Horizon Forbidden West

• Some items in the Junk category are useful. Pristine Skulls can be traded for other animal bones.

• If you want to upgrade something, just create a job for it whenever you're at a workbench and it'll automatically show you where to find the nearest components that you need.

• A few areas will be inaccessible to you at first and will only become available after certain plot-related upgrades, so it does help to progress the story.

• Purgewater disables many elemental attacks and also reduces a machine's resistance to elemental attacks.

• Many sidequests offer good weapons and armor this time around, so it does also help to complete them as they appear.

• You're invincible while performing a Valor Surge and so can also use it to escape explosions, machine charges, and environmental damage.

• Unlike Zero Dawn, the game world persists after completing the main story, so there's nothing that can be permanently missed.

• If a weapon looks at all interesting, just grab it! Weapons are cheap, and most have a unique combination of ammo types.

• Green weapons stay relevant much longer than in Horizon Zero Dawn, and blue weapons can remain situationally useful the whole game.

• You only need to get within 40 steps of a campfire to unlock it for fast travel (i.e. you don't actually need to go up to it and use it), so sometimes it's worth making a detour during exploration to unlock a campfire for future use.

• Herbalists in settlements sell pouch upgrade materials, with the furthest southwest settlements having the full variety for sale.

• Animal skins and bones sell for a lot, so hunting easy game like peccaries and owls as you see them is a good way to keep your cash flow positive.