Enemies are so frustrating, any good guides?

[Just another Ian]

I really want to like this game. The story is amazing and for the first 12 hours the fights were great. The were puzzles that did not take forever to complete. Now battles take like 5 minutes each and I have to constantly scavange for resources. For example a Ravager is weak to fire. It took like 30 fire arrows to bring it down. Whenever I put the blast wave trip caster down the enemy would stand there and shoot at me. The flying bird robots somehow magically dodge every terrwhatever arrow I shoot. Those arrows our expensive to make as it requires finding those shells. For some odd reason they placed enemies super close to camp sites. Enemies spot me from miles away and always pursue. The game has no chill. Its like they want you to be in constant battle and exploration. Controller aim is twitchy when you need percision and slow when you need to snap towards an enemy.

End of ramble. Yeah, maybe combat just isn't for me in this game. I want to see the story though. Are there any good guides you know of that makes combat easier? I really don't want to reduce the difficulty to easy though.

[RageOfPerun]

Use the concentration skill, like Always! And learn the advanced doge skill

[roba]

You are not supposed to take them down using only fire - use enough arrows to make them burning, than switch to damage / tear arrows and shoot at their vulerable places (Focus can tell you). As long as they are burning, the fire will do the damage, firing more fire arrows on a already burning machine does almost no damage.

The Glinthawks (I supposed those are the flying robots you mention) have chillwater canisters on their chest - use tear arrow to remove the armor and then hit them into the canister, they will explode with freeze - then shoot them with damage arrows for 300% damage thanks to the freezing effect.
If you mean Stormbirds, those large flying machines (always just one), these are end-game enemies and very hard to take down. Freezing them and then shooting for dmg always woked for me.

I'd suggest to use a mouse for this game, imo it is much easier than a controller.

As for the detection rate - there are different outfits and one of then, I think Silent Hunter? is the name, offer stealth stats. You can also add stealth modifiers to outfits that have slots. It makes HUGE difference. With 30 Stealth outfit I can walk literally next to a herd unnoticed. When I use some heavy armor, every machine in sight is alerted immediately. The game gives you hint about this by the noise the heavier outfit do. So if you are an explorer, use the Stealth ones. I did entire the game with them.

GLHF

[CindyK_JA]

I've used my XP to build stealth armor/skills and foraging skills. It's a bit spendy, but using the Tripcaster wires and bombs to blow larger beasts up (in full or in part) has been a great strategy until I reached a level where I could take some damage (got the herbalist and healing skills early on). It is cheaper if you have Disarm Traps so when things don't work out, you can reclaim your resources.
I'm still trying to perfect the art of strategic shooting rather than blasting until I run out of ammo!!! Good luck!
PS I did invest in some heavy armor to use when going into battle, but use the Stealth suit about 90% of the time...

[GODzilla]

You will get stronger in time and once you get to the real tough mashine, the though of a ravager doesn't scare you. There is one general hint though I learned far later than I'd like to admit:

Don't just run from enemies to avoid damage. Many machines are much easier to read and fight if you keep them in front of you, facing them.

For instance, the jump attack of a ravager can easily be avoided by jumping towards it, not away from it. And if you're not very skilled with the gamepad you will have a hard time keeping your enemy in view while running away from it, having it in your back.

Some machines wil also always outrun or outjump your running or rolling, so don't bother.

Apart from that, Post #2 from Roba is another very general but definitely important tipp. An enemy that is burning, frozen or shocked always only opens them up to easier attack, but damage and / or breaking off vital components is what's taking them down quickly.

Freezing in particular in combination with damage is a true killer. If an enemy is not particular resistant against freezing attack, once it's frozen, every part of the machine, but especially the vulnerable sections, will take much more damage from any damage related attack.

[Voca]

Originally posted by Polyhedrion:

For example a Ravager is weak to fire. It took like 30 fire arrows to bring it down.

Ravagers takes about 9 fire arrows to take down, Sawtooth 6 arrows. In Ultra Hard difficulty.

When you use fire arrows, make sure the burning bar fills up or you are just wasting arrows.

Not 70% filled, not 90% filled, not even 99% filled.
100% filled.
Once the burning bar fills up, the enemy takes huge burning damage for a while which is where the main damage of fire should come from.

[Zloth]

Have you been into a cauldron yet? You get the ability to override machines in those things. Get the machines fighting the other machines! (Just don't stay close when the big ones go after each other.)

You only get XP for machines if you do the damage that finishes off the machine. (In MMO terms: do lots of kill stealing from your own pets.)

I presume you've been crafting? Particularly the resource bag? And opening those reward chests for quests completed?

[Eye of Newt]

Originally posted by Voca:

Originally posted by Polyhedrion:

For example a Ravager is weak to fire. It took like 30 fire arrows to bring it down.

Ravagers takes about 9 fire arrows to take down, Sawtooth 6 arrows. In Ultra Hard difficulty.

