(Mini Guide) Getting max benefits early on

[DrNewcenstein]

If you've got the extra outfits (Explorer, Robes of Puka Huk, and such), you can put them to use in the first camp to get a lot of XP and max out your resources.

The Robes of Puka Huk give you more Hide and Fat from animals, and the Explorer outfit gives you more XP from animals, as well as more resources from plants and more ore from gold veins. The Tactical Adventurer suit (black with blue panels) lets you craft more ammo (arrows and such).

Collect all the resources in the area where you fall out of the plane, before you get to the camp, since you can never return to that area.

When you get to the camp, avoid all plants and go straight for the knife. Use it to collect ONLY 3 of the scrap crates (ONLY the ones that look like a junk box, not any of the ones that look like suitcases as they don't count towards sharpening the knife).

Once you've got the knife sharpened, cut down and collect your gear and go back to the camp and save (for real save, not just autosave/checkpoint).

Now, change into the Explorer outfit (the one that gives you more resources from plants and minerals and more XP from animals), and collect ONLY hardwood and herbal mixture plants.
If you don't have arrows (I think you start with 10 or so? can't recall) kill birds (25 XP each!), rabbits (10 XP each) and capybara (20 XP each) but don't harvest anything, and don't harvest the already-dead animals.

Collect all the hardwood and the herbal mixture plants in that area.

Now return to the camp and put on the Tactical Adventurer outfit (black and blue) and craft all the arrows you can.

Put the Robes of Puka Huk on and harvest the animals you've killed. You'll get more Hide and Fat (used to craft flaming arrows) with these on.
Put the Explorer outfit back on and go over the entire map again, you should see the hardwood and herbal plants have respawned.

As well, birds have respawned. Use your Survival Instinct to locate them and snipe them with the bow, as they give the most XP.

When you get enough Skill Points, take the one that lets you harvest more man-made resources and collect all the Scrap boxes. This applies no matter what outfit your wearing, but doesn't appear to stack with the Explorer outfit (needs further testing to be sure, but since reloading a save is such a chore, I only reloaded once to compare the benefits of the other outfit that gives you more XP from animals, the Samurai-looking one way down the end of the list that I forgot the name of - first outcast from Paititi - Exiled Fox?).

Repeat this process as many times as you can stand to do it. Eventually you'll see Hide is at Max. You can keep doing this grinding loop or move on to find Jonah, but when you move to a new camp, it's a good idea to do this loop again in the new area, especially since you get 6 gold at each vein.

Not sure if it's the default payout or the Explorer outfit bonus (again, never really paid attention, I'm usually in the black and blue or empress jaguar from NG+), but the final jaguar fight (where Lara gets mauled), yields 250 XP.

The only thing you don't get bonuses for is bug venom. That stays at 1 no matter which outfit you use, but you get 5 XP for each bug with the Explorer outfit (again, not sure if this is actually default or not).

Not really sure how much benefit this is in a NG+, but it definitely helps your starting situation in a regular New Game.