Fun GAMMA Start Story...

A fun GAMMA story to kick off the week.

I occasionally come back to GAMMA (or straight Anomaly) every year or two, to get a feel for where things are. The merc base in Dead City and the train station in Jupiter are... home. GAMMA is home. And because I'm after a cozy game, not just a cortisol-drenched stress bath, Iron Man stays off, I don't care very much about the main yellow marker questline story, and my main goal is a nicely laid out bunch of per-ammunition-type drop bags on the floor (bags because you can quick-release drop them with infinite weight), and base containers around a crafting table and some merchants, in a zone all of whose denizens are my friends.

In those bags are all the game's weapons I managed to collect, some requiring more than one specimen as they offer multiple options and go in more than one bag. The whole thing is a quest to find the best weapons in each category, explore hidden weapon options, and when I find some, I occasionally write it down, like I did back when for earlier days gamma and for anomaly.

My playthrough also has a second dimension, which is becoming friendly with the f*ck everyone.
I start as ISG, ramp up rep with them and finish their short and sweet main quest, grind 2000 reputation, hop over to mercs and the almost all other factions, grind 2000 with everyone and their friendly neighbours, and then figure out what to do with Monolith and Sin. In the past I used the Make a Wish mod which would make wish granter switch you to Monolith (and then grind 2000 rep with them and sin), I don't know if that mod works today, didn't get there yet.

So with that exposition laid out, I watched GAMMA 0.9.5 download a thousand mods for 15 hours, started it, went straight to the ISG start, and had a poke around.

Its first level remains, as always, very tantalizing. You start in the Darkscape barn. The two regular NPCs there - a merchant and a mechanic - are alive and well. For the first literal 5 seconds of the game. Next to them spawns a crack UNISG squad that wouldn't be out of place in the CNPP. Tin cans and tier 3-5 weapons. You heard that right, tier 5 weapons, in Darkscape, right next to you, when you wake up. 5 seconds later, the loner merchants are non-despawning corpses, and the UNISG squad settles in. Spoiler alert: both the trade/armor-exchanger/mission-giver (Hernandez) and his four-strong brute-squad will despawn the second you leave Darkscape.

I walked around them, not yet talking to Hernandez. One of them was rocking a tier-5 RD-74 "ISG" on his back. Another, a rare tier-4 AK Alfa. Conveniently, Polymer, one of the now dead loner NPCs, dropped a Druganov with a decent-shape barrel.

Ok. In this playthrough, these guys will not despawn. They will relinquish those nice things they have to my collection.

I didn't start the main mission (thinking I might be able to leave the map and come back to find Hernandez still there if I don't actually start it.. didn't test that yet).

Instead, I started nagging them for side-quests, determined to stay in Darkscape as long as I needed to (but start the quest if I run out of scavenged food and water, because he's the only trader on the map). I did a dozen or so quests for them, finding occasional darkscape stash as well, and even scoring some nice weapons off the first two squads of stalkers that spawn in at game start (from there on most are level-appropriate).

The problem was that nothing I had could kill more than one of those four without permanently turning them all hostile. And they are VERY powerful, and very well armored.

Then I got a break. One of them gave me a "Investigage signal" mission, in Darkscape. Fantastic. That's code for "Four dead ISG people with cooll guns" to find. I did, and they had cool (Tier 3-4) guns and all, but they also had... something nobody else to that point dropped on this level. A grenade. Had about 400 odd rep with ISG at this point.

So back I went, turned in the mission (I lucked out and it also gave me a yellow stash as a reward), saved at the campfire, started the main mission with Hernandez, bought a second backpack and food making gear, saved again, and dropped the grenade on it. And ran.

The grenade took out all four members of the brute squad, and made Hernandez shat off with me. He chased me around the barn, I sneaked in from the other side, cleaned out the four corpses, retreated, dropped the bag with everything I wasn't to going to carry, but with my RD and Alpha well in hand.

Then I promptly left Darkscape, making the long journey to the merc base to high-five Dushman (and set up what would become a proper base there later), make my inventory more lean, tinker with my gear, and go straight north to Limansk and into the southeeast bandit camp in Jupiter. Quick dash out from under the grasp of the bandits, and I caught upu with the newly spawned Hernandez. He seemed to have amnesia and was not aware of our earlier altercation.

So here I am. One day into the game. Jupiter ISG base. 5 rep (from the hit taken when I killed four of them). And off to a fantastic start with my weapons collection.

I'm home.