Rage 2 is here and ready to let players loose on its particular brand of the post-apocalypse. That means weapons, superpowers, and a lot of the color pink. It also means trying to fight your way through bad guys with the best possible gear and guns. But what does it truly take to rule the wasteland? What kinds of Rage 2 tips and tricks might make for an overall smoother gameplay experience? That’s what our main Rage 2 guide is here to help answer! So let’s dive right into the tips.

Hit Points are Experience Points

Early on in Rage 2 — very early on — the game will tell you to pick up Feltrite. These are the glowing, blue chips that fall out of enemies and some boxes throughout the world. And it really is important to pick them up. They’re basically free health packs, healing you more for each chip you pick up. But Feltrite has another use; it’s basically the Rage 2 equivalent of EXP.

It’s a slightly hard choice, but hardly complicated. Except that the game doesn’t mention this at the start. You really want to start picking up Feltrite immediately, even if you’re at full health. The more you have, the more you’ll be able to upgrade things like skills and weapons. So start soaking it up with your Focus power and scooping it off the ground! Feltrite chips disappear after a short time.

Enemies Have Armor – Here’s How It Works

Rage 2 doesn’t really mention enemy armor until you get the Shatter skill. Even then, the game doesn’t go out of its way to explain how armor works. Luckily it’s pretty simple. You can tell if an enemy has armor by the color of your reticle when you shoot them. If it flashes yellow, that means you’re hitting armor. If it’s read, you’re hitting health (and probably about to kill any normal baddies).

Armor isn’t a flat buffer, though. Individual body parts have individual armor plating. And shooting off someone’s armor on, say, their leg won’t affect the armor on, say, their head. You need to focus fire on a single zone to make a piece of armor fall off, or aim for a fleshy spot. You… kinda just have to eyeball it. But once you do remove a piece of armor, it appears to stay gone forever.

Note: If you’ve played The Division 2, the enemy armor system in Rage 2 is almost identical.

You Can Take a Lot of Punishment

Boy howdy can Walker (that’s the main character) take a beating. At least on normal difficulty, and at least in the early areas, you’re pretty damn hard to kill. I took a rocket directly to the face at a level three bandit camp and it only did about 12-15 damage. I’m not sure if this damage scales with the overall level of the base, or if that just determines what kind of enemies you face, but keep in mind that you can play pretty sloppy for a while. Get out there and blitz through those early bandit camps!

You Can Earn Reputation Even Before You Meet Someone

There is a reputation system in Rage 2 that lets you level up your standing with certain NPCs. To do this, you just need to clear bandit camps, destroy Authority Sentries, and… generally just play Rage 2 like an open-world game. Now here’s the tip: You can earn this reputation without ever speaking to the NPC in question.

Oh, sure. You’ll need to eventually — in order to progress the story and gain further upgrades — but don’t rush. You can safely clear those early bandit camps and other open-world activities without making a beeline for story content. You might as well do it early (right after you leave Vineyard), too. That way you won’t have to come back later.

There’s a Crappy, but Useful Melee

Rage 2 barely bothers to hint that it has a normal melee attack. And I can guess why; it stinks. The range is crap, it doesn’t have any impact, and you get a much more useful melee power in the form of Shatter very early on. But the basic melee attack has its uses. Namely, you can use it to break open crates without expending ammo or cooldowns. It’s not a lot, but hey! It’s better than nothing.

Rage 2 Tips

Arks Have More Than Just Upgrades

Arks are an enormous part of Rage 2. They offer new, superhuman abilities to play and bash bad guys with. Whenever you spot one — assuming its threat level isn’t too spicy — you really should stop to clear it. But once you do, don’t just grab the upgrade and walk away. There’s usual more inside the ark! Specifically, the walls often carry junk, ammo, and other goodies that aren’t entirely obvious, but are easy to snag. Just scan the inside of each ark before you leave.

Not All Loot Is Obvious

This leads me to one of my more general Rage 2 tips. You can often find loot hiding in plain sight! Certain household objects that look like just part of the environment will flash a dull red when you get close enough. These are junk items that you can sell to vendors, so you really want to hoover them up for extra cash. Just make sure to survey the random detritus you see at camps and you should be set.

Pink Means Go

Some stuff in the environment, however, is totally obvious. At least it is if you know where to look. Pink is a predominant color found throughout Rage 2, but it more specifically means you can interact with something. Important chests and door switches will be painted a neon pink. You can also tell the difference between ladders you can use and ones that are purely decorate by checking the color. If it’s pink, you can go up! If it’s not, it’s just part of the back drop. Use this indicator to get around quickly and check areas you haven’t been yet.

