Chapter Two: Dude, Where's My Ark?
Carrying on from last time, I notice that we've managed to snag a couple Steam achievements. In the best of fashions, they're both inevitable results of going through the tutorial, which is forced. One is also named "RESSURECTION
[sic]", AND THEY'RE BOTH YELLING AT ME IN CAPSLOCK AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT I DID TO DESERVE THIS KIND OF TREATMENT QUITE FRANKLY.
Anyways, continuing...
This is (part of) our skill screen. There are 2-3 trees on each of the four pages, and we need to unlock previous skills in the tree in order to carry on down the line. Sometimes they'll even have a level requirement, although this appears to mainly just be one skill with a requirement of 6, and 80% of the other nodes are currently unimplemented and have a level requirement of 99.
The level 6 skill opens up the "heavy weapons" tree, which is to say anything that isn't a sidearm (like our nailgun). Shotguns, rifles, and SMGs are the objects mainly covered by that tree, and although we can use most of those without the skill (we have been using a shotgun for most of the run, after all), it will incur penalties. Currently our double-barreled shotgun has a penalty of +1.3 seconds reload time, which is particularly bad on a shotgun since that applies to each individual shell... Reload times with the appropriate skill are just 0.5 seconds.
I've already picked up First Aid, which is an extremely important skill because it lets us use medical items that aren't just random "Free Drugs!" hypos we found lying in the gutter. Medical items are split into mainly two categories, Stims and Medkits. Stims can be used quickly and in the heat of battle, and will generally heal us all the way up to full health. However, they have limited uses per mission, and every time we use one it'll reduce our maximum health by a fair amount. Medkits, conversely, can only be used when you've got some time to yourself and can focus on bandaging up, and they're stocked with supplies enough to heal a specific amount of damage. These are also refilled after every mission, and don't damage our max health. So, Stims for emergencies, Medkits for endurance.
It's technically possible to use the lowest tier of Medkits ("bandages") without having the First Aid skill, but the penalty for not having the skill is a "110% reduction in heal speed", which I... Don't really understand. It either means you're slightly less than half as quick at applying them, or you're so slow you actually unbandage the bandages you haven't even applied yet. The higher level Medkits flat out require the skill anyways, and it gives us a bonus 20 max hitpoints to boot, so I figured it was a good investment.
We starter out as the Stalker class, which means we already had skill points invested in Trap Usage and Throwables Usage. Trap Usage lets us set up stuff like bear traps (which we have a couple of), and Throwables is stuff like grenades, flares (unimplemented), and smelly chunks of meat intended to distract and lure enemy beasties.
So far as I can tell, the bear traps don't actually trigger on anything and the meat doesn't attract anything before suddenly vanishing because its fuse has burned out. Unfortunately there's not a lot we can do about that, because although it technically is possible to re-roll skillpoints, we apparently only have 5 removals left and the starting price is $500... Which is pretty close to our entire gross earnings over the course of the run.
There's a gambling skill, which gives us a small chance to recoup a little money when losing a hand at blackjack. It also opens up a couple other skills, which give teeny tiny crit bonuses to whatever weapons we're using. Because that's the magic of blackjack, apparently. Not particularly interesting.
On the Survival page, there are trees for Heavy Armor and something called Paranormal Peripherals. Heavy Armor lets us use certain types of advanced heavy armor, and also lets us use the dodge roll when using heavier gear. Wearing heavy armor still reduces dodge speed and I-frames by -40%, but it's at least not the -100% from not having the skill. I'm not currently using heavy armor anyways, and I'm not entirely sure what the appeal is... But okay.
Paranormal Peripherals lets us use advanced anti-spookery technology such as... Hearing protectors. Also cool stuff like night vision goggles and gas masks, but also... Hearing protectors. We simply cannot figure out how to put the damn things on our heads without having that skill. It's also required for specialist equipment like hazmat boots, which provide acid attack resistance and reduced vulnerability to slipping/slowing on oil slicks, which is something that certain haunts (kelpies, primarily) are known to excrete. It's also a required skill for the "Accessorize" skill, which allows us to tack on even more advanced ghostbusting equipment like bottles of whiskey and gel insoles for our shoes. Again, just can't figure out how those things work without the skill in place.
