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.
3 Likes
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…
2 Likes
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.
5 Likes
Yes, you enter farmlands first. But there is no marker or anything that points you were it makes sense to explore next.
Thanks for the order of regions though. Right now on easiest difficulty every region is more or less equally easy/difficult.
I guess the machines scale to the player lever rather than having a level range depending on the region?
Okay, that sounds like a good explaination.
Yeah… no. 
I’m more of a casual player and don’t like souls-like games where you die constantly, struggle with your resources or have to be super careful about every move. That’s too stressful and not much of my playstyle. I like sneaking though instead of running in and shooting everything. So for now given the number of machines I encounter at once some times, adventure is perfectly fine for me. I might switch to skirmish again, if my gear gets better and I am more skilled.
Just of today I saw a searcher in a field about 500m away which then detected my while riding my bike. There were no other machine around so I didn’t really matter. I was just baffeled by the detection range again. Even though they are machines. 
No. Machines doesn’t scale towards player at all. Machines are defined by the region they are in.
E.g:
Archipelago - only Prototype
Farmlands - proto, mil (outer edges); FNIX (airfield and crater)
Forest - mil, FNIX, few apo
Mountains - mil, FNIX, some apo
South Coast - mil (Northern part); FNIX, apo (middle and Southern part)
Marshlands & North Coast - FNIX and apo
Himfjäll - only apo
Depth perception varies from person to person. But that much i can say that machine draw-in distance is 400m.
Knowing the exact distance can be done in 2 ways (solo game) or 3 ways (MP game):
- Unlock Spotting Intel level 2 skill (this gives range in Tech View mode when looking at a machine)
- Place a waypoint on the map and hover over it, to see it’s distance from you
- Look how far your buddy is from you (range is displayed under another person’s name)
In higher difficulties, machines have greater detection range and if you don’t want to get spotted, you need to do a lot more sneaking.
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But I encountered several Apo in farmlands already. =)
Also thanks again for the list!
November '20 update skewed the machine spawn locations, where most machines now spawn in the new, revamped part of the Farmlands.
Before the update, all my rivals were more-or-less evenly spread all over the map. Now, most of them are clustered in Farmlands.
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Adventure mode is more than balanced, I’ve had the same issues in the past using Guerillla (despite myself, long story).
The advice is to observe the behaviors of the machines, and when encountering “mixed packs”, eliminate the weaker ones first and leave the tanks and harversters at the end. Very recommended to unlock the skills related to running and maximum weight carried to the maximum, this helps in combat and in not running out of ammunition. Equally, get the formulas for the ammunition we use most often and craft them directly, this avoids the frustration of having to collect again for hours to have a supply.
Generation Zero’s claim with Adventure difficulty is that it is focused on story over combat. If Generation Zero were a movie or a book, it would not feature the main characters constantly dying and being replaced or otherwise respawning. We all intuitively understand that very few main characters die in a story, and that when Generation Zero says that Adventure difficulty is story focused, that is promising a mode where the average player will very rarely (if ever) die while playing.
This is not remotely true. Heavy machines, especially rivals, are perfectly capable of tanking a rocket to the gas tank and six more to the face without going down, and the reason I know this is because one of the Farmlands quests required me to take one on. It even had a pair of rockets in a nearby house, which would’ve been good design if two rockets were remotely enough to take on the boss machine outside.
Evading machines isn’t an option, because lots of missions (especially in the expansion) require you to destroy machines to progress. Ambush makes no difference, because even heavy ordnance fired directly into the weakspot of mandatory machine bosses does so little damage that emptying another dozen AR mags into them (even when aiming for weakspots) still didn’t bring it down. And this is in a fight where VO starts trying to carry the story, only to have it brought screaming to a halt for 30 minutes while I scrounge around for supplies to try and restock for another go.
The new expansion content is supposed to be an improvement on the early/middle parts of the game - and it places the emphasis squarely on attacking powerful enemy machines, not evading them, with multiple missions that require you to take out specific machines, whether waves of them attacking a fort or specific rivals out in the farms. And if these machines are intended to be fought rather than evaded, then Adventure difficulty makes them way too hard. Probably this specific issue would be mostly fixed if the tank rivals in the expansion mission were swapped out for just regular tanks, those seem to actually explode when you fire a goddamn rocket directly into their fuel source, which seems to me like a pretty reasonable reaction to that course of events, but failing that the HP of Adventure difficulty tanks and harvesters just needs to be tuned way down.
Also this isn’t the exact same thing but related: Solo players should have either significantly increased damage resistance or else spawn adrenaline shots far more often, at least in Adventure difficulty, possibly in Skirmish as well. Adventure difficulty is supposed to be story focused which means deaths should be rare for anyone who’s putting in any effort into playing the game all sneaky like, and it’s easy to get blindsided and overrun even when you have plenty of resources left if you don’t have any mates to help you up after getting flanked by a hunter. I doubt this would be a major issue in a full group of four because odds are fantastic that at least two of you will survive any unexpected trouble and be able to help your mates up and skedaddle, but in solo you can go from 80 health and 50 medkits to dead in literally seconds.