Carlos on Hard II ... bs

[Noquid]

I think I've taken 1 health boost, 2-3 stamina boots and the rest have been focus. The Carlos fight is a joke. He's still over half health when I'm out of stamina. The knife does a sliver of damage and he kills you in two hits. I've got the dodge down but like I said he's still more than half health when I'm out of stamina. It's such a huge difference between Hard 1, it's like I'm hitting him with a wet noodle. Gonna keep trying bu not the way I wanted to quit this game. Awesome up to this point.

[DeadBeat]

Only take two swings at him at a time. He's easy to beat you just got to be patient. Anymore than two swings and you're in trouble from his counterattacks. Oh and don't try to grapple him it's a complete waste of time because he's broken it every time in my experience.

[Noquid]

If I'm only swinging 2 times and have to dodge 3-4 times I'm out of stamina before I even get him to 2/3 health.

[DeadBeat]

Is your stamina maxed out with nero injections and did you spec all the way into the survival tree to get all the stamina regen bonuses?

[Noquid]

This is barely half way into the game! No, I'm not maxed at anything, I'm level 20-something. Have put one into health, 2-3 into Stamina and rest into Focus but focus is at least 3 from full. This is Hard 2. I tried attacking just twice and I'm out of stamina well before he's at 1/2 health. I think I have the stamina regen buff, pretty sure anyway. Most were put into Ranged, then Survival, and melee is still just the 2nd tier. All I ever read is to get Focus up asap which makes sense but this mission is a brick wall, I'm screwed. I guess I'll reload to a previous save and double-check, not like I'm winning this fight.

[DeadBeat]

Stamina is king in this game. I've beaten the game twice on Survival II (no NG+) and what I do is fill the stamina bar first till it's maxed and also max out the survival tree. Then I put a point into melee for the stamina cocktail and then I max out the ranged tree. I don't use focus at all for combat because as long as I'm mobile I can get away and I learned how to be accurate in real time anyway. The bottom line is you're going to have a really tough time beating Carlos with low stamina. I didn't have a problem with him because my stamina never ran out.

[Noquid]

1 into Health, 3 into Stamina, 9 into Focus. Just Tier 1 melee, Tier V Ranged, Tier V Survival (the stam regen). I'm level 23.

[DeadBeat]

Originally posted by Noquid:

3 into Stamina

There's your problem you're in hand to hand combat with low stamina. I don't know what to tell ya other than something you might not want to hear.

[Noquid]

Yea I figured that. This sucks. Thanks

[DeadBeat]

:(

[Sprinkles]

It can be done with low to no stamina upgrade but there's a little bit of RND involved and I wouldn't exactly call it... "fun". Just go level up a little bit, get a couple more stamina injections and you'll be good.

[Noquid]

I ended up starting over and went the Stamina route with more melee skills and the stamina skills from Survival. Carlos went down first try, tore him to pieces. Almost done with the Story line on Hard 2.

[Sprinkles]

Nice. Many people say stamina is the most important, but if you decide to play it again after your done with this playthrough, you may find you don't even need many points added to stamina at all as your efficiency of movement will just be fundamentally better from all the practice.

Like for example, many people will feel they must always sprint from hordes, but you only need to use sprint to momentarily gain distance from them (they can't even hit you from a normal jog - try it sometime). But even then, if there's plenty of elevation changes or obstacles you can hop over, they're just so slow at transitioning that you hardly have to hit the sprint button at all. Same with the Carlos fight. As soon as you memorize his visual cues for when to dodge, that fight isn't very in depth and kind of short lived actually (compared to some long winded Dark Souls/Elden Ring boss fight for example). I kind of wished for more, but I understand this is more of a story driven game then some in-depth twitch action game so expectations are to be adjusted. Fighting the hordes is the ultimate high points. :)

[Heretic]

its basically just a quick time event, you just need to be paying attention to Carlos' movements, they are very telegraphed.