Battle since the last update

I’m having trouble here. The game as it was was for me almost perfect. I could wade in and multi-fight, needing an adrenaline shot if necessary, but triumphing eventually, or I could sneak my way round, avoiding battles I didn’t want.

But if I got into a battle, I could find something in my armoury to fight with. But now, I have nothing to fight with. When I first crossed the second bridge, the Hunter fell from a direct hit from a bazooka. I came back when I saw it again and sniped the car next to it - that also took it down. The last time I tried it, I hit it with the bazooka, which also exploded the car next to it, and it was just the start of negotiations. After twelve follow-up rounds into the centre of mass from the hunting rifle, I had to close and finish it off with four rounds from the shotgun at close range.

Now from what I have seen on Youtube a tank takes 8 or 9 rounds from the bazooka to knock it down. It gives back 2 smoke grenades and a dual-usage explosive round, leaving me eight rounds down on the exchange. I don’t have that many anyway. I have to hit it with one or two and then snipe it down. Two canisters won’t do it now (I’ve tried), so it’s two hundred rounds to bring it down. For two smoke grenades and one explosive. Not worth it.

The Hunters now take a gas bottle and twenty 7.62 rounds to take down. I am generally up against three of them, which takes more ammunition than they give me. The Hunting rifle rounds now come 1 to an ammo box, so I have run out of them. Shotgun rounds I haven’t seen for four settlements so I have no shotgun. The last Dog I took on took all four of my last solid shot shotgun rounds to take it down.

Ten minutes later, I am besieged in a house by a Tank, four Hunters and about eight Dogs. I was reduced to my pistol and three smoke grenades. All other ammunition expended. I did not make it, since bullets were coming though the walls, and my only possible exit strategy was to save my two adrenaline shots, and respawn, with 100% health, in a safe house miles away. I stopped playing in disgust, but when I restart, I shall have to go back to the first safe house and work through them all, looking for ammunition, so I shall be at least an hour’s preparation gameplay before I play my first minute of the actual game. Anything I killed, or damaged is now respawned so I am right back to zero.

And in the safe houses that you go back to to look hopelessly for ammunition, ticks spawn in mid-air three feet from your head and you lose 50% health before you can physically react, and possibly lose a life. I don;t like respawning anyway (I think it’s false) but at least before the update, you could take out the radio towers (which had something to do with it) and whereas you killed ten, when you went back three were there. I can live with that - I have achieved something in my first battle. But what have I achieved now?

If it is just to be a shoot’emup, why bother to make such a perfect world? This is the first game in my life I have pre-ordered, because I bought into the whole bit about the continuity of the world, about machines carrying damage for months or years, until you met them again. Now they all respawn from thin air (not containers) every time you switch on.

It used to be you could even the odds before the battle with your first couple of rounds. But since the update, not one single Dog has fallen to the first shot, even at quite close range onto the fuel tank with the Hunting rifle - it just runs about trailing smoke and sparks, alerting all its buddies. What that means is that taking it down takes much, much more ammunition and there is nothing to replace it with.

Somebody explain to me how to survive, 'cos I can’t see how.

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You survive by not fighting all the robots, but hide and run instead. You sneak into houses without alerting the robots. You snipe them from a distance. It is not a shoot’em up game in that sense. You are supposed to feel overwhelmed by the robots, it’s part of the experience.

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To add onto haxxlinus’s comment, in the beginning tutorial of the game it specifically mentions that part of this game is stealth :slight_smile: sometimes hiding/sneaking by instead of engaging robots is the best strategy

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But you can’t snipe anymore. You can’t even take down a Dog. It runs about trailing sparks and then it, and all its mates, are outflanking you. I used to take down one or two from a distance which evened the odds a bit, and then fire from cover. Can’t do it - first round, they are all on you. Do you have any idea how hard it is to locate a sniper? They’re better at it than me or any of the Royal Marines in my Troop were! Same weapons too (I was in service in the late 70s).

So what we are saying is - all conflict to be avoided if possible, 'cos you won’t have the ammunition anyway. Trouble is, you have to kill them to get the barcodes. But I can’t think of any good reason to take on a Tank, if you’re playing alone. I’ve taken down four, but I can’t think of a good reason to take on another. And it’ll respawn the second you turn off anyway, so what would you have achieved? What would be the point? Fortunately, they are not very bright, but we’ll do nothing but sneak around and run away. Daren’t waste the bullets!

