MUST READ ! Attention when creating a new second character!

General Discussion
1

Please be aware of this and read this carefully before creating a new “second” character in the menu.

This happend to me yesterday and it was quite ‘irritating’ to put it mildly :slight_smile:

ATTENTION: When you create a new second character, your entire map will be emptied.
What I mean by this is that all the locations you have discoverd up to that point will be gone.
Basicly it will reset your map to the state it was when first starting the game.

All your discoverd safe houses (fast traveling spots)
All your discovered bunkers, churches, frams, etc… everything will be erased.

When you create a new character, you keep your inventory,
you keep your XP points, you keep your perks and the system also remembers
what you have already discovered at locations, so it will still know you have found the collectible,
and how many weapons and loot boxes you have previously discovered but the entire map is empty.

Concerning the map, you’ll have to start all over from scratch. You’ll have to revisit all the locations
by foot that you had discovered sofar.

This was quite upsetting yesterday since I had probably 80% of the map discovered with easely 200 or more locations and like 30 safe house to fast travel to.

In my personal opinion there should be a warning in the game, pointing towards this effect, warning you if you want to create a new character. Because in my opinion, simply wanting to create a new look for a second character does not impliment that the entire map will be erased for the first character aswell.

So I strongly suggest an in-game pop-up warning to inform players about this.

I have the fast running perk, so luckely I only spent about 3 hours revisiting the most necesarry fast travel locations that I had discovered sofar but this would’nt have happend if someone or some in-game info had warned me about this.

And just so you know: Ending the game with your second created character and restarting the game with your first character will not help. The map will stay empty, you’ll restart from the beginning point
of the game and you’ll have to revisit all locations.

One good thing about this: Before creating the new second character, my “discover 5 safe houses” Throphy simply wouldn’t work, I had discovered about 30 safehouses but still no Throphy.
With the map being erased and me having to start all over, the “Discover 5 Safe houses” Throphy
was immediately actived after visiting the fifth safe house on the newly emptied map.

I have visited 2 other locations that where bugged in my game however, since all quest items seem to respawn aswell when you create a second character and you start from scratch. Unfortunately, the key to Veronika’s study from “The Girl who cried Wolf” still was not there.

What I’m trying to say: Maybe (!!!) if you are willing to sacrifice the progress you have made sofar on the map, creating a second character will solve some of the buggs you ran into when completing missions but “do note” that your entire map will be erased.

I thought this was realy something worth mentioning.

I was realy upset yesterday when this happend to me
but now, having rediscoverd the most important locations, I’m all right.
Still love this game, still think it’s amazingly well designed.
The weathereffects, the sounds and gunshot sounds, the music, still love it.
The details of the trees - Amazing - I think it’s really cool to see broken-off braches
spreaded throughout the woods, seeing broken-off tree stumps, chopped tree trunks, etc…
This degree of reality in the woods is simply amazing and makes it look amazingly real.
I’m still happy I bought the game and I will continue to kill those machines,
I just want to prevent other gamers to discover what “create second character” means
the hard way, like I did :wink:

5 Likes
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  1. the game has issues, we know. the missions are broken and there’s a few gameplay issues that need resolved first so its even playable.

  2. of course it should reset everything. when creating a new character thats basically saying that is a whole new SAVE FILE. so everything you do on that character should be completely reset. currently as i said before, the game has issues, what decently good game doesnt when coming to full release? you shouldnt be having those problems when creating a new character but you are, and it sucks. but they are fixing the performances to be more enjoyable and not skipping around. im sure they will fix the character save files and missions alongside it.

i read in another post that explained when a new game came out a long time ago that it would just work right away and not have bugs to ruin it. now days there is so much going on when creating a game like this that its nearly impossible to come out working 100%. even battlefield 4 which has been out forever now still had unpatchable bugs or even call of duty with their games and clipping through wall that still hasnt been patched.

full release will help the developers fix the game even more than beta and alpha players could, since its open to the public and a lot more people who have the same issue can come together and fine that issue to its exact problem to help fixing it way more easier. just got to hang in there and wait till the patches roll out :smile:

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Thanks for your reply.
First off all, let me tell you that I don’t have problems with this game having a few buggs.
Sorry if I gave that impression. It is merely that I like the game so much that I want to contribute
in listing the problems so they can be handled and taken care of.

You are totally right. Other games have plenty of buggs on release.
In fact much worse than the once I have encountered in Generation Zero.
Once more, my comments and posts on the few bugs in GZ are meant to track and solve issues.

About one thing however, in my opinion, you are wrong.
Creating a new character (meaning a mere change of looks) does not implement that
the entire map is reset to the beginning for the first character aswell.

A menu button with : Create new Game would be the way to do this.

Here is a thought for you: (Just my personal opinion)
Just assuming you are right when you say it is logic that when creating a second character it is
normal to have the map ereased since it indicates a whish to start over …

Wouldn’t it be normal than, when restarting the game with the first character,
that your map would be complete again? Since you say creating a new character is like creating a whole new SAFE FILE? Than where is the data saved under the Safe file of the first character?
The map than should be where you left off right?

