Metal Gear Survive: Solo Scout

[Part of the MGS Diary]

While Reeve and the team continue the Iris energy base digs I explore a little bit more of the map, finding it a lot easier now that I have the scout special ability active camouflage which literally turns you invisible for a time and makes all enemies drop aggro (or randomly attack the direction they are facing).

The cool down on it is pretty quick too, and it proves vital when I take on the deadly beast called Big Mouth. I can literally setup traps and shoot it a few times then run away and hide while the ability regenerates. It takes a little time and a lot of ammo but I am victorious!

Can't aim for the brain? Shoot the nuts instead!

I also try harvesting Iris energy from an abandoned airport - now this is meant to be a co-op map and it sure is difficult but I still manage a victory regardless. Unfortunately back at base camp, Reeve has fucked up on dig #6, and almost the entire camp is destroyed and wiped out.

Since that really means a lot of repetitive grinding to repair, I think I'll just call it a day here since I've had enough of it.

Insight: Co-op missions drop some excellent gear but they will make you work for it. For the airport map, but the large square traps (like flame) at the top of the interior staircases, as far over the edge as it allows (you'll get maybe 15-20% of it in midair). This really helps slow the horde down.

Metal Gear Survive: Aftermath

[Part of the MGS Diary]

With the Lord of Dust dead, we are now able to mine Iris energy right at base camp. This obviously attracts wanderers but I can finally let Reeve and the team deal with that (especially since the gap between attack waves is in the 12-22 hour mark). Instead I go rescue more people in the horrible jungle where it seems the spider things and mosquito things now also dwell.

On one rescue I also encounter wanderers who are fully armored or flaming, both of whom I simply flee from. Powerful creatures have also been detected in the dust, no longer hiding since the great centipede is gone - I make it a point to avoid those for now as my ammo is scarce.

I do manage to activate the teleporters I previously skipped though - the one in the swamp being much easier now since the trackers and mortars had moved elsewhere. It's there I find a portable oxygen resupply item, which would have been much handier earlier on!

Anyway, I retrieve one last memory board - this one located further past the mansion in the mountains but a walker gear assists to cut down the travel time. Upon making it back, this one unlocks "class" abilities and the four classes of assault, medic, scout and jaeger themselves... definitely an interesting place to find that.

Now its up to Reeve and the squad to harvest that Iris energy and figure out what to do with it while I do what I do best... scavenge and rescue.

Basically you want three times the attack values coming for you.

Insight: In end game base digs you can choose to defend yourself or leave it to your team (and stupidly no in between combination). Leaving it to the team certainly seems easier as it is literally a mathematical battle per directional sector which you can observe on an active digger. Since explosives are plentiful, I've taken to dotting the base with mortars which increase the score of each side by a whopping 900 per emplacement. Hopefully that will be enough for Reeve to keep winning!

Metal Gear Survive: Hot Potato

[Part of the MGS Diary]

Searching for another singularity for Iris energy takes some time, but also lets me unlock more teleporters and expand base camp as I rescue more stranded survivors including a disabled kid. I also encounter new enemies: a horrible nest of alien spiders in another ruin and a swarm of giant mosquito things which I use a walker gear gatling gun on.

Best way to deal with giant mosquitoes? Shoot em with a gatling gun!

Yep, there are vehicles hidden in the dust but they don't work for very long. Back at camp Reeve is well enough to head up an expedition team and I task them to always collect wood. It seems there's always a shortage on that and on gunpowder, as opposed to the crazy amounts of explosives lying around. I guess the Charon Corps was going to try explode the planet as a fail safe?

Finally another singularity is located and I get the digger charged. The swarm here is bigger than last time, but thanks to the portable turrets I brought this defense is much easier than the previous dig. It's then back to camp to open the worm hole and stem yet another wanderer attack - again easy thanks to the expanded base and new gun turrets I prepared but we all had a collective jaw drop when the Lord of Dust itself arrived.

Apparently it too was attracted by the energy and with no way to fight it, we fled the camp through the worm hole to safety. But safety wasn't Earth, we just found ourselves at another, more jungle like area of the dust planet. With more mother base debris here we decided to setup a new camp, basically having to start over. Ugh. I'm going to miss our little potato farms.

Insight: The new camp starts with all the workshops and you get to keep anything you had in storage. Also, it turns out you don't have to build anything base related here either.

Metal Gear Survive: Digging the Sky

[Part of the MGS Diary]

The previous memory board gives us the location of a "wormhole digger" next to an inactive teleporter, which seems to be the key to escaping this place so I go to fetch it in the dust. It's worth noting that there's some form of giant monster in here too. Dubbed the "Lord of Dust", it's like a gigantic alien centipede that just marches from place to place.

I quite like it as it tends to ignore me while at the same time, stomps on hapless wanderers who get into its path. While sneaking past the horde guarding the digger is a little challenging, getting it out of there is not and soon it is powering up back at base camp to create a portal home.

