I normally play solo and offline. I find that I spend a large amount of time stealthing around but have to use game physics. Rocks, trees, slopes (esp slopes) to avoid detection. Most of my moving is crouched. It works most of the time. When that fails, run Forrest run!
I’ve never really felt the game was unbalanced or too hard. Certainly the roaming gangs of hunters are not fun. They too can be avoided by observing movements from a distance and staying low and slow. It is really too bad that shooting the legs of robots does not really slow or cripple them. That would sure help.
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There’s one thing to keep in mind: GZ isn’t Doom, where you need to shoot everything on sight and win every battle. Idea with GZ is, that you have to pick your battles. Also, learning about machines is far helpful that running in, guns blazing.
My favorite tactic and 100% effective 
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I often hoard ammo in this game. My storage and self are loaded down because I am full to the brim usually with ammo. I think, as was mentioned earlier, going through all of the bunkers helped me to build that stockpile. I mostly play solo and would avoid the tanks and harvesters in the beginning because I wanted to accomplish the mission rather than taking out every machine I came across.
Leading the battle to a house or settlement helped me usually too as I could hide out and shoot through a window. I understand to some it is a more “cowardly” way or fighting, though to others it is a tactically smart choice.
I was never good about using the gas tanks or compressed air tanks but a friend of mine seemingly mastered that technique and downs harvesters and tanks often using them.
Im more of a “guns-a-blazin” type, but to each their own
Actually, there is only a handful of mission specific machines (excluding ticks) that you have to destroy to finish missions. All other machines are optional and can be sneaked around.
Best source of XP is actually completing missions. Min 1000 XP per mission. Or if you have Inquisitive Mind skill at lvl2, min 2000 XP per mission.
I take that you don’t know that there are first aid kit schematics in the game, that once picked up, lets you to craft all three types of first aid kits, and you get 10 first aid kits per crafting.
Or you can craft any ammo you want, if you find the proper schematics first.
From all over the map.
For spoilers, you can look all schem locations from here: Schematics - Fixed Locations
Note, i play on Guerilla, solo, and i’m asking for even harder game, topic: PLEASE add April 2020 Difficulty as an option in the future. So, you asking the game to be even easier than it already is, may give you an idea why i’m not that keen with your ideas.
Btw, i’m not your “bro” and calling a female as a male is disrespectful.
Agree to this, there is a point where someone should accept a game is simply not for them. GenZ was always supposed to be tactical and relatively challenging. You don’t go and buy ArmA either if you want an arcade shooter. OP might need to try to see the game for what it wants to be rather than for what they want it to be.
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I get your idea of discovering items by yourself, i also love it. However, if given that some of these items are critical for your gameplay, to make the hard game easier for you; isn’t it justified that the location of those items is spoiled for you?
Else-ways, we have a strange situation of you complaining about the difficulty of the game (e.g not enough first aid kits) while the solution is given to you but you refuse it since you want to find the solution on your own.
Back in the early days, when i started playing GZ, more than 1.5 years ago, there was no luxury of choosable difficulty level. There was only one difficulty level to all. And there wasn’t even features that made the game easier, like Plundra, Machine Loot, Rivals, Experimental Weapons, Crafting.
Was it hard for me at the beginning? Yes, it was. However, i don’t roll over that easily and when i was kicked down, i got up and kept going. As they say (and no hard feelings): “When going gets tough, the tough get going and the weak start crying.”.
So, i started to monitor machines, sneaking past them, learning about my enemy, saving my bullets. As time (and my progression in game) moved forwards, i learned about the weaknesses of machines, their limits. That helped me to combat them far more effectively.
For a long time, the worst machine to combat with was Hunter. They are fast, agile and devastating. Even the bigger machines, harvesters and tanks didn’t pose as great of a threat as hunters did. But eventually, i learned all the machine tactics and now, i don’t fear any of them. Though, hunters still make me pause and most of the times, i don’t engage them. Or when i’m made and don’t want to engage them, i’ll outrun them (outrunning a hunter is one difficult task to do).