Anyway, I appriciate your thoughts, I hadn’t interpreted the “create second character” as a new safe file. I hadn’t thought of it this way but you are right, that is probably exactly what the devellopers meant with this feature. Nontheless, I feel like “create new character” is quite an unlucky and harmeless sounding term for the impact it has on your first character (IMO).

As I said, I like the game a lot and sofar I can perfectly live with the few problems I have encountered sofar.
It is by far one of the coolest and realistic looking open world games that I have played sofar
and a true joy to play. When that sunlight shines trough the tree tops in the woods, the amazing warm light effect it creats, and you hear the birds wistle. Awesome.
As I said, I’m happy I have the game and I will continue playing it :slight_smile:

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Reason I say is because there’s an achievement you can obtain by having a special skill active on a second character, meaning you have to level that character up to even unlock it, so why keep leveling and making it much harder to obtain skill points per level if it all connects to one character?

A second character with a fresh start will be so much easier to level up and earn skill points towards a different special skill. On my one and only character currently I have the hacker skill unlocked, so if i made a new character starting completely fresh, all i need to do is level it up to unlock a different special skill and i would be able to obtain that achievement. otherwise it would take ages to get 6 more levels to unlock another special skill.

this is all under assumptions though so i could be wrong, but just pointing it out there so everyone else could think what they want. :smile:

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Yes, you are right. If you look at it this way it makes sense.
It would indeed take a long time to skill up a second character
to another skill in the normal way.

That does not explain however why, when playing with your first character,
the entire mapinfo is gone since this is how far you are in the game with that
specific first character.

In my opinion the “create new character” should have no influence on the map progress
the first character has.

But as we both agree, with such a huge game and all the difficult and complicated mechanisems
that have to work together to make such a beautifull game come to life it is rather normal to
have some problems here and there. I enjoy the game a lot so I’m fine with that :wink:

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Yeah, the map is broken in a way. a few nights ago i joined someone and we ended up playing for a long time as a 3 person party, and they decided to skip the intro island and just go straight for the mainland and the airfield which was hectic as hell. i unlocked the safehouse at the airfield and after about 30 minutes if fighting tanks, hunters, and runners we all racked up around 8000 XP which at the time i was level 10 or so, but when they all left and i joined my own lobby, i noticed that the safehouse i unlocked at the airfield didnt exist, so i had to walk back there solo and it was so much harder without a group of people. ended up getting there and unlocking it for a second time though.

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I play the entire campaign solo in single player offline mode so I totally get what you mean.
I have invested all my skill points in the survival skill = Commando. (I’m at level 28 now.)
A good thing to simply outrun your enemies at any time would be spending your next skill points
into the two first items of the left survival perk tree. The second perk, when levelled up to maximum
will give you 30% run increase and you can outrun every enemy in the game. Ideal for playing solo
ops if it gets to hard to fight them in single combat.

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Moonmists thanks for the heads up. I have also been playing solo and was thinking of starting a new character to try co-op. I think I’ll stick to 1 character for :grin:

The skill point take forever to obtain. What is the criteria for getting them? I used my first few on upgrading XP, thinking that would speed up getting skill points, but it still taking long.

Anyway thanks for the warning

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Glad I could prevent someone from making the same mistake as I did :smile:
One way to get around this would be to create the second character as soon as you start the game
the first time. This way you can have two characters with different Skills active and not loose the mapprogress. If you are halfway the game and don’t want to loose what you have discovered on your map it is best to waite (in my opinion) with creating a second character till you have finished the game.

About the skill points: The game has only been released since a couple of days, but from my experiance sofar here are some of my best tips to get XP points quickly.

  1. My best tip would be: Go for the Beacons.
    Meaning, destroy all the beacons you can find.
    From all the other actions you can perform in the game personally I think
    that destroying beacons will give you the most XP quickly.
    They are easy to spot at night and a hint will appear if you are near a beacon.
    This will even get you XP points when you get killed while destroying the Beacon.
    You get a gas tank, you run towards the enemy packed beacon, put it on the ground and shoot it,
    even if it kills you along with it, it will give you massive XP points. (relative to other actions in the
    game that I know of = with the 100% extra XP perk unlocked it will give you 1000 to 1500 XP per
    Beacon!).

  2. You get quite a good deal of XP points when you kill an enemie and when you can quit the combat succesfully afterwards. Here is a situation sketch on how to get the most out of this.