The Investigation page has two trees based around finding better clues and using them to get buffs against detected spookies. That's basically it. There's a skill that doubles our chance of finding a higher tier of clue when searching a hotspot, with higher tiers selling for more money and providing bigger bonuses when unlocked by the other nodes in the tree. That's pretty much the only one I'd be interested in right now, since everything else applies to stuff we're not going to be doing for quite some time yet.
Investigation also has one little sideline based around the crafting of cursed artifacts... These are special items that require multiple clues and other resources in order to craft, and which generally provide a double-edged sword of buffs and debuffs. The earliest schematic that I figure we can build is a piratical eyepatch, which gives us a 25% bonus to earned XP but hits us with a 50% accuracy penalty. There's also a nock volley gun, which fires a whole big kablooie but slams us on our ass with recoil from the audacity of firing such a device. I guess that's its "curse".
...and down in Subterfuge, there's a Ninja skill tree. First node on the tree allows us to use ninja footwear such as geta and tabi. Yes, those exist, you can buy them at the gun shop. They provide bonuses to dodging and are thus actually pretty beefy from a gameplay perspective.
We'll not be investing in the Ninja skill tree, because it is stupid and dumb.
Seeing as we've just unlocked Sweeping missions and will likely need to pump out a hell of a lot more lead than before, I opted to spend one of our points on grabbing the SMG and Shotgun skill that removes that horrifying +1.3 second reloading penalty. I get the feeling that we're gonna need to use Mr. Shotty a lot more in the coming days.
At some point we might switch out the high-risk high-reward shotty for a slightly more reliable SMG, but seeing as the cheapest such weapon costs more than $250, that's still quite a long ways into our future. The game also features machine pistols, which are apparently classed separately from SMGs... We'll probably want to upgrade our sidearm at some point, seeing as the completely-free nailgun has abysmally poor damage and is really only useful for opening up doors (don't ask me how firing
more nails into a door will loosen it from its frame enough to open it, but that's Down Under for ya). Once we get some good money rolling in, we should be able to switch it out for a nice and blasty MP to help take down crawlies. With any luck we'll then be able to swap out that MP for a new MP, and then another MP after that, as is the Australian way.
Or was it PM? I forget...
After grabbing the First Aid and Shotgun skills (leaving one free point for later), we head over to Guns and Baits to expand our loadout. I buy a pair of mountain boots, which is out first pair of footwear all game... Although there is a class that starts with a pair of shoes, we were not that class. Clearly, we've been clearing out all these haunted houses in just our fluffly little wombat-patterned socks.
With not much cash left after the $45 pair of
Advanced Tacti-Uggs, the only real upgrade we can buy is a slight improvement over our starter flashlight. Flashlights also change the stats of your blacklight stick, although this is just a very slight increase in reliability. Certain missions impose penalties on the reliability of some tools, causing them to sputter and die occasionally. This happens a
lot with the blacklight on even the easiest missions, so any buff to that is appreciated. Doesn't improve the range at all though, but I guess it's not wise to look a gift roo in the mouth...
Our pockets freshly emptied, we kit up and venture into our first Sweeping mission. Probably to die horribly.
This worn-down house was apparently the site of a triple homicide, as opposed to all the massacres we've been investigating previously. We're to expect a fair infestation of nasty gubbins, and we're to clean the place up so that the real estate agent can flip it before it stagnates for too long.
