Upgrade Crafting Related Skills
First thing’s first, your priority early on in the game should be upgrading anything that increases your EXP gain and anything that opens up more crafting options. If you’re playing on normal difficulty, nothing early on will be too difficult. Instead, invest in the future and open up options in the crafting and equipment menu.
Certain equipment options won’t even open up until you have acquired certain skills. Crafting Mastery allows you to create large capacity ammo pouches for your weapons. Survivalist will increase the amount of man-made crafting resources that you gather. Also, you can upgrade skills that get the most out of everything you’re collecting and upgrading. For example, Grenadier allows you to craft explosive grenades for the rifle grenade launcher. The items and weapons that you craft are game changing and shouldn’t be ignored. Invest in these skills early in Rise of the Tomb Raider.
Be on the Hunt
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Rise of the Tomb Raider is just as much about hunting and survival as it is about progressing through the game’s Indiana Jones-like story. In-between main mission objectives, you’ll often be dropped into open areas that you can explore. It is here that you’ll be able hunt regular and exotic animals, as well scavenge materials from nature. Don’t sleep on this, especially if you want to fully upgrade your weapons or play on the hardest difficulties.
See what you need and head to areas that contain that animal/resource you need (animal types are marked on the map legend). Male Deer, in particular, are fairly common and can drop exotic hides, so be sure to take them out when you see them. Also, once you have Master of the Land, a skill that notifies you when an exotic animal is around, put it to use. Be careful, though, as bears and big cats can be extremely deadly and will put up a tough fight. Be as stealthy as possible in order to reduce the amount of work and chasing animals around that you’ll have to do.
Prioritize Your Needs
Rise of the Tomb Raider wastes no time in providing you a lot of different options for you to spend your precious resources that you have hunted and gathered. Don’t go spending them on the first thing you happen to see. Take the time to read each available upgrade node and decide if it’s even something that you’re going to take advantage of.
Resources can be burned through VERY quickly if you try to upgrade every skill early on. Only upgrade skills that you know you’re going to actually use, unless you literally are at capacity for your resources. For example, there’s no point in getting the Stock-Mounted Shell Holder if you don’t use shotguns very often. On the flip side, there are equipment upgrades that are useful no matter what. For example, the Satchel, which increases your resource storage capacity. It’s great for those that want to save their resources without worrying about capping them often.
Search for Strongboxes Containing Weapon Parts
It almost feels like Rise of the Tomb Raider treats the lock boxes as an afterthought, just mentioning them in passing. However, they are actually incredibly important as they are how you’ll find pieces to unlockable weapons. Often, these boxes are located off the beaten path and will need to be opened up using your Axe Pick.
The following weapons can only be unlocked by finding all their parts around the world in Rise of the Tomb Raider: Semi-Auto Pistol, Compound Bow, Broken Bow, Sub-Machine Gun, Bolt Action Rifle, Magnum, Break Action Shotgun and the Auto Shotgun. Get out there and get searching!
Our guide on the box and weapon part locations should prove to be quite useful in this regard.
Find All of the Crafting Tools
Like the weapon parts, crafting tools are also incredibly important as they open entire new tiers of weapon upgrades. There are three: the Crafting Tool, Enhancement Tool, and the Refinement Tool. Without grabbing these, you’ll quickly run into a wall in terms of how much you can actually upgrade and fine tune your weapons.
Once you’ve unlocked all of the weapon tiers, follow the last two tips. Look at the weapons that you actually like to use, and upgrade the skills that give you the most bang for your buck. For example, you can upgrade the damage, rate of fire, and reload speed of your favorite weapon types.
That does it for our guide on how to craft in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Be sure leave us any of your tips or questions in the comments!
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