I’ve been moaning. I admit it. Empty boxes and scratching about Safe Houses looking for more Ammo.
I changed strategy, and in the light of it, I think I’ve been wrong.
I got so sick of spending two hours backtracking every session, so went forward with whatever I’d got. I found more ammunition going forward than I had going backwards, where I had been fighting the same ground over and over again. And I found I was dying less, which is always nice. Perhaps it makes me more careful, but in spite of nothing in the coloured boxes, I found I had enough to advance all the time.
Yes, there are some places I love to revisit - there is a farm at the far east of, is it the second Island (the one before The Farmlands), where every time you go there are flares lying on the ground, if you’re short, and only one runner patrolling. The camp on the isthmus always has 7.62 ammunition and a radio, sometimes defended by Floatbots, sometimes by a couple of runners. The first Hangar (safe house) always has cool stuff in the three ammo boxes (an Exceptional Rifle Sight - silencers - compensators etc.). But going back to those takes ten minutes, not two hours and thereafter we go forwards!
Likewise, I think the repawning isn’t as drastic as I thought. The rural patrols respawn in toto, but target defenders only respawn in part, so you have achieved something. The Fort in the South Coast region had two tanks, three or four Hunters and perhaos twenty Dogs, but when I went back to look (curiosity) I found only one tank and a single Dog in the main open area and three Dogs in the second. That makes a difference. So. Going forward is the future.
Having said that, I still want a Campaign mode where every kill is an achievement and makes a difference, and where every damaged robot stays damaged until you finish it off, three weeks later, just as the release video promised.
Glad to see it’s working for you. That’s the loot system working as intended, so when you keep on the move into new areas you’ll find new loot. The farther north you go, the better stuff you’ll find.
Watch out when heading into the Mountains region though, lots of Hunter packs there and few spots to catch your breath. There’s a “safehouse” there, called Hjalmars Stuga. I’ve learned the hard way, the place is a deathtrap. Hunter patrol paths seem to cross it in several directions, last time I was there I ended up killing 20 of the bastards. So, stealth is paramount there.
Building on what @Zesiir said, do be especially careful in the mountains. On top of the very high numbers of hunters (more even than the further north areas in my experience), the extreme variability in elevation in a lot of the area makes it very easy to end up trapped on a cliff while you’re running from bots.
On the note of loot though, the command bunkers, once you have a few unlocked, are actually really good for resupply runs. Make sure you go into the room right off to the side of the room with the warboard in each to unlock the safe house (you have to do it after interacting with the warboard though). Vesslan and Minken tend to be mostly disappointing, but Uttern and Mården can be really good for restocking stuff like grenades and mines. Nyhamnen at the south of Östervik is also really good for restocking, though it takes a while because you have to open a bunch of shipping containers to do so (it will be way better once they fix the issue with loot in toolboxes) (the safe house nearest to this is at Kaptansvillan, just north of Nyhamnen, be careful though, I quite often find an FNIX harvester nearby the first time I go there each session).
Also on the note of loot, the game seems to try to mostly avoid giving you ammo for stuff you don’t have. I never found much .50 BMG or 5.56 until I got the .50 cal and the AG 5 respectively, but once I had both, I had no issue getting lots of ammo for them (although the 5.56 ammo seems to ‘replace’ 7.62 if you have both guns). It also appears to preferentially give you ammo it thinks you need, which is not always what you actually need (I quite often get handgun ammo off of tanks I kill despite not actually needing it).
Yeah, there it is - I am continually offered 9mm handgun, when I use the handgun so seldom that I never use anything but armourpiercing. Every box has 25 rounds of the stuff - I dream of finding 25 7.62 rounds at a time! I have to make do with three or four.
I tried the 5.56 and abandoned it as useless, just as the real round is. A 7.62 hits with about four times the power (not in this game but IRL). I wish it could work out that I use more 7.62 than anything else.
I search every room in a Bunker, but only go back to those which don’t spawn ticks three feet from your head. I like Minken - there are always interesting things in the last lorry in the hanger (the one closest to the open entrance, so to be careful!).
I try to avoid Hunters whenever I can. I don;t have enough ammo to take on 20, but only three or perhaps four. I’m not good at it yet anyway - afterwards I keep thinking of things I had in the Inventory that would have helped. Some safe houses aren’t safe at all - I avoid them.
One of the pleasures in GZ life is calmly watching as a Hunter patrol goes past before doing what I was going to do anyway.
