You can donate items from the map in the projects tab: You can open your map, go to the tab called projects, click any project and you can donate items from anywhere! Hold onto old gear and check to see if different projects need those items before selling or dismantling. You can also donate right from your stash, no need to carry everything around with you, just dump everything into stash after each mission.
You can change your inventory style to a grid: Pull up a list of items (ie. all of your backpacks) push X on PC to access options, it's L3 for PS4 & Xbox (short example of what the grid looks like). This will not work if you are in your main inventory screen.
Upgrade Crafting Benches: Upgrade crafting benches when you can, all materials are capped and it's way easier to just upgrade your bench when you can rather than dump all your mats into upgrading and not having enough to craft stuff you want. How to upgrade: When you first interact with the crafting table (before you select any pieces you want to craft) one of the options is to upgrade it (there may be level requirements to this). NOTES: upgrading the crafting bench also increases the cost of all blueprints you have, INCLUDING WEAPON MODS. As Weapon mods do not improve with crafting level, it is far better to wait to upgrade until you reach high world tier (4/5) so you can use less materials on all the weapon mods. PLUS - a blueprint is required to upgrade the crafting bench that comes with progression towards endgame (increasing world tiers).
Skill Timers & Skill info: In settings, you can turn on timers for skills. It will show a countdown in seconds on each skill after you use it. You can also enable the ability to be able to view what skills your team mates have!
(Console) Get to inventory faster: if you hold down the button to open the menu (start/menu) it will take you straight to your gear. Note: HOLD Start to go directly to your Weapon/Gear inventory screen. PRESS Start to exit to go back to the game *(You can also press the corresponding button for Back to go back to the game). HOLDING Start again (after the initial HOLD Start for Weapon/Gear Menu) will exit back to game but recognize the RELEASE of the button as another press and go to the overall menu screen, which is annoying so don't do that! HOLD then PRESS *If you click a Weapon/Gear item to bring up your list of inventory items it's quicker to double tap Back; PRESSING Start will cause a second of lag that causes that method to be longer that the double tap.
The weapon talent that increases magazine size by 20% ("Extra"?) is factored in AFTER magazine mods: An AR with 30 rounds normal that has the talent will now have 36 rounds. Adding the magazine mod that increases the rounds by 30 doesn't give you a total of 66, it gives a total of 71 [(30 base + 30 extra) *1.2 talent].
The armor repair variant of the chem launcher stacks: If you drop 2 or a teammate and yourself both drop 1, you will heal at a faster rate.
Deconstructing turrets & hives (does NOT work for drones): before duration expires cuts cool down in half ( 2 minutes -> 1 minute base on assault turret ), if you deconstruct a hive - even if one charge and any duration is left, dismantling it gives an enormous cooldown reduction.
All ballistic shields can be repaired by the chem launcher (but the healing drone will not do this). Example of chem launcher in action
VERY IMPORTANT (CONSOLE) - aim assist is very strong when first ADSing (ADS = Aim Down Sight): Get into cover, put cross hair (not in ADS) over the general area of target (say chest) and then ADS while firing - cross hairs will snap to head, repeat cycle for constant head shots, particularly with single shot rifles. This is a carry over from d1. Getting the hang of this will dramatically improve your success in PvE.
If you are primarily solo: Hive Reviver acts as a self rez on death
If you kill an enemy engineer before you kill their active turret the turret will turn on his teammates or at least stop shooting you.
Heavy Enemy weakness: If you shoot the Ammo Belt of the Heavies, you break em and force them to reload.
Respawn Rates: Weapon and Armor crates have a 24hour respawn time, Big yellow crate in Control points will respawn each time you capture a control point yourself in World Tier 4, Key boxes have a 24hour respawn time, Misc. lootables seem to be on a 4 hours respawn timer, not 100% about Misc, lootables but they seem to have a 4 hour respawn.
Maximum obtainable gear score is tied to your current items, *including* stash. Keep high score items for better loot!: Gear Score for loot drops is based on your max attainable own Gear Score from all items owned, including your stash. Just hold on to items with higher Gear Score, you don't need to equip them to still get better drops. To elaborate, "max possible" is the highest ilvl item you have NOT average ilvl of all items. So for instance, if your highest ilvl gun is shit - throw it in your stash and the item still counts as your max ilvl piece of gear (even though you aren't using it). You can have all the low ilvl gear you want in your stash, but the ilvl mechanic only counts towards your highest ilvl gear.
Donating supplies gives you the ability to see lootable objects from further away: Donate supplies to one of your settlements before going sewer looting. It will temporarily highlight loot near you, making it easier to see and less likely to miss a cache key.
Loot Control Points after a bit of time has passed: If you go back to a captured control point after a certain time, the supplies and crates in the supply room are obtainable again except the big chest. No exact time has been confirmed but it does happen from time to time. Helps with getting some free loot! Note: if you go into the map and select a control point, in the info it includes a timer counting down till the supply room loot fills up again. (Might only be during end game).
Don’t overlook DZ & Control Points in your search for loot
Regarding DZ loot: Even if you hate PvP, but want a nice spike in gear: Go to the Dark Zones. You don't have to hunt other people. Heck, you don't even have to deal with calling for choppers, extracting gear, watching nervously, then get shot by rogues. Just Landmark hop from point to point and clear them out. Enemies there drop loot that you do not have to extract. And they drop nice, NICE pieces of gear. Hit the landmarks up a few times and you'll have no worries of falling behind with gear while leveling.
You can find unmarked SHD tech in underground tunnels & loot sewers regularly: Key boxes in the sewers respawn, come back for more faction keys! Sewers are by far the fastest way to farm Rare Crafting resources like Carbon fiber, Titanium and Electronics due to how many different boxes there are in them.
You can shoot locks on gates / doors
In main story missions there are loot spawns that are easy to miss
Side missions often unlock a room with loot (aka. Control Points)
Sometimes you can see into a room with a weapon case / loot but there's no obvious way in...there IS a way in... there is always a way in (bugs not withstanding). Side note: Follow the red cord to a yellow box and shoot it. Your cross-hairs should be red when you aim at the thing that opens the area.
Don't forget to search for faction keys and key boxes/cabinets on the walls. They look like a fuse box of sorts or a cabinet you would see near a valet office. Faction keys open faction loot boxes.
Claiming armbands: You've likely unlocked lots of arm badges if you haven't checked the Progression section of your menu. Open up Progression, go to the next tab and you'll see a list of all the challenges you've completed. You have to manually claim the rewards for each challenge. You can see a list of unclaimed challenges on that screen.
Supply boxes in trees: Orange supply boxes that are stuck in trees, on buildings and other high objects always drops a Dye for your Gear. Faction lock boxes always drops Gear mods.
Do Bounties! They give great rewards, exp, credits and best of all skill points for your specialization.
Commendations: Under Progression there is a Commendations tab, claiming the rewards there unlock Emblems and at certain points Commendation Caches that give the same loot as a Field Proficiency Cache.