Share tips and tricks for others.

For new players like myself (and maybe some experienced folk who missed something). Share tips and tricks or even basic necessities that you should know but aren't told to the player. also post questions to small things.

Tips:
1. Food is the ideal health item as you can totally ignore the medicine tolerance issue. Pears, Juice, packaged meals and Army meals seem to give you the most health for weight.

2. Decorative Food in towns respawns at a certain distance(time?) so you can plunder between missions. Free health!

3. The bar on your starting planet has NPCs who will boost your reputation for a fee. This can make some missions a lot easier.

4. In space select the place you want to warp to on your inventory map.

5. Prices for cargo items bought and sold in space stations (like Niftidium, spices and minerals) are system specific. Station, faction and other factors do not seem to matter. This is without a doubt the quickest way to make lots of money in the game.

Questions
1. I know armor decays really fast, but do any extra effects of armor continue to last? I saw some stealth armor for sale and was wondering if the stealth effect would continue to last when the armor rating was down to zero.

2. Lockpick and hacking, is either preferred in the long run? I haven't "needed" either for a mission yet. I suppose lockpicking actually gets you more loot. I get the impression you can ignore both and play the game fine.

3. Are there any items in the game you find useful that you overlooked for a long time or think others might?

3

Originally Posted by moonracer
1. Food is the ideal health item as you can totally ignore the medicine tolerance issue.

This is true, but I really don't like this. As with the Fallout 3 games this is a bad design decision in my eyes, the food should not heal at all because otherwise medicine is completely useless…

Originally Posted by moonracer
Questions
2. Lockpick and hacking, is either preferred in the long run? I haven't "needed" either for a mission yet. I suppose lockpicking actually gets you more loot.

I choose lockpick to get the loot, I didn't care much about hacking at all…

yeah, the food thing is kind of a cheap way of playing, so is abusing the item respawns. Still the idea of squishing fruit on your wounds in combat is part of the charm of these games.
It is nice that drugs and alcohol are an optional role play feature that is well fleshed out.

Easy way to perk-up by having arcada style shooting fun

Goldin Desert

That is a good way to improve your perks without getting damaged and having hard fights with Gnows and others big guys, I've explored the SE region and reached the enclosed ground with the "uncle's buggy" and the retired canibal, as soon you get there you become attacked by those nasty flyers like in the movie Pitch Black, while at the open area there is no escape but here you can hide under the tree, talk with the old canibal, kill him and get ducked at the left fork, there you are in shelter and the flyers wont reach you anymore, so now you can change with the energy pistol to good old classic shoot'em up, call your kids to do some rounds for you, so keep on shooting, you don't use ammo and wont get hurt at all, dont shot the 2 lairs to keep em going, I made a few perks by that, so a hidden classic arcade game with good benefits

The "Upgrade wear -50%" packages you find for certain weapons reduce the wear percentage of the weapon you install it on. Think of it as a weapon cleaning kit rather than an actual upgrade

Use the Hacksticks!
crack the vending machines with the medicines, at major planets and space stations around you can find them quiet often and it just takes a few hacksticks to get free access, you can loot a lots of medicines, around 150 pieces of each box, sell them to a faction with what you are good and put almost 10k in the pocket, at any return they are full again and waiting to be emptied, food and ammo don't pay well, so just go after the meds.

When on Goldin, don't be afraid to become addicted to substances to get ahead in a particular mission, or to just test out the product

Outside the Bar in the main town there is a "Girl" standing to the right hand side against the wall. Talk with her to receive free treatment for both addictions and battle wounds.

At the service station, go to the garage on the right of the two garages at the southern end. There, speak to the man on the right at the computer for vehicle ammunition.