Could you get to the DEVS that the ammo algorithm should reflect not so just what you have little of, but also what you use most. According to the stats page, the game knows who I have killed with what - so it should be an easy shift. What do you think?
BTW, I hit a Hunter smack in the fuel cell and the explosion took out the car alongside it, and the Hunter with it, but I didn;t get my “One shot Hunter kill” medal. Any reason? If not, how is it to be done?
Ironically I am at a place called Nydala and had the bloody robots running over me inside the barn, they didnt seem to end so after dying will give that place a wide berth. Now for the “Ironical” bit, I used to live across the road from a place called Nydala!
Yeah, 20 Hunters is an extreme. But you encounter one pack of four, then a Seeker comes by while you’re fighting and calls for reinforcements, then another pack is drawn in, and so forth… Seekers seem to move in packs as well, I’ve encountered up to 10 at a time in certain areas, and they can cause a lot of problems for you.
The way I do it if I’m out walking; as soon as I hear a Hunter’s ‘warning call’ I go into a crouch and slowly make my way out of there. 5/10 times they lose track of me, especially with plenty of foliage in the way.
I do know that ammo drops more for the current weapons you’re using, especially from enemies. I think when it comes to the one-shot achievement it has to be a one-hit kill with a weapon, not a car explosion.
Naa the police shot a guy for waving a water pistol about… Thats why we sold the apartment and bought a house
But if you meant robots running about, I never saw any
Okay, so where do you hit a Hunter with one round, if not in the fuel tank?
I never use the pistol first-up - but it literally offers me ten times as much 9mm handgun ammunition than 7.62 which I use all the time - 2 rounds of 7.62 for 21 rounds of 9mm handgun, box after box. I think on balance I’ll report it as a bug, then at least the DEVs’ll have a heads-up to look at it.
Talking about Hunters, I just unlocked lock-picking, so went round to all the locked doors I could remember (same cr*p with a 7.62 ammo!), and thought, “I can take the bloody Tank, and there’s three places with locked doors in the Fort on the South Coast.” So I crept up to my normal snipe position (I’ve worked out how to kill that Tank) and was just waiting for the Dog to pass the other endo fthe tunnel, so I could snipe it out and contentrate on the Tank, when I heard something behind me. I looked round and there were four Hunters in a row on the other side of the wire gate, five yards away solemnly and silently watching me. Um… Er… sorry! Just passing through… Nothing to see here… Bye…
Caught between the Tank and four Hunters, I didn’t make it. Should have, but reached for the wrong defence! Oh brings up another thing - Adrenaline is rare as rocking horse poops these days, and I have only one or two at most. Had to save the one I had on me and spawn away. Hate doing that.
Well, yes, but the explosion of the fuel tank wouldn’t be accelerated by the power of the round - the exploding fuel would dwarf it. I think I deserve my medal - it was a stunning shot!
It’s not intended to be realistic. But if I had to guess what was in those fuel tanks the Machines carry around, I’d say it was some kind or experimental (and highly unstable) fusion tech.
For the hunters, the best tactic I’ve found is to use buckshot with the Sjöqvist. I focus on the tick pods first (if they have them), then any shoulder mounted weaponry and the gun on their arm, then just focus center mass. Removing the weapons and tick pod does a ridiculous amount of damage to their effective health, so it usually only takes a few well placed shots after that to kill them. Weak points other than the weapons, tick pod, and fuel tank are the box-like things to the left and right of their head.
The tick pod looks like a giant metal bedroll mounted just below the fuel tank on the back. They’re wide enough you can hit it from the front in the space between the arms and the torso, and stick out far enough that you can hit it from the side pretty easily too.
As far as getting them to stand still, the trick is to find a place they can’t get to to jump on you. If you’re unreachable for a melee attack, they’ll usually just stand in place somewhere they have line-of-sight and try to shoot you (and then stand around looking like idiots when you shoot their guns off). Best example I’ve got was one fight I had with 12 FNIX models in one of the southern neighborhoods in Östervik. I noticed them from a few hundred meters away, and set up in a balcony of one of the houses that faced in that direction. First shot I took to engage was from far enough away that I didn’t actually see it hit. They just grouped up and sat there trying (unsuccessfully) to shoot me while I picked them off one by one. That time though, I went for the shoulder cannons first, since they all had gas launchers, and those could hurt me.
I love it when they do that, and it’s not unreasonable, that a machine sometimes becomes confused. I like it when Tanks do it, too. It’s my only chance against them…