Things progressed in fairly standard fashion, with us finding considerably more than the three bodies one would expect from a triple homicide. Perhaps it meant three independent cases of multiple homicide? That would make sense. A family of 6 rats skittered out from the webbing they'd spun inside the kitchen cabinets, and I ended up taking a few more hits than was strictly necessary... Previously they've only been showing up in groups of 2-3, getting 6 at a time had the furry bastards running every-which-way and nibbling us to bits. Ended up eschewing the nailgun entirely and just splatting them with the shotgun.
After patching up with a few bandages, I progressed through the house on the hunt for more ratty inva-
ohgodwhatisthatSo we're dead again. Bummer. Time for round 2!
I scrounged up a few spare clues I had lying around and pawned them off to Redback, which gave me enough scratch to grab a snub-nosed .357 and some rounds for it, to replace the nailgun. Clearly we needed an armory improvement.
With that, we picked up a new sweeping contract at an eerie house, the site of a triple homicide that may have attracted... You get the idea.
Opened the door, made a quick search of the entryway, checked a door on the right an-
ohshithereitcomesagain!AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASHIT I'M ALMOST DEAD AGAIN! SAVE ME, FREE DRUGS!GOTCHA, BITCH!
Damn, what the hell
is this thing anyways? It's crazy fast and has a mean streak a mile wide. Lemme whip out my Cryptonomicon and see if it says anything about this.
Hmm, lessee... Large... Bipedal... Dark-grey coloring... Hairless... Arms ending in claws... I think I might know what this is.
Yep, definitely. No doubt about it.
This is an emu.
As you can probably see, we did indeed end up using a bear trap on this thing. Nevermind the fact that it pranced right over the damn trap the first couple times before inexplicably getting caught by it, but whatever... I got the chance to unload a couple facefulls of tasty death pellets into it before it got free. Unfortunately I can never use that bear trap for anything ever again, and they cost $12 a pop, which is the equivalent of 50 12ga. shotgun shells, or 100 rounds of .357 FMJ. Still though, until I can get a bead on their erratic movements so I don't keep uselessly redecorating the walls instead of actually hitting them when they're charging, the traps may be useful to keep around. I've only got one left at the moment though.
After cleaning up a few more rats with our newfangled ratslayer revolver, I head into one of this house's three expansive living rooms. Shortly after entering through the archway, a body propped up against one of the walls starts lurching horribly, before its stomach finally ruptures with a sickening squelch and a barbed appendage slithers its way out! Taken aback by the whole affair, I promptly get stuck with one of the tentacle's hurled stingers and appropriately lose a third of my healthbar.
An intestinal disagreement.
Poor fucker must've had one of those kebabs from 5th street.
In the kitchen I found a couple more standard house centipedes, nothing too frightening, but they still managed to take a quick taste of my footwear before I blasted them away. With all my medical supplies exhausted and with only about half health left (not including the max health lost to popping my stim earlier), I figured it'd be better to forego the $12 completion bonus than to risk losing two thirds of what I'd already earned to the death tax. I found the nearest exit and hopped outside to grab my ute and skedaddle.
And
wouldn't you know it, there was another one of those ropey fuckers hanging out right behind the rear tires! I'm not sure how I managed to miss it when I first arrived, or indeed how I avoided running the damn thing over, but there it was... It tried to make a compelling argument for me to remain, but I wasn't in the mood for gabbing with some poor fucker's tormented intestines.
The fight was fairly annoying due to the fact that the delay between it firing its spikes was almost exactly the amount of time I needed to reload my revolver, and dodge-rolling out of the way of a flying death needle just so happens to interrupt reloading. Words were had. Stern words, of the disapproving sort.
Total earnings for the aborted contract ended up being $85, which isn't too bad... Although the expenses report noted that we'd used up about $6 worth of ammo, along with the $12 bear trap. So...
Regardless, we now have some of the meaty giblets that Mr. Unimportant at the bar had asked us to retrieve. Only three more to go...
