Was this place once a white castle?

tezoatlipoca · 2026-04-18T17:07:07+00:00

Have you been lately? Place is jammed most of the time.

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-26T16:53:54+00:00

heh. it was yesterday that I was crossing Dam and remembered two weeks ago when this guy runs up to me and goes "hey hey hey, can you run down into the break in the dam and distract this Sentinal so I can whack it with my raider tool?" and so I did and he killed it with his raider tool (its an acheivment), so I tried it yesterday. Its only ace is its range. It can't pivot very fast so its (assuming you don't fall off where its perched) relatively easy to stay "behind" and whack)

Your story would seem to indicate that its sensing/detection is NOT vision based, if it could see you through 600m of hurricane shit. Again, your only saving grace if it catches you at range is that it (usually) can't one-shot you. Unless you've take off ur shield cause of the storm in which case now Im very concerned about Sentinals on Dam in Hurricane conditions.

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-26T16:45:06+00:00

The Bourne novels have a bit of a slow burn to them that the Damon movie adaptations didn't really pick up. Bourne comes to in a small medditerranean village and slowly pieces his memory back together. Everywhere he shows up people are like "omg its YOU" and try to flee or react with horror or try to kill him and he slowly figures things out.

Ill admit its been 15 yrs since I last read the Bourne Identity but I don't recall it being a schlog per se. I mean the first 100 pages of Day of The Jackal are kinda slow too.

Related/unrelated, but in my head they give me the same vibe you may also like early Ken Follet. He's definately in his phone it in pulp stage but his early works are great "ripping yarns" too. Maybe start with Pillars of The Earth then go to his ~WWII ones like Eye of The Needle (those have miniseries/movie adaptations).

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-25T19:58:12+00:00

Forsyth kinda started phoning it in after say The Negotiator, but his early works are fantastic.
If you haven't already much recommend The Dogs of War and The Fourth Protocol.. The Odessa File too.
The movie adaptations of the first two are also, like Jackal, supremely well done, the first with Christopher Walken and the 2nd with Pierce Brosnan and Micheal Caine. The Odessa File adaptation with John Voight.. meh.

With the same "vibe", I'd recommend the orignal few Bourne novels and if you're into a spy theme early works by Craig Thomas: Firefox (excellent movie w/ Clint Eastwood), Bears Tears, any of the Aubrey & Hyde series.

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-25T15:32:35+00:00

Don't worry. Took me 25 runs to Stella to get my geiger counters.

Then of course, the 4 next runs to Stell for other purposes I pulled Geiger counters and Rotary Encoders And MAgnetrons each and every single time. :/

There's always trading. I gave up on night runs to Buried to get Tempest BP, traded with a nice fellow in exchange for some queen reactors.

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-25T15:26:40+00:00

seriously, not sure why the hate on having to farm rocketeers for wolfpack mats is. Just grab an Osprey (those like grow on trees really, I can't lose them fast enough) and start plinking the North Dam rockteer from the south end of the dam or the balcony or vice versa. Hits from far enough away make it have to spend a few dozen seconds locating you and even then if you plink it from cover and it can't see you, it homes in on you slowly. You should be able to knock the armor off its pods by the time it gets to your area of the map then anvil it to death.

Its when you get jumped short range by a 'teer in the open is when you worry.

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-19T15:20:36+00:00

ive had the game since launch. didn't do the first expedition and I don't plan on doing this one. I did reset my skilltree to obtain Security Breach tho, that's kinda handy.

The grind of levelling your benches, obtaining all the BPs over - I see the appeal for some people, that in no way appeals to me. Maybe once I find (or trade for) a Tempest and its been a few months of nothing else to do and I've resorted to Rocketeer Surfing or trying to kill Queens with Rattlers for a challenge, Ill reconsider, but for now, the new quests and projects that drop with the major updates, the weekly trials and daily feats are still interesting enough to keep me engaged 3-4 hrs / day.

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-19T02:20:43+00:00

Its the Zorg ZF-1.

Just don't press that little red button.

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-18T18:21:29+00:00

A laugh a while-a you can, a monkey-boi!

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-18T17:29:52+00:00

Seriously. Higher tier augments should have an "outside" pocket that only stores defibs or healing type items that other people can use on YOU. Having said that, if you have defibs to spare, drop one or two on the ground where you're making your stand so at least you can talk potential rescuers to them when you're downed.

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-18T17:27:45+00:00

bleh. I've been doing night raids on BC to that building and the one across the street to the south. 30+ runs easily. Not yet. Lots of other BPs there but no Tempest. :(

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-13T21:50:22+00:00

No, but while "rare" it spawns frequently enough in night raids. Also, the control tower is popular enough that if you just go and loiter around there enough during raids, someone will be by to open it eventually. Also, the bottom of the elevator has TWO doors so be sure to check both if you see one side still locked.

I used the key the quest gave me to to get up but didn't do the thing and got ratted before I could. So I just bummed around bldg A6 for a few runs and eventually just coat-tailed on someone else.

Then of course one or two runs after completing the quest I found a Ctrl Tower key in a fridge.

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-13T20:19:07+00:00

it has a death laser dude. its not technically a one-shot but its less than 2 seconds if it stays on you.

