Overview
This is a guide detailing what to do in the world of Neo Scavenger to ensure a long and (relatively) Happy life.
1. Introduction
When writing this guide I assume you know the control scheme for Neo Scavenger, and have a basic understanding of the concept of scavenging.
This guide is entirely my own work, and has been made from my own experiences playing the game.
You may use any part of my guide in your own work as long as you credit me as the author.
Enough of that, let’s get to the part where I tell you how not to die!
2. Starting a Game
When you first start the game the traits you want are as follows.
1. Strong
2. Melee
3. Botany
4. Medic
With the Flaws
1. Myopia
2. Metabolism
(optional) Insomniac to get Tracking
You might think that having 3 negative traits will severly hamper your abilities, but I disagree, and here’s why;
1. Insomnia is solved by sleeping pills. You can purchase these at the Haggerty Health Clinic once you get to the DMC.
2. Metabolism is solved by Botany (food is a non-issue when you can eat all those berries).
3. Myopia is solved with eye surgery, and eye surgery also grants eagle eye (yay!). combined with binoculars this will let you see pretty far.
Now that you have your traits you have to deal with the Dogman, oh no! Actually its pretty easy, just use strong + melee to kill him without getting hurt. Now that you have killed him (good job by the way!), do what you need to do in the cryo facility and then head out.
If you take trapping you can skin the Dogman using glass shards to get a “Dogman fur coat”. Without Trapping skinning him won’t get you much, but you can still do so if you want to.
The dogman fur coat will do two things for you;
1. Scare people (make them run away) which can get annoying if you want their boots.
2. Prevent you from freezing to death; You can be naked except for the coat and you will be fine in terms of temperature (but not modesty). Just be careful not to wear too much, as you can get heat exhaustion and die.
Don’t worry about not having a dogman coat, you will still be safe from the cold.
Also make sure to grab the medkit and the film for killing a dogman with your bare hands. Once you have these use one of the clean rags that came with the medkit (most of the medkits will have a few) to wear around your mouth as a crude filter. This prevents nasty spores from infecting you while you loot.
3. Setting off.
Now you have a box with some medical supplies, a video of you in all of your dogman killing glory, and a severe case of overconfidence.
You might be thinking “I killed a dogman with bare hands, how hard can this game be?” Don’t do that, you WILL get killed.
The very first thing you want to do is go to a forest and get a large stick by “crafting” the woods found there. After this you want to make a Broad Spear, one of the best weapons in the game. To do this put the melee skill, a large branch, a glass shard (from the cryo facility, you grabbed those right?), and some sort of string/cloth. I use the hospital gown, since you don’t need it to stay warm, and you probably don’t have anything else.
Note: Do not take the talisman off of your neck for any reason and do not craft with it.
The Broad spear has a range of 3, which means you can get 1-2 hits on someone before they can hit back.
Now that you are armed and dangerous go west to the strange forest. Upon completion you may have an “encounter”. If you get a bracelet from the forest “encounter” put it in the medkit or another carrying device of your choosing.
DO NOT PUT THE BRACELET FROM THE STRANGE FOREST ON!
This bracelet is… bad for your health. keep it in a bag and sell it for $500 at the junk market.
Note: You are not guaranteed to get a bracelet, the encounter that gives it is rare. If I don’t get a bracelet, I restart the game because having it makes life much easier. This particular encounter was modified some time ago to always happen (Along with a few others)
You may also get a dogman repellant that says “hold in hand”. Please don’t do that, bad things will happen.
After the strange forest encounter head North-East.
4. Going North.
Now, it used to be that you could just waltz over to the market and deposit your double backpacks worth of loot into the market, and then sift through your sled to see what you want to sell. Nowadays however, you will likely not find a backpack for a while, and sleds are vanishingly rare most games.
This means you will need to stop off at the ATN Enclave to buy Travois(es?) as a means of carrying loot. Once you get there, barring any “diplomatic incidents” (Hint: Don’t attack the face painted people) you will be able to trade. Among the goods available are Travois(es?) War clubs (superior version of range 2 weapon, may be useful as a backup weapon if you have space), Hip-bags useful for carrying ammo, pills, or some other small necessity, Leather Overcoats, and various ranged weapons.
I recommend camping out and buying as many NATIVE VEHICULAR STORAGE DEVICES (No need to stumble around with the “T” word now, eh?) as you can until you run out of patience waiting for them to restock and storing them on the “exit” hex of the ATN (the one you find yourself on after leaving). This is so that you can come back and quickly pick one up later, without having to worry about one being in stock when you have a bunch of stuff you want to take but the NATIVE VEHICULAR STORAGE DEVICE you have with you is at 2% condition.
While you are up here, beware of the so called “blue frogs” who wear blue sashes and hospital gowns. Many of them are carriers of the deadly disease Blue Rot, and I would HIGHLY recommend avoiding them if at all possible.
After stocking up on ways to store your gloriously worthless pile of junk, head towards the Glow
5. Traveling (South)east.
On the way to the Glow you will find all manner of people, places and items. Befriend the people (seriously, only fight if you have to), loot the places, and take the items (sorted by value of course).
At this point you probably are starting to wonder what you should take versus what to ignore, when attacking is a good idea, and where to loot.
You should take anything that has value, and ignore anything that doesn’t (barring stuff you need for crafting recipes).
