Progress continues on our Guide to Secronom Bunker missions, but it is still not ready for publication. Consequently, we are publishing excerpts as they become available. Today's lesson focuses on the trilogy of missions consisting of "Extraction," "Valuable Data," and "A Merciful End."
All three of these missions require a long journey south. In a way, this is the greatest difficulty of the trilogy. Odds of making the trek without running into a boss or at least an agro spike are slim. Students may reach the mission wounded, hungry, or low on medicine and ammunition.
Even if students arrive completely unharmed and healthy, there is a psychological component that cannot be overlooked: after investing so much time reaching the mission area - and knowing that a false move could result in an instant trip back to Secronom Bunker - fear of failure can be overwhelming, leading to second-guessing and excessive caution that compromise performance.
Our Advice: Build an outpost near the mission area.
Heal up, repair armour, restock ammunition, buy more meds - or simply take a break and relax. When fully rejuvenated, tackle the mission.
A house with a single entrance can be found two left and one down from the mission area. Students need bring only one set of wooden planks and nails to secure an outpost.
(There are houses in the mission area, but entering a house from an area loaded with agro risks luring agro inside. It is safer to use the house outside the mission area.)
Useful Tips:
- Take advantage of the long journey by looting along the way, especially in Red Zones with weaker zombies. Grab only easy loot; otherwise, the journey may take hours.
- Market prices in the southeastern end zone are not too outrageous. The cost of medicine and ammunition falls somewhere in the upper range of that seen in Secronom Bunker.
Now, let's look at how to handle the missions after completing the journey...
EXTRACTION
- Type: Rescue
- Goal: Make contact with four surviving scientists
- Zombies: Black Zone Population
- Agro: Dangerous but not infinite
- Suggested Weapons: Vulcan plus a good looting weapon
- Difficulty Level: Moderate
Extraction if the first of a trilogy involving Secronom Bunker's sister facility to the south. This first chapter is a rescue mission; subsequent missions involve looting and grinding.
To complete this first mission, students must take a very long walk into the southeastern section of Fairview, passing from Black Zones to Red Zones and back again. Getting there and back in one piece is half the battle.
The mission itself is straightforward: contact four scientists and speak to them during lulls in agro until they decide to leave.
Finding the scientists is simple:
- Two of them are are half a block right of the southwestern intersection.
- One is a little father along, in a small park on the corner of the southern street's middle intersection.
- One is on the sidewalk of the street running east-west through the middle of the area, just left of the eastern intersection.
If you do not see the scientists, keep circling the block and listen for gunfire.
Agro in the area is intense upon first arrival. With myriad zombies attacking from all directions, we found the Hammerhead assault rifle not quite up to the task. The Vulcan did a good job hammering back the horde.
Typical for rescue missions, the scientists will not speak while under attack, so it is necessary to lure zombies away, then run around the area and speak to the scientists before agro catches up.
It may be necessary to circumvent the area two or three times to elude the agro. After that, it is relatively easy to stay so far ahead that that there is time to talk to the scientists - though it will be necessary to pick off individual zombies with a looting weapon.
VALUABLE DATA
- Type: Loot
- Goal: "Find Adam" - actually, retrieve a hard drive from his corpse
- Zombies: Black Zone Population
- Agro: Moderate
- Suggested Weapons: Decent Looting Weapon
- Difficulty Level: Moderate
Part 2 of the Extraction trilogy is a looting mission disguised as a rescue mission. Valuable Data asks students to find Adam, who was entrusted with a hard drive by scientists from the previous mission. However, Adam turns out to be dead. The actual goal is to loot the hard drive from his body.
Valuable Data takes students on another perilous journey to the southeastern section of Fairview. The most direct route has students entering the mission from the west and moving east through four contiguous areas, including the one from Extraction.
Once inside the mission areas, success is relatively easy. Simply search corpses until one yields the hard drive. There is some agro, but if it interferes with looting, move to the next mission area.
It is not necessary to thoroughly search every area for the hard drive.
Lootable corpses tend to be located near northwestern intersections. It is usually possible to enter an area and grab the loot before agro interferes. Walk east along the northernmost street, passing from one mission area to the next, checking each corpse in turn.
Bottom Line: With little need to confront the agro, Valuable Data is more easily completed than Extraction.
A MERCIFUL END
- Type: Grinding
- Goal: Kill 100 scientists
- Zombies: Black Zone Population and Burned Males
- Aggro: Heavy
- Suggested Weapon: Hammerhead 47
- Difficulty Level: Moderate
The Extraction trilogy concludes with A Merciful End, which has students return to the area of the first mission and put 100 scientists out of their misery.
The Scientists are not dressed in lab coats; they are simply Male Zombies (with 24 health points), so they are easy to kill. However, scientists make up such a small percentage of the agro crowd that students have to shoot their way through a multitude of stronger zombies to hit the real targets.
Keep moving around the perimeter of the area, past intersections (which act as spawn points) so that more scientists will appear.
For most of the mission, the scientists spawn only one or two at a time. As the mission nears completion, scientists may show up in slightly larger numbers.
There are several walls and fences in the mission area, but none of them are ideal for trapping agro. In any case, a trapped swarm is unlikely to contain many scientists.
Bottom Line: By the standards of extermination missions, A Merciful End is less challenging than most.
Agro is moderate but not overwhelming. The chief difficulty lies in not targeting the scientists so single-mindedly that one overlooks the threat from other zombies.
Useful Tips:
- The Hammerhead 47 assault rifle is ideal for this mission. It is one of the few grinding weapons that delivers enough base damage to kill a male zombie with a single non-critical hit. While firing into the crowd, most bullets will hit other zombies, but every stray bullet that lands on a scientist will score an instant kill.
- Any good Grenade Launcher delivers enough DPH to one-hit-kill a male zombie. The blast can reach the scientists even when other zombies are shielding them from bullets.
