Back in 2022, I had the pleasure of starting a challenge run in Saints Row that involves me beating the game with only the Pimp Cane. Little did I know how stressful this would turn out to be.
Despite this, I did end up achieving this feat in the end without the use of cheats, much to my surprise given the amount of work (and time) that it took to acquire the Pimp Cane in the first place.
I decided to write this up in hopes that other players might want to give similar runs a try, or at least showcase the level of fun (and stress) that can come from one's experience when trying such challenges in this game. All in all, this is here to show what's possible amongst the many other shenanigans that one can get up to in Saints Row and the games to follow, or at least a way of documenting where one such masochistic idea can get you.
While this isn't a comprehensive guide on how one can do this, I have included the most interesting bits here regarding this run. I've also done other runs on this game and Saints Row 2 that are similar to this, too, which may or may not be posted here (depending on whether the time allows for it or not).
1) To start off, one must acquire the Pimp Cane without the use of cheats. If you wish to go for a cheated run, you can simply type #PIMPCANE via the in-game phone to immediately spawn it in. However, we like to live life on the edge, so we're going for a vanilla run without any cheats (this run was livestreamed from start to finish, with no commentary, via an Xbox One; the final edited video has been linked above).
This can be done via completing the first set of missions, without killing anyone, up until you unlock activities. We won't be completing any just yet. Instead, we'll go to the Forgive and Forget in the Harrowgate area (the branch that's closest to the church), steal any bypassing cars, starting the Hostage diversion, then ending it repeatedly (without ever completing it here, so you retain your Police notoriety) to rack up your Police notoriety to five stars, then save your game. This'll ensure that if something goes wrong, you can reload your save and keep your notoriety. From here, try to store at least two FBI vehicles in your garage (one for personal use and one for the Downtown Chop Shop). You could even use this to your advantage by camping outside the Downtown Chop Shop with maxed out Police notoriety and turn in as many FBI vehicles as your please (they sell for $5,000 each). This is useful for vehicle repairs in this run, but not ammunition purchases as unlocking the Pimp Cane will allow you to replenish your ammo for this weapon at any unlocked cribs. A trip to Forgive and Forget (recommended) will then allow you to wipe your notoriety level.
2) Now for the Snatch activity; you must complete all levels of the Snatch activity around Stilwater to unlock the Pimp Cane.
Sounds daunting, doesn't it? Fear not! I'll be here to guide you along with a useful trick.
Still have an FBI vehicle handy? Good. You'll be needing that. It's additional three passenger seats, besides your own, would be useful for picking up more, let's say, workers of the night. Plus, it's a fast vehicle, capable of taking a lot of damage until it blows up. Make sure yours is fully repaired before trying each instance of this activity. You can also repair your vehicle via any of the Rim Jobs outlets while the Snatch activity is in progress. That's where your mountains of cash from trading in all of those FBI vehicles would come in (while largely helpful, the FBI vehicle farming method is optional, however).
Upon starting any of the instances of the Snatch activity, you may notice that over time, some hos may spawn in pimps' vehicles. This can create difficulties and require you to kill some NPCs without the use of the Pimp Cane. However, we're not going to be doing this. We'll only be using the Pimp Cane to get kills on NPCs throughout this entire run.
To remedy this, always check the spawn points (via the pause menu map) of the hos and pimps whenever you start a new level of the Snatch activity. Sometimes, hos may spawn in pimps' vehicles, sometimes they don't; to my knowledge, and from my experience, this is largely random. You'll have to keep re-rolling the spawns to make sure that NO hos spawn in any pimps' vehicles. Sounds tedious on the surface, but quitting and restarting the activity is surprisingly quick and easy to do (down on your controller's D-Pad twice in rapid succession to quit a mission, activity or diversion).
If there are green and red blips (green for the hos and red for the pimps) overlapping each other, as in, directly ON TOP of one another, then this is a prime indicator that a ho has spawned in a pimp's vehicle. Another way to know that this is the case is to pause your game, take note of where such overlapping blips have spawned, unpause your game, wait a few seconds, then pause your game again; of at least two blips have moved together while remaining on top of each other, then that's a pimp's vehicle that you're seeing there. Quit the activity, then start it again.
Play the Snatch activity as normal throughout all of its instances, without killing anyone. This would take a lot of practice; be very careful with driving, going around corners, etc. In my run, at no point did I make use of any guns here. The FBI vehicle will come in handy and the somewhat generous time limits will let you repair your FBI vehicle at the closest Rim Jobs between ho pickups (around 10 mins for some levels where hos are located around the corner of the starting point). Make sure to not recruit any homies while playing the Snatch activity as you'll need as much space in your vehicle as possible for picking up any recruited hos (NPCs killed by homies, recruited or not, do not add kills to your stats).
3) I've unlocked the Pimp Cane after completing all instances of the Snatch activity. Now what?
Now you'll be prompted to rack up enough respect to tide your way through to the end of the game. I usually rack up at least 46-48 respect levels before running through the story missions and strongholds (at least from the point where I first unlock activities in-game).
