Admittedly I’m fairly noobish, pretty much play with the wiki open all the time, but I’ve started making it to summer.
My biggest problem as I start to think about clearing a city area, or megastore, is the eyebot issue. In my last game I tried taking them out from distance, which worked well, but after taking down 5-6 I was out of ammo, and they just kept coming. It wasn’t even me that set off the alarm. (Zombies smashed through a bank) I counted 11 in all. Is this a usual amount? It seems a lot to deal with, or am I going in too early?
Is there another way to deal with them?
How do you approach the eyebots?
On a slightly different note in my new game, I started in a shelter next to some crates which I pried open and found C4 and a few grenades. This is my first access to explosives in the game, so any advice on best use? I’m guessing look for a Military Bunker and use it to “open” the door? Get more C4?
I kill them asap before they can call in riot control bots or worse. Get a mask or a rebreather or something to block on the peaceful gas from riot controlers and just shoot the hell out of them.
Avoid them until you can deal with police bots. Then just come up to the eyebot and wreck it in melee, then kill the spawned bot.
Policebots have an armor bypassing ability, but only a total newbie of a survivor would be endangered by one. Drop torso encumbrance to 0 and charge at it with a good weapon.
Riotbots can be killed by anyone who has enough time. Just grab a plank or a stick (anything wooden/plastic with no metal bits) and keep on trying to attack. If you’ve got a gas mask, put it on and they won’t be able to affect you in any way.
Opening bunkers with explosives will probably get you killed and even if it doesn’t, you don’t have proper equipment to benefit from bunker’s contents.
Use the explosives to deal with strong zombies instead. Wait for the night and wreck some shocker brutes with them. Even better if you can occupy the zombies with something stupid like smashing a car (zombies love to gangbang cars for some reason) and take out many of them at once.
Even a short bow with wood arrows is usually enough to take one eyebot out before it gets close enough to eternalize your rugged handsome looks into the law enforcement database. They are really fragile. And with a decent bow+metal arrows or throwing knives, you can deal with a whole oggling of eyebots.
[quote=“glenmack, post:1, topic:8335”]Admittedly I’m fairly noobish, pretty much play with the wiki open all the time, but I’ve started making it to summer.
My biggest problem as I start to think about clearing a city area, or megastore, is the eyebot issue. In my last game I tried taking them out from distance, which worked well, but after taking down 5-6 I was out of ammo, and they just kept coming. It wasn’t even me that set off the alarm. (Zombies smashed through a bank) I counted 11 in all. Is this a usual amount? It seems a lot to deal with, or am I going in too early?
Is there another way to deal with them?
How do you approach the eyebots?
On a slightly different note in my new game, I started in a shelter next to some crates which I pried open and found C4 and a few grenades. This is my first access to explosives in the game, so any advice on best use? I’m guessing look for a Military Bunker and use it to “open” the door? Get more C4?[/quote]
Eyebots have a pretty close picture range. If I don’t have any weapons or decent throwing items I just skirt around them. There’s definitely a lot more of them around after 0.B than there used to, when only one would spawn.
As for C4… Personally I do use them in bunkers, though breaking into the surface level is pretty dangerous. I typically use a military ID on the front door (often taken from an early disposal site, where one always spawns on the floor), then look around downstairs for interesting equipment, particularly more explosives. Be careful setting things off in close proximity to other explosives though, as they WILL cook off in a chain reaction. Also, from experience: Do NOT fire a high-velocity rocket at close range to try and open a door. Or mininukes.
Save your C-4 for blowing up something big, it produces a large blast radius. Use dynamite in the subfloors of bunkers to crack open the storage rooms (usually next to the door works). Don’t blow open the front doors, you won’t get to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
As for eyebots…well eyebots suck. The only thing you really can do is avoid the area until you have enough firepower stockpiled to reliably take them down. I wonder if they could be programmed to be unable to summon responders to masked characters…
Save your explosives for other areas like Military Bunkers (and sometimes labs), they’ve got many other uses and I’m sure blowing up eyebots is not one of them. Just try to destroy the eyebots before they spawn Riot bots and cop-bots, they’re pretty weak so they should be easily be destroyed by even a field-point arrow (if you’ve a good archery skill). They’re very easy to kill IMO, but they can be a pain sometimes.
