So, finally decided to pick the game up recently, and really enjoying it. But, I do have to admit, I’m a little rusty with shooters in general, and the scout role is pretty chaotic sometimes.
Anyone have advice/tips/reliable guides they prefer for the scout class specifically?
What kinds of things do scouts do, especially newbie ones, that kinda bug you? What are the things a really good scout does that marks them as a really good scout?
So far, I find myself focusing kinda heavily on combat just because it’s an obvious thing I can do, and zipping behind a bug to blast it in the ass with a shotgun is really fun. I assume that’s not really my #1 job though. I keep our cave lit up pretty reliably, but should I be doing more … actual scouting I assume?
Use your light. Best part of the Scout’s kit. After that your grappling hook makes you the best dwarf to get to the hard to reach places for collectables. You pair well with the Engineer who can place platforms on walls that you can then grapple hook onto. Don’t run off on your own though. If you die in a hard to reach spot it becomes a challenge to rescue you.
get the fall dmg reduction
Mining and lighting the area is usually your job as scout. For combat taking advantage of you range and high burst damage try to take out high priority buys to help you team out and use grapple mobility to get to bugs weak spots
Also For Lighting try hitting high spot to use as much light radius as you can.
You’ll often be the first one entering new caves, so when you reach one do the following:
- launch flares until it’s lit, 1-3 per cave depending on the size
- LOOK UP
Seriously, look up. So many people don’t look up. I don’t look up, half the time. Looking up when you enter a new cave will stop you from being leech food.
Use flares to light up large caves
If you get killed by a grabber or leech 300m away from the rest of the group, that’s your problem
Watch out for C4 charges
Great tips! Did I hear a Rock and Stone?
I’m assuming the leeches and grabbers get more common at higher difficulties? I just got the heightened senses perk, but haven’t even had a chance to use it yet.
No, but scouts seem to have a desire to zip off to the nearest area code and get killed by a leech, and rendered useless until another in the party makes the journey to them
So far my newbieness has protected me from this. lol
I find when I get separated, which does happen often, it’s because I’m zipping ledge to ledge mining stuff, and the rest of the team dug their own exit tunnel and left me behind.
I’m always behind the team trying to catch up, I am never able to get ahead of them.
Bring heightened senses and field medic.
Enter a room before the rest of your team, shoot a couple flares and clear any leeches.
Learn to kite enemies. Kite them into your team during swarms, kite them away when you need to revive a teammate.
Ask for plats from the engi, politely. “Hey, engi, can you plat this nitra, plz?”
Then a simple “ty” when they’ve done it.
And while you wait, throw yourself at the resources and power attack. If you time it right you don’t need a plat, but it takes practice. Check YouTube to see how it’s done.
Grapple, grapple, grapple.
During combat, especially in Haz 5, you should be using your grappling hook constantly to move away from enemies. Your high maneuverability makes you the most likely to survive a tough wave. With either frost or boomerang grenades you can disable the swarm around a dead team mate long enough to revive them.
Your weapons are great at picking off long distance enemies, so look up and keep the acid and web spitters off your team while they clear the masses of melee enemies.
Learn to grapple and then pickaxe a hole above nitra veins. It will save you a lot of time versus waiting on a platform.
Keep in mind you are not the sole miner of nitra. If your teammates are pinging ground level nitra and walking away please call them out on it, or leave them dry and join a new lobby.
Most of all have fun! :)
Yeah, I’m getting this… I kinda hate being the most survivable, the stress gets to me, I fuck up and then die. lol Plus with all my teammates down, every mob converges on me, making any perch I find only very briefly useable. I have to keep zooming, in an unfamiliar cave, with my ceiling lights flickering out.
I’ve got power attacking my own footholds down, it’s really extremely easy if you’re not required to actually land in the hole you just made. I have stuck one perfectly exactly once, but yeah that’s harder.
Basically I’m figuring out I’m a sniper, kiter and nitra/pickup mule. Those are my primary purposes. Everything else is in service to one of those three things. lol
Thoughts on the AR vs the semi-auto? AR is frankly great for sniping, I don’t really need an upgrade. Yet anyway. I can handle haz 4 stuff so far, when I’m on my best A-game. Usually I’m putzing around on 2 or 3.
I like the AR a little better for dealing with swarms of grunts, but all of the builds feel kind of the same to me. It’s boring but reliable.
The semi-auto can deal with grunts pretty well with the hipster overclock, and it’s a good sniper too. You can change the build to be more based on quick shots or more based on focus shots. It’s a fun weapon worth toying around with.
I’ve never found a build I liked for the Drak plasma carbine though. It always seems like a very weak weapon with high ammo consumption.
Play at whatever Hazard you’re having fun with! I played the game on Haz 3 for a long time because it had a good balance of fighting and objectives.
Rock and stone!
