Elex tips & tricks
 

A few for starters:

1. Explore the first area you start thoroughly before using elevator. You'll stumble upon some mutated chick that "guards" +1 pick locks amulet.

2. Past elevator a temporary sidekick, Duras, will join you. Just follow him and do the ruins exploration he suggests, don't take strolls.

3. Duras will lead you to beserkers' settlement and leave. Find him in there, he'll give you a quest to talk to some people. Talk to at least one then return to Duras and he'll become your first actual sidekick (you'll find more sidekicks later).

4. Improve lockpicking in the settlement, pickpocket is not a bad choice too, steal everything and sell crap, you need $. I've posted stealth seems bugged in early impressions, but you can always rest till midnight before "cleaning" houses, chests and pockets. Some chests require a specific key that's why pickpocket is nifty.

5. Don't use small Elex pots! Two small pots can be combined into medium which gives you +2 attributes permanently when used, while two medium ones combined give large elex potion that adds +1 stat permanently on use. To mix pots you need recipes and train chemistry.

6. There is no pickaxe like in gothic/risen but a mining "machine" called jackhammer. You'll find it in the Pit. Yes, you need it, desperately.

Not sure if this qualifies here, still have to add, for bugreports you should use the official forum:
http://community.elexgame.com/

And easter egg. The person who sells medium Elex pot recipe and natural elex, plus trains lockpicking/pickpocket in the first settlement is the most important, of course. His name is:

Yea, he doesn't play this game as it's not MMO which is a huge shame.

Well, Alrik still has an XP machine. He may be homeless.

One more:

It's not specified, but XP bonus "skills" add 5% boost to respective activity experience reward. Honestly, I don't think these are worth investing into unless you're after charisma dialogue checks.
Each trained skill adds a point to the skilltree top description, in this case it's charisma although for some reason and unlike other skilltrees it's written "personality" in the menu - most definetly qualifies as a bug:
https://s1.postimg.org/6wb2rvv00f/pic.jpg

[EDIT]
Another, but this is more of a spoiler than highly desireable thing to do:

Just a useful site. Player built it seems as a lot is more opinion and some guess work - but still has some useful information on building a character and combat.

http://game-maps.com/ELEX/Character-Creation.asp

Jetpack for evasion helps a LOT. Gets you out of trouble enough to drink a potion and regroup.

That lockpick amulet also gives +5 armor and you dont find amulets or rings easy in this game. Like the the best armor you can get at the start is like this, +12 for chest, +4 for legs and +3 for helmet. So that amulet gives a little more than 25% increased armor. The ring gives health points. Invaluable items to get at the start.

EDIT: Oh, you find the ring if you go back after you find the jet pack and use it to get the floor up from where you get the main quest and the little cutscene.

I have a huge problem with that combatcentric "blueprint" and I wouldn't follow it blindly. IMO investing in chemistry, barter, trophies and improved sidekicks will add more benefits, but that's just me.

However, that site has a superb earlystarting "step by step - where to go next" schematics. If you start exploring the map on your own early while level 4-5, you'll notice many trashmobs with the skull mark which means they'll kill you with a hit or two. You need to beef up your hero.
For example if you go south from beserkers settlement, a few trashmobs will be easy, but then you won't be able to deal with some new hard types that are lurking there. So, forget exploring south (except "flying" to closest NPC for murder solving quest so Duras joins you as sidekick).

Instead of risking and wasting time on trying to win pathetic XP yet hard trashmobs too early, the better option would be getting and solving huge XP/$ rewarding quests as fast as possible, right?
Following this route early seems highly beneficial:
http://game-maps.com/ELEX/ELEX-Order-of-Exploration.asp

You don't find many rings or amulets for the sole reason that unlike weapons and armor you can craft your own rings and amulets.

I am not following any blueprint or guides myself - I just shared the link for those who might be interested.

I always pretty much build my character around my vision of who they are. I hate cookie cutter guides myself.

