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B.04: Item Collecting
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Your primary task in X-Men Legends is defeating the bad guys. Your 
secondary task is scrounging for loot...that is, collecting valuable 
equipment. You get most of your swag from drops by your enemies; however, 
you can also get a lot of loot from destroying the scenery.

Most of the items you will collect are health packs and energy packs. Since 
these resources get used up frequently (especially in the early game), it's 
a good thing the game drops a lot. Later in the game, as your energy 
regeneration improves, you can start selling off some of the energy packs 
you pick up, since you don't need them as much and so many of them drop 
anyway. Keep the health packs, they don't show up quite as often.

You also need to look out for tech bits, the X-Men Legends 2 equivalent of 
money. You use tech bits to buy equipment from Forge and Beast and revive 
fallen mutants-in-arms. Once you hit 15th level and can use Xtreme powers, 
you'll start picking up the Xtreme tokens you need to fill your Xtreme 
power icons.

You'll also pick up a lot of gear that improve stats. In order to avoid 
slowing the game down to a crawl, it is recommended you turn Auto-Equip on; 
however, if you like to micromanage...

All allies share the inventory, so any hero can equip anything that's been 
picked up, unless another character is already wearing the item. There is a 
limit of 20 unequipped items that can be held in inventory. If you try to 
pick something up and get the message "Inventory is full", you have three 
options:

1) Ignore the item on the ground because it is underpowered for your
   current level;

2) Return to base and sell unused items to Forge or Beast or put them
   in the hero stash; or,

3) Drop some of your current inventory on the ground.

In order to keep your inventory from filling up, re-evaluate your equipment 
and sell unneeded items at least every other mission.

**NOTE** There's a game-stopping bug in the game related to memory dumps 
and the number of items in your hero stash. Keep your hero stash at 30 
items or less!

There are also many bonus items that are hidden throughout the game. If you 
thought there were lots of hidden items in XML, wait until you get a load 
of XML2. Here's the quick hit list:

Comic books: there are 15 of them. They don't confer any stat bonuses, 
alas, but they are still cool to look at.

Sketch books: there are 16 sketch books, each unlocks 3 pieces of concept 
art.

Tech stations: like the skill/stat point bonuses from XML, although there 
are more of them. Each tech station gives a bonus to the one character that 
uses the station. They provide permanent stat boosts, health and energy 
increases, etc. There are 30 tech stations scattered throughout the game.

Weapon cache: XML2's version of the uber-loot-producing treasure chest. 
Each weapon cache contains tech bits, health and energy packs and rare or 
unique equipment.

Danger Room Discs: as in XML1, you have to find these in order to play the 
scenarios. Find them all (and beat all the scenarios) and Professor X is 
yours to manipulate to your will...

Data discs: Collect four data discs and you get a bonus to your health or 
energy pack carrying capacity. There are twenty discs in all.
* +2 energy packs for the first set of four data discs
* +2 health packs for the second set of four data discs
* +4 energy packs for the third set of four data discs
* +4 health packs for the fourth set of four data discs
* +6 health and +6 energy packs for the fifth set of four data discs

Section F of this guide will fill you in on all the locations of these 
goodies. You can also find the location of all the Danger Room Discs in 
Section G.

And, there are load screens and cinematics that can be unlocked through 
normal gameplay.

Finally, beating the game once entitles you to start a new game+, which 
gives you all characters (including unlocked characters) at their endgame 
level. If you beat the game on Normal difficulty, you can play at the Hard 
difficulty.