Re: level 3 of tutorial

[brazen island]

So I've been getting murdered here several times trying to complete the objectives...brutal.
I was about to skip the tutorial and start a freeplay in peaceful mode when suddenly it dawned on me what I'm supposed to learn here. Although I have objectives given to me, that doesn't mean I should prioritize the level's objectives above making sure I have adequate offensive and defensive capabilities. Running out of ammo and trying to bludgeon the biters with my pistol doesn't work very well at all.
Am I on the right track here?

[trail eagle]

tutorial level 3 is actually a fair bit harder than the regular game, the biters are surprisingly nasty. so don't get too discouraged

it's been a long time since i played it myself, so i can't remember the details, but i would expect you want to have at least a couple assembly machines auto-crafting ammo. use another machine to automate turrets as well, but you don't need to hook it up to a belt. just dump iron/copper/gears into it manually and let it chug away in the background

that level is the first place where you really have a sort of time pressure. it spawns biters at a specific rate, which means you have to be producing enough ammo to kill each wave of biters, which means you need a certain amount of iron per second, and so on. you can't just make a smaller factory and let it run for longer, like you might have in earlier levels

[brazen island]

What I'm doing now is I manually gathered resources coal, iron, copper and wood. Then I set up a furnace in a cluster of trees south of the boiler. I made a bunch of plate, hand crafter more ammo and a suit of armor and the will gather more resources before moving on the objective of firing up the boiler. So far no biters.

[trail eagle]

if i recall, biters in the tutorial are not based on pollution. it's just a timer that says 'after x seconds, spawn angry biters'

so hiding and taking it super slow might not be the strategy

[brazen island]

There was a wooden box by that cluster of trees that had grenades and iron gears in it.

[trail eagle]

yeah there's a few goodies you can find. grenades are really good for if you get surrounded, you can drop them on your own feet and you take very little damage

level 3 is the 'power plant' one yeah? where you need to make 3 radars and scan a certain area?

[brazen island]

I think you may be right about the pollution. There was no pollution showing on the map when the power was up during my previous attempt.

During my last attempt I got swarmed while working on the third radar....no ammo.

I pistol-whipped a few of them before being overwhelmed. Is that how Custer felt at the Little Big Horn?

[queen pivot]

i suggest you to clear the nests that have gotten the sense of pollution with gun turret spamming

[trail eagle]

in the tutorial, most of the biters don't come from the nests. they're spawned in by the scenario itself

so killing the nests won't actually prevent biter attacks like it usually would

i think you need to treat this game like a factory game instead of a survival one. you said 'a furnace' earlier. try making like 20

[queen pivot]

wait really? dang so i wasted lots of my time wiping out nests..

[trail eagle]

well the nests do work like normal nests, they'll spawn biters and attack if they're polluted. but the tutorial also spawns them on a timer regardless of pollution

[queen pivot]

ahh ic

[brazen island]

Well thanks for the insight, folks. I will keep at it even though some people suggest skipping the tutorial and just start a freeplay. I like a challenge.

I'll use some of your ideas, Schmee, if this attempt fails.

[queen pivot]

don't leave tutorial no matter what mate, tutorial will greatly teach you the ability of spaghetti and give you nostalgia

[trail eagle]

a few tips for quickly scaling up: place a square of burner miners on a coal patch like in the top left, they'll dump coal into each other and fill up with 50 coal each. ctrl-click to grab the coal out of them, then use that coal to fuel more burner miners and smelters on an iron patch like on the right. once you have electricity you can feed an ammo assembler with the bottom left, though you'll still need to manually deliver coal to the furnace

then again i'm not 100% on what resources you start with. maybe you can skip most of the burner miner stuff and go straight to electric

[queen pivot]

as far as i remember, they start with telling us to get the power high enough and then to repaire the funrance stack and then to conquer the 2 semi destroyed outpost nearby

[trail eagle]

i think that's a later mission. this is mission 3 where you make a steam power and radars

[queen pivot]

ahh i must have mistaken with 4 or so..

@brazen island sry for the spoil

[brazen island]

Thanks again. I'm writing this stuff down.

@queen pivot No worries. I'll still be surprised.

[queen pivot]

all the best with your run, btw you can eat fish to heal lots of your health bar

[brazen island]

Update: Tutorial level 3 complete! Thanks again for your advice. It was a good learning experience...glad I didn't abandon it.

[queen pivot]

GG!, Tutorial 4 has train station nearby right?

[brazen island]

Not sure. Just got there. Going to eat some breakfast before I continue.

[queen pivot]

ic, enjoy your breakfast

meanwhile me about to have dinner lol

[brazen island]

I crafted an smg and took out the biter camps. Then completed L3 at a more relaxed pace.

[brazen island]

@queen pivot level 4 is cars. Maybe level 5 is what you're thinking of. From the looks of it I'll be working on level 4 for a bit. Lots of learning opportunities there it seems.