Halloween V frustrations

New player (sort of, I played years ago when the game first came out but I sucked even more then...) and I'm trying to get the Halloween directives done but I've hit a bit of a wall and was looking for advice. (Git Gud I already know and am working on it. ) Supernatural Savior seems to just be happening and I know if I get in a MBT I'll have Witching Hour in no time. I ground out the 1500 resupplies and now I'm staring at this wall of not being good enough to get kills with the Halloween weapons (I tried to play Stalker Infiltrator but I'm so bad at it I can't even explain. Twenty deaths. No kills and massive frustration. Ugh. I had a little more luck with Medic revives but it's still going to take me a week to get 450 of them. The fact that everyone else is also trying to get revives means I just can't get to the bodies before they rise or vaporize.

I'll probably get the banner (and that will be fine) but I really wanted the stupid lightning turret and good god those numbers are big. So any advice? Just keep grinding and see where it falls?

Anyway, thanks a lot.
Geo

You did the 1500 ammo packs?!?!?! I grinded on that one for a couple of days and only managed around 415ish before I realized the engie side of the event was a trap.

Even with max certed engie, there are just so many other engies out there that it is difficult (ime) to really grind that sufficiently.

Actually, i am already done with it.

The 1500 ammo resupply i still did, it is quite doable with normal gameplay. But the 2500 of the last stage no, i did not.

I did the revives and it was work, but it did it in one day. So if i can do the 750 revives in a single day i think it is possible for other to do this during the runtime of the event.

And yes you have to hunt a big pumpkin.

And yes you have to do tank, harrasser with a teammate.

And helloween weapons, get yourself briefed ingame how to complete this part.

Go look for the Halloween mega pumpkin or whatever it's called? Esamir is the best continent to look for it: It's color scheme allows you to easily see them and the continent is mostly open ground with little foliage or cover to hide them. I have a route around Echo Valley substation, Searro listening post, Apex Genetics, Mani Lake Sattelite, Aurora Materials, Rime Analitics and then across the mountains to Eisa Mountain pass that yields tons of easily spottable pumpkin locations, I was lucky and got my mega pumpkin in 5 minutes. I usually do it in a Skyguard or similar to keep away any ESF that try to bother you, and bother you they will.

The halloween weapon shouldn't be done as Stalker, far too dedicated and frustrating. Try to do it through normal gameplay. I've gotten 3 dozen just by using the Ectoblaster as a backup when I run out on my primary and whenever I see a hapless sniper/whatever standing around gazing in the distance I'll be sure to shoot them a couple of times and knife them with the slasher. Keep in mind how many shots you need to get the passed half health, also keep in mind that if you hit the torso you'll likely hit nanoweave so you need to deal 20% extra damage, just fire one or two more bullets than your minimum to deal 500 damage.

I have ammo packs maxed since early in the games lifetime. I can throw down 2 ammo packs that stay for 6 minutes, have a 7m range and it looks like the game gives a higher chance my ammo packs give the ammo when there's multiple ammo packs on the ground. This means that after a continent switch you can get 30+ ammo ticks for free (I had one with about 120 ammo ticks!!!!). just throw one near the spawns in the back and one near the door and your golden even if other engi's throw theirs.

Actually the one with the ectoblaster and the Halloween pumkin are the easiest. Pumkin you do best on esamir at off peek hours in an ESF. I find 2 or 3 everytime I do a run of like 1h. I think I have like 5 or 6 by now and farmed pumkins for less than 2h this event. During off peek hours most other pilots just farm too and leave you alone...if you get unlucky you have to deal with some people that wait for easy prey(and frankly, I pity anyone that kills distracted pumkin hunters. It's like stealing from toddlers.).

Ectoblaster is crap if you try to do it with kills of the other faction. The Ectoblaster is just too weak. However, mines, ammo packs, scan darts etc. count too...even those of your faction and your own. I think it's a cheap move to kill ammo packs of people that just want to do the ammo resupply directive...especially if they are of your faction. However, dropping a medic shield gen and destroying it yourself with 3 shots works quite well. The shield gen needs much less hits than ammo packs and you do not piss anyone off. You can finish the last directive tier in 40-50 minutes like that(it's boring...but it's easy and planable). Perfect place is somewhere around your own warpgate cause nobody can attack you there.

I would choose the resupply directive over the revive directive. You can simply drop your ammo pack in a big fight and just keep playing(or go surfing). Reviving especially last tier(750 people) needs you to stay focussed on just that for many, many hours...at least with the current competition. Even worse if you do not have a great connection.

Witching Hour is easily done in a battle bus, MBT and liberator, I guess. You can even just be passenger in a battle bus or valkyr, I think.

Savior can be easy (it's just 45 kills after all)....or very annoying. You get it while playing but if you got bad luck then you can be playing for some hours and only get like 4 or 5 savior kills in. I guess, playing MAX in big fights or engi with Eidolon right behind a MAX works best if you really want to grind it. All other directives should be more grindable tho if you really want to do it within a few days.

I had no idea you got credit for destroying stuff other than actual kills. I will give that a try. Thanks.

Dude I haven't even been able to play at all! I'm chompin at the bit to get in and play!

Hopefully they extend the event so we can have a full month and hopefully you guys who CAN play now get extended time with the event also. I feel like if a mass amount of people can't play that hurts the ones that can too. Less players in game for certs, smaller battles. Everyone is being impacted by this even if they are playing and think they aren't. They are. Here hoping they fix it soon and let us have a chance to participate.

Thanks for the tips. However, on Emerald it is just a mass of engies and Medics right now. My Engie is already maxed and it was such an uphill battle I skipped it. Getting kills with Event weapons is far easier imo.

