Tips for a bad player?

[DaMoney]

I love this game, but I'm horrible at it. Could someone give me some advice as to how to get to at least downtown?

[Banzai]

Hacker is one of the easier classes to reach the highest level with. As soon as possible, get the perk that decreases your "doing something" time, and the one that makes it harder for others to see you. Once you have some cash, hack the casinos to increase odds and do some gambling. Pretty quick you'll be a mostly unstoppable force with too much cash, just keep hacking yourself a clone to draw fire (or send in to aggro targets) and you'll get to end zone.

Only real danger with being a hacker is being caught by cops, so be aware of where they are and how they patrol. The perks decrease this threat significantly once acquired.

[Madguy]

You could also play the game with the Sandbox mutator active and toy around until you start to develop some better strategies.

[Kajnake]

Look at your items instead of just hoping for the best with a baseball bat and a shotgun with 3 bullets

[HonorableFool]

Hire people and stock up on food,use the people to do your biding so you don't have to take dmg.

[Sentient_Toaster]

Have to adapt a little bit to different zones.

Slums -- fairly low threat. Nobody starts out hostile unless you have negative traits to that effect. Good place to pick up some easy food early on (e.g. breaking down wooden doors of empty apartments with fridges; certain items or abilities make it easy to quietly raid occupied units, too). Mostly, keep an eye out for the police if you're going to do anything that might annoy them, like tampering with air intakes. Remember that they can be useful, e.g. if you're being pursued by an armed goon with a pistol, maneuvering so that the goon accidentally shoots a cop can result in the police doing your dirty work for you.


Industrial -- have to watch out for the saws and flame jets inside buildings, in particular. Pays to watch a bit so you get the timing down. Hackers can make things a lot easier in strongholds by disabling security or releasing gas to get the guards out for a while.

You can shut off power more generally by disabling the power box somewhere on the level. There are usually police patrolling in the area, but there are ways to get them to destroy the power box for you (e.g. dropping a holographic gorilla right next to it). or to lure them away w/ boom boxes and what-not. They're also hackable, w/ Tech Expert.

If you don't have a ranged weapon yet, try to get one before you hit the next stage.


Park -- this is where things can get ugly if you're not particularly fast and you don't have good ranged firepower, because you will be ambushed by axe-crazy cannibals who can hit for substantial damage in melee, and a lot of other opponents will probably be melee-focused gorillas. There's less to hack here, and more straight-up combat.

Ideally, you have a ranged weapon for this. If you don't have one yet, you might want to take down soldiers at a military base, since they'll have some guaranteed.

No cops, unlike all the other zones.


Downtown -- avoid the mobsters if possible, unless you have a specific reason not to. If you're a Tech Expert hacker, you can hack the teleporters to prevent supercops from showing up. If you end up getting pursued by angry supercops, it may be useful to use the mobsters as human shields, resulting in a crazy firefight between cops and mafia. You can get a lot of machine gun ammo that way. ;)

If you're not a hacker and can't disable the teleporters, and you don't have lots of booby-trap items (landmines, say) you will want to take down Upper-Crusters running for the alarms.



In general, being methodical and trying to loot everything early on (e.g. all the chests in Slums and Industrial, all the fridges, etc) will get you extra XP and loot to survive Park and beyond. If you're a hacker, hack the vending machines (lower purchase prices, higher sale prices, clone a random NPC) for an edge.

If you have a variety of traits and rewards unlocked, you can have some very strong custom characters, e.g. using Laptop + Tranquilizer Gun + Ammo Processor and decent speed for a low-lethality run (speed is useful, because it takes 10s for a tranq dart during which your victim will be just as dangerous as ever), while combining a Kill Ammunizer and Ammo Processor with a Rocket Launcher or Machinegun can make for a solid murder-happy build.

You have a lot of inventory slots for a reason. Some items are quite powerful, e.g. holographic bigfoot and rage poison are both good ways to get NPCs to hurt each other without drawing any aggro onto you. Cyanide is brutally effective as a poison. The tranq gun will not be detected, even by your victim, unless somebody actually sees you fire -- it's silent and the dart is also unnoticed. Ammo processors are great for any gun-dependent build. Giantizers can be put in air circulators to cause NPCs to stomp around and smash their own stronghold to bits, or used on yourself if you want to go on a non-subtle rampage. Hypnotiizers can let you rob places without the NPC caring, haterators are also useful for neutralizing NPCs without dirtying your hands. And so forth.

[Iodized Salt]

Originally posted by TheFoXeletan:

....And you need to be prepared when you reach the third level because i dont know if its the unique disaster that happens but it will have 4 timed bombs hidden around the map and you need to take then in 4 or 3 minutes, i guess.

To answer that, the hidden bombs mission is one of the random disasters that can happen, it's not specific to any level.

