Excavator Mike Locations & 6th Anniversary Week 2 Guide

Overview

This guide includes fixed spawn locations of Excavator Mike, his loot table (based on my observations), tips for farming him and tips for the event in general.

Quick Note

★ Locations of the marker indicate the spawn points of Excavator Mike whereas those of the player icon indicate the safe spots mentioned below.
★ Excavator Mike will only spawn between March 3 (2021), 19:00 CET and March 10 (2021), 19:00 CET
★For 1st week’s guide click here.

Excavator Mike Locations (Slums)

★ At the north-eastern corner of the bus station. (Which is near the north-western corner of the map.)
★ You can select Underground Parking Lot as your active quest and exit and re-enter the save to farm this location.
★ Don’t use the white car as cover. There’s a puddle of fuel next to it and the concrete chunk Mike throws seems to ignite the pool. Instead, use either the white van nearby if you’re going melee or the rightmost roof if you are going ranged. Just make sure you bring him closer to the roof first to make sure that the concrete chunk doesn’t go over the roof.
♦ This location has some zombies. Clearing them out first is advised if you’re going melee.

★ Near the train shed with 2 toads, 1 goon and multiple gas tanks.
★ You can select Underground Parking Lot or Stuffed Turtle as your active quest and exit and re-enter the save to farm this location.
★ Use either the support columns of the structure going above the railways (deal with the toads first if you are going to use them as cover) or the yellow railway wagon (preferably inside) as cover.
♦ This location is easier to farm since there are fewer zombies nearby (not counting the area filled with gas tanks), is closer to the quarantine zone and has more cover.

★ On a path leading to Rais’s tower.
★ You can select Bright Mountain Tunnel as your active quest and exit and re-enter the save to farm this location.
★ Definitely use the trees as cover. Killing him is a piece of cake when both of you circle around the trees. See those 3 trees to Mike’s left? The 2 closest of them are the ones i’m talking about.
★ This area is the easiest to farm since the cover is excellent and zombies mostly stay on the road. A few of them might follow you from the tunnel entrance.

Excavator Mike Locations (Old Town)

★ At the north-western corner of the map, near the quarantine gate.
★ You can select Striped Dragon Hotel as your active quest and exit and re-enter the save to farm this location.
♦ As you can see this is the harder location to farm since there is a family of demolishers here. Simply deal with the weaker 2 and then proceed to the big guy.
★ There are 2 fuel puddles nearby. Ignite one of them and simply circle around it. Mike seems to avoid the fire and circle around the puddle with you. These puddles are ideal for both ranged and melee attacks. One thing to watch out for is the ranged attacks of Mike.

★ At the south-western corner of the parking lot. (Which is at the south-eastern corner of the map.)
★ You can select Three Moons Restaurant as your active quest and exit and re-enter the save to farm this location.
★ One way to easily kill Mike here is to stand at the edge of cliff and let him charge at you. When he gets close simply dodge his charge and he’ll fall off the cliff, into the sea where he’ll eventually drown. (Thank you Rasputin for this tip!)
♦ This location may be easier to farm compared to the one above but there are still way too many zombies here. You may need to do a lot of slashing bits and limbs before going melee on Mike.
★ I suggest using the blue trap car as cover. Circle around it while attacking Mike but don’t go on top of it. If the place gets crowded with biters, retreat and activate the car trap.

Excavator Mike Loot Table

★This section is purely based on my observations and these values (%) represent relative frequencies.
♦ I will update this section until the sample space reaches 100 trials (kills) to give more accurate values.
★ I haven’t noticed the difficulty having any effect on this loot table.
♦ Since Mike seems to sometimes drop multiple rewards, i divided this loot table into tiers. When he drops the loot, i only take into account the highest tier reward. For example, if Mike drops a blue and a purple item at the same time, i count that loot as purple rarity. If he drops the pack and an orange weapon at the same time, i consider it a pack drop (since pack is the unique reward). He also drops mods, money and green tier weapons but i excluded them from this loot table.

