u/Glocky_McGlock

Hi there,

after the 1.0 release I haven't found too many helpful posts or threads regarding Lightkeeper's quest Return The Favor in PVE and the difficulty of eliminating PMCs in the mountainous area around Sniper Rock on Woods.

Personally, I remembered this quest as incredibly tedious and tiresome before 1.0 already, however, after the release of 1.0 it has become even more frustrating in my opinion.

With this post I want to share my insights from my recent quest completion with those who are currently struggling with this quest. Maybe this helps you with the quest progression:

What did not work:

• Hosting local games: My first 15 raids on Woods were played locally and felt simply completely empty. I only encountered dead PMCs around Sawmill because of Shturman and his guards completely obliterating them. I couldn't even hear any gunfights or grenade explosions across the map for most of the time in these raids. I was constantly patrolling in huge circles around the entire mountain area and I couldn't find a single PMC at any time. Camping the Cultist bunker or Sniper Rock was a waste of time.
• Online games during daytime: When PMCs spawned in they mostly killed each other (BEARs vs. USECs), were killed by Shturman and his boys again or were taken out by SCAV Team Six. Camping the Cultist bunker or Sniper Rock was a waste of time once more.
• Trying to bait PMCs inside the kill zone by firing loud weapons or throwing grenades etc.

What did work:

• Online games during nighttime: Since there's a lot less SCAV traffic around the map and Shturman and his boys don't get aggroed as easily, PMCs seem to spawn in much more often - or might just have a much higher survival rate - while staying on their programmed paths, which sooner or later leads them through the kill zone.

To give you an accurate overview of how I operated I have documented my quest progression this time -

1. Blue circles: This is where I have encountered PMCs early on in the raids. I tried not to trigger/aggro them to avoid screwing with their pathing through the kill zone later on.
2. Red Xs: These are the positions I was patrolling to and from - the two positions close to the BTR stop called Junction are the rock formation next to the "triangle" as well as the car where you have to place the WI-FI camera The bear who sat into a flaming car for Fence. The last position is the Cultist bunker close to the village area.
3. Yellow crosses in the kill zone: Those are my de facto PMC kills. As you can see, the southern and eastern side around the mountain is somewhat a waste of time. I only made one kill inside the bunker and baited one PMC from the village inside the kill zone - while killing four more outside of it.

https://preview.redd.it/euulqo7axq1h1.jpg?width=943&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1e26a2709b3d8065bc87fd11947f067ed0c7f073

Constantly patrolling between the rock formation and the burned out car was my best bet and it paid off relatively quickly.

Some PMCs came from the sunken village woods heading towards Sawmill, some came from the USEC camp heading towards the Cultist bunker, others came from Sawmill heading towards the sunken village/Cultist bunker.

In one raid I managed to get 6 kills, in other raids only 1-2. Within seven night time raids hosted on servers I had managed to get all the kills required to complete this extremely annoying quest, though.

From my experience I should mention that there are no specific times when PMCs moved through this area as was mentioned in other Reddit posts - I have encountered PMCs on the western side at basically any time into the raids, early on, mid-round and late-raid. Also, I finished this quest using NVGs only, no thermal scopes or anything - because I simply don't like using them.

I hope this helps some of you. Cheers!