Kyria's 37 Defiance tips

[Kyria]

I typed up some tips that will hopefully help out some fellow Arkhunters. Many will be pc specific. No NDA should be breached.



1) At Arkfalls where the objective is to destroy the crystal: A) DON'T kill the Skitterlings. They nibble at the crystal and create the weaknesses (yellow craters/spots) for you to shoot at that allow you to destroy the crystal that much more easily. The Skitterlings will not aggro on you much, so you can fairly safely leave them alone. B) DON'T kill the Mutant Demolitionists. Allow them to place their kegs - then blow those up to create a surge that travels back into the crystal to help destroy it.

2) F3 brings up the map.

3) Fast travel = blue map icon. Double click, or highlight -> select Fast travel, any blue icon on the map to fast travel to that location. As you venture out you will discover more fast travel spots that then shows up on your map.

4) Perks need to be equipped!!! Press L to bring up the loadout menu then click the open slot beneath your ability. This lets you equip one perk per slot. More slots open as your EGO grows.

5) Right mouse button will place a marker on the map for you (but only you, not for your group). The trail it sets will give you a driving route that reliably lets you get to the destination by means of vehicle, mainly following roads.

6) Weapon skill lvls up! Each weapon has an xp bar that will add to levelling up that weapon type skill. When that bar is full you will no longer earn xp towards levelling that type up. Swapping to a new weapon lets you start earning a new lvl of that type. The stats and buffs added are visible in the STATS-menu (Esc -> Stats-tab).

7) To change loadouts click L, then the number of the loadout you want, then Esc to close it down.

8) Assault rifles, Light machine guns and Small machine guns all use the same ammo. To not run out of ammo it is wise to equip weapons that draw from different ammo pools.

9) Holding down E when picking an item up equips it. Tapping E will pick it up.




10) Salvage matrix: You cannot break down or add mod slots to something equipped in any of your loadouts. You can however add mods.

11) Remember to update all of your loadouts with new gear, ie shields.

12) Having something in a loadout, even the ones not currently active, will not let you sell/destroy/trade/matrix those items. Only mods can be added.

13) There's a mod vendor at Iron Demon Ranch.

14) Stun grenades stun, but do no damage.

15) Elemental types and info.

16) 'Enter' activates the chat.

17) Exit. To exit the game: A) Press Esc -> hold spacebar -> press exit (top, right corner), B) Press enter (to activate chat) -> type "/exit" or "/quit", C) Press Ctrl+Q.

18) Ammo crates are marked on the map by the icon that looks like a grey diamond with a vertical slash ("I") in it.

19) Use Alt to roll. You can roll off effects like burn and sludge.




20) Lshift is run on foot and boost in vehicle.

21) BMG is the heal-gun. Left mouse button = damage beam. Right mouse button = heal beam. Beams link from target to nearby enemies/friendlies to do chain-damage/heal. Beams bounce off crystals and they can be used to sustain chains. Friendlies with full health can still be used to link to distant friendlies in need of a heal.

22) BMG does not consume ammo. (It is the only weapon that does not.)

23) Infectors infect and do damage over time (DoT). Descriptions are pretty good. Some spawn bugs upon target death that will attack other hostiles.

24) Killing something with your vehicle deprives you, and any other friendly, of that potential drop. Not considered good maners at Arkfalls where ammo can be sparse.

25) You get (potential) drops from enemies, upon their death, that you have done damage to. If in need of ammo: Do damage to multiple enemies - as opposed to focusing on one big one - to increase the drop chance.

26) Green honeycomb currancy. That is Gulanite. You use it at the Lockbox vendor's to buy fragments or in the matrix to add mod slots to your weapon.

27) Lockboxes. The higher the box lvl the rarer the weapons will/might be.

28) This game has auto-voice. As soon as you group your mic will be transmitting. If you mute someone on voice you will not be able to see them in chat either. There's currently no push-to-talk ingame.

29) At creation screen - circa top left you will find tabs that will let you customize your character more.




30) If you recieve items from completing missions when your inventory is full you need to claim them once you have freed up space. Press Esc -> hold spacebar -> Store -> Claim items (left hand side).

