- Make sure you always have a Line Gun amongst your weapons - It never stops being useful.

- Try and craft a pair of Elite Heavy Frames once you've got some basic weapon parts - they have a good balance of stats, and they let you slot 4 upgrade chips onto each of the weapon's tools for a total of 8.

- The Telemetry Spike Engine makes weapons that have mostly the same basic properties as the Military Engine (machine gun, shotgun, etc), only they're far more effective. The Chaingun has far more ammo than an assault rifle, and the rivet shotgun does nasty damage at close range.

- Experiment with your guns. Some combinations produce wildly varying effects, and there's no penalty for experimentation due to the Universal Ammo.

- Upgrade Chips are removable and reusable, so don't worry too much about if they might be locked to that frame or anything.

- Keep your scavenger bots busy - deploy them again as soon as they return so you get as many materials as possible

- Make sure you AlWAYS have one tungsten torque bar in your inventory, and make one if you don't. You'll never encounter more than one door that uses them between benches (they essentially replace power node doors).

- Don't be afraid to go off the indicated route - there's a few side missions to find, as well as hidden weapon parts and collectibles tucked away.

- It's not readily explained unless you go looking for it, but Ration Seals let you buy the resource DLC packs (and obtain special weapon parts unique to ration seal purchases) without spending money. 30 Seals for the Basic, 60 for the Ultra. **** As of 8/20/2013 there is a bug? preventing the purchase of ration seal packs on the PC/Origin version. They will not even appear on the DLC list ****

- If you have Dead Space 2 on the same Origin account you will be given a special, upgraded plasma cutter called the Planet Cracker. If you change the tip of the plasma core or remove the rotator cuff lower, you will not be able to re-add one without removing the other. Aside from that special instance the game will only let you use the Planet Cracker tip or the rotator cuff, but not both at the same time. It's not a big deal in the long run, or even the short run, but hey this shit to know before you play!