if you just started playing death stranding 2, this is a gentle suggestion to move onto australia as soon as you’re given the opportunity rather than sticking around the opening area and trying to 100% the preppers in mexico. trust me.

similar to its predecessor, death stranding 2 features two maps. mexico acts like a sort of tutorial, while australia is a much bigger open-world region where (i assume) players will spend much of the game. unlike the first game, however, getting five stars from the handful of preppers who call mexico home is much more difficult if you try to do so immediately rather than traveling to australia and unlocking additional features.

i spent the first seven hours of my death stranding 2 playthrough avoiding a main mission about traveling from mexico to australia. instead, i stuck around the former, repeating a huge loop around the map, gathering lost cargo, and delivering it to preppers. lost cargo is a great way to earn supplemental likes — the death stranding franchise’s social currency — from bigger deliveries between the game’s settlements, but it’s not supposed to be your main source.

the thing is, death stranding 2 doesn’t unlock random side deliveries until you go to australia, which left a completionist sicko like me desperately trying to max out my relationship with preppers using the paltry amount of experience gained from lost cargo. in the first game, the opening area was a microcosm of the full game, allowing you to 100% the connections there relatively quick, but getting five stars in mexico is a slog if you rely on scouring the map for parcels.

i don’t know what i was thinking. something broken in me kept hoping that side deliveries would appear at some point. i eventually got so fed up i decided to accept the mission to travel to australia before i completed mexico. it made my stomach churn but i soon realized how stupid i’d been. don’t be like me. don’t be afraid to continue the story before getting 100% in mexico. go to australia. you can always return to the western hemisphere later.