As for Op, a piece of advice I can give is run up to a police box and destroy it when the mobsters start hunting you (thus spawning in a superop). When you have the super cop in, feel free to punch a mobster of your chosing then GTFO

[bambeck]

The biggest tip for playing as a hacker is to, whenever possible (which it usually is), do your hacking from inside some other building, and stay away from windows. The cops will never enter a building other than the police station, and owners in question-mark mode won't go through any doors they don't own, so you'll be safe from anyone who might get angry at you. You can even use a room in a do-not-enter building, as long as it's not patrolled.

If you can't do that, then try to at least get some other wall between you and your target building, because question-mark owners will usually only search the perimeter of their own building. And don't do any risky hacking until you have enough of the map explored to teleport away quickly, if it looks like the owners might be heading in your direction.

I actually find the simplest classes to be the Soldier, Gorilla, and Werewolf, though. Their solution to any problem is pretty much the same: Kill it. The Werewolf has the added advantage that, as long as you get out of the way before you change back into a human, nobody will be hostile to you in human form.

You can also play around with mutators to make some classes easier. For instance, if you're playing as a Gorilla, you can set the game to "no guns", because you can't use any anyway. If you're a Werewolf or Zombie, you might as well also add "no melee weapons". If you're a zombie, there's no downside to turning on "Zombies Ate my Game Balance", because they're on your side, and "Everyone Hates You", because they do anyway, and so on.

EDIT: Oh, and one other big piece of advice: Don't hoard items, because death comes easily, and no items are any good if you're dead. If some mission would be made easier by using some limited-use item, then go ahead and use it. Don't worry about "I might need it later", because that later might never come, and if it does, you can worry about it then. If you're really worried about it, then use a Clone Machine to copy the item before you use it, or a Loadout-a-matic (if it's one of your starting items) to buy a new one.

[BigCakeTwo]

When playing as the hacker, don't install malware on a hacked computer before completing downtown. if you use the elevator to skip levels to avoid repeatability I would recommend playing as a soldier for a wider variety of weapons at the beginning of the run or just farming cops or super cops for free ammo and guns. to deal with cannibals wait until they finish swinging their axe then hit the once back away repeat or just shoot them, the bushes shake when one is about to jump out at you.if you still are having trouble try playing the cannibal or the soldier as those are the most commonly spawned enemies in the park.

edit: also, I would recommend not using mutators until you have completed the game because they are virtually cheating (unless you want to make it more difficult).

[suejak]

OP, I sympathize, as I spent so long in this game dying on the Industrial floor.

After, uh, 22 long hours, I've finally cleared a run! With the Shopkeeper, no less... Selected at random...

I actually got to the top floor after Downtown for the first time ever and still managed to clear both it and Mayor's Village on the first try.

What I did differently this run compared to all the others is I took a very roundabout approach. Rather than walking in the front door, I started shooting switches through windows instead, if possible. Rather than kill all the guards, I killed only the ones I needed to and who didn't pose much of a threat.

Some of my proudest solutions involved turning enemies on each other. For instance, I needed to neutralize a machine gun-wielding wrestler in a Downtown mall. My plan was to fill the Super Soaker with Rage Juice and shoot a couple random people in the mall, setting off a riot. Instead, while I was checking out the windows, I was approached by mobsters who demanded my money. I backed into the mall, and then they started shooting like nuts. They hit other mall patrons, triggering the various thugs in the mall, and then it was an all-out bloodbath with cops joining and everything. I took the opportunity to pop the wrestler and that was that :)

Probably the most useful item in this run was the Rocket Launcher, which can both kill and blow holes in walls. If you can get the trait that prevents people from getting mad at you for breaking their stuff, it can be used to really shorten some missions.

For example, I had a hunch (but didn't know) that cannibals and soldiers hate each other or at least will fight. I needed to kill some cannibals in a maze and there was a soldier fort right next door, so I just shot 2 quick rockets that blew holes in both structures, and then the soldiers murdered the cannibals for me!

In other cases, the Hypnotizer items are great on the top floor for those gated communities where the bouncer takes your weapons from you. Also, I was lucky enough to get 3 x EMP bombs from a mission reward, which was a huge help against the Cop Bots.

About the Mayor's Village:

This was the weirdest one. I bribed the bouncer at the start so I could bring my weapons in (I had tons of cash as the Shopkeeper). My plan was to use the Boombox to at least keep the guards from patrolling so I could use a Glass Cutter on a bathroom window and sneak in to get the mayor's hat (and kill the mayor, I guess?).

Well, I messed up and all the guards and the mayor came out front to listen to the beatbox and dance, so there was no point in sneaking in. I used my cellphone to call some friends since I anticipated a fight, took a Crit Pill, and shot my rocket launcher right into the middle of them. 4 of 6 died on impact, and then the remaining 2 guards walked off like nothing happened... Kinda weird. Plus they were both "Aligned," possibly because I had the (upgraded) trait that made random people aligned with me. Or maybe not?