What is the best way to reward exploration in games?

Make the exploration fun.

Ideally, the true plot of the game

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Cosmetics and bonus features. Exploration should be just for fun, not required for upgrades. It's where BoTW missed the mark for me, the puzzles rooms are nice but too many are just a combat encounter or no puzzle at all

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More content, be it sidequests, equipment, dialogue, bosses, even whole new areas.
I recently played Bloodborne and it did this so well, there's lots of missable stuff like this that's really nice when you do find it.

The problem is that eventually, the game runs out of interesting things to give. There are always more places to explore than mechanics implemented. I think Dark Souls balances this pretty well, even if most of the loot you get is garbage that you will never use or variations on the same thing, at least you can read their descriptions or play dress-up.

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>What is the best way to reward exploration in games?

The other Anons have already said it, but: unique loot (whether that be materials, cool/cute outfits, crafting recipes, weapons, etc), unique monsters, enemies, or even entire bosses, interesting characters, quests, or interactions therein with them to expand upon the story or a smaller new one.

You can also reward exploration with lore/plot relevant information or interesting & beautiful landmarks n' so forth. Do you happen to remember the Leviathan Skeletons in BOTW? Each one was the fossilized remains of a different WindFish from the various Zelda games across time- it was great fun hunting them down.

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it should be interesting in-and-of itself

If the world was interesting, you shouldn't have to be baited with a carrot on a stick to explore. You need to scale back on your world, or have failed entirely if the player doesn't naturally wanna see everything.

Not every nook and cranny of a world has to have a high value item in it, but there should be at least some treasure you can sell

Reward curiosity. New items, upgrades, access to new locations, etc.

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Hand placed loot no randomgen.
I've been playing fallout 1 and exploring is actually pretty rewarding cause you can find interesting loot and it always feels balanced.

The main questline. Old school adventure games, like Zelda I, made exploration fun by tying it directly into the game's progression. Modern action adventure games use exploration solely for side content, mostly some kid of collectable that isn't worth the effort put in.

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