The Outer Worlds

• There is loot everywhere. Jump on boxes, leap up on roofs, crawl under tables, check behind every corner; you're bound to come across a little yellow or red box containing bits, equipment, ammo, and mods.

• Your Lockpick skill is tied to character Intelligence. If you build a low intelligence character, expect to use a lot more Mag-picks opening locked doors and chests.

• Mag-picks are scarce early on. You can wear equipment with bonuses to Lockpicking, eat food that boosts Mind Attributes, or travel with companions who have the lockpicking skill to lower the number of Mag-picks needed to open containers. This can mean the difference between using 4 Mag-picks per lock or using 0 Mag-picks per lock.

• Choosing to go sub-average in a stat is always a detriment, but doing so with Intelligence unlocks [Dumb] dialogue options, many of which are funny, one of which is required for a trophy/achievement (if you're into that sort of thing).

• Combat starts off somewhat difficult but a few hours into the game it becomes trivially easy. You can and will find basic weapons that will instantly double your DPS and turn the game into a cakewalk, and you can find ammo everywhere. Because of that it is wise to keep your combat abilities at level 40 and dump the rest of your points into more fun non-combat skills.

• You can break down and repair items right in your menu, although it is generally less efficient than doing it at a bench.

• The easiest way to get lockpicking/hacking supplies is to upgrade your skills until you can buy restricted items in stores and then just buy out every vending machine you come across, since the tools are cheap.

• This a personal thing, but I would advise against stealing. It's pretty easy to do, especially since pickpocketing has no chance of failure unless visually spotted once unlocked, but it breaks the game even further to the point where it isn't fun.

• Companions do not have an ammo supply, they just use the weapons continually. Got a cool flamethrower that burns through ammo? Give it to your companion.

• The inhaler system is a bit confusing. Using an inhaler will take one of the health restoring items, but any other consumables that gets put into the other open slots will also have their affect applied.

• There's an option under Game Options that's on by default that makes it so you see a weapon's base damage, turn that off so you can see weapon damage as it's affected by your skills and such

• In the journal section there's a codex that has a lot of valuable explanations in it, like how damage types work: kinetic isn't good against armor, shock is good for robots, plasma isn't good for mantisaurs but great for other things, corrosive is good for armor, although in my experience it seems to be good for everything, N-ray damage ignores armor and is basically poison that'll spread to other enemies but isn't good for inorganic enemies.

• The only game breaking glitch I've run into was fixed by loading an earlier save, a quest got messed up and wouldn't move to the next bit/dialogue options didn't update. The game autosaves a lot but it's a good idea to manually save every once in a while just in case

• Flaws get offered in certain contexts, they're optional, and you get a perk point for taking them, be aware of what the stipulations are, like if it's some conditional thing like "you're afraid of robots so these stats will be lowered" or if it's just a 24/7 debuff, like permanent concussion which takes your mind stats down 1 for the rest of the game and will reduce the points for the skills those attributes affect. Also the fear of robots flaw apparently applies if you're using the robot companion.

• Don't feel apprehensive about using mods on weapons and armor, yeah you don't get them back, but you get a LOT of mods in the game, you could easily play it safe and only use mods you have copies of and still have most of your gear modded out.

• Don't sell stuff to Vending machines, the merchant skill/faction bonus doesn't apply, vending machines can't haggle, so you'll lose money if you do this. Go for it if your over encumbered but just so you can move again, don't sell your whole stash.

• The Deadly Demonstrations perk gives you +50% XP from companion kills. Now that may not sounds like much, but actually your companions' kills already give you 100% experience before the perk, so the perk enables you to get 1.5x experience for the rest of the game as long as you let your companions finish off stuff. May be too micromanagey though.

• 1 of the most effective skill threshold is Inspiration 60, since for just an additional 10 points from 50, you'll get so many more additional "free" points from your companions & even the armor they wore. You can even 100% some stuff with only 50 hard skill points invested.

• Companions's skills gotten from armor will grant you 25% of their bonus only for the skills which they naturally grant. Eg, Persuade for Parvati. This armor bonus increases to 50% with Inspiration 60.

• High lockpick means lots of containers being lockpicked for free due the "1 = free" skill threshold, hence saving you lots of Mag Picks over time.

• Perception is the most checked attribute in dialog ever, so keep it High if possible even with a non-combative character.

• You literally don't lose anything (karma/reputation etc) from stealing stuff, as long as nobody sees you.