I am going to list the most important game changing tips and not-so-obvious mechanics of the game, in the order they will become relevant to you as you progress from the beginning to the endgame.

 
Something the game doesn't tell you and its pretty hard to figure out on your own is how to loot items fast, instead of using the mouse to press "Loot all" on top of the screen every time.


Keep in mind that this will not identify the items you are looting and they will apear as a "?" in your inventory. You can quickly identify items in your inventory by dropping them to the ground and quickly picking them back up or you can wait until you extract and they will be identified when you get back to the innards.

 
To identify and tag enemy targets (or containers) from a distance aim your crosshair at the target and press "Z" Aiming at an empty terrain spot will also place a marker that shows you the distance to it. The marker will be red for enemies, yellow for containers and white for terrain.

This is incredibly useful for completing missions that require you to eliminate specific enemies.

 
Increase your water reserve to 16 days to unlock all vendors. However, after that, unless you know for sure you won't play the game until your water runs out, don't immediately transfer your water barrels to the water reserve. Instead, try to get as much water as possible by doing missions and keep the water barrels for when you know you will take a break from the game.
There are always easy missions you can do, like the ones that only ask you to extract from a map, or bring back 2 explosives etc.

Do this because, while the water reserve is full, all water rewards from missions are lost. You only get to keep the water barrels you extract with.

Also remember that you can upgrade your water reserve capacity by 16 days for 500K and by another 28 days for 1500K so that you can keep getting the water rewards from missions.

When I started playing, I always transferred my water barrels to the water reserve and together with the mission water rewards I managed to get to 55 days very fast. But since then I did a lot of missions and because my water reserve was already full I missed out on tens of water barrels that I would have still had in my stash. So... don't do what I did :)

 

She is the fastest character and with her you can dash around the map and outrun trouble (except for melee cyborgs which will catch up to you if you aggro them). You can do your first runs with nothing but the surplus shotgun (which is free) and if you want, some extra shotgun ammo and light medkits (which will soon become almost useless anyway). This way, you won't loose much if you get killed until you get used to the feel of game.



It spawns in one of 3 locations and you get weapons and loot worth 50-100K once you open it after you extract. I recommend you search for a youtube video guide of the 3 possible locations in Scorched Enclave. Apparently there is one Gacha Box on each map but the one from Scorched Enclave is the easiest one to get.

Do some missions, get some loot and credits and try to upgrade your rig as soon as possible once you unlock the rig vendor. You can unlock vendors by increasing your water reserve.



He's slow but not that slow, has a ton of HP and has access to the heaviest rigs that will allow you to loot the whole map! And after you unlock some prestige levels and have 2000+ HP you become "that guy", cleaning out (almost) the entire map.

 
When firing a loud weapon like a shotgun, you will draw the attention of a lot more enemies if they are in hearing range of you. So try to use a weapon with a suppressor (silencer) whenever you can.

When firing a suppressed weapon you will only aggro enemies in the same squad, and only if they are relatively close to each other.

Most of the times, especially of you are playing solo, this can be the difference between reaching the extraction point or getting overwhelmed by enemies.

Also, keep in mind that opening doors will generate noise that attracts enemies to your location!

 
After you get a rig with more large item slots, try using the tactical camera and pneumatic jump by equipping them in the Combat Loadout screen before a starting a run. You can buy rig equipments from the rig vendor on the "Large Items" tab.

During a run you can use them with "Q". If you have both of them equipped, you can switch between them with "7". You can also remap the keys to something more accessible in the settings menu ("7" is to far from the WASD keys imo).



It allows you to see loot and enemies through walls and terrain from a distance. This is essential for being able to avoid running into enemies and it greatly increases your chances to survive the run. This, and using silencers on your weapons, completely changes how the game feels.
Being able to see if there is loot in a location from far away is also very useful by saving time and reducing risk.



Helpful for getting around the map fast and getting out of some bad situations even faster. Can be very useful on maps like the Scorched Enclave to quickly jump over barricades and walls or to reach higher ground fast. But, if you have to pick only one equipment, the tactical camera is more useful.


Rig light is situational, but I don't recommend it that much because the tactical camera shows you lootable items even in darkness and you can also use flashlight weapon attachments. It's better to pick one of the other 2 options or to keep the slot free for loot.

 
One of my favorite builds is playing the Bag Man with a "The Rack" rig that has 8 large item slots. I fill 2 slots with the tactical camera and the pneumatic jump, equip a SAW LMG (there are some other weapons that are also fun after you unlock them but I don't want to give you too many spoilers) , 5-10 advanced medkits, a few hundred extra ammo and I always extract with 5-6 lockbox/water/explosives and a gacha box, 40+ kills and a ton of experience.

Also, using the "Pack Mule" rig with a tactical camera is great for looting hundreds of kg's of equipment each run and you can use other characters to equip it. However, it's usually slower to farm credits this way than speedrunning a map in 4-5 minutes and returning with 6 large items, especially if you manage to loot the 1 gacha box large item available in each map.

 
When you start your run, the weapon you bring comes fully loaded, for free, so...

To start your run with 200 free bullets that don't take up inventory space, equip the SAW Light Machinegun once you unlock it. To start with 300 bullets, upgrade the SAW's magazine! :)

This should be more than enough for a semi-stealth run and the best part is this also frees up inventory space which is extra valuable if you are using a low capacity small items rig like "The Rack".

The SAW LMG is also great because it is the most customizable of all the LMG's. After being leveled up it will be able to equip silencers, sights and zoom scopes, flashlight and laser attachments, upgraded barrels etc.

To save ammo even further, you can switch your weapon's fire mode to single fire. When using a 2x scoped SAW with single fire, it's easy to headshot low health enemies like the cyborgs and kill them in one shot.

 
Keep playing, don't forget to also buy (advanced) medkits from the vendor between runs and to take on missions at the beginning of each run. There are some really profitable ones and some even reward you with weapons you cant usually buy from vendors.

Enjoy and have fun playing this awesome game! And please, leave a comment if you have any other tips, questions, updates or corrections to this guide. Peace!