With the cash from the job and a few of our earlier savings, I managed to scrounge up a couple more bear traps, a few surplus grenades (which I haven't tried yet, but could be worth a shot? Maybe?), and a new stim type that allows for two uses per mission instead of just one. I'll still have to be careful though, as each usage will inflict the max health reduction. I'd really like the next medkit up, but it costs $250 all on its own... And I simply don't have that kind of money just yet.
Checking our gear, we head across to the other side of the river for another sweeping job and a shot at some more sweet revenge against the feathery menace invading our fair township.
Arriving at the location, I make a horrifying discovery! There's a tear in the fabric of reality and we're all gonna die! Oh god oh no, it's horrible!
WHAT IS GOING ON?!?
Okay, yeah, no... The game just let me walk around the north side of the house, and I'm somehow able to shine my flashlight into the seam between two internal rooms, which ends up looking like bare ground because the outside and the inside are loaded separately. It's probably fine and most likely won't crash my game horribly.
Let's head on in, shall we?
Right off the bat we get the welcoming committee bursting out from the floorboards and giving me a proper bingle in the cramped confines of the corridor, which they're more than welcome to just slither and skitter around freely with their
wiggly, ephemeral fucking hitboxes. I'm two steps in the door and it's already time for bandages! Yay!
Two more steps and an impertinent emu hiding in the closest jumps out and we have a proper stoush running up and down the hallway, and I end up having to inject pure asthma medication into my thigh in order to stave off death. Eventually he goes down, and the blood splatter repeats itself in triplicate on the moulding while his avian remains slide just a teensy bit into the molecular structure of the floorboards.
The close encounter with yet another dumb death shows me the error of my ways, and I remember to actually set down a bear trap before moving forward.
A couple more centipedes meet their doom with two well-placed shotgun blasts, and the body count starts to rise. I haven't seen any rats yet, but I'm sure they're hidden away somewhere... Plotting... Scheming... Cleaning their ratty pedipalps in anticipation...
Suddenly, a blood-curdling cry! Another emu leaps at me from the bathroom ceiling, and I'm forced to make a hasty retreat back into the hall! The terrorist flapper charges after me, and...
HAH! Couldn't fit THAT down your gizzard now could ya, birdbrain! Luring him into the bear trap I'd set earlier, I got a prime chance to unload four shells into him at point blank range. Luckily he was a bit too preoccupied with being stuck to notice that I was well within range of his emu evisceration claws, so I managed to add another oversized drumstick to my collection without taking too much of a bashing. We now have 3 of the 4 giblets needed, and we've leveled up again!
Another bathroom, another stalking emu attempting to learn the secrets of indoor plumbing. Venturing into the kitchen spooked the local nest of rats, but between the shotgun and the revolver they ended up dying quite handily.
Things are actually going pretty smoothly!
OH COME
ON.
Yeah, so... Inspecting one of the other large rooms, I end up finding another kebab victim. But it's fine, I can do this... End up messing up the timing and getting hit once, losing me almost all my remaining health, but it's fine... I've got another stim, I can just roll to safety and-
YOU DEAD, DRONGO!
Dodging in this game is, perhaps appropriately, a little dodgy. So I end up getting nailed again and our paycheck gets buggered righteously. Oh well... Our only real takeaway was the emu bits and XP, so we'll head down to the bar and gain our just desserts for providing the gravy ingredients.
Turning in the chunks, we make a handy $240 along with some bonus XP. This should let us grab some new swag down at the Guns and Baits.
Incidentally, we've apparently managed to progress the story further! So we have a quick chat with Zoe to find out what's what.
Zoe: "So you know how I said earlier that your trouble was probably caused by ghosts?"
Ken: "Yeah? Find out something new?"
Zoe: "It's ghosts."
Ken: "...right then. So what can I do about it?"
Zoe: "Don't know, I'm a scientist, not a paranormal researcher."
Ken: "But your specialty is cryptozoology!"
Zoe: "So? That's completely different. Now go get some ghost extracts for me, once you figure out how."
