Prologue Section 2: Central Knot City

Follow this Death Stranding 2: On The Beach guide to navigate Central Knot City, find lost cargo, and make your first delivery to Mama.

At the bottom of the slope, across the river, is the second package Sam dropped in the opening cutscene. Grabbing L2+R2 while fording this (or any other) river will help you keep your balance. The water's shallow, but swift. It's not likely to knock Sam off his feet but you'll use less stamina if you balance while in the water.

Cross the river, grab the package, and continue to your right toward Central Knot City. As you travel you should spot an upslope to your left. If you've been using your odradek scanner with R1, you might have a note that there's a package up there. Go on and head up the slope to find "Lost Cargo" for Central Knot City next to a cryptobiote nest.

Eat some cryptobiotes if you want, then turn around and head back down the slope. You'll notice glowing blue footprints on the ground. This is your path, and can be very useful if you can't remember how to get around an obstacle or which way you came from. In the future you might see green footprints; these are paths laid down by other players. Enough footsteps trodding the same path in the wilds will change the terrain in certain areas, making a clear road that's easy to see. You haven't tromped around this area enough for that just yet, though.

At the bottom of the slope, turn left to keep on toward Central Knot City. At some point, you'll want to ford the river again. The final "key" package is on the other side, having floated all the way downstream to rest conveniently close to a set of stairs that leads up to a road. Go up the stairs and cross the road. Despite what it may look like, you can't get into the city simply by walking in through the road; there's an air pressure dome blocking your path.

Instead, go down the stairs on the other side of the road and cross the rocky terrain ahead. Pick up one more piece of Lost Cargo on the way. This will bring you to the point of being "close to your weight limit," though it's really more like half. Still, you're almost there, and it's worth going ahead and grabbing all the packages along the way. It'll give you a good headstart on your likes.

Grab your backpack straps for balance and head forward. There will be a scan that verifies your cargo; any time this happens, so long as the lights are blue or purple, you know you've arrived somewhere relatively safe. Head forward and to the left, through any of the three lanes. You're not going into Central Knot City itself (which is underground), you're just dropping off your cargo at the delivery center up ahead on your left. Walk in and hold down square to activate the terminal, to deliver the cargo to a woman we'll get to know later as Mama.

What comes up next is a very short version of a screen you'll be seeing a lot later on. I'll go into detail about the cargo terminal when you encounter it again later. For now, just select "Make Delivery" and "Deliver Requested Cargo." Deliver everything you have; there's no point in holding onto any of it. If you've been following this guide and didn't accidentally fall on your face, you should get an "S" rating for this delivery, and some extra likes for the Lost Cargo. Again, I'll go through the details of these screens later; for now, bask in the likes and your new Porter rank (at this point, mine is 6: just a plain old Porter.)