Movement

Walking and Running

The most basic ability that Lara has is to walk around. Use the left control stick to meander through a room, pushing left or right, forward or back, to control Lara’s movement. The harder you push in a given direction, the faster Lara moves. To make her sprint, push down the control stick. This lets Lara go as fast as she can. Use that to reach distant cover, to cross larger areas, or to charge enemies that don’t have their weapons already aimed at your head!

Jumping and Falling

Use to jump. Lara can jump straight up to reach ledges or climbable walls. Or, she can get a running start and leap across various gaps. Lara can also wall scramble by jumping against a smooth flat surface and pressing to jump up the wall. Later, she can even jump and grapple to reach higher areas.

If you miss a jump, Lara falls. She won’t take any damage from minor falls, but her health drops if she goes too far. In some areas, there are fatal drops that cause you to die instantly regardless of your current health level. Luckily, the game resets you very close to these falls if you die.

Climbing

Interact with climbable walls to drive your Axes into them. Lara can then climb around on the rockface, moving left or right, up or down on the vertical surface. Look for the rough edges of the climbable section so that you know where you’re allowed to go.

It’s still possible to jump off of these walls. Use to jump toward other ledges or rockfaces, or to drop off of your current wall. Only drop if there is something solid under your feet (or another climbable section to catch). You can also press X to attach or reattach to the wall.

If you’re really bold, jump up a rockface and grab hold of the wall higher up. This lets Lara climb areas very quickly, but you need to stick those landings or else it’s a long way down. Practice this if you’re a speed fanatic and like getting through areas as quickly as possible.

Swimming

There are quite a few rivers, ponds, and sewers throughout the game. Lara starts swimming naturally as soon as she gets into deeper water. The movement controls are very similar to the walking commands.

In extremely deep water, you’re allowed to dive under the surface by using the Left Trigger to dive and resurface. This is requires for getting through multiple sections of the story, and it’s also a way to find a few extra treasures. We’ll point out all of the goodies and their hiding locations in the Collecting Treasures chapter.

Using Your Map

After you complete the first area of the game, Lara gets access to the map system. This is extremely powerful, and you are going to use it often as you play through the game. Everything pauses when you bring up the map, which makes it easy to plan your next activity well.

The map reveals collectible items that you’ve already discovered or collected, as well as items you know about because you’ve found an object such as an explorer satchel, archivist map, or monolith which reveals their locations. It also has objectives, Base Camps, hunting spots, and just about anything else that the game has to offer. Mark something that you’re trying to find if you want it to show up as a secondary objective after you leave the map screen. That is quite effective when hunting for Coin Caches and Survival Caches.

From the map screen, you can switch to a few other systems using the bumpers. Cycle through the map, Documents, Relics, and Resources windows. Each has a fair bit of information. Documents and Relics are threadbare at the beginning of the game, but they’ll fill out with tons of information as you proceed. As you look through these collectibles, notice that the ones you haven’t found are still given locations (Located in “Map Name”). This gives you a heads up for places to search for the items that you still haven’t discovered.

You can also look at each map individually and see the collectible items that it lists. If you don’t have everything completed, you know that there is still hunting to be done there!

Interactions

Lara is able to Interact with quite a few things in the environment. Break open boxes, doors, and lockers by approaching them and starting the Interaction. For tougher boxes and doors, you tap to smash the item open.

Lara also uses to search bodies, harvest plants, and to pick up collectible items. You benefit from tapping the Interaction button often while searching through crowded rooms because you might snag something that you didn’t even notice!

Scramble

Use to Scramble. Lara ducks and hurries in the direction that you press. This gets her to cover quickly and safely if there is any cover to be found in the direction you’re heading. You can also Roll by tapping again quickly after Scrambling to swiftly move to cover. This is also a decent way to avoid a melee attacker that is getting too close for comfort. Scramble away and use your ranged weapon to light up the creep who is attacking you.

Survival Instincts

Press the right control stick down to trigger Survival Instincts. You can do this every few seconds, and the effect lasts until Lara moves. While Survival Instincts are active, she sees the world in almost black and white. Every color is muted, except for a yellow glow around special objects. This highlights treasure, ammo, climbable walls, special doors, puzzle objects, and enemies.

Hostile targets in yellow cannot be seen by other hostiles (thus, they’re isolated). Red hostiles can see each other, and you won’t be able to pick them off as easily. You’d need to use very fast weaponry or explosives to take out the entire group. It’s always better to kill the isolated targets first.

Use Survival Instincts as often as you can to ensure that you don’t miss useful items. Especially rely on this power when you’re working on puzzles. Lara automatically can sense which items are involved in these puzzles, so all of the important items glow. That sometimes is a good hint for what you need to do!

Stealth

Stealth is a great way to win fights without having to actually risk your life (much). Lara can stay outside of enemies’ line of sight. There are many ways to do this: keep Lara at long range, use cover, stay inside bushes for superior concealment, and move behind patrollers so that they won’t see what you’re doing. Lara can also climb trees and sit on tree branches to avoid enemies spotting her, waiting for the opportune time to strike!

It’s extremely hard to get through the game without taking out dozens of your enemies. Lara is not a pacifist. Because of this, stealth is not always a way to avoid combat, though it certainly can be in certain situations. This usually takes more effort than charging in, guns blazing, but with work and patience, it can be a much safer option. Stealth is also often a way to get a strong advantage in combat. When you see a group of six enemies, the trick is to eliminate four or five before the others realize that they’re under attack.

Done perfectly, Lara can absolutely clear entire areas of her enemies without being spotted.

The Bow is your best early weapon for stealth kills. It has range, silent attacks, and high damage if you score headshots. Once you get Suppressors for the Pistol and Rifle, those weapons become potential stealth weapons as well.

During stealth ambushes, you need to aim for the head with everything you use. Headshots kill unarmored targets instantly. This prevents them from calling for help. Silent weapons and headshots keep you from being detected unless another enemy directly sees what is happening.

Use Survival Instincts to detect isolated (yellow) targets, and snipe them first with silent, headshot attacks. Poison Arrows are great for this as they allow you to silently take out multiple enemies. When all of those enemies are gone, use either an explosion to attack the remaining group, or snipe one of their members and attack everyone else as quickly as you can to keep them before they realize where Lara is hiding.

Enemies that are alerted because of bodies or noise won’t see Lara automatically. They spend a few seconds looking around in confusion. Use that time well to set up another free kill before the battle really starts.

Base Camps

Base Camps are sites where Lara can craft ammo and new equipment, use skill points, switch weapons, improve equipment and weaponry, switch outfits, or Fast Travel. These are very important locations to discover because they have so many nice functions. Some Base Camps are found as part of the main story, but there are also quite a few of them off the beaten path. Try to find as many as you can so that Lara can travel around the region quickly and safely.

On Survivor difficulty, you need several pieces of Hardwood to activate some of the Base Camps. Always keep spare Hardwood around for this very purpose.

Fast Traveling

If you’re at a Base Camp and there aren’t any special events taking place, Lara can instantly switch to any other Base Camp that she’s discovered. This Fast Traveling lets you see earlier parts of the game where you might still have collectible items to uncover.

This is also a way to boost your resources. Return to earlier areas and scour the locations for animals to hunt, plants to harvest, and maybe some boxes of materials in the more settled locations. All of these things regenerate over time, and it’s good to collect them periodically so that you can keep your resources topped off.

The higher your difficulty level, the more important it is to go on harvesting runs!