As a main rule of thumb, I'd be careful during those missions where you're required (or at least prompted) to use a vehicle as to not accidentally hit and kill any NPCs. Save your game often, ideally between missions, and take note of your kill count via your in-game stats.
During two missions, I had to make some exceptions to using the Pimp Cane which, thankfully, didn't invalidate the run. As such, this is still classed as a proper, legitimate Pimp Cane Only run. These missions are:
- What Goes Up... (Los Carnales). The final mission where you blow up Angelo's plane. You can still snipe at some of the Carnales stragglers with the Pimp Cane, though the Angelo's plane can still be damaged with any weapon as the game registers this as a vehicle. Blowing up the plane doesn't add a kill to the player's statistics, and there are no NPCs inside the plane. No actual kills were attained without the use of the Pimp Cane here in my run.
- Semi-Charmed Life... (Westside Rollerz). The final mission where you kill Joseph Price. You can only damage the cars on the trailer of his truck, at first, with the use of the SKR-7 Spree that this mission supplies you with, conveniently with unlimited ammo, too (also supplied by this mission). I used the FBI vehicle during my run of this mission. I damaged Price's truck cab with my SKR-9 Spree, then finished him off by bashing my FBI vehicle into the side of his truck cab to whittle down at the final slither of health he had left. Regardless of whether or not you shoot his truck cab and blow it up, or simply destroy his truck cab with crash damage (from my experience), the game doesn't give you a kill for this in your stats. You might want to recruit some homies to take out any pursuing Westside Rollerz members (as I said, NPCs killed by homies, recruited or not, do not add kills to your stats).
Besides all of this, you'll be carving your way through Los Carnales, Westside Rollerz and Vice Kings gang members with ease with one of the most powerful weapons in the game. Just walk on by and annihilate entire groups of enemy gang members until Stilwater is under your complete control. That is, until you attend that one "celebratory" boat party.
And... that's it! That's how I had successfully beaten Saints Row using only the Pimp Cane. I've also done similar runs like these in the past, which may or may not receive their own threads in the meantime. Let me know what you guys think!
- Jacob.
EDIT: Attached to the final video, via the description, is an unlisted playlist showing the run from start to finish (yes, the ENTIRE thing). This is the standard that I've set for every single challenge run that I have done. Ideal activities for this run would be Snatch (mandatory, of course), Insurance Fraud, Chop Shop, Escort (LC, Airport; use the airport stunt jump to get to one of the rooftops to farm respect from this activity; WR, use the green space near the freeway to completely avoid the press - both largely negate the need for driving on the roads), Mayhem (LC only; use Hand Grenades at the airport in the building where you start LC Hijacking, loads of objects to blow up in there for 1,000s of $$$ without NPC interaction).
Despite this, I did end up achieving this feat in the end without the use of cheats, much to my surprise given the amount of work (and time) that it took to acquire the Pimp Cane in the first place.
I decided to write this up in hopes that other players might want to give similar runs a try, or at least showcase the level of fun (and stress) that can come from one's experience when trying such challenges in this game. All in all, this is here to show what's possible amongst the many other shenanigans that one can get up to in Saints Row and the games to follow, or at least a way of documenting where one such masochistic idea can get you.
While this isn't a comprehensive guide on how one can do this, I have included the most interesting bits here regarding this run. I've also done other runs on this game and Saints Row 2 that are similar to this, too, which may or may not be posted here (depending on whether the time allows for it or not).
1) To start off, one must acquire the Pimp Cane without the use of cheats. If you wish to go for a cheated run, you can simply type #PIMPCANE via the in-game phone to immediately spawn it in. However, we like to live life on the edge, so we're going for a vanilla run without any cheats (this run was livestreamed from start to finish, with no commentary, via an Xbox One; the final edited video has been linked above).
This can be done via completing the first set of missions, without killing anyone, up until you unlock activities. We won't be completing any just yet. Instead, we'll go to the Forgive and Forget in the Harrowgate area (the branch that's closest to the church), steal any bypassing cars, starting the Hostage diversion, then ending it repeatedly (without ever completing it here, so you retain your Police notoriety) to rack up your Police notoriety to five stars, then save your game. This'll ensure that if something goes wrong, you can reload your save and keep your notoriety. From here, try to store at least two FBI vehicles in your garage (one for personal use and one for the Downtown Chop Shop). You could even use this to your advantage by camping outside the Downtown Chop Shop with maxed out Police notoriety and turn in as many FBI vehicles as your please (they sell for $5,000 each). This is useful for vehicle repairs in this run, but not ammunition purchases as unlocking the Pimp Cane will allow you to replenish your ammo for this weapon at any unlocked cribs. A trip to Forgive and Forget (recommended) will then allow you to wipe your notoriety level.
2) Now for the Snatch activity; you must complete all levels of the Snatch activity around Stilwater to unlock the Pimp Cane.
Sounds daunting, doesn't it? Fear not! I'll be here to guide you along with a useful trick.
