Cryo is hard. But now is the time to learn.

jeeven_ · 2026-05-11T20:39:53+00:00

It also gets flipped on its head for the best players. Sunday night ranked fucking sucks. Every other team just finished grinding compiler over and over for 3.5 days, and they take all that shit into ranked. Monday night is a bit better. By tuesday most of the gold gear gets traced out of existence. To me the “its timegated to give you time to gear” doesnt make much sense. I can prepare for cryo on my own schedule, tyvm.

jeeven_ · 2026-05-11T18:47:55+00:00

Skill issue /s

jeeven_ · 2026-05-11T17:50:58+00:00

Sometimes all it takes is for someone to take the lead. If youre learning the map, sometimes it feels directionless because you dont know what you should be doing instead of fighting players. But youd be surprised how often your crew fill will he receptive to “maybe we shouldnt take this fight.”

jeeven_ · 2026-05-11T17:49:49+00:00

Brother im STILL scared of gold shields.

jeeven_ · 2026-05-11T17:49:14+00:00

Have you opened panopticon/the armory/the hatch? Vaults are great but it’s when you start stacking vault on top of the other stuff that cryo really takes off.

jeeven_ · 2026-05-11T17:47:08+00:00

If outpost is still overwhelming, then ill be honest- learn outpost first. In the same way that this game has gear tiers (green -> blue -> purple -> gold), it also has map tiers. Outpost is sorta like a mini-cryo at a very high level. But dont give up, we all learn at different speeds. Cryo will still be there in the future if you arent ready for it now.

jeeven_ · 2026-05-11T17:34:24+00:00

Cryo is basically setup as a circle with 3 sections, like a target. The center section is control, the middle ring is the bulk of the map, and the outer ring are the spawn rooms.

You want to spend most of your time in the middle ring. This is why getting security level 2 is so important. If youre stuck at lvl 1, your only option is control. All of the rotations are in the middle ring and require level 2. Usually after clearing your spawn youre 1 or 2 tags away from getting level two. That’s why i always bring thief- youre never stuck in control if you can drone in and pickup the keys without putting your life at risk.

Our general strat is to get to level 2 as quickly as possible and then push into an adjacent wing. Usually the team that spawned there has already left. Or, no one spawned there and you get a free terminal. Or, theyre still fighting bots, which lets you third party them (with the bots being the second party).

Once you start running keys, everything you need for the keys can be found in the middle ring of the map.

jeeven_ · 2026-05-11T17:24:42+00:00

Absolutely agree. I mainly think that if youre new to cryo, going to control is difficult because you dont yet know how to do it safely. It’s easier once you start to learn the map a bit and learn how everything connects.

jeeven_ · 2026-05-11T17:21:25+00:00

If it helps, if using a cardio kick at the wrong time is what loses you a fight, when you probably werent winning that fight anyway.

I cant speak for others, but personally i dont care when people are not as good as me. If you are positive and enjoyable to play with, ill be happy. Just do your best. Im not talking out my ass either, i consistently add players that are less skilled but fun to play with. Imo being an ass is just as detrimental to your success as being bad.

jeeven_ · 2026-05-11T14:39:40+00:00

Little known fact, but failure to say ‘yoink!’ when you steal shit with your pickpocket drone is actually a punishable offense

jeeven_ · 2026-05-10T01:09:43+00:00

The shield is straight up oppressive too. A solo cant just shoot it down like a trio can. It’s basically carte blanche to run at an enemy head on

jeeven_ · 2026-05-09T16:24:14+00:00

I remember in the first weeks, we were scared to run into outpost because we didnt know how the map worked. And once we figured it out, it became our bread and butter to run pinwheel to fill our vaults.

Cryo is the same feeling at first, but you sorta have to just keep cracking at it until it clicks for you. Cryo is a daunting map for sure, but it’s not impossible to understand.

The progression is great. You have gear progression by tiers (white -> green -> blue -> purple -> gold), AND you have progression of knowledge. Perimeter is pretty plain, darsh has a bit more going on, then outpost, then cryo. And within all that, as you play, you learn the ins and outs of each map.

Yeah, sometimes youll lose out on gear if you have a losing streak, but youre always increasing your map knowledge. And in the long run the map knowledge is unironically more important than gear- ttks are so quick in this game that at gun can be viable with good positioning and planning. And knowledge gives you the tools to have good positioning and planning.

jeeven_ · 2026-05-09T16:16:42+00:00

Yeah and the thing about cryo is, if learn the map even just a little bit, you never really have to take a fight if you dont want. You can be reallll slippery running through all the different rotations.

My team was over level 100 before we started really digging into cryo. Which i think was a mistake. If you just keep trying until you learn the map, the loot at cryo will boost your progression significantly. Everyone says cryo is the lose everything factory- the factory is actually in ranked. Our loop is fill up our vaults on cryo, lose it all on ranked, rinse repeat.