Initiating combat is NEVER a good idea, but if in combat all you need to do is attack while they hurry to get in range (you have a spear, remember?) then dodge/parry until they get “vulnerable”. When this happens it means they are more likely to get hurt if you strike. Strike now, and if you have any abilities such as leg trip, lure, etc. use those.
Looting should be done only when the “safety” meter is green. The looting bar should be high, but it doesn’t really matter, since its relatively safe to loot when you can kill or scare most people you meet. The sneak bar doesn’t matter at all, if someone finds you then the advantage given by a spear, strong, and melee practically guarantee a victory for you (and some extra loot).
“Wait a minute” you say here, “I thought you said combat should be avoided!”
Well… it should. The thing about fighting is that its tiring, time consuming, and you could get killed. However, the chance of you actually getting hurt is pretty low so you don’t need to worry too much, as long as you don’t get out-numbered. Still, don’t go around picking fights. You DO have a reputation to uphold after all.
It shouldn’t take long to get close to The Glow
6. The Glow
Once you come upon The Glow you will see people dressed in what appears to be body armor, and they will be carrying guns. These are “DMC Guards” and they are friendly unless provoked. Do not provoke them if you value your life.
Once you get to the glow you should stop by the market BEFORE approaching the gates. Sell the bracelet from the strange forest, and any other loot you might have (keep one gun, ammo for said gun, and nano medkits). Then go to the gates. At the gates you will be approached by “Hatter”. Now, not to go into details, but using the trapping or tracking skills during the encounter will make life significantly easier.
From Hatter you will get ANOTHER bracelet, put this one on and go into the DMC. The bracelet will be on the ground in the hex labeled “Hatter”
I recommend purchasing eye surgery as soon as you get into the city.
Once you finish there the world is yours. With the gear you have, your cool 3k not so cool 500$ from selling loot, and some basic skills, you are set to survive in the wasteland. From here on in what you do is up to you but remember to stay cool, and NEVER get greedy.
If you didn’t earlier, you might try seaching a bit east of the ATN for the Saginaw Mental Institute, I don’t want to spoil anything, but its a pretty dangerous place with some fantastic rewards for those who choose wisely.
7. Summary and Advice
To summarize what you want to do,
1. Always take the cautious route, just because you are strong and well geared doesn’t mean you should go charging in blindly.
2. Always plan for bad luck, because if you plan for good luck you will die.
3. Use a spear in combat to get a range advantage.
4. Do not fight more than 2 people at once (even then its iffy, I usually retreat when faced with more than one enemy unless I am feeling lucky/bored/stupid.)
5. Talk to people at every opportunity, this will make them like you.
6. Never spare someone’s life after combat, they will come back later to seek revenge.
7. Use noise traps when sleeping.
8. You will not always get a bracelet from the strange forest, as the encounter that gives it is rather rare.
9. You can also make a broad spear using the “Ranged” skill.
10. Blue Rot can be spread by anyone who has been infected by it, and the later stages of the disease give it enough “reach” in battle to infect you at range 3.
11. Some diseases can be spread through the air so wearing a rag around your face to cover your mouth and nose will help keep you healthy.
With the massively increased danger of Blue Rot it may be worthwile to swap out melee in favor of ranged, and use a bow to take targets down from a distance, finishing them off with a crowbar.
This would mean that you could simply take down blue frogs from afar with the bow and wait for them to bleed out instead of risking infection. This is up to personal preference, so you may want to test out a ranged character to see if it works better for you
When you are done with your current character, you might want to head up to Camp Grayling for the Finale of the Neo Scavenger story. Beware though, its a very dangerous place for the unprepared.
A guide I would highly recommend to veterans and newcomers alike is jayTOH’s guide “A few pointers for the Neo Scavenger”, it contains many useful tips and hints for helping you survive the wastes. You can find it here:
[link]Lin has written a sort of compilation of hints and tips, give it a read!
[link]Another guide I recommend is one by Qwar, it contains some useful advice and is well written, and seeing the game from multiple viewpoints is surely a good thing. Simply click the following link to read it:
[link]I would recommend using the wiki if you are confused about anything or want to know a recipe, it can be found here:
[link]The Offical Forums can be found here, use them if you have questions about the game.
[link]If you have any questions, comments, or advice to add, please comment below and tell me what you think!
(I will continue to improve this guide sporadically as new features and encounters are added to the game, please leave feedback on what you would like to see added)
Changelog
1/11/2016
Updated information involving the Strange Forest encounter to reflect changes made by Dan
8/1/2015
Added a link to Lin’s guide.
Removed wording implying that Qwar’s guide was written recently
1/10/2015
Finally(!) updated the guide for Release Version of Neo Scavenger
9/7/2014
Added information about airborne diseases and wearing rags as a safety measure
9/6/2014
Added section involving ATN.
Made adjustments to other sections to compensate for new section
Added some new info in “Summary and Advice”
4/20/2014
Minor edits to clarify some things that might have been confusing
4/11/2014
Clarified section 4. “the last bar” changed to “the sneak bar”
4/5/2014
Minor grammatical errors corrected.
Fixed price of strange forest bracelet, previously guide incorrectly stated that it was worth 3000$
Added a note about strange forest bracelet being rare
Added link to jayTOH’s guide