I can tell you how to trigger John if you want - it's a fairly logical action on your part.
I restarted ND last night and just played through to where I'd got to before. I found a way of bossing the training level after the Highwaymen were triggered - there's an armoury container out of the way and I stationed myself there - it's safe from the howitzers and the baddies keep running in to be slaughtered. I holed up in there for ages - long enough to be certain that the baddies are continuously respawned.
When I'd filled up my inventory with everything I moved on to the bridge level where I kicked a bunch of mutant deer to death (they don't run after the first melee blow) and wiped out all bridge baddies with ease. But I'm just back where I was a few days ago.
I'm enjoying it. The sawblade gun is awesome - kills at least twice if baddies are close enough together.
"We all have flaws, and mine is being wicked." James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks 1951
Yeah I triggered him by capturing his ranch. I also found out you can hold off his posse if you don't stray too far from the ranch, kill them and retreat back to the ranch before they respawn (the respawns hang around on the road outside hollering threats). But eventually I was grabbed, and remembered that of the three, his levels are 'relatively' interesting so that wasn't too terrible. Forgot that he zeroes out your inventory apart from weapons though. That was expensive, but an excuse to go hunting. I was chagrined to discover that after slaughtering a small herd of caribou (4-5), you aren't warned you reached your limit, until you try to save more skins. :-@ Interesting that some fairly large parts of the map are devoid of wildlife, while others are teeming with it.
edit: rural USian folk don't 'shout', they 'holler'.
“Is that dead cattle, or your ass I smell?”–Jess Black
Got deeper under the skin of ND last night & played till 2am, which tells its own story.
The character development is quite different, with the options available at different areas of the base, Prosperity; and the main experience points mechanism is looting ethanol and bringing it back for the base.
There's quite a push to persuade players to buy Ubisoft credits to exchange in-game (and a melding of bought & earned credits, in order to blur the line still further, though they're fooling nobody). But the character progression is fine without any in-game purchasing. I'm only on level two of anything - with lots of progression to go - but generally I'm well matched to the enemy AI and the vicissitudes & dangers of the world.
As soon as you have liberated an enemy base, you have the option of taking it again from rock hard NPCs, with massive amounts of ethanol as your reward. First time I did it, it took me four or five attempts to win it back. I can do it again, but I don't know whether the difficulty is ramped up yet another notch if I do. There are plenty of side missions and no great pressure to plough through the main quest.
There is some absolutely rock hard fauna. Even the mutant warthogs are tough, and the elks have the skin of an FC4 rhino.
"We all have flaws, and mine is being wicked." James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks 1951
Base capped Kellet Cattle Co. outpost last night, it was surprisingly dead easy, seeings how I went in without a plan: I sniped a couple of dudes (including a heavy) with the .50 undetected, then sidled around t'other side. Meanwhile the bodies were found and the defenders hived off in that direction. I walked into the house and freed a couple of captives, who picked up guns and did all the heavy lifting when the defenders drifted back home. Won a 'bladed combine harvester' for my trouble, whatever the fuck that is.
“Is that dead cattle I smell, or your ass?”–Jess Black
Haven't had much truck (so to speak) with driving FC5 vehicles, so far just walking around is all the excitement I can handle. Know what's weird though is pickups (especially white ones), vans and fuel trucks catch my eye in the real world now.
“Is that dead cattle I smell, or your ass?”–Jess Black
Hit a FC5 sweet spot: Faith's dead, no peggy action in henbane river. Jacob has me slated for more shooting gallery BS, and John wants to meet me at Fall River chapel for his shitass pathetic finale.
Oh gosh, no thank you John, fuck you very much.
So I'm tooling around the valley with unlimited cultist targets all lit up, and plenty o' critters to harvest for bullet money.
Suweeeet!
“I don’t know where you came from, but I’m sending you back.”
I finished ND yesterday. Two final battles, one great fun with a good ethical dilemma at the end, but the second is one of those tedious grinds in a small arena with an overpowered boss. I failed several times, quit and went back into the game world to take advantage of one of its innovations - unlimited upgrades of some skills and weaponry. I increased my health pack and ammunition capacity to fuckninja levels and powered up an elite SMG and LMG to 11, then returned and defeated the last boss without much effort. Another ethical dilemma at the end of the second boss fight and an OK final cutscene.
The game world is now mine, with all quests & subquests complete unless I've missed something, but there's plenty to do: scavenging the camps on the hardest settings with my choice of guns for hire, killing monstrous fauna and building up my stats even further.
I've found a splendid bug. I often find myself a vantage point and use bait to lure animals to their doom to build up my resources (there's an exchange of different skins for specific materials in ND). I've discovered a location next to a cliff where, when I throw bait, animals throw themselves off the edge of the cliff and fall, either to their deaths, or to lie unconscious for a few moments, then spring several feet into the air.
"We all have flaws, and mine is being wicked." James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks 1951
Speaking of bugs, hit an odd one couple of days ago in FC5: a weird ground-to-sky giant 'box' that looked like it was made of sepia-colored, vertical venetian blind slats. I could see through the interstices, enemies could drive through it, I could walk into and out of it, but inside everything was all jumbled up. I quick-travelled elsewhere, haven't seen it again.
“I don’t know where you came from, but I’m sending you back.”
I love bugs and glitches and that sounds like a goodie. I once found a npc in FC 4 walking on the surface of a river. The most common one I come across in FC is assets stuck in mid-air - I came across an arrow just the other day. Sometimes stuck things will react if you walk into them, sometimes not.
The first one I ever came across wasn't a glitch per se, but bad map design. In an early level of Tombraider 2 it's possible to run, jump and walk to a place in the map where you can look (or jump) into the void of blackness beyond. At the time I found it very affecting - a metaphor for existential oblivion.
"We all have flaws, and mine is being wicked." James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks 1951
As I remember, get shot of the acolytes ASAP with the grenade launcher, duck & weave, duck & weave, & then heavy machine gun fire.Keep taking the health packs.
"We all have flaws, and mine is being wicked." James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks 1951
Oh, the kill jacob finale. Nah, I just want to make it through the 3rd repetition of the 'cull the herd' shooting gallery and get some more play time in the spectacular white mountains. Hopefully I can skip the finale altogether. I've been off my game so to speak, I realized when I sent my GFH home and got killed about thirty times. Guess I just got to hunker down, remember where the ducks are sitting and beat the clock.
“I don’t know where you came from, but I’m sending you back.”
There's a nasty trick played on you at the end of that the scene and it suckered me in. I'd be fascinated to see what the consequences are if you don't fall for it. You'll know what I mean when you get there.
"We all have flaws, and mine is being wicked." James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks 1951