I think the best strategy IMO will be:
Put on a gas mask (Filter-Mask will not work and dust masks are useless anyway) or a rebreather mask
Craft a longbow if you don’t have one (imo its the best bow after the reflex-recurve bow), craft lots of arrows (any type of arrow will do, if its not a wooden arrow shaft ), 40-60 arrows are enough for taking out a number of eyebots at a low archery skill but you should be wary about the riot bots and cop bots. Craft a quiver or a large quiver too since it’ll allow storage space for the arrows without encumbering you.
Start taking down the eye bots one by one and avoid being photographed by multiple bots otherwise multiple hostile-bots will spawn which can prove fatal for you.
If you’re running low on ammunition then leave the area, craft more arrows and then comeback and resume your work. To avoid this kind of situation, try to pick up any arrows left intact on the ground, this will save you the problem of running low on ammunition.
IMO, riot bots are relatively weak (if you’re wearing a gas-mask then they will not do any damage at all), as they don’t have any weapons besides their tazer and they don’t do any melee attack so you’ll be safe if you’re wearing a gas mask. Police Bots are a little bit more dangerous, but they don’t have any chemical weapons so you’ll be fine even without a gas mask, put them down before they get to you. Police bots are a bit faster than you and do a good deal of damage in a melee fight, so don’t fight them with a melee weapon and take them down using a range weapon.
Don’t try to retreat since Police-Bot/Riot-Bots are faster than you, they will outrun and kill you.
Avoid using explosives, guns (any kind even the low caliber ones) and melee weapons while fighting against hostile bots. Firearms and explosives have other uses and should not be wasted against bots. Using melee weapon against a Police bot can prove fatal since they’re really good at melee fight (and you’ll do little damage since they’ve good armor) and will injure you in a matter of seconds, using a conductive melee weapon (or fighting unarmed) against a riot control bot will shock you, even if you’re not using a conductive weapon you’ll do very little damage (if you manage to hit at all) so avoid a melee fight at all costs.
Any kind of a good ranged weapon is enough for this fight. Though Crossbows can be a bit problematic because of their long reload time and for firearms, as I said earlier they’re are best reserved for emergencies since they do quite a lot of damage against enemies such as zombies which have low armor against piercing weapons (Hulks and Brutes too). Bows are the best for this, since they’ve a good range and a decent damage, longbow is far by the best bow in the game since it can be easily crafted at medium fabrication levels and it’ll continue to increase your Archery skill for the rest of the time.
I personally use the pneumatic-assault-rifle for taking out anything that requires lots of ammunition, since it uses pebbles as ammunition. Though it uses pebbles, its not weak, with a good rifle and marksmanship (Firearm skill in earlier versions) skill, it can do 50+ damage to a Zombie-Brute (its 5-shot burst is extremely powerful if combined with the Targeting system bionic and used at short range). There are a few exceptions where this rifle may not work, such as bots, turrets and some zombies (in general, enemies with protection against piercing weapons; Pebbles are like bullets, they do piercing damage though its very small).
As a side note, always avoid raising the alarm if you’re entering a secure area (Jewelry shop, Mall, Pawn shop), since these bots can cause a lot of trouble when you’re surrounded by hostile-zombies. Either use a picklock kit (if your mechanics skill is not high enough) or a crowbar to enter the area.
), 40-60 arrows are enough for taking out a number of eyebots at a low archery skill but you should be wary about the riot bots and cop bots. Craft a quiver or a large quiver too since it’ll allow storage space for the arrows without encumbering you.