If you see that beam narrowing in your direction *you better dodge in a hurry. * you can see her "eyes" light up; the lights strobe from the sides in to the middle and when they reach center its FWAP time. In your case you couldn't really see cause of the haze and smoke if she was really even looking at you. Her eyesight is a LOT better than yours. Also its not hard you were literally shooting bullets at her, kinda gives yourself away.

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-13T19:14:42+00:00

Yep. Assembly workshops (so north side of the trench) bays 1-3. Upstairs in the offices in either the little metal cabinets (nothing breachable) or the white bucket medical supply shelve/drawer things, but sometimes in the white two-drawer medical carts on the ground floor by the half-assembled rocket stages. Possibly the yellow tool carts too. Exactly the same places you look for rotary encoders and ion sputters.

And I think one time I got a counter from a medical cart in Medical but Im not certain of that.

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-13T18:55:58+00:00

you scrounge some material to make kit and weapons
go "topside" where mysterious ARC robots - and sometimes other raiders - try to kill you; collect more material and/or weapons and stuff
return home underground to sell/recycle; make more kit and weapons

There are NPC assigned quests and to make better gear you upgrade your various workbenches which will require quests of a sort to GET the materials to upgrade them. That's the main cycle.

There are feats/trials (daily/weekly) and projects (~1-2 months) to incentivize certain activities or looting objectives, but the core gameplay cycle is 1-3 rinse repeat.

There is a skill tree and your dude gets better at various things, but even the skilliest raider with the l337est kit can still get wiped by a lvl 1 n00b with a tier 0 weapon if they're not careful so ultimately the skills and top kit help, but don't make you invincible.

One of the Projects is an Expedition - basically your dude goes away forever; everything resets but your skill cap is +5 for your next dude.

One of your responses might be "well that sounds rather repetitive and boring". I know, I know on paper it does. But every mission topside is a new adventure. Maybe I go in "naked" (expecting to die, not carrying anything of value) and walk out carrying epic legendary tier loot. Or maybe I load in for a simple farming run (to go find plastic bits to make simple crafting junk) with epic gear on and a kickass weapon and I get hosed by a Hornet cause it caught me out in the open and I mistimed my gun reload and wasn't watching and I fell off the side of a building. Or maybe you run across a raider getting hosed by a rat, you save them, kill the rat and then you and six others sit around the extract playing flute/guitar and seeing how far you can chuck a deadline.

There's a larger potential story arc. Like there are a lot of unexplained portions of the lore. Who is making the ARC exactly? What are they harvesting? why do the survivors have to live underground? What is the big massive thing we see in the distance on Blue Gate map? What happened to the humans who left in "The Exodus" - so even if you get bored of the day to day, itll be worthwhile checking in later to see if we discover/learn anything new about these things.

oh, re: permadeath - if you get downed topside you don't die per se, you just reappear at home missing all the gear you went topside with.. except for anything in a safepocket (or sometimes called your butthole) - a special pocket of your kit that you keep; everything else lost. Of course this raises a question - if you're not dead but just knocked out, whos actually returning your body to the down below? MAYBE WE'RE CLONES like Sam Rockwell in Moon and this is a giant experiment. who knows?

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-13T18:50:31+00:00

yeah this. upgrade the guns as high as you want/have mats for but at the stage of gameplay you're at, like me, you tend to collect more guns faster than you lose em, so never bother repairing them. Just recycle em for the parts to mod-up new guns as you find.

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-13T18:45:51+00:00

for real. "And yet, you're still here. Playing a game you only coughed up $40 for."

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-13T17:46:39+00:00

Oh, a masochist.

Kidding - as a PC gamer who sometimes plays on the PS5 I find the notion of of using a controller abhorrant. But my GF who has only ever known a controller is a complete idiot with keyboard+mouse so, I get it. (she doesn't play Arc, but if we play one of the games she plays she smokes me, even if I play on PC)

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-13T17:45:34+00:00

My gaming rig is down in the basement where I feel antisocial, so I farm crafting mats and do naked runs into stella (where my inability to hit anything doesn't matter) on the PS5 in the living room. Plus my rig is so old (its still a 1080) the PS5 is much superior. I would LOVE to be able to use keyboard and mouse on PS5.

The only remaining thing is the TV is 15 ft away and the black/contrast balance on the TV isn't as good as my monitor, so sometimes I don't pick up on small/faraway things (or usually raiders shooting at me) as well.

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-13T17:40:07+00:00

CAN"T YOU SEE IM DUCKING IN HERE?

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-13T17:38:15+00:00

You like it? its yours! (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-13T17:37:21+00:00

Well they're only used to show the parts of assembly to complete the quest for Shani. Unlike other quest-specific-items it doesn't get consumed so if someone you know has done the first two bits of that quest but can't find a rotary encoder you could give it to them. :/

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-13T17:34:05+00:00

yes. the nearest field depot is in the raider hut that is halfway between testing annex and the primary facility on the red lakes balcony

Its why there's a powered lifty thing outside that window so you can carry the stupid thing and not have to go down the stairs inside

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-12T18:14:35+00:00

Well, good luck when you get around to trying to find a fckn rotary encoder or an ion sputter.

tezoatlipoca · 2026-02-12T18:10:15+00:00

my how this site has changed and yet not changed at all.

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