During your journey trough the Island trying to survive is one of the most important things to do. In Tomb Raider you will have plenty of ways to improve your performance, making surviving the harsh environment easier than it looks like. We have already covered pretty much all the skills that Lara can learn by acquiring some experience points by doing a lot of different actions like gathering loot from the ground and from dead animal bodies, fighting enemies and so on. While all skills may not be too useful in the beginning, unlocking and mastering all of them will bring you some important advantages. Together with the skill system, you will also be able to improve your gear and weapons by finding spare parts for the four weapons in your possession: Bow, Hand, Rifle and Shotgun. Some of the extra parts will be available as part of the story while others need to be found and are completely optional. Each new part comes with a salvage cost so think carefully before buying one of the upgrades: at the same time there’s enough salvage to purchase all the upgrades but you will have to find all crates, hunt all animals in each area and loot as much as possible. Just make sure to buy the upgrades you really need in a specific moment. In this guide we will cover all the possible weapons upgrade starting with the Bow and then moving on the other three weapons.
Gear Upgrades
Gear Upgrades, unlike the weapons’ upgrades, aren’t found randomly: they’re all part of the story and most of them won’t require you to go the extra mile to obtain them. The only one requiring some Salvage to obtain is the Pry Axe upgrade, which is also a mandatory update since you’ll need it to open the Mountain Temple gate for Whitman.
The Torch, together with the other Gear upgrades, is not listed in any in game menu. You’ll get the torch in the tutorial level and you’ll have it all the time. When the torch is lit you’ll attract enemy attention so it may be a good idea to extinguish it by holding the dodge button. The torch will be extinguished also when performing two handed actions or getting into contact with water.