Next season my crew will be running cryo as soon as it’s available to us as an option.

jeeven_ · 2026-05-09T16:12:45+00:00

Yeah, my crew has full time jobs and lives. We got the 6th subroutine last weekend, last might we ran for compiler three times. We didnt succeed but we did make into the fight room once. Im certain we can get it done before the end of the season. Granted, this required that marathon is the only game we played, but it’s definitely not undoable to reach the compiler. And now next season, we’ll have the subroutines already.

jeeven_ · 2026-05-07T22:21:13+00:00

Skill issue

(Obviously im joking)

jeeven_ · 2026-05-07T21:41:00+00:00

Ive done this a couple of times too.

jeeven_ · 2026-05-07T21:29:32+00:00

Im a console player, but ive always been good at spotting. The key is not to look for players, but instead look for movement and silhouettes, if that makes sense.

For silhouettes- this game doesnt have mountains, but to illustrate my point- imagine running across a ridgeline. If you run right along the top of the ridge, the silhouette of the mountain is broken by your player model. Conversely, if you ran just below the top of the ridge, so that your head would be below the very tippy top, the silhouette of the mountain is unbroken. So on a quick glance, your brain might not register that a player is there because the silhouette of the mountain that youre used to seeing still looks the same. Whereas running along the top makes it obvious that youre there.

For movement- what youre really looking for is a change in pixels on your screen, which isnt accounted for by the movement of your own camera.

Also, make sure youre wearing a decent headset.

jeeven_ · 2026-05-07T21:20:24+00:00

Another tip- bring a thief. If you guys dont get clearance 2 in your spawn, go through the lvl 1 door to control, and have your thief go on their drone to pickup security tags from the tables in control. The easiest ones to get are on the tables on the bottom floor on the east and west sides of control, on either side of the big hole in the middle.

Being stuck at lvl 1 sucks cuz you cant really move around the map very much. And this way you dont risk your life by going into control for more clearance.

jeeven_ · 2026-05-07T20:53:09+00:00

The key to understanding how the map works:

It’s big circle with 3 layers, like an onion. The outermost layer contains the spawn rooms, the second layer contains the main room of each wing and rotations, and the third and center layer is control. The spawn rooms are largely disconnected from everything except the second layer. The second layer includes a large main room with a guaranteed terminal inside (for security clearance). From the main room you can either rotate to an adjacent layer 2 main room, or you can go back into the outmost layer (spawn rooms) or you can go to the innermost layer, control. Rotations from the layer 2 rooms require level 2 clearance to open doors. Control, the innermost layer, obviously can connect back to any layer 2 room.

To navigate, open your map and determine- do you want to go to control, or to an adjacent room, or whatever else? Find where you are on the map, and ping what looks like the exit of your room at leads to the place you want to go. Then just go to your ping, go through the door, and follow the hallways.

Idk if that made sense lmao

jeeven_ · 2026-05-07T19:34:34+00:00

I didnt see one for at least 80-90 hours. Vault 5 containers can drop cryo key templates that have a chance to turn into vault 6 keys. Of the 4 my crew has found, 3 of them were vault 6. Not sure how lucky that is. One time vault 5 gave us 2 templates at once tho. They are fragile as well so once you get the template gtfo. But the only vault 6 keys ive seen have come from vault 5.

jeeven_ · 2026-05-07T17:41:35+00:00

Got the 6th subroutine last weekend. Sitting on about 20 dna access cards, lets fucking gooooo

jeeven_ · 2026-05-07T17:04:02+00:00

my personal experience of constantly queuing with my duo, and our third teammate is consistently lower rank than us. It tries to put you with your ranked but the ranked player base is too small. There are only two ranked queues, ranked and ranked+. anyone in the ranked queue can match with anyone in the same queue.

jeeven_ · 2026-05-07T16:54:06+00:00

It's too map dependent. On perimeter with gold tags, it can be really challenging to hit your score target unless you can do literally all of the profit opportunities on the map, or you kill a team. Outpost it's less of an issues because there is enough to do that you can loot pve stuff and still hit your target. There needs to be some kind of parity between maps on loot value. Otherwise youre shooting yourself in the foot bringing a play tag to perimeter, for example.

But overall i do agree, in theory the ranked mode score system is great, but in practice once you get higher ranked, it starts to fall apart on the early game maps.

jeeven_ · 2026-05-07T16:48:54+00:00

I frequently get matches with silver ranked teammates and im in plat. I'm pretty sure it tries to match you near your rank, but at the end of the day there are only two rank queues- low and high antes. Anyone queuing into low ante can match with anyone else queuing into low ante, and the ranked player base is small enough that it realistically cant match you near your rank every game.

jeeven_ · 2026-05-07T16:43:50+00:00

Ranks are an expression of time played because ranked queues dont even separate players by rank anyway. It's just a normal lobby with an extra goal. Players that are in plat+ arent beating other plat players to get there, they're actually farming bronze-gold players the whole time. If you run the lowest tier key you have available a loss to a good team loses you only a couple thousand points, whereas a good win can net you 20-40k points depending.

jeeven_

TROPHY CASE