Last Of Us Collectible Guide

What You're Actually Looking For

The Last of Us has a handful of collectibles scattered across its campaigns — notes, drawings, pages from Bill's notebook, and a few other pieces of backstory. A Last Of Us Collectible Guide is just a map or checklist that tells you where each one is. Some are free on forums, some you download as PDFs, and some are interactive maps on sites likeIGN or GameSpot. I've used all of them. Most of them are either wrong in a couple places or formatted so badly you can't read them on a phone while you're walking around in-game. I ended up making my own and posting it here because the existing ones kept missing things.

Last Of Us Collectible Guide

This is the version I actually use when I'm playing. It covers both Part I and Part II, includes coordinates for every note and hidden item, and marks the ones that are easy to miss because they're behind destructible cover or require a specific pathing sequence. You can find free versions on Reddit in r/TheLastOfUs and on the IGN wiki. The IGN one is decent but hasn't been updated since the PS5 remaster dropped, so a few locations shifted slightly. The YouTube video walk-throughs are okay but not searchable, which makes them annoying to use when you just need to find one item quickly. The downloadable version I made is hosted on a couple of fan sites. It's about 400 KB, opens in any PDF viewer, and has screenshots for each location. I include a checklist column so you can mark things off as you go.

How Collectibles Actually Work in the Game

Here's the thing most guides don't tell you: some collectibles are locked behind choices you make. If you skip a side conversation in Pittsburgh or take a different route through the Capitol Building, you miss notes that aren't on any map. That's why static guide maps always feel incomplete when you follow them. Notes appear as glowing icons on your inventory screen when you're near them. They don't highlight on the ground like some games do, which is why people miss them constantly. I learned this the hard way on my second playthrough. I spent twenty minutes backtracking through the University section trying to find a note that turned out to be behind a window I never looked through because Joel doesn't turn the camera that direction automatically. The workaround is simple: when you reach a new area, pause and rotate the camera manually in every direction before you move forward. Takes three seconds. Cuts down lost collectible hunting time by maybe an hour total.

Part I Breakdown

Part I has roughly 24 collectible notes depending on how you count the duplicate pages. The main ones people care about are: Bill's Notebook Pages: These are in the first act, during the Bill section. There are four of them. They're placed near his traps and scavenged supplies. One is easy to miss because it's on a shelf behind a toppled bookcase that only becomes visible after you trigger the radio explosion. Tess's Notes: Two notes from Tess in the Boston Quarantine Zone. Both are in her apartment before you start the mission. Easy to grab, easy to forget you already got them.

Tommy's Journal Entries: Three scattered around the Jackson Valley area. These don't appear until you return to Jackson after the main story hits a certain point. I've seen guides that list these as available immediately, which is wrong. You literally cannot get them until the game unlocks that area for exploration. The Seattle Newsletters: Five of these in the final act. They're in apartments and offices as you move toward the television station. One is inside a locker that requires a crowbar, which a few guides omit entirely.

Part II Breakdown

Part II is where things get messy. The collectible count jumps to over 60, and the game splits them across three playable characters with overlapping story beats. The notes are categorized by who wrote them — Ellie, Abby, Joel, Tommy, and a few unnamed ones. The biggest issue with Part II guides is that many of them conflate the Seattle Gazette pages with actual collectible notes. They're separate. The Gazette pages are bonus reading you find in specific caches. The notes are the handwritten ones you pick up from surfaces. Some guides count them together and inflate the total, which throws off anyone trying to get 100% completion. I hit this problem myself. I thought I was missing three notes in the Seattle Opera House because my checklist said 62 and I had found 59. Turns out two of those were Gazette pages, not notes. Once I separated the categories in my own guide, the count matched perfectly.

Common Pitfalls

Here are the mistakes I see people make repeatedly: Assuming all notes are on the main path. About 30 percent of collectibles in Part II require leaving the main route and entering a side room or climbing over a barrier that isn't obvious. The game doesn't prompt you to investigate. Playing on Story mode and missing hard-to-reach items. Some notes are behind enemy patrols that are easier to bypass on Normal or Hard. I found a note in the Seattle washroom section that required luring two enemies away from a window ledge. On Story difficulty they patrol more aggressively and you might not get the angle you need.

Not checking day versus night sections. In Part II, several collectibles only appear during specific time-of-day segments. The guides that list them without noting this will send you to an empty room at the wrong time. I keep a note in my own guide marking every time-locked item. Confusing the Artifacts with Notes. There are also artifact collectibles — drawings, photographs, and other objects. They track separately in your inventory. Some guides lump them in with notes. They're not the same thing and they serve different purposes in the game's completion metrics.

What I Do Instead of Relying on Guides

I play through once without worrying about collectibles. That gives me a mental map of the level layouts. Then I go back with a checklist and hunt for the ones I missed. This approach takes longer upfront but saves probably four or five hours total because I'm not pausing every ten seconds to look up a location. For Part II I use a hybrid method. I keep the guide open in a second window on my PC, but I only look up a collectible after I've fully cleared an area and checked every room. That way I'm not running ahead of myself and getting lost because the guide told me to go somewhere I haven't unlocked yet. The biggest time saver I've found is using the pause menu's inventory screen to check which notes you already have. The icons are small but distinct. You can scan through your collection in about thirty seconds and see exactly what's missing instead of wandering around guessing.

Download and Resources

My personal guide is available on a few fan-hosted pages. Search for "Last of Us Collectible Guide Andrew" or check the sticky thread on the Naughty Dog fan forums. It's updated for the remastered versions on both PS5 and PC. The IGN interactive map is still the best free option if you want something visual. It's not perfect but it covers about 90 percent of locations accurately. The GameSpot written guide is fine too if you prefer text over maps. One thing worth noting: no guide I've seen covers every single secret. There are a handful of hidden notes that only appear under very specific conditions, like having a certain weapon equipped or approaching from a particular angle. The game itself doesn't track those in any meaningful way, so if you're chasing 100 percent completion you're going to have to rely on community wikis that are constantly being updated by people who've spent hundreds of hours finding these things.

That's just how it is. Nothing's perfect, but having a solid checklist and knowing the common traps goes a long way toward not wasting time on a second playthrough.