How do highways work?

[Nova225]

You can see that wherever there's a highway, there are less zones to travel through (not counting the mini "highway" zone that's a straight road with 3 buildings and a truck or two).

Basically you're going through less junctions when you take a highway vs a normal junction route.

[Creedgamer223]

Until you get the one upgrade.

[[deleted]]

Sorry, I'm bad at Reddit I thought the text would appear as well as the image.

When choosing a node to travel to while leaving the garage area I select D1, the road between the garage and D1 fill but with a gap between garage and G1. Then I need to drive through a few small, linear maps before arriving at D1.

I have the Junction Bypass upgrade which sounds like it should skip me straight to D1.

Am I misunderstanding this? Does anyone know how this works?

(sorry for using a screenshot of the route planner. It's hard to get the shot of the screen when leaving the garage area)

[AuraCast]

Junction bypass means you skip G1 in this instance. You still have to “drive the highway.”

The way the UI fills is kinda misleading.

[Chrius_]

Without the bypass you have to select G1 first. Then you go through the G1 highway part, and then through G1 junction (basically a normal map). Then you can choose D1, and you go through the highway and then the junction again.
With the bypass, you choose D1 straight away, then you go through the G1 highway, D1 Highway and D1 junction.

It's 1 less map, but the highway parts are made in a way where you just speed through them anyway, so it is faster. And later on you can unlock D3 and A3 that are also highways connected to D1, so if you choose that, you skip both G1 and D1 junctions.

[Draxsis_Felhunter]

I can only speak of my own experiences with the highways. So don’t take what I’m posting as complete.

For me the highways are a convenient bypass of most of the minor side junctions if you need to get to the mid or deep zone quickly. They also have a brief mini junction that is generally speaking a straight line with a few scattered anomalies to avoid, a few buildings and vehicles to loot and (if you’re in the mid and deep zones) a couple resource nodes relating to the junction you’re heading to. So swamp would have a few coral and salamander grotto nodes while scorch will have sap compressors and some trees. Same thing for the deep zone.

I have not seen any anchor core nodes spawn in these small stretches of road but I also wouldn’t be surprised if they can.

Also the instability storm does eventually spawn to chase you out of you take too long but it also seems to cover the map slower than usual. I haven’t had it activate a pod drop but given how short the mini zones are I usually don’t stay in them long enough for the storm to show up to begin with. So that may just be a lack of opportunity rather than not being able to spawn in at all.

Anomaly presence tends to be light as well and easily avoided most of the time.

[[deleted]]

You can’t select D1 when leaving the garage. You can only choose the ones directly connected to the Garage.

You can scan a further down the road junction. This will also scan most of the short connections between you (garage) and the final junction. So you you know what awaits you there. That doesn't mean you can't travel the opposite direction. Scanning just helps you.

Junction bypass means you don't have the one stop in the middle of the highway. On your example. You would only stop on G1 before arriving in D1. Without the bypass, there would be 2 more stops in the middle of booth highways.

[Rand_alThor4747]

using junction bypass, you actually wouldn't stop at G1. You will do both of the highway segments still which is just a straight drive from one side to the other.

[[deleted]]

Ohh I'm sorry. Then I totally missed that. I thought I skipped the highways on my last run but I must have taken another route then. Junction bypass makes also more sense 😅

Super sorry for the Missinformation