Overview
A short summary of what makes the Mako great, and one method to get enjoyable games out of them.
The undersea train with no brakes
This guide is intended to build on Ray G Quit Penalty’s excellent general shark guide, by providing some Mako specific details. Go read that first as i’m going to assume you understand basic sharking and want to Mako better.
This method has worked for me in about 2/3rds of my 1.5k shark games, but it should only be taken as a starting point.
One thing to note that for this guide to work, you *need* to be about level 18 to unlock the important parts. In fact i’d go so far as to say “don’t play Mako” until you can use nimble finned.
Whilst the Mako is certainly the fastest shark in Depth, speed is not her greatest strength – and you will lose constantly if you expect it to carry you through the game.
The Mako’s greatest strength is this:
Which, to the uninitiated, represents 390 EP – accomplished in 17 kills. Scaling back to what it needs at only 8 kills, the Adequate Mako build can impose a permanent assault in open water, stalling diver progress completely, during or immediately after safe #2.
So here’s the recipe for an Adequate Mako:
- Spawn – No bonus
- Spend every shred of stamina you have to get to the diver cage but DO NOT right click to get there. In almost every instance you will find a straggler who you can kill in that magic 1.5 seconds before his buddies can turn around and get you. Incidentally, if you don’t make it a Mako active kill, it’s not the end of the world.
- If you died in the process, Buy Mako Active 2, fun times approach. If not, WAIT because one more mako active kill skips you the next step.
- Hide like a coward until your shark bro gets a failed kill, and get in there and finish his target with Mako active
- Buy Mako Active 3, if you’ve done well this should be about 1/2 through the first safe
- Your goal is 60 EP for Nimble Finned and Strong Tail. Everything else is secondary.
This is: 2 mako active kills and one none, 1 mako active kill and 3 none if you managed to get mako active on your first kill but died before your second. - Fin & Tail changes the Mako into a subsea balistic missile with toothache. Enjoy the screams.
Now comes the actual intelligent part – if you’re in a non-open water map (Devils Head, Antiguo, Cove to a lesser extent) you will want Blood Feast, as it means your health recharge will finish at about the same time as your stamina can handle two lunges after a kill. If you’re in the open you absolutely have to capitalise on it, either with Hangry to make sure you get your kills in before the divers are safe, or for preference, Blood Rage.
Blood rage merits some further explanation as it means you can bite someone out, do a one 180 turn and about 100 ms after the turn animation is finished, launch into another lunge. This can be huge if you or your bro has managed to knock S.T.E.V.E around a little and the enemy have bunched around it.
After that? Go nuts. This is just to get you started on the path to the joy of the Mako Frenzy, where quintuple kill streaks are the norm.
Tenets of the Isurus
Still Here?
Why?
Oh well, have some idle mako centric musings.
- Your active ability is the single most important component of your playstyle.
- You are going to die. Often. Plan around it.
- You do not get to survive the devoted attentions of more than one competent diver at a time.
- You do not get to survive more than two *succesful* attacks unless the blessing of Sekolah is upon you or you have blood feast. Die productively and in harmony with your shark bro.
- Bleed = Dead
- Poison = Dead
- Net = Dead
- Double Mako = Double Dead
- Two lunges with nimble finned is all it takes to get a diver from ‘no heartbeat’ indicating to him that you’re close, to ‘bitten in half’; this can happen in less than a second.
- Seals will kill you in the long term with their opportunity cost, as the time spent finding one and getting back is time spent by divers getting cash for flares/sonar. In nearly every case, better to attack and die to line up an easier kill on the wounded diver later.
The adequate mako is doing exactly 2 things at all times.
- Attacking or about to attack
- Not getting shot
Anything else will get you killed, most importantly, without the benefit of more EP. This includes chasing seals.
And finally, for every shark;
Get the biggest, brightest screen you possibly can. I personally use a HD projector for 1/2 life size sharks. The divers have sound advantage, we have sight advantage, but with your monkey-like binocular optical arrangement, you are wasting it on tunnel vision with a smaller display.
On a bIg enough screen you can tell which direction a diver is facing – and especially which ones are wearing a crown – long before the heartbeat starts for them. Also on a big enough screen, it is much easier to detect the hazed motion of a diver in a shark shield.
Happy Sharking!