Battle tips? Trouble with Harvesters and the Hunters they spawn.

[Kysska]

Hello,

I'm playing co-op with my partner on Adventure mode (The easiest mode I think?) and Harvesters are just brutal. (In combination with the Hunters they spawn at least)

We don't really have a lot of time to hit the Harvester before we're just *bombarded* with gas bombs that have a *massive* area of effect, or forced behind cover with machine gun fire. Not to mention the endless huge mortars from the Harvester itself. It takes ages for us to make any progress in combat since killing the Hunters feels pointless when the Harvest keeps spitting out more so fast. And it blows through or supply of med packs.

And to make it worse it feels like Harvesters are absolutely everywhere: near every road, every town, sometimes more than two and often with several Tanks around too. Makes avoiding them near-impossible, and hard to complete quests.

It's making progressing in the game not fun, and may be the reason we end up quitting :(

So I was wondering if anyone had any tips that might make going through the game less of a miserable experience?

[BastardSword]

Try and sneak up behind them, then unload everything into the box on their back. If you knock it off then I think it will prevent them from pooping out hunters.

[Sparzy]

Its also easier to kill them by shooting the box, sometimes i can do it from a distance so they cant hit me with fire. I admit though hunters are stupidly over armored and they can missile and gas u with uncanny accuracy.

[[THT]ElPoutrador / DarkFougere]

Hello !
The things you are describing (with machine guns) can't be harvesters, harvesters has only rockets and they have 4 legs. And they spawn nasty things. They don't have gas rockets aswells but has a "melee attack" that spawns gas around them (In my experience, only in the DLC, but I could be wrong).

For tips :
The easiest one needs ammos and an open field : shoot them from over their shoot distance (275m at least guaranteed, you won't get their rockets shooting you, maybe less distance).

First : if you are two, sneak behind it and shoot its rockets. Don't hesitate to use an IEM if one loader of both players is not enough (in this case, you probably don't have good weapons try to get a better one, or you're facing high lvl one).

Then, there are differents tactics you can use :


First : stun it when it summons minions, they get their front legs together and lower their main hull, you have got few crucial seconds before it works so preventing it will prevent a more complicated fight (if you don't use sticky flares).
You can use grenades, rockets, IEM or even gas canister but it's more tricky...


Sticky flares will draw their minions's attention and even better : make them to shoot at it (if you hit it with those flares). But you need to maintain the aggro by throwing regularily one a it, then you'll have to deal with the minions but you can still use flares if they are too much.
Beware, if it still has its rockets launcher, it will aim to you after few bullets.
And stay a little bit away because it will probably use an AOE melee attacks against hitself (not damaging itself obviously).

IEM perma-blocking : if you have got enough IEM, throw one, empty a loader (I used the not-an-AK when I was doing this), reload, shoot the half of the second one, swap back to IEM and throw another one, rinse and repeat (usually, this is the timing I used for this method)

Grenade perma blocking : every grenade will stun it, so it's the same as the upper tip, but a little bit different.

Setting a trap with gas canisters, landmine or whaterver you have to use against it, but you should empty the area from any other minions (dogs, hunters or whatever) because you have to lure it in there with a radiocassette. Don't forget that they won't go right onto your radiocassette but will stop at something like 15 meters away.
Use IR vision to check and find if there's dogs/hunters around.

Finally, I'd say that a whole combination of sneaking behind it, spike-killing its rockets then stunning whatever the method when it tries to call for reinforcements is the main way to kill it without many problems, IR vision is goot to check around if there are no patrols that would interfere in your business.

Good luck and have fun !

[Unfair Advantages]

Sneak behind em,They die super quick if you take out the missiles first, Kinda cheese it for a moment as it just looks at you and walk around it, They die easier than Class D hunters honestly,

[Ataraxia ♥]

Shift + W away from them ezpz

[Drakeema]

Originally posted by Hen:

Shift + W away from them ezpz

Jump move? I like it!