This is the first video game (outside playing Splatoon with my nephew) which I've played in five years or so and I wasn't big on them before that. PS2 amuses the heck out of me though so I came back after hearing (most) of the functional issues with the game had been fixed. Overall my experience is far less frustrating than last time but my skills are... laughable? That's probably a fair description. I had a four hour play session where I got 50 kills and only 98 deaths and I was over the moon. The thing is I play my Engineer more like a light assault and push the line to resupply people and repair MAX suits and all that. Which gets me killed but it's fun and even when I don't do much but act as a bullet sponge I usually feel like I'm accomplishing something because of the resupplies and occasional kills (or more often assists).

The point where ALL I'm doing is dying (and often getting a Medic killed trying to revive me) is where the game annoys a bit. I suppose things may clear up a bit in terms of Engineer and Medic saturation as more people finish the directives and go back to playing normally.

On a different note. If you play in an Alert but have to log out before it ends do you get anything for participating in the Alert?

Just as a heads up, we're gong to be extending the duration of the Halloween event this year. Not sure how much longer it will go quite yet, but it won't end on October 31st.

I gave up. I made huge progress... I think just an inch away from 3rd tier. Then we had all that patching and somehow my stuff all got reset.

It was already a struggle as I'm right now trying to get a new avatar leveled up. I've been splitting my time between two factions and the directives are not shared.

When all my progress got erased I threw in the towel. Good luck to the rest of you.

My main gripe with the directive is the kills with the event weapons.

Hundreds of revives? Sure. Thousands of resupply ticks? I can do that in a day. Tens of savor kills? That was the first thing I got on tier two and three.

But then over 100 kills with the Ectoblaster? The thing struggles to kill someone from behind! And the only other option is a knife?

It just comes down to either AI vehicle farming as a driver or getting very lucky and finding a Galacto-lantern before anyone else can. Extending the directive is very helpful, but I can't say I like the few options we have.

Why not smashing pumpkins like last year? Pumpkin-helmet-headshots included!

If I had been designing the event (though I totally get why it's set up the way it is) I think I would have reversed the rewards for the final tiers of the directive. If nothing else it would have given you the B00 Turret for use in the final tier but also rewards the different amounts of time and skill in a way which is more likely to mean something. The players who have been playing for a long time who are most likely to be able to finish the directive without (too) much effort probably already have the original skin for the B00 (if they want it) so it isn't going to affect their game experience outside of being able to have the goofy version of the Lightning. For newer players the Turret would be a bigger deal. So if you treat the Banner as the top of things with it being a sign of status for completing the event in the allotted time (and maybe toss in a Boost of some kind IDK) then the new players get what they want and the players for whom the Turret is more or less the same as the Banner also get what they want (In this case recognition... though maybe not. I'm not clear how the banners work. My presumption was they show up on the other players screen when you kill them but I haven't paid that close of attention.)

Glad to hear the event is going to go a little longer, at least makes it a little more feasible.

In the past the directives made a lot of people do a lot of annoying stuff. Remember when it was just flash roadkills left and right? God the horror.

Now at least the directives are for stuff like, "be a frickin' medic for once!!!". It's actually... helpful


It's refreshing that they are taking this direction at least.

You get nothing if you logout before it ends.

But... if you log back in from say a disconnect, it will remember previously spent time.

I've just been dumping recon darts on the ground, I have it maxed so that's 6 recon darts per refill in quick succession, then I knife them all with only 1 hit grief points per... I don't think I'm going to do the full 400 kills this way, but I'll try and put it at a more reasonable amount of say 200 kills, which is already a pain to reach with the Echie and knife.

That works!?

Pacster talked about using the Medic shield regenerator as it has lower health than the ammo pack, but he does mention recon darts himself. I dont know why he didnt think of using that if he does mention them. I actually missed that he mentioned recon darts the first time as he only mentioned the shield regenerator as best to accomplish it. I just tried the recon dart to see if it counted and boy does that go fast compared to anything else.

Okay... so they removed the deployables count as kills 'bug'. Maybe enemy deployables still count? Didn't sound like it. I know killing Pumpkins doesn't work anymore which seems sort of silly given doing so will massively slow you down when Pumpkin hunting in comparison to flying (if you can avoid crashing... ).

Maybe someone can help me out here. Are the events supposed to be for the Vets or to encourage new players to give the game a try and reward them for doing stuff which will help them become Vets themselves. The reason I ask is the Directives seem designed to reward inter-disciplinary play (something which require time in game and a boat load of Cert to make reasonable).

Necromancer = Medic. Toil and Trouble = Engineer. Supernatural Savior = High skill or luck with whatever you are playing. Halloween Hunter = knowing the game well enough to use melee or the Ectoblaster effectively (Stalker Infiltrator being the most obvious choice). Witching Hour = Vehicle Play and to force it you need to be the driver and get a gunner. Pumpking Slayer = taking the time to hunt for it or getting lucky.

Now none of that individually is an issue. Given enough time I could get all of them. Given the time remaining I'm not so sure since I can't even play every day. Damn RL responsibilities and lack of skill in the game.

Anyway, mostly just venting since the structure and intent of the Event seems off to me. I will say this though as a major criticism of how things have been handled. The NPC/team kills counting toward the Halloween Hunter directive may not have been intended but should not have been removed halfway though the event. Next Halloween remove the glitch. No problem. Removing it now rewards the people who took advantage of the bug and punishes those who were trying to do it legit but were glad there was an out if the event was almost over.

Still liking the game but more than a little irritated at the same time. I did go on a mini-tear this morning in my lightning... blew up three vehicles and killed four or five people in the process (sad as the may be I was feeling pretty good ;D). If we had the LB00 as something other than the final tier those might have counted toward finishing the Halloween Hunter portion of the directive where as after I get the LB00 it will just be a very dangerous tchochke.