A Sand Land beginner’s guide might seem superflouous for Bandai Namco’s light and breezy action-RPG, but while the challenge level might be moderate, there’s still a lot to manage at any given time. Everything from upgrade parts, floods of items and materials, money shortages, and needy NPCs demands your attention, so we’ve put together a list of things to keep at the front of your mind to make life easier.

Our Sand Land beginner’s guide has some handy tips to save you time and frustration, including easy ways to get and save money and some tips for moving around the map more quickly.

Think before you spend

Beelzebub has a separate skill point pool, but his companion party members share one. That means when you level up, you have to decide whether to invest in Rao or Thief, which go around, since you can’t do both unless you’ve saved a lot of skill points. Which character you should invest in depends on how well you’re faring early in the game.

Rao’s passives increase your vehicle power, and one even spawns a tiny tank that acts as a decoy. He’s the one to spend your points on if you’re struggling in combat, though you could also turn the difficulty down. If not, I recommend investing your skill points in Thief instead. His passives are much more useful.

Steal stuff

Well, you can’t--but Thief can. Sort of. His passive abilities, including Pilfering Pro, increase the money you earn and how many items enemies drop when you defeat them. Unlocking these cuts down on some of the material grind and makes buying and upgrading what you need easier, especially early on when access to resources is limited by how much you’ve explored.

Talk to literally everyone

Sand Land labels essential quests with markers that guide you where you need to go, but there’s a lot more going on in the open world than just what you see in front of you. Some quests, including the first one you do, have optional objectives that reward you with extra materials, items you can sell, or fun little scenes that expand on Beelzebub’s personality and Sand Land’s world.

They aren’t marked or even mentioned in your quest log, so if someone mentions a place of interest or asks you to help another character, you might want to jot it down so you remember.

Build your town

Sand Land’s base building is more than just an extra little side game. It’s an excellent way to stock up on materials and useful items without scouring the wastelands. Vendors and other residents will periodically come to you with requests. Completing those usually earns you rare rewards, and vendors will set up shop permanently. Keep chatting with them over time; they’ll eventually have new quests for you.

Completing these requests expands their shop inventory, so they stock even rarer items, which saves you more time trying to track them down for vehicle upgrades.

Explore everywhere…

This might sound obvious for an open-world game, but exploring all the caves, points of interest, and abandoned towns you find is essential to upgrading your vehicles later in the game. It seems like you’re swimming in gears and car parts before you get to Spino, but once you reach a garage, you’ll find how quickly you blow through them, even on basic upgrades. Almost everything you do rewards you with gears, whether it’s finishing a little side quest for a demon in need or looting a cave full of treasure.

TL;DR: If you’re in need of upgrade parts, take a hike and see what you find.

…After you get the Jump Bot

It’s worth completing some of the main story quest before you spend too much time exploring the vast desert. After you reach Spino and sort out your tank situation, you’ll claim a Jump Bot. As you can probably guess from the name, the Jump Bot lets you jump and reach the high ledges you’ve probably seen while out and about. These are almost always home to valuable treasures or useful upgrade parts, so they’re worth checking out.

Sell, sell, sell

Most metals and monster parts aren’t useful for upgrades, so there’s no point hanging on to them. Things like exoskeletons, ore, and scales only exist to make you money, so there’s no harm in offloading them with the first merchant you come across. You’ll need all the money you can get after upgrading vehicles.

Find water supply points

You might not need to refill your water supply, but finding water supply points is still one of the most important things you can do in the open world. Sand Land uses these as fast travel points, which cuts down a lot of time if you need to backtrack to find treasure or finish a quest. If you struggle to find water points, head to the radio tower in each new map area. Activating these functions the same as activating towers in Breath of the Wild. It removes the fog over a portion of your map and points out areas of interest.