Level Zero: Extraction – Merc Guide to Light Usage and Positioning vs The Aliens

Merc Guide vs The Aliens for New Players

By Redman.

Tired of getting banged up by invisible screeching aliens all the time? You and your duo keep dying because the aliens EMP your flashlight and run you down? Here’s the alien approved guide on how to kick their butts.

Light Management

Let’s start with the basics of light management:

Redundancy is your biggest enemy, there’s two or more of you, why do you both have your flashlights/flares turned on? The damage no longer stacks so it’s a complete waste of resources, nevermind the fact a single ability counters your entire team, and I better not hear you complain when that happens and one of your guys bites the dust, and if you’re solo? Your teammate is stealth, with the scan changes, being unnoticeable as solo is your most viable game plan, and if you’re found out? I’ve got just the tips for you too!

Deally, after the flashlight nerfs, a duo will run around with mainly falres(they’re about equal to flashlights right now) and occasionally glowsticks, which are much weaker but have no counter from the alien side, so sue them mostly as shields and defensive tools, while flares are very low commitment tools for aliens to take out, spit is low energy and low CD, which is why at least one guy should be running his flashlight in main hand, just to make sure at least one alien can’t cast his scream, which is currently their most powerful merc killer ability, since it strips you of the ability to swap your items for several seconds and prevents you from turning lights on or looking around, at the highest power, when 3 or more mercs are hit, the stun lasts as long as 5 seconds, which is the same amount of time an alien is slowed down and unable to do anything when shot out of invis, but more on that later

Second Point

Identifying the best room to bunker down in if the aliens are after you. A room needs to meet the following criteria in order to be an ideal bunkering down spot:

Multiple entrances, ideally 2 to prevent mercs from flanking too hard, preferably with a light switch close outside of them to cover your advance, multiple light switches for the same room, and a large interior so acid clouds are easy to avoid, and wide open field of view outside of the doors, the less clutter the better as it’s less likely you’ll have to brave an egg trap.

Example: Laboratory sector A extract double door room. This room has two entrances, one light switch on each side so it’s harder for aliens to run in, EMP and scream as you might be on the other side of the room and out of their range for the scream, leading to a failed attack, wide interior so you can’t be gassed out, regardless of which side you choose to leave the room from you have access to a lightswitch nearby to further cover you, woth clear line of sight from the doorway

So you can preemptively flare or glowstick it up to spot eggs meant to trigger when you sprint for the lightswitch and prevent aliens from stalling the patrol robot and preventing you from going forward

And Thirdly…

The rule of 3… If there are 3 of the same light source, aliens can’t play.

Room lights and two people with a flashlight in hand? If the mercs don’t get two of these sources knocked at the same time, the aliens phisically can’t deal with all of them.

A properly spaced out trio of flares?

The aliens have 2 spits, they use them, and you’re safe for 20 seconds, plenty of time to use the remaining flare to relocate and escape.

Don’t wanna deal with aliens spitting you up?

Glowsticks, they’re currently uncounterable for aliens, just pop them down on the floor and watch the aliens skitter away.

Then, even if your main light source is countered, you have a safe haven of glowsticks to fall back to, meaning aliens won’t be able to 100 to 0 you.

You’re an out of luck solo? got spotted while taking a broken vial off of a mad scientist’s corpse?

Even then! When stealth, your best friend, is dead, you have another buddy.

Ceiling Lights

With proper usage of the previous two rules, you can have your own little buddy in the sky to hold your hand and keep the pesky aliens at bay, with two flashlights, or even just some flares and glowsticks, you’ll be untouchable until you need to hell out of dodge for a couple minutes at the very least, if you fumble the lightswitch timing.

How to prevent ceiling lights from bailing out on you because of flcikering? You turn them off for 5 seconds, leave your lit flashlight in a corner covering you and hte lightswitch, and pepper the room with glowsticks and flares.

What if power failure? Same deal, you’re fine as long as your flashlight is fine, which is two minutes of continuous operation.

And don’t underestimate your body light, any amount of light damage slows alien attack speed, buying you precious seconds.

The basics out of the way, let’s talk more about the specifics:

Aliens can see your high BPM, how do you counter this? You only use half your sprint bar, let it reset, and go on, this keeps you mobile and just under the reveal threshold, allowing you to quickly route your way around the map without arousing the alien’s interest, alternatively, the cold blooded perk is a great and easy way to stay under the radar at the cost of a perk slot, very useful once you’ve got a good kit and good loot and need to get out fast.

If you’re following my advice, you’ve likely been turning on about every single light switch you run across, this means that either the aliens won’t follow you, or if they do, you gotta be ready to respond.

In certain spots, for example when you’re going inside the research facility, the aliens have no chooice but to follow behind you or go around the whole way, if you’re in a duo it might be worthwhile to have one guy call the elevator whle the other keeps an eye on the corrdior and shoots down invis aliens.

And here’s another thing: if you think you see an invis alien? Shoot it out of invis, it will be slowed down enough for your teammate to finish it off with a flare, as being pulled out of invis forces the alien to do nothing at all for 5 seconds, rendering it crippled.

Meaning you’ve just won yourself about 1 and a half or so minutes of freedom, as the aliens won’t be able to commit to anything until the one you killed returns. His buddy might harrass you and take advantage if you’re overly cocky, but the death of an alien is your GO signal to get out of wherever you’ve been, this makes it harder for the dead alien to track you back down if the two aliens aren’t communicating and if you hurt both of them, chacnes are the other isn’t actively tracking you, at this point you want to locate an extract and get out of the raid since prolonged alien attention can still result in your death as the aliens play a war of attrition.

They have infinite resources, they’re weaker head on, but they’re playing to bleed you dry. The easiest way to counter that? Getting out before you’re in any danger of running out of resources.

You should ration your resources according to the 1/3rd rule, it should take you 1/3rd of your resources to explore and loot, and 1/3rd to come back, with the last 1/3rd dedicated for emergency situations, if you’re tapping into your last third it means you’ve long overstayed your welcome and need to get out. Of course, you can stumble into more resources mid raid from dead mercs and other places, but if you want to reliably survive? Expend up to 1/3rd of your flares to hold the aliens off while you explore and make your way to an elevator and 1/3rd to hold the fort down until the elevator comes, if you get stuck on the way, the last third is your last chance.

Which leads into the next point:

Optimize your pathing, yes, this makes it predictable and a good alien will immediately spot your intentions and prepare traps on the way, try to force you to a longer more convoluted road that almost certainly leads to you death, but if you’ve got the map figured out well enough, you’ll be in and out long before the aliens can lay their second egg.

One of the perks of the predictable spawn points is that you can plan ahead of the raid which route you’ll want to use with minimal variables.

Every second you’re in raid is a second longer the aliens or other mercs can kill you, unless you’re looking forward to the pvp, in which case you shouldn’t really care about dying either way as that’s exactly what you signed up for.

I sincerely hope this was helpful. Good luck to you!

Volodymyr Azimoff
About Volodymyr Azimoff 8013 Articles
I love games and I live games. Video games are my passion, my hobby and my job. My experience with games started back in 1994 with the Metal Mutant game on ZX Spectrum computer. And since then, I’ve been playing on anything from consoles, to mobile devices. My first official job in the game industry started back in 2005, and I'm still doing what I love to do.

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