You Don’t Have to Stand Near Open Crates

There sure are a lot of crates in this game… And why not? Crates have loot, and loot tips the balance of power in Rage 2 nicely. You want to find more crates. But once you open them, don’t be a rube like me and stand nearby, waiting for the loot inside to animate. There’s a short delay before spoils (money, items, etc.) disappear into your inventory in Rage 2. But it’s purely visual. The instant you open a chest, the items inside should be added to your… post-apocalyptic backpack, or whatever, instantly.

Rage 2 Tips

Car Kills Don’t Generate Feltrite

It’s extremely easy to kill enemies out in the world with your armored vehicle. It’s so easy, in fact, that the developers of Rage 2 appear to have accounted for that. Randos in the world don’t drop Feltrite for you just run them over. Though they still do just that if you hop out and kill them on foot! The Feltrite is still there; it just takes a bit more effort to get at.

Oh, and if you read this tip thinking I meant killing cars doesn’t give Feltrite… That’s true, too. At least in my experience, blowing up parked bandit vehicles doesn’t offer any reward. It does feel nice to watch them blow apart like that, though.

You’re More Mobile Than You Think

Rage 2 has a surprisingly generous jump height. That in and of itself isn’t too impressive. However, you can also mantle over low walls and grab onto ledges if you jump towards them from a distance. That’s very useful, because the game will periodically hide chests in hard-to-reach places — usually high off the ground. Use these additional jumping tips and tricks to scurry all over the place!

Rage 2 Tips

Be Careful With Grenades

I almost didn’t add this tip. It was just so funny and surprising when it happened to me the first time that I didn’t want to spoil things. But, just in case you don’t like nasty shocks, I guess I’ll mention it. You read this next, minor mechanical spoiler at your own peril, though!

Grenades work in Rage 2 just like in pretty much every other game. You pull ’em, you cook ’em, you throw ’em. But there’s an especially good reason to cook grenades as long as possible in Rage 2. That is to say, if you throw them directly at an enemy, they will grab those suckers right out of the air and throw them back at you. Sadly, this does not work both ways (at least not until you unlock a perk later in the game). You can’t hurl bombs back at the baddies once they throw them.

How to Kill Authority Sentries

Authority Sentries are big, scary laser turrets built into huge towers across the wasteland. They will seriously mess you up! Luckily, however, the turrets have a very long wind-up time that will let you get into cover between shots. And there’s nearly always cover to cower behind nearby. But what do you actually do about these monstrous monoliths?

You shoot them, of course! Don’t be intimidated, either. At first I thought I needed some kind of special weapon — like a rocket launcher — or even just a ton of grenades to topple these towers. Turns out your trusty assault rifle works fine, though. You just need to aim for the big, glowing, blue vent on the front of each turret. I know! It goes against every cliché in the book, making the weak spot blue, but it’s the case in Rage 2. Go figure!

You Don’t Need Fancy Items to Upgrade

Speaking of things you don’t need (at least not immediately), you can add Nanotrite Boosters and Weapon Core Mods to that list. Sorta… You see, Rage 2 implies very early on that these items upgrade your powers and weapons. And that’s true! But they specifically add perks (bonus effects and abilities) related to those pieces of gear. They’re not the only way to upgrade.

Instead, you can use raw Feltrite to enhance the levels of both powers and guns. Besides opening up new tiers of perks, these levels also provide basic bonuses — like weapon damage — without requiring rare resources. This is an even better incentive to farm as much Feltrite as possible, early and often.

Look Up for Balloons

This is definitely one of my simplest Rage 2 tips, but it still might wind up helping someone. MBTV balloons periodically appear throughout the wasteland as icons on your map. That might make you think of bandit camps and convoys. Avalanche Studios, the developer behind Rage 2, even included weather balloons as a kind of outpost in one of its previous games (Mad Max). But don’t think so terrestrial this time around. MBTV balloons actually float high in the sky around their marked locations. They’re small and hard to see, too. But when you spot them, you just have to shoot them down to collect the spoils inside (usually some resources).

There Is Fall Damage

It feels like fall damage is less and less of “a thing” in first-person shooters these days. Well, it’s a thing in Rage 2, and it hurts like hell. It’s especially bad considering how high you can climb and the fact that you don’t regenerate back to full health naturally. Try not to fall off anything…