u/orientalmushroom

End of season 1 was amazing. My friends list ballooned up, the discords were popping, and it felt like the game was really doing some cool stuff. I had so much fun.

Meanwhile the only good thing to come out of Season 2 reset has been Sponsored Survival Outpost. Getting rid of ranked, not keeping Cryo open the whole time, not turning on all events on all maps, and hell, even the login rewards for the last 2 weeks were purple kits. Even that gold template week was fun, just give everyone gold keys!

My friends list was empty on Sunday. No one wanted to play, not the sweats and not even the newbs. Lots of offers to Sherpa people through compiler went unanswered on Saturday

I know they’re planning a lot for December but frankly it seems like very little effort and thought had been put into the reset.

I’m not sure how to sum it up aside from saying that it feels like they don’t even want us to play the game.

Please let me be clear, I’m not talking about having new content. I am literally just talking about recycling content they already have.

It’s in stock in the UK store but looks like licensing won’t let them officially sell it. I love this edition and was eyeing a used copy that sold (doh!) and now not sure how to get a copy of this edition with Margaret Atwood’s introduction

for those who haven’t read it, it’s a beautiful non-fiction book about pesticides and its impacts on the environment.

but the really impactful thing to me is how a book changed federal policy in the US. Chemical companies (like the lovely Monsanto) did a ton of smear campaigns against it and lots of the public still trusted them. Eventually President Kennedy formed a committee to look into it and a lot of the science was validated and policies enacted.

It’s such a lovely piece of environmental history. But I also think it’s also an important piece of literature history that I think is probably never going to happen again with the way our media and reading habits have changed so drastically.

Tldr: stop dropping your evergreen consumables every time, because they’re some of the highest slot:value items in the game, and there are runs where it is simply very worth it to exfil full of consumables. I know it’s not the sexiest thing to exfil with consumables, so I’m not saying do it every run, but it will make you will stop running out of meds.

—

I see a lot of posts complaining about med prices, and I do think meds should be slightly cheaper than they are now, but I also think the high price is important to balance the risk of bringing in a lot of meds to basically ignore bots and extend fights.

Now that that’s out of the way, guys, I play with way too many of you who say you’re broke and then drop your meds for a blue valuable or a random gun.

1 stack of green heals is 1.3k (900 for shields) and takes up 1 backpack slot. 1 blue valuable is 1.1k and takes up 2 backpack slots. That means that 6 green heals is 2.6k for 2 slots and 6 green shields is 1.8k.

So you would need 3 (!) stacked blue valuables to beat the cost of 6 green heals or 2 blue valuables to beat the cost of 6 green shields. Meds are some of the highest slot to value ratios out there. You can essentially imagine 6 green heals to be 2.5 blue valuables.

Obviously there is an intangible value too (e.g. Do you value the codex entry? Is the gun your favorite gun? Etc), but the actual real resource you’re battling in this game is backpack slots and vault slots.

Those people you kill that bring in like 9 stacks of green heals? Just take them all and exfil. That’s a HUGE haul despite the lower number value that the end screen shows.

When you’re infilling, pick up the depleted heals and shields for topping off chip damage. I always pick these up until we kill our first team, even in Cryo runs. So many people leave them behind and run out of meds.

Infil with 2 stacks of green heals and 2 stacks of shields, and 1-2 single blue heals/shields if you’re playing in higher lobbies. You honestly don’t need more if you’re using depleteds for top off.

Don’t bring in full stacks of blues or more than 2 stacks each of greens unless you’re really rich and simply don’t care. You will either die and lose them all or you will kill the other team and leave behind their meds, so you’re just wasting stuff.

You can apply the same concept to ammo. If you aren’t super rich, sometimes it’s simply worth exfiling with a bunch of heavy ammo (400 creds per stack). I don’t bother with light or volt because their slot value is low, but you can essentially imagine every single stack of heavy ammo is 4 unstable gel or lead. That’s a lot of looting that you’re saving. Especially true if you use lots of MIPs guns

I love this implant. I run it every single game as even the blue implant is really good, and it's good on every single shell. It provides you with sustain when you're doing PvE and you can do some crazy stuff with it in PvP.