My suggestion; learn about machines. Knowing exactly what you enemy is capable of, is far more valuable than all the gear in the game. 
Bro is abbreviation of brother. Brother is male.
For females, there is sister. Or Sis for short.
And i guess my female name and pink heart (avatar) isn’t that obvious to all. Oh well.
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They should at least add more difficulty levels. I’ve been a hardcore gamer for over 40 years and I can honestly say that the current “skirmish” difficulty is about 1-2 notches above normal. I really don’t think the average guy knows or wants to kite 10+ hunters and multiple heavies at the same time. This is what I have been dealing with the last couple of days and that’s still without an experimental .50. I just can’t seem to break combat without having to run for miles so I just kite and kill.
Then to add to all the balancing difficulties we have skill, equipment and weapon progression to throw another spanner in the works. Personally, it would be much better to add weapons as rewards for quests as people progress to more difficult areas. And allow people to start a new game at a higher difficulty rather than putting them on the experimental weapon treadmill.
I just signed up to request exactly this - I would love to play this game, but my friends and I have given up after just a couple hours (xbox if it matters). I spend 90% of my time running from a respawn point back to where I died, and often die again on that run. I really like some aspects of the game and would love to go through the whole thing, but on the easiest difficulty, it’s not fun for me. You could make an even easier mode called ‘baby’ or ‘don’t hurt me’ or ‘chill and gen0’. The point would be for it to not be challenging at all, so in that mode, take away achievements/trophies/whatever steam has. Any or all of these changes in a ‘baby’ mode would be great: infinite or more ammo, infinite or more health, no dying or infinite adrenaline. It’s super frustrating to play with a friend but not be able to revive them, even just allowing friend revives would be great.
Instead of a baby mode, you could also add cheats - I’m thinking like the phone cheats in gta5. Again, remove achievements/trophies/etc if a cheat is used.
My friends and I are all parents, we get 1, maybe 2 nights a week to play together for an hour or 2. We would love to be able to explore the world you’ve created and shoot some robots. But at the current lowest difficulty level, it’s just frustrating for us.
So, you are saying that you with 2 or 3 other people in CO op, in adventure mode with scaling difficulty off, still have trouble with the game?
The thing is, the game is much more easier now than it ever was, things are ok as they are for most people, the game just requires time and patience, time that you for obvious reason´s does not have, it´s the same with many other games, strategy games require time, survival games require time and the same with Cars games with Resistance races, where it could take from 1 to 20 hours to finish a race.
It takes from 15 to 40 hours for a new player to understand how everything works and to know how to play this game.
You can´t just barge in guns blazing without learning the game mechanics first and expect to not die.
I do understand your situation, the best thing you can do is learn from experience and support each other, which makes everything easier, playing in co op.
I already implied that, but the Host can turn off the Automatic scaling difficult, making things much more easier in terms of machine health and damage.
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Make sure you guys invest in “Running Speed” skill early on. The kids and I died countless times simply because we couldn’t get away from rocket barrages.
THIS^
That´s right, as @jblackball said invest in the Running speed skills, and i suggest the following skiils:
- Stamina ammount
- Stamina recharge
- Carry capacity
- Health ammount
- at least level 1 in Salvage skill
The rest is up to you.
Here is basic info no one is really saying. The robots are MORE POWERFUL. You generally cannot fight them head on and win. If you try this you will lose. Period. You need to fight smarter some how. People are giving you advice on how to do that but really it is up to each player to realize and learn to play tactical. Sometimes I snipe , other times my position is bad so I run for the hills to escape. Grenade or mine, It varies alot all the time. It is a challenge and I love it that way. So do all who play this game for long.
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Only way to make Adventure difficulty easier, (other than learning to play the game), is to remove all machines from the game. And even then, you can die. E.g step on a landmine, blow yourself up with a grenade or fall to your death.