Imagine you are confronted with 4 hunters. The worst thing you can do (concerning XP gain, in my opinion)
is to kill them all at once. It is best to kill 1 Hunter and than run away untill the situation has
cooled down (you can hear this in the music and you’ll get a notification like: Combat won, or something likewise. This will give you XP points. Than you go back to kill the second, and run away once more untill the situation has cooled off again, giving you once more extra XP for having survived a combat. You repeat this till all are dead. Giving you 4 times extra XP points for each time you survive a combat. (To be honest, I havent checked thoroughly if maybe XP points are added up if you kill all 4 at once and than only get 1x massive XP points for surviving a combat but I don’t think it gives you the same amount of points as when you kill them seperately and add up the earned XP for having succesfully survived a combat. (needs to be checked)

  1. Escaping combat (running away once you entered a fight) will also give you XP points.
    Evidently not as much as winning a combat. So a simple trick would be to run around in this
    vast open world and to run towards every enemy you see. Once combat is engaged you simply get the hell out of there. Once the situation has cooled down and you are far away enough, you’ll get XP for escaping combat succesfully. (The running faster perk - run 30% faster - will allow you to outrun every single enemy in the game.)

  2. Finding collectables: I believe this gives you 250 XP points with every found Collectable.

  3. Discovering locations: For evey location you discover you get 100 XP points.

  4. Last but not least. There is a perk in the skill tree that wil give you 50% extra XP in the first step,
    and 100% extra XP in de second step (maximum level) This will evidently make you gain more
    XP points, up to double, each time you earn XP.

These are the best tips I can come up with at the moment.

I’m at level 28 now and I wish I had bought the skill perk with the extra XP a lot earlier.

Anyway, I hope this helps. Cheers, Moon.

PS: I just see that you already spent XP to the perks I mentionned. Sorry, just re-read your tekst.
Anyway, this is a good “How to” manual on getting XP fast so I’ll just leave it in the tread :slight_smile:

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Moonmists thanks once again. I think my next points will go on running and stamina.

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Very good idea :wink:

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It seems the harder the fights and the more machines IN the fight, the more xp you will get of course. So when you leave the first island that won’t be a problem lol. In no time I checked my stats and had 3 unspent points I didn’t know I even had at level like 13 so :+1::muscle: also the xp perk is only for xp earned completing missions I think

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I just checked this as promised.

Here is what I discovered (this is easy to test for yourself if interested):

I went into a fight with 3 runners.
I killed all 3 runners in one go.
This gave me 89 XP points.

Then I picked another fight with 3 runners.
This time I killed one by one, making sure to run away
after each kill to let the situation cool down till the game
says “Combat won” than turning back to kill the next one.
This time, each single kill gave me 39 XP points per runner.
Adding up to a total of 117 XP points all togehter.
So, my tactic does indeed give you more XP in the end.

One sidenote: To be honest I wouldn’t advise you to use this tactic on “hunters” wich I used as an example in my first post. They follow you for a verry long time and the time you loose doens’t make up for the extra XP in my opinion.

However, it works great with runners. They don’t chase you for long so the “in combat” situation cools down quite quickly. It truely works great with them.
Besides: I also have to perk that gives double damage with the first hit on an unaware enemy.
So this tactic works twice as good if you have this perk aswell :slight_smile:

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Moonmists on the job , i think the robots should run away from u now , u know to much , thanks for the tips

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Pssscht … , don’t tell the robots, they don’t know it yet, muhahaha :wink:

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I’ve actually been having the opposite problem, my new character’s all have the exact same missions and start in the exact same place I was at with my main just with no weapons or items. Would this be a bug on my end?

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I believe so. Not sure.
In my game, my second character spawned right where you begin the first time.
The inventory was full with the weapons and items I got from the first character.
Only the mapinfo had been erased as to be able to explore the world once more and to rediscover all locations once more. When I approached the first buildings, like the church, the system gave me the info that I had found 9 of the 11 loots, the mission, etc… So it remebered my loots, my inventory and my XP level from my first character (with the perk tree being empty however offcourse) When I went back to the first character, I respawened also at the first spot the game starts. Anyway, this is what happend in my game.
Not sure what the “right” sytuation is. If the experiance I had is corrcet than you indeed have a bug concerning this thow.

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I found out that currently all characters share the same world. That means there is no way to start a new game without deleting all of your characters, and in doing so absolutely all progression. When I start a new toon though, I don’t get all my inventory like you do. It starts me completely empty, just with all the missions completed and stuff.

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Well, this is maybe where my game is bugged as to me it sounds logic that when you create a new character that has to start from scratch, this should also involve loots and weapons. I believe what it should do, when working correctly, is to basicly start a new game, empty loot, empty XP, and empty map. It seems as if I only got the empty map part.

I surely hope it was your intention to start all over since it must be quite awefull to loose everything.

When my “empty map” issue happend I decided to run trough the whole map rediscovering
the most needed Fast travel spots first. In your case, if intended, I just would do a quick revisit to the best weapon staches.

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It was my intention to start completely fresh, yeah. I’m playing through the game with some friends but wanted to have a separate solo campaign without progressing beyond where we played to as co-op. That way I could have my own experience to go through at my own pace, with my own solo mission-set/gear-set, and jump right back into our co-op campaign right where we left off.

Right now, I’d be able to start over except the missions and the map, which is what I wanted to reset. I just don’t want to delete everything to do that.