Misery Black Road And The Armed Zone

[arottweiler]

Never tried the Black Road start for Misery 2.2 before so have given it a go. The main screen shows TAZ is installed but I've noticed the bandits at the Ranger Station are not carrying random weapons added by TAZ and are carrying vanilla weapons. The traders still stock the weapons and ammo added by TAZ but it seems the Black Road start affects the weapons enemies are carrying. Does Black Road make a lot of changes to the game or is it just the beginning that is different to normal mode?

[Martial.Lore]

I have no idea about TAZ, and my experience is largely (but not exclusively) from playing 2.1, but I don't think The Black Road makes big changes to the usual Misery game, or at least fewer than playing the daytime radiation mode: in the latter, I found that some things like mutant spawns were changed, but again, I only played with daytime radiation enabled once.

Upon reflection, I think most of my starts have been Black Road starts so I'm not the best placed to make concrete comparisons. My impression is that Black Road only changes your starting location and gear, normally. With TAZ, I have no clue....

[arottweiler]

I think you're right. I used money raised from clearing out the Ranger Station to buy a leather jacket and screen helmet and three carbon steel plates and have now cleared out the Waste Plant and most were carrying weapons from TAZ. Made 600,000 from the weapons so I can now buy a scientist suit and visit all the choppers. This playthrough I'm focussing on getting to Road To Pripyat as quickly as possible and might not bother with Strider.

[IIIIlllIIIII]

The black Road start does Not affect that. My guess is thats its RNG

[arottweiler]

Seems like it could be random but it was strange how every bandit at the Ranger Station had old, worn and rusty weapons the first time I try Black Road with TAZ installed and they usually have some top tier weapons. It made the hobo stage harder but I'm now in a good place and have got One Of Ours, Friend Of Stalkers, Diplomat and a few other useful achievements and only have the helipad left before I trigger the Jupiter Plant missions. I always like to get everything done at once when I'm at the plant so I don't have to go back there. Get all the documents, tools and sort out Black and his squad in one visit.

I thought Black Road might be the same as Dark Mode which I wanted to try. I'll be trying that next because like the idea of a vampire type existence.

[Redrick]

It's really different, the hours you can go outside are shorter than the hours you can't (9pm-6am), so you have a lot of spare time indoors. You tend to sleep for longer obviously to kill time but that makes you hungry more often, so food is pretty important. That's where cooking comes in. I would spend entire night times doing nothing but hunting boars and flesh, then a lot of daytime hours cooking.

And those nighttime hours go by pretty fast if you lose track of time so I would 'wake up' at 8pm and plan what part of the map I was going to explore and farm stashes, or what specific quest I was going to do, and map it all out literally with a pen and paper. If you just throw caution into the wind and don't plan your outings and manage your time you find yourself far from base and the sun coming up , then you're in trouble, you have to drop what your're doing (literally in some cases) just to make it back to base before 6am and hope your loot is where you left it next evening.

Dark mode is a whole side of Misery that doesn't seem to get a lot of attention but from a role play perspective but I found it quite enjoyable and immersive.

[IIIIlllIIIII]

Meh now i think my save file is corrupted. I can't climb the ladder to pripyat. I mean i can but end up beneath pripyat in an empty void. GG

[Heresy]

I think Dark road may hold back on traders inventories as you progress a bit. Rather than seeing tier 3 items for example after earning the wealthy client achievement (earning over 200,000 ru) seems to upgrade the traders inventories to tier 3 in normal mode but not dark road. I assume the tier 3 equipment is gated by some more story progression I just dont know.

As for making 600,000 ru off a WPP clear... You must of tweaked the weapon durability settings for that to be possible. As finding a weapon over 50% condition is I think impossible in stock Misery.

[arottweiler]

Nothing tweaked it's from making enemies surrender.