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Hi everyone.
I’m not sure how up to date this topic about difficultly still is and what was actually tweaked or fixed.
I started the game about three weeks ago with my brother and we nearly quit after exploring South Coast region and encountering loads of hunters and at least one harvester. As we came in quite freshly from Archipelago and were on skirmish difficultly, we got our asses kicked big time to the point where we ran out of ammo, medkits and adrenaline.
We decided to switch to adventure difficultly and heck, was it payable all of a sudden. Machines actually got damaged with our then crappy guns as of before we didn’t even notice that we’re damaging them at all. That’s for hunters and above, runners were no big deal.
Now that I found better guns and stockpiled a good amount of ammo I went back to area I mentioned before.
What put me off was, as mentioned before in this thread, the machines join battle from miles away. I had a rival in the area (didn’t even spot it) and encountered a FNIX harvester with like four to five hunters. What I ended up with were four harvesters (military and FNIX) plus all the hunters in a large radius, plus the hunters they call in, plus the rival, also a hunter.
I managed to beat them all, even without dying, but it was kind of stressful to say the least. I wasn’t near any building and had to use the environment as cover, which works only so well until the hunters circle you, forcing you out of cover. Oh and the harvesters mortar fire of course.
Long story short, I support the wish for a smaller detection range. I didn’t even see any of the other machines as I scouted the area before engaging the FNIX harvester with its hunters, but still a s***load of machines came out of nowhere. That’s what in my opinion makes the game too much of an arcade shooter.
Later I went up north in farmlands to kill an apo tank rival. My ammo is mostly depleted now, as there were three harvesters plus two other tanks more or less with the rival.
So, I’m not saying the number of machines should be reduced or made easier (they are quite easy for me now, except that rival), but to lower their detection range and/or sensibility.
I hope I wrote not to much crap as English isn’t my native language and I’m writing from my phone.
Have a great weekend everyone. Love this game though.
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Your English is fine mate personally in early game the archipelago to the south coast is where most go but the south is harder now so idk it seems to jump a little too fast now into hard machines for new players…
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Thanks.
That reminds me of one thing I forgot to mention. There isn’t really a hint where you should go after archipelago as the story mission doesn’t continue, or we didn’t find it. The only hint we got was Sorken Bunker warboard, but that was way up north and we encountered two tanks already as we entered farmlands.
Also the areas aren’t described properly in terms of how easy or difficult they might be, for example a recommended player level range.
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Yeah it would be nice to have when you look at a region level the recommended level to do it at
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Actually, there is. As soon as you exit Archipelago, the next region you enter is Farmlands and difficulty wise, it comes after Archipelago.
In the early days, South Coast and Farmlands border was different and it was possible to go from Archipelago directly to South Coast, without even entering Farmlands.
As far as region difficulty goes, it goes like so: Archipelago -> Farmlands -> Forest -> Mountains -> South Coast -> Marshlands -> North Coast -> Himfjäll.
But depending on your play style, the order can change. E.g for me, Mountains region is far harder than North Coast since former it’s heavily forested and my sniper play style is hindered in there. Also, in Mountains, machines can sneak up on you relatively easily, if you’re oblivious.
Machines doesn’t have 300m+ detection range. What most likely happened, was:
- you aggrod the harv
- the commotion drew in FNIX seeker(s)
- once seekers detected you, they blew their horn, drawing in all machines in hearing distance (about 400m radius from seeker)
Also, do note that machines have patrol routes, and long ones. So, it is common that once you start a battle, additional machines join since they heard the commotion near their patrol route.
You should try play on Guerilla difficulty (like i do), to see the true detection range machines have, before complaining about it on Adventurer difficulty.
Also, do note that enemies are machines and it’s logical that they will outspot you. And with greater numbers, also outnumber you. But what you have, is outsmarting them.
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