Of course, this attracts a major attack on the camp (6 minutes worth) which I barely survive. The digger fires its ray into the sky and... nothing. Damnit, it looks like we need to charge it up first with something called Iris energy that can be found in singularities on this planet, one of which isn't too far from a teleporter outpost so I hop on over to dig that up and as usual, have to defend against more wanderers!

Hmm, just realized this is actually just a tower defense variant.

Again, I barely survive this defense and learn that the digger still needs 40% more energy before attempting another wormhole. Greeeat. Since it looks like we might still be here awhile, Reeve constructs some rainwater tanks and Miranda teaches us to boil water to purify it first before drinking it (which should be common sense).

Insight: There are three types of defense - defending a teleporter just requires you to best guess where baddies will come from, but you can clear them prior to starting the defense. Defending a moving singularity dig or base camp (more waves) has enemies dropping in from worm holes but you have red dots on the mini map to help you out and other "defending the digger" types actually gives you the paths enemies will use to attack so you can put your defenses on the correct spots.

In all cases every time the defense target loses a set percentage it creates a small AoE that damages nearby enemies (and defenses). This means you can actually let a few of them through especially if you know they won't have enough time or health to destroy the objective.

Metal Gear Survive: Miranda is the Bomb

[Part of the MGS Diary]

In the dust, little wormholes regularly open up and drop a variety of materials at random but having a helicopter crash right out of one is definitely worth investigating. Sure enough, there is one female survivor stuck on a ledge as a whole herd of wanderers have also come to check out the noise (note: they do this with all the wormholes).

Since she doesn't have an oxygen mask her life is already draining away when I arrive, but the best way through the herd is the smartest: first throwing a bait bottle to get as many of the scum clustered together as possible and then using molotovs to burn them down.

It's game over if she dies.

Activating the next nearby teleporter gets us to safety and the woman introduces herself as Nurse Miranda. Reeve is slightly upset because now someone can tend to his leg to make him start pulling his own weight around here. By chance, the next memory board is pretty close to her crash site - in the depths of some dark ruins where I encounter a new type of wanderer: the bomber. Slow moving with a bloated head, these things explode when killed - unless you back stab them which is pretty easy as they don't have the reflexes the normal wanderers do.

Those ruins really test the limits of my air tank though, as it's nearly empty by the time I return to base.

Insight: If you are super sneaky or only have bait bottles, use them to sneak past the large group while ignoring the nurse and head to the opposite cliff. There are a pair of emplaced machine guns there than can easily wipe the herd out. The bait + molotov tactic is handy all the time though, remember it especially in places where time is not an issue.

Metal Gear Survive: Hunter Scavenger

[Part of the MGS Diary]

Having established a small base camp, the first order of business is to scavenge up supplies. This includes food, water and materials to make crude weapons. Thanks to the debris it's very easy to fashion a pipe spear, and a nearby watering hole offers some dirty water (yuck). Food wise, there are some goats, gerbils and wolves whom I hunt and cook to keep our strength up.

Afterwards, it's time to look for nearby memory boards listed on the damaged computer to see what else we can learn about getting off this planet. These lead to small outposts the Charon Corps previously established and are now guarded by the wandering zombies, who we end up just calling "wanderers".

Portable fences. Brilliant!

Early on I find their weakness: fences, especially the type you can poke a spear through. This tactic makes it pretty easy to clear those areas and retrieve the data, which in turn shows the location of the next memory boards. Eventually though, the next closest one is beyond a gigantic wall of deadly dust. Good thing Reeve knows a thing or two about oxygen tank crafting and can do something with the broken pieces of one I brought back.

Insight: The best way to hunt goat or wolf sized enemies is to sprint at them and punch them. This knocks them down, making for easy kills or captures. Careful against large packs of wolves though as this tactic is risky if you have four or more bearing down on you.

MG Survive: The Shadow of Mother Base

[Part of the MGS Diary]

They attacked without warning, and while we fought back as hard as we could the enemy used some sort of gateway technology to reverse gravity and rip Mother Base out from the ocean and into the sky, taking me along with it.  

Somehow I survived - waking up in some dusty ruins, and I wasn't alone: the place was inhabited by aggressive crystaline zombies! Thanks to teaming up with Reeve, a soldier from the enemy PF who also survived the gateway event, we both made it out of there alive and found that we were on a different planet!

Reeve was just as in the dark about this development as I was, and was adamant his PF had nothing to do with the portal. Since his leg was injured, we decided to make use of a small abandoned camp in the shadow of the Mother Base debris and found a damaged foreign computer system there.

That's a nice title card.

In its files we learned that we were not the first ones here. An army known as the Charon Corps had been sent from Earth to harvest some form of energy in this world. Both Reeve and I gained some hope with this, as that meant they would have had a way back home. We just had to find it.

Insight: Crawling makes you near invisible to the enemies but crouching walking works too - as long as you use the "walk" key when you get closer to these baddies, who seem a little bit more alert than the soldiers in Phantom Pain.