I’m coming round to the idea of pre-choosing the level of game. Then you could set it as it was, or as it is. Play it one way first time, then crank it up and play it again if you reckon you’re hard enough!

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Hi Boston.

Yeah, part. Now it’s all of it, 'cos there’s not enough ammo to do anything else. Each encounter takes so much ammunition that you’re down to living on scraps.

In parenthesis, you’d think that every one of the Bases would have an armoury, if you could blow your way into it, and there would be all the ammo you could carry. In fact in those days, there would be no ammo outside the armoury!

Now, we used to carry 80 rounds of 7.62, but one of those would actually go through any machine you care to mention and would knock over what it couldn’t penetrate, so 80 at a time would be sufficient. Here they are little better than a 9mm… sigh

As it was, it was perfect, you could choose between strategies. If you cleared a settlement, it mostly stayed clear, so you had achieved something - you had helped to free the Homeland! I liked that. Now it achieves nothing. It’s just a shame, that’s all.

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Bootie, overall it sounds like you’re experiencing a severe loot bug that not many players have. My reasoning for that is you said you didn’t find any shotgun ammo through 4 settlements, and you’re only getting 1 round of hunting ammo for hunting rifles from crates at a time which is definitely not fun. I have a rather silly amount of shotgun ammo stored in one of my extra characters.

My suggestion is to wait for the June update, and if that update doesn’t improve your game then consider reinstalling the game if you have not already. If your ammo problems continue after that point then there isn’t much you can do other than hope that future updates can resolve this issue for you. Thanks for supporting the GZ community.

No sweat, Boston, but tell me more about creating characters to hold stuff for me. I have heard the theory, but cannot find the right menu to do it. A quick idiot guide would be appreciated.

P.S. Half the boxes are empty and half the rest have a pair of trousers in - ammo boxes, that is!

When you launch the game, the main menu has a “Select Character” option :slight_smile: Click on that and you can create up to 4 characters.

If you drop an item from your 1st character, it drops a backpack on the floor. If you then “exit to main menu” and select your 2nd character, you spawn into the world as your 2nd character and you can pick up any items that you dropped from your 1st character. If you Exit to desktop, any dropped items will disappear forever :slight_smile: so be careful to only ‘exit to main menu’ whenever doing this.

Thanks for that. The curious thing is that before the last update i read on here about all these bugs and crashes and freezes, and I had none of them - not one - the game worked perfectly from beginning to end. I’ll creep about until the next update - see how I get on, but at this rate I can afford no battles at all. There’s an army camp on the isthmus which is only guarded by a couple of seekers, so I’ll have a look for more ammo there.

Talk to you soon.

Stealth is a valid and very necessary tactic in this game. However, it seems the good folks at Avalanche haven’t quite realized that people don’t play first person action / adventure games to NOT get to shoot at things. This balancing like it’s a competitive PvP shooter has drastically altered the gameplay (for those able to play at all) to a point it’s no longer the same game that was released. They’ve patched the fun right out of it.

Hope the June update restores some of that original balance and gameplay and that the bugs that currently prevent me (and many others) from playing finally get fixed.

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I agree that the balance is wrong, especially for us solo players. I really have to pick my fights, and then spend a lot of time fast travelling to bunkers to find ammo. And almost always avoid tanks. But I still enjoy it, because I like the slow pace. If I wanted 100% action and lots of ammo, I would have played some battle royale game instead.

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I just have to face the fact that I have to fast travel to a bunker and spend some time looting it before heading off anywhere new (Minken is handy because it’s not too large so you can loot everything in a few minutes)

I’m tired of only one area giving any appreciable amount of 5.56 ammo and .50 cal has been reduced to the level of never actually wanting to use it as I may need it later.

For groups of hunters I recommend the salvage skill as you can get a medium EMP module from almost every hunter and they are useful to slow packs if hunters down.

They also give a lot of tick pods where throwing a load of those down slows down the dog packs.

A doggo can usually be taken down with two silenced hunting rifle shots, and sometimes one if the bugger gives you a good view of his fuel cell.

As long as you are a decent distance away and lurking in bushes you can usually take out a pack of doggos, the IR module makes it easier to target the fuel cell.

The annoyance I have is that I now have to completely avoid the top tier tanks and there is a shed load of them when you go up north.

I’m a solo player and I couldn’t carry enough stuff to be sure of taking the things out.

Ironically I find the Harvesters easier than ever to take out on the current patch (though it may be because I’m a bit better at playing the game now)

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