31) Vehicles and outfits/hats do not take up inventory space.

32) Accepting a mission will hide all other missions from the map until completion or you drop it. You will still be able to see and do challenges like Rampages and Time trials.

33) 'Esc' will mostly let you skip through cutscenes.

34) 'K' brings up your EGO grid and lets you unlock and equip.

35) Loot drops on individual basis. What you see is yours.

36) One-stop-shop-for-information

37) EGO calculator


Kyria
<3

[A s0t]

thank you for #26 was wondering what that was for.
and you have to unequip the weapon to do the modding for it

[DustOfDeath]

I would say that a VERY good item to ALWAYS have is the BMG - it has infinite ammo so you always have at least a weapon available to use - specially in Big arkfalls. Plus you can heal if situation gets critical (the beam arcs back to you aswell i noticed).

[Deviliusrift]

thanks for these tips.. didnt notice the customization on character creation, thats why my character has a mohawk lol..

[Pasha]

Nice tips. However for me

2) M brings up map because I remapped keys.

Also

19) Ctrl = roll

because it's much easier to hit quickly and is vital part of gameplay (it shake off debuffs - fire, slow - and allow to avoid grenades + it's faster than normal run)

16.1) X switch chat channels (common/group/clan)

[INPD]

Thanks for all the information

[Betrayer]

Thanks for the list~ Need to find myself a BMG now..

[Pasha]

Thanks for the list~ Need to find myself a BMG now..

Earliest you can find is storyline quest reward in Madera. Game changer. Same for infector: use it on bosses and elite mobs to see its amazing DoT DPS.

[Shismar]

Rolling interrupts reloading of your weapon. Also some mob attacks interrupt reloading and make you lose your ammo. Run is your friend.

Also folks, please be careful where you use those swarm cannons and similar. Those things that split up into several detonations. They really make it hard for other players to target. Especially at arkfalls they are not welcome (see OPs #1).

[Sanguinesun]

1. I think for helping new folks, it is better to say to "minimize killing" those mobs as it is not plausible/possible to prevent killing them entirely..... Since many weapons have/are aoe and because the mobs too attack folks before and after their "weakening".

2. M should also pull it up unless they changed it.... yet again(its seesawed back n forth between game testing versions.)

3. Fast travel sometimes cant be clicked easily or highlighted easily in cases where a story mission icon is overlapping it. You can use the arrow keys to move which icon is highlighted(though it also has issues). As well even highlighted properly going to click the "fast travel" button at the bottom sometimes wont work if there is another icon directly under it in the map overlay(it will default to read the map overlay one first) and you will have to move the map around in a manner to get around that.

4. Clicking isnt always the only thing needed to do of the slot. On the perk screen once you've clicked the slot, you still will need to select the perk(unlocked one obviously) and click equip to finalize it. Sometimes you can double click the perk in that manner instead of clicking equip but it doesnt always work. It is also important to sometimes double check your slotted perks in the load out screen because there is a bug that can occur that your most recent unlocked slot does not retain the perk you equipped if you fast travel, zone, cutscene, logout etc. Not always but still can happen. Just better safe than sorry.

5. While the navigation feature of that "reliably" gets you there, it does not always most efficiently do so, which I think is important to make note of.

6. The weapon bonuses from ranks leveled on it also show up on the loadout page as well. Also too it is important to understand that in the current incarnation of the system, that the weapons cap at a certain point(not all weapons level cap equally btw) but they will most likely change from how it is done now with the potential for more longevity in use of the same weapon. Additionally, one can have more than one of the exact same weapon in name but their exp bars will be individual to that specific weapon. This too may change.

7. There's supposed to be a way to change loadouts too besides that but I forget off the top of myhead/not being in game at the moment to look.

8. To clarify, ammo is shared by certain weapon type categories and you have only one total ammo pool for all of them in your "inventory". If you have 4 differnet types of rocket launchers and expend the ammo of one, then you have no ammo for all 4 types. The main cross (and strange) variance to this is with shotguns that launch grenades and the normal grenade launchers do not share the same ammo pool.

