Solo mercenary

[BT]

What’s your setup for this one?

I find it really hard due to taking damage at the beginning and having to heal.

[spectator]

Before you could've probably done a LMG build, now not so sure. Now has to be stealth based one that eliminates as many loose enemy before going after the stuck together ones. Maybe one that relies on stealth kills and low AP weapons where you can make multiple attempts at a stealth kill.

[Tunnelirotta]

Melee Ivan, you are welcome.

[engager6]

Just finished my Lone Wolf playthrough with the IMP. LMG is still viable even after damage nerf, 2AP burst run & gun with Minimi & AP ammo still devastates everything at close range, including endgame highest difficulty commandos. Try to make IMP as sharpshooter / LMG combo, by limiting yourself to agility and dex trees. Use sniper rifles to mow enemies from afar and switch to LMG running and gunning once they get close or in crumped env.

Your AP count is absolutely critical then playing solo, so that is why max AGI is critical for your solo build success. Your #1 priority is to train IMP's agility to max, and dex and marksmanship after. Having high wisdom really helps with speeding up leveling but is not essential, you do not want to level up skills by actions, you want to buy needed journals in fleetown every 5-6 days to level up your skill gaps (both sections of fleetown has stands who sell them). With somewhat ok wisdom you will end up at level 10 in no time, much much earlier than any major battle in the game.

Since your IMP costs nothing you can take all the time in the world to sit around near fleetown and buy journals until you out of money. Don't waste your time and resources on useless activities like most side quests because you don't need XP from them anyway (unless you still want them for fun or narative reasons), focus on completing the game's main objectives and looting special locations with important good loot spawns, you need the toys to win. Reaching 50 mechanical ASAP or from IMP creation is critical, because you want only use heavy modded weapons with top performance, this includes early game, so take this into consideration.

Where is no meaning in taking outposts, since you will get enough money from selling the loot, you don't need to take any mines and have any outposts to protect them. Ignore those completely, only take them if they are on the way to your current objective and you can't go around. You can still take them for fun though or to scavenge some parts or ammo, but don't play like in normal campaing trying to take and hold, in solo play this will be extremely annoying, time consuming and useless activity with no benefit for you.

If you play carefully you can kinda ditch health because where is no benefit in it if you are not getting shot often, it can help in some tough fights but you can manage without it, use your precios points boosting elsewhere. STR on the other hand is extremely useful because it determines you carry capacity, you want to reach 100 at some point, this is crucial for solo play, because more slots are needed to carry arround useful equipment and special weapons, like grenade launcher or RPG.

Leadership - irrelevant. Most of use for leadership is buff in moving speed on world map, but since IMP is free, speed does not matter you and the leadership checks while do exist in the game are mostly non critical or essential, so you can go dump on that one.

Most important loot locations are: 1 - Abandoned factory (K14), possible loot: C4 explosives/Aug/AK74/AKSU/Minimi/PSG-1/armors; 2 - Colonel's fort (K16) for garanteed PSG-1 and frag/poison grenades ; 3 - box under the hill in C13 for MGL or M82. You may need to savescum a little to get the loot you need (do save on world map before entering). Be sure to attack fort on the Ernie island ONLY when you have recon data on it, you will be able to loot a box with big stack of C4 explosives right from the start, and with 50+ explosives you can turn that pile into 40-50 devastating HE 40 mm grenades you can launch from tubes on your modded assault rifles, this alone makes early game much much easier. You can go to K16 right away after clearing the starting island, evading fights on route, just talk to colonel and go to his intendants who will give you PSG-1. This way you can already have top gear even before starting to doing anything on the mainland at all !!! You may want to complete some quests in refuge camp to get full set of Deathsquad armor.

Only use equipment with no freemove penalty, like PSG-1 sniper rifle, Minimi LMG and deathsquad armor to keep your mobility that is basically your lifeline. If you need to use something cumbersome keep it in inventory and deploy only on demand.

