This guide is for new players. I am no expert at the game and have less than 100 hours played at the time of writing, having only finished the game once on normal difficulty. This guide is for newbs by a newb. I have read a few other guides and tips, so I will try not to reiterate what I have already read or seen elsewhere.

1. When cooking at a heat source to heal yourself, meat heals more than veggies. Inventory space is limited, so stack meat and sell or avoid the veggies.

2. Posse Leader perk is a must have if you plan to have companions. Companions are walking storage bags, so keeping them alive is important. The companion AI is not always very bright, so buffing them with your perks is a good way to keep them around, especially if you have bad aim and end up accidentally shooting them a lot. You can give your companions stacks of bandages and antivenom and they will use them.

3. If you plan to use previous story characters as your companions, they will keep their amulets equipped unless you remove them. I don't know for sure if the effects transfer to them as NPC companions, but they are unable to reequip the amulets once they are removed, so keep that in mind if you want to possibly have extra stats/effects on your companions. If you plan ahead, you can equip them (yourself) with less powerful amulets and put the best ones in the bank before moving on to the next chapter, so that the companions will still have amulets, while saving the better amulets for your new player character in the next chapter.

4. Blow out light sources, such as candles and torches, to help you navigate where you have already been/looted. Besides having the benefit of added stealth, blowing out light sources is a good way to track where you have been, but also many hidden treasures are near light sources and blowing them out often makes the treasures easier to see. NPCs will commonly attempt to relight blown-out light sources, so you can sometimes lure enemies into an ambush this way. If you arrive at an outdoor area during the day, it can be very beneficial to Loiter until the sun goes down.

5. Skinning is not really worth the time. It's fun to do and can make you some money in the long run, but the tools are expensive, and by the end of the third story, you will be getting green and blue vests more regularly, and will also be able to buy them from the store since you will have more gold. The upgrades do not give any special bonuses that you cannot get outside of the loot/store so unless you really enjoy skinning, just avoid it.

6. Mines regenerate ore. On top of that, the map details which mines contain which types of ore, so when upgrading your weapons, you can focus your search as more mines open up on the map through exploration.

7. Pick the weapon bonuses you like the most when upgrading your weapons. Besides the legendary weapons you can purchase at the store, weapons can be upgraded to epic/purple with ore. Since ore can be limited, it's best to choose which weapon bonuses to focus on before spending the ore to upgrade weapons. I personally really like the faster reload bonuses, so I will save my ore for when I am able to acquire those specific bonuses, instead of just upgrading whichever weapon I have when I get the proper amount of ore. It pays to be patient in this case.

8. When it comes to ore, one bar equals one nugget when you are upgrading weapons. The blacksmith can turn bars into nuggets, which you will need to upgrade your weapons. The blacksmith also turns nuggets into bars, which can be sold at the bank. It takes 2 nuggets to make one bar, but one bar will only get you 1 nugget, so don't turn them into bars unless you want to sell them or else you are wasting ore.

9. Inventory space is limited. And the game gives you access to A LOT of junk. It's best to choose a handful of junk items that appeal to you and just stick to those, leaving the rest behind. Certain areas have different kinds of junk, so if you are traveling to multiple areas before you sell, you will find space becomes even more of an issue. To avoid this, I like to loot only certain things from certain areas. I will loot all the ectoplasm, and avoid the ashes, when dealing with wraiths, for example. This way you can maximize space by having full stacks of items to sell, instead of a backpack full of single-stack items.

10. Don't jump on people in towns. Landing on any NPC is a combat maneuver and will be considered an act of aggression if you do it to a random NPC in town, turning everyone against you. This is bad if you do it by accident. The high jump perk makes it easy to jump and somersault on top of things, which personally I find kind of fun. While it may be hilarious to super jump somersault onto the head some passerby, make sure you save your game before you do so unless you want to fight the whole town.