I've cleared the game on the normal difficulty, and now I'm going back over it again in 1999 Mode. One thing I noticed during my first playthrough is that there's just not enough money to buy everything - weapon upgrades and vigor upgrades are particularly expensive.

I spent my cash in my last playthrough willy nilly, but I feel like with the increased difficulty I need to make some more considered decisions. My money and salt budget are likely to be very tight.

Are there Vigor upgrades that are overpowered or essential for play at higher difficulties? Are there any in particular I should ignore outright as being completely useless?

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3 Answers

I just finished 1999 yesterday and honestly what I found surprised me. It really seemed like the vigors were balanced, even in 1999 mode. As long as you are utilizing them properly, all of them are effective. If I were to focus on three, they would be Murder of Crows (for Handymen and to distract peons while taking care of heavys), Shock Jockey (allows perma-stun of 80% of enemys), and Overtow (this is critical when you get to the Hand of the Prophet, as you can literally just knock all of the enemies off the Zeppelin instead of fighting them.)

If there was one that was underpowered it was Possession. Any enemy that you posses will get demolished by other enemies almost instantaneously without dealing any measurable damage, and at a high vigor price to boot. The only way I could even use Possession was to get by some turrets without destroying them to preserve ammo (presuming you are going for the Scavenger Hunt achievement as well.)

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I wrapped up my 1999 mode run yesterday, and documented my overall strategy here.

As far as vigor upgrades go, I spent money on the following:

• Murder of Crows upgrade for increased duration
• Shock Jockey upgrade for increased duration
• Charge upgrade for invulnerability/shield recharge
• Possession upgrade for humans

MoC is great versus handymen, but it wears off very quickly. Similarly, Shock Jockey is great against Patriots, but wears off quickly. Bucking Bronco is probably the #3 duration upgrade I would pick, as it's very useful against groups of the weaker enemies that tend to charge you.

Charge's invulnerability+shield recharge is awesome. It's essentially turning your salts into health. If you couple it with Brittle Skinned, you'll charge to an enemy, hit them to make every shot count for double, and then you can unload into them. It was key for fighting the Lady for me, and for surviving the endgame.

Possession's human upgrade is nearly free. It's relatively expensive in terms of salts (even if you invest in the salt reduction) but there are times when a human enemy just won't quit, and in these cases I found it to be ammo-efficient to use it. For these hardened, armored enemies, I did tend to prefer to Undertow them off a cliff if possible, though.

• Bronco is very good for crowd control and crow guys, but useless against handymen.
• Murder of crows is also good for crowd control, especially once upgraded, it's also great against handymen.
• Sender is good for boss fights (i.e Lady Comstock) if you have a good amount of salt upgrades, absorb her attacks while popping of close range shots.

I never was much of a melee guy, but if you are, upgrade your charge vigor.

Shock chain and Devils kiss are mediocre overall, but good against patriots.