Still have an FBI vehicle handy? Good. You'll be needing that. It's additional three passenger seats, besides your own, would be useful for picking up more, let's say, workers of the night. Plus, it's a fast vehicle, capable of taking a lot of damage until it blows up. Make sure yours is fully repaired before trying each instance of this activity. You can also repair your vehicle via any of the Rim Jobs outlets while the Snatch activity is in progress. That's where your mountains of cash from trading in all of those FBI vehicles would come in (while largely helpful, the FBI vehicle farming method is optional, however).
Upon starting any of the instances of the Snatch activity, you may notice that over time, some hos may spawn in pimps' vehicles. This can create difficulties and require you to kill some NPCs without the use of the Pimp Cane. However, we're not going to be doing this. We'll only be using the Pimp Cane to get kills on NPCs throughout this entire run.
To remedy this, always check the spawn points (via the pause menu map) of the hos and pimps whenever you start a new level of the Snatch activity. Sometimes, hos may spawn in pimps' vehicles, sometimes they don't; to my knowledge, and from my experience, this is largely random. You'll have to keep re-rolling the spawns to make sure that NO hos spawn in any pimps' vehicles. Sounds tedious on the surface, but quitting and restarting the activity is surprisingly quick and easy to do (down on your controller's D-Pad twice in rapid succession to quit a mission, activity or diversion).
If there are green and red blips (green for the hos and red for the pimps) overlapping each other, as in, directly ON TOP of one another, then this is a prime indicator that a ho has spawned in a pimp's vehicle. Another way to know that this is the case is to pause your game, take note of where such overlapping blips have spawned, unpause your game, wait a few seconds, then pause your game again; of at least two blips have moved together while remaining on top of each other, then that's a pimp's vehicle that you're seeing there. Quit the activity, then start it again.
Play the Snatch activity as normal throughout all of its instances, without killing anyone. This would take a lot of practice; be very careful with driving, going around corners, etc. In my run, at no point did I make use of any guns here. The FBI vehicle will come in handy and the somewhat generous time limits will let you repair your FBI vehicle at the closest Rim Jobs between ho pickups (around 10 mins for some levels where hos are located around the corner of the starting point). Make sure to not recruit any homies while playing the Snatch activity as you'll need as much space in your vehicle as possible for picking up any recruited hos (NPCs killed by homies, recruited or not, do not add kills to your stats).
3) I've unlocked the Pimp Cane after completing all instances of the Snatch activity. Now what?
Now you'll be prompted to rack up enough respect to tide your way through to the end of the game. I usually rack up at least 46-48 respect levels before running through the story missions and strongholds (at least from the point where I first unlock activities in-game).
As a main rule of thumb, I'd be careful during those missions where you're required (or at least prompted) to use a vehicle as to not accidentally hit and kill any NPCs. Save your game often, ideally between missions, and take note of your kill count via your in-game stats.
During two missions, I had to make some exceptions to using the Pimp Cane which, thankfully, didn't invalidate the run. As such, this is still classed as a proper, legitimate Pimp Cane Only run. These missions are:
- What Goes Up... (Los Carnales). The final mission where you blow up Angelo's plane. You can still snipe at some of the Carnales stragglers with the Pimp Cane, though the Angelo's plane can still be damaged with any weapon as the game registers this as a vehicle. Blowing up the plane doesn't add a kill to the player's statistics, and there are no NPCs inside the plane. No actual kills were attained without the use of the Pimp Cane here in my run.
- Semi-Charmed Life... (Westside Rollerz). The final mission where you kill Joseph Price. You can only damage the cars on the trailer of his truck, at first, with the use of the SKR-7 Spree that this mission supplies you with, conveniently with unlimited ammo, too (also supplied by this mission). I used the FBI vehicle during my run of this mission. I damaged Price's truck cab with my SKR-9 Spree, then finished him off by bashing my FBI vehicle into the side of his truck cab to whittle down at the final slither of health he had left. Regardless of whether or not you shoot his truck cab and blow it up, or simply destroy his truck cab with crash damage (from my experience), the game doesn't give you a kill for this in your stats. You might want to recruit some homies to take out any pursuing Westside Rollerz members (as I said, NPCs killed by homies, recruited or not, do not add kills to your stats).
Besides all of this, you'll be carving your way through Los Carnales, Westside Rollerz and Vice Kings gang members with ease with one of the most powerful weapons in the game. Just walk on by and annihilate entire groups of enemy gang members until Stilwater is under your complete control. That is, until you attend that one "celebratory" boat party.
And... that's it! That's how I had successfully beaten Saints Row using only the Pimp Cane. I've also done similar runs like these in the past, which may or may not receive their own threads in the meantime. Let me know what you guys think!
- Jacob.
EDIT: Attached to the final video, via the description, is an unlisted playlist showing the run from start to finish (yes, the ENTIRE thing). This is the standard that I've set for every single challenge run that I have done. Ideal activities for this run would be Snatch (mandatory, of course), Insurance Fraud, Chop Shop, Escort (LC, Airport; use the airport stunt jump to get to one of the rooftops to farm respect from this activity; WR, use the green space near the freeway to completely avoid the press - both largely negate the need for driving on the roads), Mayhem (LC only; use Hand Grenades at the airport in the building where you start LC Hijacking, loads of objects to blow up in there for 1,000s of $$$ without NPC interaction).
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