[trojanrabbit]

I second Melee Ivan, he's harder to get rolling compared to Blood, but once he is there he is a beast.

[Red Wizard]

I just completed my run a couple of days ago with Shadow. Captured Ernie Village with Barrie first, then bought AIM Gold Membership and hired Shadow. He's great for melee and gets bonus AP from Lone Wolf. Running in stealth is also pretty handy as the sneaking around for melee take-downs normally takes ages.

[BT]

Originally posted by engager6:

Just finished my Lone Wolf playthrough with the IMP. LMG is still viable even after damage nerf, 2AP burst run & gun with Minimi & AP ammo still devastates everything at close range, including endgame highest difficulty commandos. Try to make IMP as sharpshooter / LMG combo, by limiting yourself to agility and dex trees. Use sniper rifles to mow enemies from afar and switch to LMG running and gunning once they get close or in crumped env.

Your AP count is absolutely critical then playing solo, so that is why max AGI is critical for your solo build success. Your #1 priority is to train IMP's agility to max, and dex and marksmanship after. Having high wisdom really helps with speeding up leveling but is not essential, you do not want to level up skills by actions, you want to buy needed journals in fleetown every 5-6 days to level up your skill gaps (both sections of fleetown has stands who sell them). With somewhat ok wisdom you will end up at level 10 in no time, much much earlier than any major battle in the game.

Since your IMP costs nothing you can take all the time in the world to sit around near fleetown and buy journals until you out of money. Don't waste your time and resources on useless activities like most side quests because you don't need XP from them anyway (unless you still want them for fun or narative reasons), focus on completing the game's main objectives and looting special locations with important good loot spawns, you need the toys to win. Reaching 50 mechanical ASAP or from IMP creation is critical, because you want only use heavy modded weapons with top performance, this includes early game, so take this into consideration.

Where is no meaning in taking outposts, since you will get enough money from selling the loot, you don't need to take any mines and have any outposts to protect them. Ignore those completely, only take them if they are on the way to your current objective and you can't go around. You can still take them for fun though or to scavenge some parts or ammo, but don't play like in normal campaing trying to take and hold, in solo play this will be extremely annoying, time consuming and useless activity with no benefit for you.

If you play carefully you can kinda ditch health because where is no benefit in it if you are not getting shot often, it can help in some tough fights but you can manage without it, use your precios points boosting elsewhere. STR on the other hand is extremely useful because it determines you carry capacity, you want to reach 100 at some point, this is crucial for solo play, because more slots are needed to carry arround useful equipment and special weapons, like grenade launcher or RPG.

Leadership - irrelevant. Most of use for leadership is buff in moving speed on world map, but since IMP is free, speed does not matter you and the leadership checks while do exist in the game are mostly non critical or essential, so you can go dump on that one.

Most important loot locations are: 1 - Abandoned factory (K14), possible loot: C4 explosives/Aug/AK74/AKSU/Minimi/PSG-1/armors; 2 - Colonel's fort (K16) for garanteed PSG-1 and frag/poison grenades ; 3 - box under the hill in C13 for MGL or M82. You may need to savescum a little to get the loot you need (do save on world map before entering). Be sure to attack fort on the Ernie island ONLY when you have recon data on it, you will be able to loot a box with big stack of C4 explosives right from the start, and with 50+ explosives you can turn that pile into 40-50 devastating HE 40 mm grenades you can launch from tubes on your modded assault rifles, this alone makes early game much much easier. You can go to K16 right away after clearing the starting island, evading fights on route, just talk to colonel and go to his intendants who will give you PSG-1. This way you can already have top gear even before starting to doing anything on the mainland at all !!! You may want to complete some quests in refuge camp to get full set of Deathsquad armor.

Only use equipment with no freemove penalty, like PSG-1 sniper rifle, Minimi LMG and deathsquad armor to keep your mobility that is basically your lifeline. If you need to use something cumbersome keep it in inventory and deploy only on demand.

What skills do you choose at character creation?