Tips and tricks for new players!

I'm currently rank 15 and there's a lot of the game which may seem very intuitive to players of the original Division but which is a little obscure and/or not particularly well explained. Even if you have played the original (as I did, briefly) some of this stuff might not immediately be obvious, so let's help one another out and share some knowledge;

• All co-op progress carries over except control points. If you take over a control point in a coop game, when you return to your game it will be back under enemy control. It's worth noting that if you've looted the supply room of a control point in a different game, it will not be restocked when you do it again in your own.
• Supply rooms in control points are replenished each day, assuming you've provided the control point with enough resources. Keep them stocked up and there's a nice loot/xp reward.
• If you look at the resources on the map, they're colored red, white, and green. If they're green or white then the NPC's from the control point will routinely go there to gather the resources (you might occasionally bump into a friendly patrol that's "transporting water" or whatever) but if the resource is red then you need to go liberate it personally. Liberating the red resource points ultimately means you need to donate less resources yourself.
• Don't instantly junk all your old loot! A lot of the projects in the settlements require multiple items to be completed, and doing so will unlock blueprints and a nice chunk of XP.
• Side missions scale to your level, so don't feel the need to fully clear a zone before you move on to the next one. It's worth completing the first 5 or 6 story missions at the beginning of the game as each one will unlock a new feature (darkzone, PVP, crafting, shooting range, etc)
• When spending SHSD points on perks, the best ones for new players are the accolade perk (which gives a bunch of XP for killing enemies) and the restock perks, which will automatically stock you up with armour and grenades.
• If you're playing solo then the drone is one of the best skills, as it will flush enemies out of cover and essentially flank them for you.
• A lot of the low-level crafting blueprints are easy to make mods which can be applied to a wide range of weapons. It's worth throwing together a bunch of them just to give yourself some options. They scale, so a mod you make at level 5 will still be good at level 15.

That's all I have for now, but any other advice or tips are welcome

Run with cluster mines if you are alone too, they can pretty reliably kill off 3-4 people as the opening to any fight and are also very useful for highlighting enemies you haven't seen without having to equip a much shittier skill like Pulse.

the hive will auto-rez you if you die. Useful for solo players.

The healing chem launcher is a must if you’re playing solo. It’s so much faster than the healing drone, you get 3 charges, and each charge only takes 16 seconds to replenish. Leaps and bounds better than that drone, it took me until level 18 to realize this.

I’ve also found the regular turret to be amazing at watching your back and less likely to be destroyed than the attack drone, plus way more damage.

You can de-summon turrets, drones and hives by holding that button down for a few seconds. If you do before it disappears on its own it will have a greatly reduced cooldown.

Remember to use grenades. They're useful to flush out enemies from cover, blowing up enemies along with red combustibles, and can do a lot of damage to heavy armored dudes. I always chuck them after setting up my turret and drone to start a fight. Good stuff.

Oh, also you can double-tap a skill button to drop it at your feet. Useful for the chem launcher heal, and for insta turrets or seeker mines.

@sweep: I just single tap and it does it for me.

Here are some tips:

• You can donate to active Projects from the map. Open the map and tab left to Projects.
• There's a Perk that makes it easier to spot lootable items if a Control Point is sufficiently stocked. I believe they have to have 50 of each item. If they already have 50 of each you don't have to donate more, just talk to the Control Point Officer to activate the perk.
• You can use completed mission map markers as fast travel points.
• If you find yourself going around a corner by accident while in cover there's an option to require a button press to go around the corner.
• There's also an option to change the speed at which you go around the corner.
• If you find yourself parkouring over cover when you really wanted to take cover there's an option to turn off the parkour feature.
• Basically, go through all the options! This game has a lot more than most games, including HUD customization.

One thing I didn't realize about the PC version of the game is that you can just hold down Space to vault/parkour over cover that you're behind! I thought you always had to hit CTRL because that was what was being prompted but you can totally just hold down space to jump over something.

• If you have a lot of things you want to mark as junk, you can just hold down the button and it will go down the list
• If you go back to the main inventory screen, you can deconstruct everything you marked as junk, a lot faster than doing it 1 by 1

Don't do side missions until you are around level 20. Each side mission is roughly 1/3rd of your needed xp to level up so you are kind of wasting xp early on. Wait until later on when you need a lot of xp to level up and then just do side missions to progress quickly without having to do an end game grind.

@stonyman65: I am going on 27 having done all side quests before continuing with anything else (which I wouldn't actually recommend since that delays unlocking some features) with several more main missions to go and quite a bit of misc. stuff.

So I'm not sure it would really impact things all that much?

@stonyman65: I’m at 24 and I’ve done a bunch of side missions and have so many more left.

So I saw Rorie post about this thread and then ask what the numbers on the UI mean so I thought I'd let people know! The Red number is for Offense, the Blue is for Defense and the Yellow is for Electronics. These are essentially your attribute points (the numbers don't actually dictate how strong/weak you are in any of those categories, that is what your main stats do). Later on when you start getting Superior and High-End rarity items (Purple/Yellow respectively) you'll notice those items come with certain talents that require a certain number (either fewer than or more than) of one of those Attributes. For example, I have Kneepads that have a talent called Patience and for that talent to be active I need 7 or more Defense points. You accrue attribute points from having mods slotted into your armor and they can also roll on the armor itself! If you go to your inventory and tab over to the right to your Stats page, you'll see a list of all your Gear and Weapon Talents that are available, and also the requirement of them. Not all Talents have requirements, some are just passive!

Also a general tip: if you find a weapon/armor piece with a talent on it you might want to use later, stash it. Later on you'll be able to recalibrate items and the way that works in The Division 2 is you take 1 talent from a weapon/armor piece and put it on the one you want to use. So if you get a Superior SMG with a talent you like, you can transfer that to a higher level SMG later on down the line for a few crafting components and some Credits. You can only transfer like to like though, so no putting a talent from an Assault Rifle on a Shotgun or anything like that. This goes for armor pieces too!

If you're playing on a TV and sitting far I'd recommend going into the UI options and making the radar a bit bigger.

A tip for XB1 players, put this game on an external SSD. I had this on the internal HDD on my X since I’d looked at tests on the X in other games showing a marginal difference between HDD and external SSD. Well I moved it and the 10-15 second texture pop-in was fixed and load times were reduced dramatically, like more than 50% dramatically. This game doesn’t like being on a HDD.

A solo player here. Make use of blind fire. The game has been a relative breeze because enough enemies run right up to you so you can kill them quickly while blind firing. After about 14 hours I started using LMG's with a huge mag that'll make spraying around not really matter, but now at the 25 hour mark, I settled down with a machine gun with better damage and a higher RPM and it works just fine (even better since the reload is faster, and they die faster).

I also recommend staying back, in the best positions that will allow for the least amount of enemy flanking. That might seem obvious, and I don't know how effective that was in the first because I used marksman rifles throughout the first, but really there is little reason to pop your head out for most enemies in almost every encounter. It's just certain types of enemies that often stay back (when in the end will only be about two or three enemies left) which you'll have to get up.

All the guns I use have 900 ammo, so I haven't ever run out of ammo for my main gun. As for my skill equipment, I use the cluster seeker mine that'll track multiple enemies and take about half their health down, and a demolisher firefly (which I just started using several hours ago). I don't love them, but they're ones that effectively whittle down health so I can take enemies out a little bit easier. The pulse scanner sucks in this game unless mods, later on, make it better.