When you use fire arrows, make sure the burning bar fills up or you are just wasting arrows.

And then after the status effect is triggered, SWITCH ARROWS. Using more fire arrows will just waste them.

[MULTIPASS]

I have to second the suggestion to use frost wherever possible. Anything that's not resistant to frost is easy to take down with volleys of triple hardpoint arrows once they have the freeze effect going.

[Eye of Newt]

Originally posted by orksmith:

I have to second the suggestion to use frost wherever possible. Anything that's not resistant to frost is easy to take down with volleys of triple hardpoint arrows once they have the freeze effect going.

I have legit seen people blast Thunderjaws dead with three freeze + three hardpoints in like 30 seconds.

[JL::Jose-Juan Kenobi]

For Ravagers specifically, you can try the "easy" way: 2-3 hardpoint or tearblast to knock down their gun. Then tie it up with the Ropecaster, pick up the gun and finish it up.
You facing more than one, tie them up both, kill one then the other. You facing 2-3 of them plus a group of scrappers and watchers, tie them up both Ravagers, shock arrow to scrapper, take down the rest quickly.
Scrappers go down incredibly easy by one well placed hardpoint to the scanner, and other to the bat pack on the back.

I think the key in this game, even in lower difficulties (I just finished it in Normal) is know exactly which elementals to use against what, ideally to prepare proper outfit + resistance potions, and you caught off guard just pause, think, select outfit +weapons, etc. Focus on their weaknesses. And know when to retreat.
A shock arrow on a Scrapper will disable it and disable few small-med machines nearby.
Freeze arrow to freeze canisters, Fire arrow to blaze canisters, etc deal tremendous amount of area damage
Hardpoint arrows on weakpoints (i.e. Fire/Freeze Bellowbacks) will destroy them in just a few shots while causing a lot of damage to nearby machines.

A stealth outfit with few stealth mods, plus unlock the Silent Running (or something like that) Skill will make you almost invisible, except on highest difficulty.
You can switch outfits, weapons, craft ammo in the middle of the battle (yeah kind of cheating really but it is what it is )

final words: brute force just doesn't work, and is a waste of resources. target the weaknesses.
I had a super hard time initially when facing for example Demonic Scorchers. But now they are a breeze of hot air

[pcdeltalink]

It’s also worth mentioning that for Ravagers (and really any enemy smaller than Thunderjaw or Thunderbird size) that the skill that lets your spear more easily knockdown targets and opens them up to finishers means that with proper dodging most enemies don’t even need arrows used on them.

I was amazed going through the game just how much you can do just with spear. This also lets you save ammo and materials for the more important targets that need those status effects.

[CindyK_JA]

This is great information. Thank you! It took me about 40 hours to figure out that brute force resulted in kills and then countless time foraging for ammo resources! I'm still honing the strategic approach but getting much more efficient! That spear is quite a weapon!

[Zuffy]

Upgrade your weapons, there's a huge difference between the starting bows and fully-modded shadow bows.

To spend less time on/in combat, as others have said, use the stealth outfit and put stealth mods on it. With high stealth rating and on normal difficulty you can pretty much hug* the machines without being detected. This makes the spear silent-strike attack extremely useful.

Also, don't underestimate the usefulness of the sling weapons, as an example; using the elemental sling to lob freeze bombs allows you to not only freeze multiple enemies in one go, but also create areas of frozen/freezing ground. The blast sling is equally useful, making it very easy to cause high damage to multiple enemies.

Originally posted by CindyK_JA:

<snip>That spear is quite a weapon!

Indeed! In my current play-through, roughly 1/3rd of all Human and Machine kills are silent-strikes with the spear. I reckon another good chunk of those are from spear melee attacks. I wouldn't at all be surprised to find that 50% of all the kills are from the spear.


*What?? Watchers are adorable!

[Code]

Originally posted by Polyhedrion:

I really want to like this game. The story is amazing and for the first 12 hours the fights were great. The were puzzles that did not take forever to complete. Now battles take like 5 minutes each and I have to constantly scavange for resources. For example a Ravager is weak to fire. It took like 30 fire arrows to bring it down. Whenever I put the blast wave trip caster down the enemy would stand there and shoot at me. The flying bird robots somehow magically dodge every terrwhatever arrow I shoot.

are you attaching the weapon MODs to your weapons?... if you really wanted, you could use WeMod which would give you Unlimited supply of everything you need and once you become use to the game, try playing without WeMod.

[Sunny]

As a rule of thumb:
-For the big guys get a rattler and freeze them before unloading your barrage.
They take like double damage and go down super fast.
-For all the smaller stuff just use fire arrows and switch to normal arrows once they start burning.

If you have alot of trouble, the best guide is your notebook. It reveals all the weakpoints of said monsters.
Also make sure you modify your weapons. A standard hunting bow with 2x damage and 1x fire mods served me well.