Not entirely true I killed a bunch of those mobs when I was level 1 and jumped to 5 really fast, Just aggro one and kit it another mob like Raptors kit to a dog or a group of outlaws then all you have to do is jump on a hill and do a quick save just in case you time your shot wrong but just land the killing blow with your bow and free xp for taking a single shot plus you get a bunch of stuff I explored for 9 hours before I even made it to my first town >_<

IIRC it is ring of vigor, +10 HP, which is IMO utter trash and you'll find another somewhere east from beserkers settlement. But you'll also find IIRC ring +10 fire resistance on your path towards beserkers settlement (can't check if that's it's stat now as I'm not at home).
As you can equip only one ring, you should sell the +10 HP trash. IMO. At least I did. ;)

I'm not even sure why they "published" that build of theirs. As you might have noticed in the game, if you pass a dialogue check you get more XP, more $ or even a nifty item. Their "recipe" simply does not care about that, only about how to beef up and kill trashmobs easier early. I mean, not everyone wants to play a noneloquent brute. ;)

I'm not saying you shouldn't do that, as long it's fun. Elex is supposed to be RPG that allows you variety of possibilities, not some tunnel grinder Final Fantasy 13 that can't be played different ways . :)
But instead of that, you may save time by following their early location by location route as you'll get crapload of XP (and stuff) by solving numerous quests you get that way.
Not only that, I've mentioned trophy skill - that one makes trashmobs drop more loot which means more $ which then means more elex pots to brew. Isn't it a waste to kill many trashmobs without having this skill? ;)

Yeah I've been rushing the quests on my second play through it was more of a downfall to since I waited 9 hours and was level 13 before I even got to spend my skill points lots of skills could have been put to better use had I gone to a town I mostly just wanted to find where all the goodies were on that playthrough I never look at guides or maps till a second play.

Edit. on the up side I was level 13 with almost 100k elexit

Thanks for the links, fellas. I'll be sure to use the exploration one when I start playing for real instead of playing around. @joxer, I've been looking for charisma everywhere. You're saying it's personality instead? So, I can pick personality skills to build up charisma, correct?

Yup. Personality=Charisma. Seems a translation issue.

When you hear buzzing flies that means there is a corpse nearby that can be looted.

Use the jetpack and explore! I busted into a stronghold last night against much stronger dudes (one of whom also had a jetpack, and could kill me instantly) ran into a building and lost them. That building happened to have an unlocked chest with 2 VERY nice rings in it! Jetted out the open window on the back and was on my way. :)

Use the jetpack to evade in combat too. If you are fighting around rocky terrain you can use it to your advantage, to get to a safer spot to drink a potion and regroup.

Unless you somehow managed to get your copy early, I smell some BS in that post. ;)

Anyone know how to turn off the camera lock in combat without putting the weapo away?

I am running out of stamina so I can't dodge but I still want to move away from mobs and stuff. The camera lock is annoyi g.

In the Difficulty settings you can turn off Autolock. Now you can toggle it on with 'X' if you still want it, using Z and C to move targets if you're facing a group.

Also jetpacking, even for a moment, will immediately start stamina recovery.

I also find shield blocking is far more stamina efficient than dodging, at least in early game.

You can also disable automatic targetlock:
Options - Difficulty - Close Combat Focus - set to Manual.

Note that on QWERTY keyboards, target switching is mapped on y and c, not z and c.

There were review and beta keys circling around, dunno how people got those at all. Also, if a steam friend of yours had such key and you preordered the game, you were able to download and play it on Steam before the release, don't even ask me how's that possible but it was.

Anyhow, he's most probably right about the $ total. Abandoning blind exploration in order to get quests in "quest hubs" where I also steal everything I can, I'm now swimming in $. Still didn't reach 100K but you may check my achievements (shard hoarder) where I passed 10K of $ - and I'm only level 7.

Finally a tip:
In Fort, don't forget to pickpocket Doc's bodyguard. Who needs a shield now? :D

Standard issue tip to skip intro videos:-

Elex folder -> data -> extern -> videos rename logo_pb.bik and logo_thqnordic.bik. Add a .bak or something.