This is going to be a thread all about the new tank “The Reaper”. I have no information and I would like the community to add advice and tips about “The Reaper”.
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1st step, shoot the shield projectors. These can be located on the knee joints, and the joints above the head. They are circular with a red dot in the middle. They can only be damaged during when the shield is on cooldown. You can tell when the shields are up if the Reaper is glowing red. The shield projectors will explode when destroyed. After the shields are down you can start doing damage. First thing to take down when the shields are destroyed is the machinegun, it does the most damage. Also take out the tick pod. Once those two are down you can either keep the rocket, so it stays still a bit more. Or take the rockets as well, so it has no weapons other than thermobaric. The thermobaric is the most devastating attack. It can one shot you. The only way to dodge is to run far enough away, or hide behind something. Running far away is harder as the range is large. You can hide behind trees, and small rocks sometimes. Other times you hitbox just happens to catch the blast. Elevation up or down does not protect you from the blast.
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Reaper has same tank AI as basis, but overclocked. Faster reactions, but as dumb.
It will start to walk into smoke if something damaging it from it.
As said, earlier - fist thing to do is destroy shield generators (knobs on knee and “shoulder” joints/hinges).
All are accessible from frontal projection in default tank’s fighting stance, may be needed shooting off kneepads.
Fighting in plains (i.e. Farmlands) is gonna be very difficult, since it’s MG is almost impossible to dodge.
Sometimes it won’t react to returning fire, if it can’t see you - rule of thumb you can’t see lower head and lamp on front armor plate. If you stuck with it spawning on plains try to lure it into more favorable environment, but it will try to stick to the place of spawn. Otherwise prepare a lot of smoke, flares and medkits. Pulling off solo is extremely difficult since you have to deal with a lot of minor things simultaneously.
Thermobaric blast (a.k.a. “blazing butt-hurt”) triggers on health percentage. Thresholds are 45 and 15, could be more. Doubles as call for reinforcements.
I didn’t managed to disarm Reaper due to unfavorable environment, but leg weak spots are good to go and not protected that well (9mm FMJ can penetrate hips and knee hinges)
Stunlock with exp. shotgun is viable tactic as long as you get shields destroyed, can manage reinforcements and able to run away from ground zero in time. And a looooot of heavy shougun ammo, due to Reaper’s health pool.
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Any tips for spawning the reaper
Get region level to above 21, and have 7 rivals or below. Then once those requirements are met, go around killing machines. Do not kill rivals unless decreasing to 7.
For me it seems it will not spawn so easily anymore as the first time. I keep getting a 8th rival instead of the reaper. Then I go and kill that 8th one and kill more machines but it been two days now.
Edit: it’s all good now. Got the level up to 23 / 24 and the reaper comes to reap.
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Advice? Dont try and sledgehammer this dude also bring a kjillion medkits and stims. Exp PVG as always is a lifesaver. Also kill the rocket dogs he spawns asap the missiles don’t have a red beam and can do some serious damage if there is little cover.
It kind of surprising that no one has suggested don’t get hit or get good. It’s a nice thing to see a community that aculy cares.
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Yeah it’s a pretty good community here. Also with the reaper is it better to try to remove its weapons after shield nodes or just shoot easier weak points?
I would argue weapons. As the mg does a lot of damage if you get caught by it. But there is also points for the other argument. With weapons it tends to stand still more. And I think does the thermobarric less often, as when it has no other attack then gas, and thermobarric, and you kep your range, it will do thermobarric often. I personally take out both weapons, as it damages the reaper a good amount. And the thermobarric has a larger window to get in cover for.
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Appreciate it that was a fast response👍🏼
No problem. Good luck in your reaper fights.
Thank you really looking forward to them
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The Reaper is very good at sticking close to other rivals I have found and it’s quite annoying having a level 4 tank shooting you take out any rivals nearby first from a distance if you can and don’t make the mistake of ignoring 2 harvesters on the way! We had to fight the reaper with about 40 hunters harassing us
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So, playing Solo in skirmish difficulty, after 20 minutes of hide and seek at the Farmlands, I destroyed my 1st Reaper .
Reminds me of those Big Boss battles in games like Metal Gear and Resident Evil Series.
Pvg90 is a must, and at least 20 medkits of any kind.
The Reaper with the Thermobaric attack can destroy any other machine, runners and seekers are instantly destroyed, the others Machines I can at least guarantee they will be damaged.
What I found curious and it might be a bug is that provided the Reaper has at least 4% health, he can kill himself with the Thermobaric attack.
Unlike the normal Tanks, his missiles have a different attack angle, they can reach you even if you are behind buildings, so take that in consideration.
As it´s been said before, the first thing to do is to destroy the shield emitters, then it´s your call what to attack next.
I did not shoot the Machine gun and the Missile Pod, because it might increase the chance to get weapons if they are not destroyed, but that is debatable, you guys should do what you think is better or easier for you.
The Loot was pretty good, ammo, part of the FOA Suit and an experimental weapon.
Not impossible to destroy it Solo, just make sure that is not in an open field.
Happy hunting.
