Up	Craft every item at least once
Brick Master, Skillz, Nobody's Perfect, Angel Knives	Left Behind: win the brick-throwing contest, win the water gun fight, play the Jak X game, and beat Black Fang without taking a hit

Because chapter select exists after the credits and New Game+ keeps your collectible progress, you do not need a perfect first run. Play blind, then clean up with chapter select.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Crafting Health Kits the second you have materials. Molotovs share ingredients and win fights; heal kits only extend them. Keep a balance.
Wasting shivs on doors when you only have one. Always keep one shiv in reserve for a Clicker grab.
Fighting in the open. Human enemies flank aggressively in Part I. Break line of sight, move, and re-engage from a new angle.
Ignoring side rooms. Supplements and tool upgrades are usually off the main path. Skipping them makes the late game much harder.
Upgrading every gun a little. Parts are finite. Commit.
Sprinting past Clickers. Sound gets you killed. Walk.
Playing while shaders compile (PC). Wait for the build to hit 100 percent on first launch and after patches that trigger a rebuild.

Advanced Tips

Stun, then punish. A thrown brick or bottle stuns a human long enough for a free melee combo or grab, even mid-firefight.
Stealth-grab after a lost-contact reset. If enemies lose you, they search in patterns; wait in a dark corner and pick off stragglers.
Nail bombs at choke doors. Toss a bottle to pull a group through a doorway, then let the nail bomb do the work.
Bow headshots on humans are silent one-shots at low difficulty and conserve precious ammo on higher ones.
Molotov a Clicker cluster instead of shiving each one when you are short on blades.
Grounded tips: turn off auto-pickup expectations, loot everything, rely on bricks and bottles as your main weapon, and treat every gunshot as a last resort.
PC settings: keep an eye on the in-game VRAM usage meter in the Graphics menu; exceeding it causes stutter. Use DLSS, FSR (FSR 4 on compatible AMD GPUs since v1.1.5) or frame generation (FSR 3.1 frame generation added in v1.1.4) to hit your target frame rate. DualSense haptics work over a wired connection.

FAQ

How long is The Last of Us Part I? Roughly 15 to 20 hours for the main story on a normal playthrough, plus a few hours for Left Behind. Collectible hunters should expect more.

Is Left Behind included on PC? Yes. It is included in the base game and launched separately from the main menu.

Does Part I have multiplayer (Factions)? No. Part I is single-player only.

Is it Steam Deck compatible? Yes. The game became Steam Deck Verified with patch v1.1.0 (June 2023), and v1.1.5 improved a Steam Deck audio issue.

What is the latest PC patch? v1.1.5 (July 2025), which added AMD FSR 4 support plus performance and crash fixes.

Why does the game rebuild shaders after an update? Some patches (for example v1.1.0 and v1.1.2) change rendering and trigger a full shader rebuild. Let it finish before playing.

What difficulty should I pick? Moderate for a story-focused first run, Hard if you want resource pressure and stealth to matter, Survivor or Grounded for a second playthrough.

Do I need to collect everything in one run? No. Chapter select and New Game+ let you clean up collectibles and achievements later.