The idea here is to ask around the bar to see if anyone knows anything about summoning rituals, in order to call out the big ghostie at a haunting. Those are the big leagues though, and we still haven't had a 100% complete Sweeping contract yet.... I'm figuring on grinding our way up to some better gear end levels first.
At the moment we have two free skill points, and there are a lot of things we could use them on... There's a skill that reduces revolver reload times by 30% (and increases damage by
1%... Because that's really worth the point, isn't it?), and another that reduces it by 15%, so we could potentially get some quick gunning going. Seeing as our new revolver takes out spiders in a single shot and does a decent number against most other enemies, it might be worth considering improving our sidearm skills somewhat.
There's also Paranormal Peripherals and Accessorize, which would require two points but would open up the world of accessories and charms to us (basically, three whole equipment slots for passive buffs), but they don't directly improve anything else that we do and there aren't any real uses for PP yet due to all affected equipment being unimplemented (except for night vision goggles which, while they cannot be purchased, you
can start with a pair... If you pick Ninja as your class).
There are a few investigative perks as well that, while not hugely useful right now, will become quite potent in later stages. This includes the "double chance of a rarer clue" skill, which would let us earn more money doing the much safer scouting missions.
Or we could focus on our primary weapon, with the Marksman and Pump & Choke skills. Marksman lets us use weapon sight mods like a red dot , while P&C lets us use barrel mods on shotguns. I'm... I'm not
entirely sure how you're supposed to fit a suppressor onto a sawed-off double barrel shotgun, but there you go. Suppressors improve accuracy by the way, they don't do anything to noise levels, because noise levels don't exist in any meaningful way ingame. P&C also reduces shotgun reload times by 25%, but considering it's already at 0.5 seconds... I mean... Sure?
SMG specialties go in the other direction, with Sharpshooter instead of P&C. Sharpshooter improves SMG accuracy by 10% and crit chance by 1%, as well as allowing barrel mods on SMGs. I haven't tried out an SMG yet, but I've been fairly impressed with my starting shotty so far, even if it does suffer from impotence when firing at objects beyond the 1m effective range. The next shotty up has three barrels instead of two, allowing for a 50% increase in shots before needing to reload, however that works...
Or we could go for Gambler and Irish Luck, giving us a tiny bonus to blackjack and a 2% chance to evade attacks. Yep. Irish luck gives 5% crit chance increase, 5% crit damage increase, and 2% evade. Considering how
precious skill points are at this stage, I have my doubts about how worthy that increase actually happens to be.
There's also Heavy Armor and Armor Finesse, allowing us to dodge in heavy armor (with penalties) and reducing those penalties by 20%, respectively. We can actually afford the best heavy armor currently available, but even with the skill I'm not sure if -40% dodge speed/I-frames is worth the moderate increase in armor and stability. We can also just buy a leather jacket for slightly less money, which gives +80 armor and +10 stability with no penalties, with the armor vest being +140 armor and +14 stability with penalties.
Or we could put more points into our medical skill tree and get the skill that reduces the Stim maximum health penalty by 25%. So rather than losing 20% of our max health with every stim, we'd lose 15%.
For actual gear, I'm a little unsure where to go. There aren't any machine pistols currently available in the store, unfortunately, but there are a few SMGs, the better shotty, and a few different semi-auto pistols and revolvers. I'm fairly impressed with our revolver, despite it being the second-worst of the ones that are available for purchase. Impressed enough to specialize with them? Don't know... It's hard to say.
I checked out the better medkit, and it actually only has double the capacity of our $50 super band-aids. For $250. Sure, the healing rate is vastly improved, but you're going to be using it when out of combat anyways, so...
And that's it for now. I'm going to take a few more jobs and see if I can stock up some cash, maybe gain another level, and then next time we'll see what all this "summoning ritual" voodoo hoodoo is about!
Who knows, maybe we'll even have some epiphany about what skills and gear to snag, heh.
...
Filthy ratses!
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Topic: HellSign Hunters: Australian Pest Control (Read 13948 times)