Flunking Flank

I spent most of this afternoon running around in The Division. I cleared out all the world bosses, and then started going after HVTs. I cleared a couple of weeklies, but then hit a point I just don’t know if I can cross solo. There were a lot of them. So, I switched to the dailies, and ran the ones there that dropped greens.

Then I went to West Side Piers, the new open world area. There were a couple of phone recordings that I wanted to track down, and I’m glad I did, because they reward a ton of XP towards the next cache. So, between fighting the guys to get to the recordings, I think I earned three caches for three recordings. This loot box mechanism is really similar to Destiny’s Luminous Engrams. Both reward you for simply playing the game. Unlike Destiny, however, there’s no drop off after the first three levels a week. You can keep earning caches as long as you’d like.

I’m now running a 4 Nomad/2 Lone Star build. The 4 Nomads give me an auto heal if I get killed, something that came up more than once today when I got in over my head. And the 2 Lone Stars give me double the ammo, so my pockets got a lot deeper. Both when I was hunting world bosses and running around in West Side Piers, I felt like I had to flick back to base a lot to re-up my ammo. This should give me a little more time in the field.

I’m getting better at the game, too. I’m learning how to line up my shot in cover, then pop-up by hitting aim and then shooting. With my marksman rifle, I can pop a series of targets like that. I feel like I’m swimming through jello though when I end up with a situation where I’m getting overrun and overwhelmed. I’m so spoiled by Destiny, where I can run backwards probably about as fast as I can run forwards. You move and jump at superhuman speeds in Destiny, so when you’re just a mere mortal in The Division, you can feel the difference.

But I think that’s a design choice. The game wants you to think in terms of tactics, to use cover, to not get flanked. Getting flanked is pretty much game over, though with this build I’ve got a little more survivability than I did before. I’m also getting better at figuring out how to deal with the different units, and not get myself into those situations.

I only had a couple of “glitchy” moments today: once when I meant to hit X to duck behind cover, I hit O and climbed over the cover and fell down to the floor below, where three yellow bar bosses were waiting for me. That didn’t end well. A couple of times I glitched when throwing the turret, mostly when I was in a hurry because I was being overrun. I’m also used to being able to quick toss grenades in Destiny, which is often my response to being rushed, and I couldn’t do that here. I almost feel like I need a something like a sawed off shotgun instead of my pistol, sort of a more potent “get-off” weapon.

Oh, and I was able to clear out my supply drop by dropping my world tier to 1 (or 0, whatever the lowest one is). I thought it hadn’t worked because there were still a bunch of gold bars waiting for me, but then I tore through them like tissue paper. I think I got a couple of gold drops and some Phoenix Credits out of it, so I guess it was worth it.