I've killed so many people with Misriahs and won so many team fights I probably shouldn't have with Parting Gift. It's absolutely busted and I can't find a reason to run anything else in the leg slot this season unless I'm completely out of them for the day from the armory.

Getting a huge heal on both downs and elims is wild. Get out your knife and skin people before they inevitably adjust it, and honestly I think it would be warranted.

You don't need mizzy to play Cryo successfuly. You don't need gold everything to play cryo successfully. You don't even need purple shields to play Cryo successfully. You don't need to be super experienced to play Cryo successfully.

The only thing I think is really necessary to play Cryo and win consistently is to go in with a pre-made, whether it's people you play with already or randoms from Discord or elsewhere.

Seriously. If you're afraid of going into Cryo, just try it out. It's the most fun in the game and 1 win can offset 5 losses.

Yes, sometimes you'll get spawn pushed by people. Sometimes you'll lose a fight against a team with mizzies.

But the thing to understand is that Misriahs are only really busted in Cryo with a coordinated team. That means 3 people with mizzies, 3 people who know how to push together, 3 people who know how to abuse bubbles to force close range, etc. Otherwise it's just the best close range gun, and for the most part you can kill uncoordinated people with the battle pistol before they get to you.

Even people with misriahs are often bad with it because it's a very different play style than normal. It can be hard to aim and hard to know when to get the gun out correctly. Lots of people with misriahs don't have the experience with it to use it.

I guarantee you I run into more people in Cryo who don't know how to effectively use bubble shields (spoiler: it's also me) than all the stories about absolutely juiced teams spawn pushing you at 1.5 minutes or whatever.

Yes, it sucks that you can't fill into Cryo and have it be consistent. It's not impossible, but it's extremely inconsistent. But it is the endgame raid that's the hardest content with the best stuff, it's not going to be easy. Most of my Cryo games this season have been with random pick ups from the official Marathon or the Dads of Marathon discord. I've made friends with a few of them and now we will semi-routinely run together on other maps, too.

I have all 6 sub routines and a few compiler kills now. I go in often with blue shields and sometimes with purples. I am not good at PvP.

Please don't let all these weird ass posts in this sub scare you off of Cryo. The more you play it the more you'll realize it's just another map to learn where you win some and you lose some.

Don't be afraid to do it. Load in with a blue battle pistol and start killing.

You start at North Relay almost every game, but sometimes you’ll spawn around or South Relay as well. I haven’t had a single Hauler spawn.

Starting at North, grab every single Unstable Diode you can. Move to Station and grab every Unstable Gunmetal you can. Move to South Relay and grab every Diode you can find.

If you still have time, then you can swing by Overflow and grab every Biomass you can, but usually I prefer to do an event if it’s up. Either way, you’ll end up close enough to Final that you can book it there pretty easily.

You’ll end each run with about 50-80 Diodes and 40-50 Gunmetal. 50 gray salvage is about 5.5k Cradle exp. A full stack of grays (500) is about 55k exp. It’s the most consistent farm you can do for cradle exp right now, and you’ll also end up with all the greens and blue salvage you need for your upgrades, and you level up your factions too by doing the regular contracts.

You’ll have runs where you can hit Intercept or High Value Target and get out with purples. You’ll have runs where random UESC will drop keys for you (I’ve had 3 runs where a bot dropped a compromised Perimeter blue key that I hit the same run). Swing by Hauler and get some biostripping on a few runs, too. Hit up the safes and get blue/purple valuables.

Honestly I’ve been having more fun on Perimeter than Night Marsh, though the Night Marsh loot was definitely better, this has been way better for actual progression.

Do it before they inevitably nerf salvage matter transfer. Go Thief if you want to make it super easy with mobility and loot vision.