Amount of times killed: 100
Excavator Mike’s Pack dropped: 51 (51%)
Rare (blue) weapons dropped: 34 (34%)
Exceptional (purple) weapons dropped: 11 (11%)
Legendary (orange) weapons dropped: 4 (4%)

★ You get a GREcipe blueprint for completing his bounty. Recipe: 1 Alcohol, 2 Herb, 2 Toxic Lichen and 1 Fluorescent Shrooms.
★ GREcipe gives +25% health, infinite stamina, roughly +50% increase in speed, +20% regen time for 60s.

★ Excavator Mike’s Pack includes 5 GREcipe, 1 King mod, 2 exceptional (purple) mods, 3 jewel caskets, 3 super molotovs and 3 military medkits.

Farming Excavator Mike

★ Last Hope (Crafted with pickaxe) combined with a crossbow is my number 1 recommendation.

★ Crossbows are my number 1 ranged recommendation.
★ Shotguns are my number 2 ranged recommendation. It’s easier to land head-shots on Mike with shotguns.

Golden and engraved shotguns (highest damage output)
Advanced police rifles
Ranger (The Following expansion – Revolver) (Rais’ Gun if you don’t have the expansion)
Dragon’s Breath (Bow)
Gust of Wind (Shu Warrior bunle – Crossbow) (Upgraded Crossbow if you don’t have the bundle)
Volkatronix (Retrowave bundle – Rifle)
Ox Cannon (Ox Warrior bundle – Shotgun(?))

Last Hope (Crafted with pickaxe)
Volatile Hunter Baton (Volatile Hunter bundle) (Crafted with pickaxe)

★ Higher difficulties make him significantly harder to take down.
★ Whatever weapon you use be sure to go for head-shots and dodge frequently. Unlike Hothead Joe, freezing throwables don’t work on Mike.
★ I suggest going melee on him first to remove his helmet and then either continue with melee or go for head-shots with a crossbow (or a shotgun if he’s moving too much).
★ Once you kill him you can re-spawn by selecting the closest quarantine zone (mentioned above) as your active quest and exiting and re-entering your saved game.
★ You don’t have to exit your save to re-spawn Mike. Simply entering and exiting a quarantine zone will do the same.
★ The safe spots i have given above aren’t completely safe. Ranged attacks of Mike affect a large area. It’s enough for the concrete chunk to land somewhere near you to knock you down. If you are going to snipe him down from the top of a vehicle or building, make sure there is a lamp pole or something between the two of you. That way his concrete chunks will be absorbed by that object. You can throw melee weapons from the safe spots too but i’d just go for melee.

General Tips For Week 2

★ Sleeping doesn’t re-spawn Mike.
★ These are locations of the airdrops in Old Town. Markers mark the locations of the airdrops not seen on the map. The one on the small island seems to sometimes spawn. I don’t know what triggers it.
★ Select Striped Dragon Hotel as your active quest and exit and re-enter your save to spawn in front of that quarantine zone and re-spawn the airdrops. There are 4 airdrops nearby which you can quickly collect over and over again.

Community Feedback

This section includes information that either didn’t work for me or i haven’t been able to (or didn’t want to) try.

Originally posted by XeRnUno:

“Playing on NG+ Nightmare 100% story. So he took 60 arrows, 60 bolts, 72 shotgun ammo without taking a scratch. 2H Melee works fine tho.”

Originally posted by og_lupica:

“i was able to drain his health so fast with molotovs, shrapnels grenade and volkatronix”

Originally posted by XeRnUno:

“Buddy uses a Brick Hammer with Bolter Poison BP and he goes down VERY fast.
Game: Nightmare
We were able to get 9 Mikes during 1 day cycle.”

Interactive Map

There is an interactive map where you can see the spawn locations of Excavator Mike. (Thank you Tspoon for bringing this to my attention!)
Slums [mapgenie.io]
Old Town [mapgenie.io]

Final Note

★ Feel free to correct my mistakes if there are any and/or leave a suggestion. I hope this guide helps! Don’t hesitate to give it an up-vote if it did so that other people can find it too. 🙂