[KyrenCross]

Originally posted by Hen:

Shift + W away from them ezpz

Yup Shift W away and jumping to restore stamina while throwing emergency flares behind to loose aggro.

This is the better way if you are just starting out low level as it will eat up your ammo and health items with very little reward. If you have tons of supplies to spare and want to beat it use DarkFougere suggestions.

Plus you can also lure it near a safe house so you can just spawn back in without using any adrenaline, medkits or field radios.

[[THT]ElPoutrador / DarkFougere]

Yeah, I forgot to say : fight it only if you have the supply, if you're really beginning and you don't have the supplies to fight it, maybe you have gone too fast for your own level.
Because if you have got the skill lvl2 that gives more ammos on loot, you're probably crowling under regular ammos you can't even shoot (it's my case). Or you're not looting most of the numerous lootboxes that are waiting everywhere.

[SoanoS]

The method I use is probably the most resource-optimal but if you have the option to keep your distance, I would stay outside the rocket range.

For tanks, try your best to disarm the guns underneath it's "chin" and then try to hit the red, glowing spots on the face, very top of the main chassis. This not the optimal way but at least it saves me medkits. :p

For Harvesters... firts try to take out the Hunter pod. If that fails one of you has to take the anti-hunter duty and focus on them. Then you could start shooting off armour plates on its legs to strip it of its armour. I have never succeeded in taking off the rocket launchers for some reason so I don't usually bother with them if I can keep my distance. But if you can do that then you can get a little closer.

[Rpground]

How I deal with Havesters is to rush them, throw fireworks under it to distract everything then unload into it's missile launcher on it's back, then the rest of it's weakpoints.

Just keep using fireworks until the job is done, Hunters don't focus you all that much due to usually being close to the Harvester and they help attack it.

I swear, fireworks and flares are the best damned things in this game. I never go anywhere without a stack of 20 at least of each, or at least try, and they work on all the bots no matter their type just to some varying effectiveness.

[Kysska]

Thank you for the tips, we were able to "beat" the game, although it was still a bit more painful than I would've liked.

I might recommend, perhaps, an even easier mode for those of us too unskilled or physical impaired to simply "git gud" :)

[Greb]

My typical process with Harvesters focus on destroying their rocket pods first, usually sneak up on them and empty a magazine into them while I have the chance. Hopefully they break.

Then you run to a fortified position and kill any stragglers around, and then kill one of the Hunters it spawns. The remaining Hunter you just shoot the shoulder weapon and the main cannon off so they become (mostly) harmless except for their really poorly aimed melee attacks. Since it doesn't spawn more endless Hunters until both are dead, this can deal with the spam. It's only when you get into a prolonged assault with a lot of robots (sadly pretty common right now) that this can be difficult, but not impossible. Just kill 'em all!

Then the Harvester is also mostly harmless and you can shoot it either in the back box (where three cannisters are hidden) or in its eyes at the front below the main body. Both of those will kill it rather quickly.

I wish Harvesters had a little relay they had to protrude from the top of their bodies when calling for reinforcements, something you could shoot and break to prevent it from calling any more, but you can only hit it while it is knurled up. That'd make it more interesting than just disabling the Hunters and exploiting an AI limitation, lol.

[buster_dee]

I was surprised, a couple of days ago, to see 2 Hunters pop out AFTER a Harvester died. To me, popping out something half as big as yourself is weird. That aside, it looked natural coming after the death (like Ticks popping out of a Tank that has just collapsed). My guess is that it uses the same AI routine but switches out the subject. Back to topic: I had found immediately after the patch that shooting off the Box on the Harvester's butt stops the Hunters (though I've seen 2 pop out anyway while the Damaged Harvester is still alive). Lately, though, the boxes seem to soak up .50 Cal but no longer fall off.

[Sparzy]

Saw this on another thread

https://generationzero.com/en/blog/news-from-the-team-may-15th

[buster_dee]

I wonder if they drew straws. 'Hey Lumpy, you're up...,' If I was a dev, I'd probably be figuring out if the coffee table is good cover.