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Finally I got my first Reaper to spawn after a relative annoying phase of levelling up the marshlands region far beyond 21 because I already had 8 Rivals there. So I levelled it up to 24 what was not really easy due to the lack of the usual machines and hopping from safehouse to safehouse… That was/is a rather meh mechanic and I wouldn’t be too sad if that get changed in the future, maybe e.g. to making the Reaper a 9th Rival, but only one Reaper per Map, or something like that.
At least that would be more convenient than having to level up a suddenly nearly empty region, then killing a Rival hoping to get the Reaper to spawn and not another Rival which in turn lowers your region score again when killing it… I took out a military harvester Rival as it was the lowest class Rival I had there.
My Reaper spawned north of the Stenmyra church so I had enough cover from the beginning, at least I thought so…
Having a bad and obscured view on the reaper behind some bushes/trees and the need to expose myself more than I initially wanted killed me the first time, I took some hits from the incendiary rounds and one of the rocket runners finished me off… lol
After a seemingly endless fight and about 1500 7.62 AP rounds, about 150 .50 AP rounds, some 12G Birdshot from the Exp shotgun and a few HEDP rounds from the M49 (right in his face , I needed that at that moment… ) the Reaper went down in his own final shockwave…
The loot was ok, I nearly got my wasted 7.62 AP rounds back, a good 3000 rounds of 9mm FMJ pistol ammo, a blue police uniform jacket and FOA5 exo gloves.
Thanks to the new crafting system I shredded the 9mm ammo and crafted some .50 AP rounds to fill up again.
On a sidenote: immediately after the Reapers death a new Rival spawned, a FNIX hunter… It had a rather short life… and now I’m trying again to get a Reaper but the second Rival was a FNIX harvester… r.i.p. …
That levelling system is a totally annoying mechanic…
My 2 Ct.
P.S.: so the Reaper is doable in skirmish solo mode
We got our first Reaper at Broskulla with plenty of hiding spots against the thermobaric waves.
The first impression was rather meh… It ran around like a crazy, so it was somehow hard to aim at. We did not manage to destroy the shield emitters, but shooting them looked like disabling the shields for a while. Some good look, but we spent thousands of 7.62mm and got 5000 9mm FMJ 
So some hits for devs to improve the things:
- if it’s a boss, give it a boss health bar. It was annoyingly long fight without knowing the health status, our characters don’t have skill points in intel skill
- There is no story about the Reaper - what about traveling to FOA4, have a short fight, then the Reaper submerges into the tunnels (lift) and emerges in FOA2? Or something similar? Just give it a story
Finally, as it seems I was not the only one who lost the save while the Reaper showed up, my wife got better luck, but I had to use an older save.
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As this is going already -
Anyone noticed that a levelled rival is being destroyed in another region after killing a rival?
Having reports of the Reaper being on a game timer in the same region. For example - kill reaper in Farmlands, at level 22, progressed all the way to level 25, with 7 active rivals…no spawn,
Restarted game ( not through dash crash for a change ) killed 1 seeker then it appeared.
This then led me onto thinking there is an XP threshold for it. So I’m currently rebuilding and will log the XP difference and see if there is a pattern.
Finally, trying to figure out its HP, and it’s value on the XP chart.
I have found there is a significant way to damage the Reaper but requires a few items in the inventory to work. I’m testing this week and will update once I know it’s 100%
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Got in my first with The Reaper yesterday, and I even decided to record the battle.
This is on Skirmish difficulty.
Have a look, if you’re interested. 
A few basic tips, if you don’t want to find out for yourself:
Summary
Shoot off his 4 shield generators first, that was kind of obvious. (On shoulders, knees.)
His weapons appear indestructible, but shooting them damages him of course.
There’s only 1 escape from a thermobaric attack. Hide behind a building! You can’t outrun it.
The lower it’s health, the more desperate it becomes. Thermobaric attacks come often, and he also spawns Runners more frequently.
Final bodycount: 1 Reaper, 3 Hunters, 2 Seekers, 6 Ticks and 40 Runners!
Getting The Reaper to spawn was a bit of work. I decided to go for Himfjäll, since my region score there was already 20, with 5 rivals present. Long story short: Some pesky Hunter rivals kept appearing as my 6’th rival, and 4 times I had to blast them, and then get the score back up to 21 or 22 or whatever.
Here’s how my score looked when The Reaper finally appeared:
Short summary: It was really a fun fight! Certainly more challenging than anything so far. 
The Reaper’s AI appears to be the same as a normal Tank, except for the fact that he can charge you at any time in a fight. This AI allows you to make simple uses of terrain in order to defeat Tanks a bit too easily. If these big boys were a bit smarter, they’d at least try to get the high ground on you…
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Sod doing it on Himfjall,
Also, spawned my 4th reaper 35 minutes after killing my 3rd last night so the 2 hour window idea may be shot.
Farmlands is defiantly the way to go though, fair balance of enemy’s and XP across the whole region. 4 / 5 hotspots as you go NW as confirmed by @0L0, great starting point and work your way south / south east to F23.
3 pieces of the suit so far, was a great battle at F23 last night with Reaper III. Feel free to check the twitch channel for the battle itself.
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