u/T_Gamer-mp4

Gonna be running triple assassin Traxus free kits. Smoke the area when you hear enemy shields break, volt thrower on approach and knife upon arrival. Or magnum team shooting with Arachne free kits. I’ve never seen an objective more catered to ratting & third partying before, cause you can steal 3+ runs of people’s time in less than 30 seconds.

Can’t believe they made event around key templates when the main feedback they got about key templates was “you should go back to how they were before” lol

my reasoning:

Point 1: all keys are easy if you lobby wipe.

Point 2: you will not always get teammates that can lobby wipe.

Therefore as Point 3: you will sometimes need to progress keys and potentially even open the vault with other players on the map.

Key 1 has the DRRVISH and is easy to open but everybody and their mom is going for this vault now. Gold squads keep giving up their lives in the hallway around this vault and I keep getting gold shields from it. Play it like you’re a rook in pinwheel and you’ll win a lot more than you think. The area up the ladder is also crazy for hiding. If you didn’t get the DRRVISH you probably won’t get much from the vault, but the demand for DRRVISH is so high that you’ll get all sorts of goodies from players.

Key 2 is just bad. The gun sucks, the loot is mid, and nobody else ever does it due to needing coolant. Charge rifle needs severe buffs to be viable in the world of Outland and Gold Zeus. Key 1 guarantees combat in a way that you have much more control over (you’ll know teams will likely be there and there’s way less bots), key 2 doesn’t give you that control at all and has no player loot to back it up.

Key 3 is the best one to do in crewfill. The warden fight is always in the middle of nowhere so you don’t need to worry about getting 3rd partied, the vault doesn’t need coolant, and salt wages is a very strong weapon for compiler killing (and killing in general). Items in the vault are decent.

Key 4 makes you do the combat event in panopticon, which has gotta be the easiest thing to mess with ever. If you haven’t lobby wiped, you need to have some sort of early warning system at the entrances and have a clean plan of exit. The gold circuit breaker you get is, IMO, the only gun in the game that compares to the DRRVISH. Other items in the vault tend to be worse than they are for vault 3 for me but the gold salvage chance is higher. If the gun wasn’t good, this would be in C tier.

Key 5 is a mash of keys 3 and 4. Tranquility warden fights are also easy to mess with, but it’s not as bad as panopticon battle. You’ve also got more options for running away… bring antivirus and a bubble of really desperate, and hide in labs until your enemies chase you up or leave. Items in the vault are usually better but I find the gun to be subpar compared to the other uniques.

Key 6 is rough. Needing to get sec4 is harsh, but the items are usually worth it if you can pull it off. Gun is mid, but the other items are usually quite nice. Harder to interfere with than other vaults… as long as you don’t take the vent exit. You’ll almost certainly need to kill another team for certs, and your first 10 minutes should be dedicated to wing rotations for monitors and certs. The risks balance out with the rewards IMO. However if you bring a key six into crew fill I am contractually obliged to slap you. Those things are rare goddammit!

A lot of people post about how they're too scared to ever try cryo, so I wanted to give some advice to them. Learn how to recognize bad positions, and do everything in your power to NOT FIGHT FROM THERE. All my lost cryo crewfill runs this morning involved somebody dying in these squares first, and then the remaining two of us needing to clutch a 2v3. I win 90% of the fights I take here when I'm not in the "red squares of doom and despair".

The zylbrad video mentioned above (https://youtu.be/q9R-hVf28MY?t=1001, this is at the timestamp) shows how insanely easy easy it to kill people here. They definitely get aim diff'd, but the larger deal is that they have no way to predict WHERE zyl will shoot from, WHEN the rest of the team will push, and HOW the team will push onto them (either dropping down, peeking down, or flanking).

For new players: if the bots are shooting you, fight from somewhere else. If the other team is through a tiny door and has a bend right after the door, fight from somewhere else. Most importantly: the least safe place to fight from is underneath the enemy team. High ground wins games.

If you're a regular cryo enjoyer, post other bad positions to fight from below. I can think of at LEAST three other spots with a 90% loss rate. if we all work together hopefully I won't have to watch as many assassins wedge themselves been rocks and hard places for no reason anymore, because I don't know how many more of this kind of loss I got in me