9. Be mindful of this since it is counter intuitively designed to the fact that almost every other "E" action in the game is a hold down and can cause you to accidentally equip a weapon you loot by mistake in the heat of battle etc. If you do so, the game will not tell you that you equipped it on the fly like that and you'll only notice the change from the graphics changes/actions or from looking at your loadout.

10. 10 and 12 should be combined and clarified simultaneously

11. Depends on your game play need/style as well and not necessarily needing to be done just to be done.

12. see 10.

13. As well there are mods put on "special" at random times on most general vendors and cheaper/higher quality too.

14. This may change depending on the hybridized nature of some of the naming conventions for the grenades.

15. The basic information listed is not the entire current set of things the elemental procs do. For example syphon also will do a percentage of extra damage in addition to transfering heath to you. These also are very much a work in progress so take what they do overall currently with a grain of salt.

16. From the main screen.

17. Alt tab then close window, F6(If memory serves) too.

18. Most all player spawn points(after death fast travel, etc) also should have them for quick reference.

19. Alt plus a direction key (which will send you rolling in that direction).

20. And faster swim in water. (Though currently you can jump faster farther while sprinting in this manner in water than just fast swim :P).

21. Not all BMG's will chain to other people for healing or damage(will state such in the weapon description). Some will add a slow effect to mobs as well when used in the offense form, and others will offer stronger shielding than the normal ones.. again all mentioned in the variances of those weapons in their descriptions.

22. BGM's do not consume ammo but do consume a "charge" of the weapon. When it reaches to 0% you will have to "reload" the weapon which is currently the second longest reload weapon situation in the game(there's a certain orange shotgun that will make you action/graphic reload 19 individual times its shells for a full load).

23. All infectors currently(seeming to not be intended) will drop bugs. All drop bugs from infected mobs when the mob dies. Some will drop bugs for every so many shots of infection put on the mob/time infected in addition to when the infected mob dies.

24. In addition to car kills there is supposedly currently a bug that load out changed sets can also deprive drops as well though its less common/guaranteed to the car kill issue. Given the current state of arkfalls and ammo, it is even more important to emphasize to not run around an arkfall killing mobs to grief others as well.

25. Also it is important to note that you can get an ammo drop from someone elses kill in proximity(a feature of the game). Thus you can gain benefit from them if they perks set to higher ammo/item drop rates. Conversely others can benefit from yours as well. Certain mobs will not necessarily drop stuff as well or are set to super low drop rate chances.

26. The crystals for currency as stated are used for both purchasing (essentially) caches from vendors through conversion to key codes (fragments version was taken out kyria) it is important to note that they are gotten from drops, mission rewards, arkfalls, and the use of the mod screen to "break down into resources". Amount broken down into is relative to the item color quality/type.

27. Incorrect. Orange weapons can currently in beta be gotten from even tier 2 lock boxes (Ive an orange shotgun I got yesterday as one example). It is better to say that currently(and this will most definitely get more balance pass throughs before and after launch) the higher tier box has a higher chance at better quality/color items.

28. To clarify this happens when you accept groups in the open world(-not- the proximity deal with arkfalls or missions mutually benefitting) And from joining pvp or pve instances.

29. To better clarify, the creation system for characters is divided into to parts, icon tabs at the top of the screen and the central selections found within each tab. Hitting "Continue" "finishes" your character creation and asks you to select a character name. It does -not- move you to the next feature of customizing the look of your character.

30. This issue also applies if you purchase a cache or item from an in game vendor.

31. To clarify, they do not take up the primary inventory space but have instead their own seperate inventory screens with no current limits.

32. When completing or dropping such missions there can be a bit of a lag between seeing the story or episode mission reappear as well. There has been some improvements though as it used to be much worse of a lag.

33. Indeed.

34. Also(though 2 steps) f1 then clicking the ego grid at the top of the player screen does the same(for those that are more left hand keyboard and right hand mouse centric. Left hand users with a different set up may be obviously different.

35. Should be combined with 25. Loot's drop is indeed yours but others can affect said drops per their killing over yours and vice versa.

36 and 37. Nothing of issue there that I can see.