What exactly do all the items do?

[Ripz]

Can't seem to find an accurate description of everythings effects anywhere. A few examples:

1. Lures dont seem to work if youre already in combat.
2. Still have no idea the radius of each lure. What order are they when it comes to range? Is it radio < boombox < light < med < heavy?
3. Do lure effects stack? If i throw two lures down does it boost the radius or no?
3. Whats the point of poison gas tanks against robots?...
4. Smoke grenades and such dont seem to do anything but block your own view.. Do they also block enemy vision? Doesnt seem like it.
5. Similar to lures, car batteries vs emps?
6. Crafting seems to only give 1% of a stat, ever. I don't want to be overpowered anyway, but whats the point of implimenting crafting or us even using it for only 1% increase? How do I get more from crafting?
7. Deployable ticks never seem to do anything.
8. Difference between gas tank, air tank, land mine, and fuel cells? Damage and radius?

I mainly want to know whats better between boomboxes and comm arrays, gas tanks and fuel cells, and car batteries and emps, so i can free up space cuz right now having too much of these different but similar items never knowing whats better is annoying af.

[Juan Eye Jack]

The small EMPs are throw-able. Larger EMP/batteries you have to shoot or blow them up with a bomb.

Bombs are your fuel cells, air tanks and gas cans and are used to blow bots up or do a lot of damage to a lot of them.

You use the bombs and the EMPs as part of a complex trap. You can SEE a bunch of bots in an area, you look for a place to bring them all in close to each other with a bomb or two in that area. To LURE them into that area you use one of your sound producing devices, radios, boomboxes and arrays. In that order produce more sound that will go farther. Once the bots are lured into your trap you spring it on the bots. You spread your bombs out so they cover a larger area. EMPs in the mix will zap bots that doing blow up completely.

Traps and lures ONLY work under stealth conditions where you have time to do the setting of the trap. You can use the mines as self triggers to traps but a bot has to step on the mine to trigger the first explosion that sets off the rest, so very risky on not getting to many bots.

But you can use mines when you can get the runners and hunters chasing you. Since you can deploy them as you run drop them on the corner of building and then get the bots attention and dart around the building. This is a more effective bomb if placed near the red long cylinder gas tanks. But mines are great in parking lots with a lot of cars everywhere,

Mines are also useful for hunters that will not give up the chase. Just run and deploy one and listen for it to go off. FYI, get on a road that is straight and you can run backwards, just as fast as forwards, and watch the hunters blow up!

The deployable ticks and gnomes seemed to have stopped working after one of the updates, hope they get that fixed on the next update.

[reynraptor76]

Audio lures are strictly for pre-combat use, getting enemies to a certain location. The Arrays have the largest and longest lasting "alert" effect. Machines will come from about a 150m distance from a heavy array, assuming their path is clear. NOTE: If you're having trouble finding Arrays, simply alert a Seeker drone, same effect. Using lures in heavy forest or mountain areas is ill-advised. Radios are actually close to boomboxes in terms of range. The biggest difference between all the lures is how long the machines will try to reach the lure location. Radios have the shortest duration, heavy array the longest.

I've never liked the smoke devices, but you have to deploy them very close to the machines to be effective. Flares are better distractions, including during combat. Flare duration changes based on your level. Also, if you shoot a machine distracted by flare, it will target you. Sticky flares are excellent for making enemies attack each other. Also, flares are only useful one at a time and only affect machines within a certain distance of flare, about 40-50m. Machines beyond that point will still target you if they can.

Poison gas canisters can be recycled, if you don't want to recycle the compressed or red gas canisters. Since poison canisters only appear in gased bunker rooms, there's no need to collect them.

Apparel schematics range from 1-5* (%), you just have to find/loot them. 1-3 stars tend to be found while exploring, 4&5 from looting machines, mainly rivals. Rivals will sometimes drop apparel schematics or just apparel if they're below level 3.

Estimating ranges for explosives is difficult because the blast wave is hard to see, but the red and white canisters are close to equal to the large fuel tanks. They have the largest radius. Emp and explosive AOE and damage can be enlarged in Skill menu, though it's far down the Engineer column. Small EMPs are best for runners and low-tier hunters and can be thrown. Medium works up to tanks and harvesters, if only for a few seconds and can be thrown short distance. Apocalypse class machines have the shortest disabled duration. Large EMPs are best used combined with trap explosives. Car batteries are similar to Large EMP and must be placed on ground and detonated. Land mines are medium range bombs that are good for traps, either while you're running from runners and hunters or as part of lure trap. 3 land mines will kill a FNIX hunter, or at least close to death. FYI- environmental explosives like cars, propane tanks and electrical boxes on houses have largest blast radius but (cars especially) take a number of shots to set off. Use a grenade, rocket, or placed explosive to add it to a trap. There are map locations that have parking lots near common machine spawn points that can kill or severely weaken a tank or group of hunters if times right.

Bear in mind, Engineer+Hacker skill columns is best for extensive explosive/EMP use. If most of your skill points are in Combat section, explosives while useful will not have as much effect.

[The_Feet]

Not trying to "necro" this thread...just found it NOW and cudos to "reynraptor76" for some GREAT INFORMATION that really helps! I hope more read this and find it as helpful as I did in 2023! GenZ is a GREAT GAME! A real underrated game imo...so much fun especially when co-op