Guide to Barter & Resources
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Barter System
Bartering (or crafting as many refer to it) will be your primary way of acquiring gear in the game. Barter vendors are indicated by a pistol icon on the map and can be found in every base. With exception of some very first items, bartering gear requires different barter resources (items with a chain icon) with later game barters needing more in terms of both quantity and variety. Each resource has a type of source and parts of the Zone it can come from. For example, Seeds come from clearing human NPC camps in Cordon, Dark Valley and Agroprom while Pickles come from human NPC camps as well but only in Rostok and on the other hand North Moss comes from mutant camps in Army Warehouses and Fool’s Path. Moreover each resource has its purple variant that can either be converted into 20 pieces of corresponding resource or sold on the auction.
In addition to resources you must need a sufficient amount of money, be at the specified base and have required reputation level at that base as well as having the previous item in that barter branch.
However there are some exceptions to this such as early guns in Cordon or some containers and Scientist armor suits later in the game that can be bartered without needing the previous items in the branch.
Many items have several barter options that you can see in the top right corner after selecting an item!
Additionally if you are using in a barter a weapon or armor suit that was improved and/or painted the improvement level will carry over to the new items and the paint job will be unequipped.
Also you can’t use weapons and armor from quests in the barter.
Farm Activities
World events
These are your red hexagons on the map you will be farming most of the time. There are several types of these events but in the early game you will mostly encounter human NPC camps and mutant lairs to complete which you simply need to kill all enemies in that area. Additional variations of these are distress calls which require you to defend friendly NPCs in addition to killing all enemies. Your rewards will vary depending on the number of enemies killed and damaged (as well as surviving NPCs in distress calls).
In a few later zones such as Forest, Pit and primarily Limansk you will encounter bosses that are indicated by yellow hexagons on the map. These bosses often have grunts with them that respawn over time, to finish the encounter quickly you can just go straight for the boss.
If the world event hexagon has a red pulsating border it means that some is currently doing that event or at least ran past it aggroing the mobs.
Caches
Caches drop resources such as aluminum or copper cables. Caches are not shown on the map as they are buried underground. To find them you first need to get a metal detector. While there are two of them in the barter I highly encourage you not to use them, they are awful and will make you miserable. To get the best metal detector you simply need to finish the first Main Story quest at the Dumpyard. After you get your metal detector you need to proceed to spawn areas of stashes. Unfortunately these areas are not indicated on your map.
Go to one of these areas and run around with a metal detector in your backpack until you start hearing beeps, after that equip it and follow the direction on the monitor. After you’ve found the cache, put the detector back in your backpack as having it out in your hands drains the battery. To recharge your detector you need to find a loud generator near a mechanic at a base.
*If you can’t find any caches at your first area, go run around other places as caches have variable respawn rate that depends on either total players online or total players in that zone across all layers.
Rifts/Protoelecrto cluster
These are another type of world events but they work a bit differently compared to your regular camps.
Rifts. To farm rifts you first need to buy an anomalous installation (big ass scanner) from a supplier vendor in the Bar (or later bases), you need an installation per each rift you do. With installation in your inventory go to a Rift and place it down. After that you need to defend the installation from Wisps for about 5-7 minutes, you can check your progress on the monitor of the scanner. The most effective ways of dealing with Wisps are using a shotgun to kill them or using impact grenades (approximately 25 per Rift). Also Wisps don’t attack the installation from 12pm to 4am.
In the North there is another variant of Rifts where the scanner is preinstalled and you need to defend it from several waves of mutants.
Protoelectro cluster. This is much simpler than Rifts as you just need to run around as close to the center and possible while evading anomalies. You can monitor your progress below the minimap, if you stray too far from it the progress will rapidly decrease.
Daily quests
Daily quests are an important part of your grind as they provide additional barter, resources, spare parts for repairing your gear, reputation and some money. You can accept daily quests from the quests board. Cordon base and the Bar have separate quest boards while 100 Rads bar and subfaction base share the board. There are several types of daily quest such as killing certain enemies, looting special items from the camps or placing scanners. If you get a quest to collect a bunch of items then after you collect the required amount (collecting more doesn’t improve your rewards) go to the Supplier (shopping cart icon) at any base and choose the 3rd dialogue option to turn in the items.
There are also weekly quests.The weekly quest you get in the Bar isn’t worth your time but the two weekly quests that are unlocked at level 4 of your subfaction base are important for the endgame progression as they reward anomalous serum for endgame barters. One of these weekly quests requires you to complete 40 daily quests from the subfaction quest board while the other one is a chain of 30 daily-like quests.
Daily quests that you’ve accepted won’t reset on the daily reset however and the same goes for the quests that you didn’t accept but also didn’t decline. So if you dislike the quest you have go to the quest board and cancel or decline it otherwise it will persist. The same is for weekly quests as well but they reset on Mondays only.
Rewards for completing daily and weekly quests go to your mail.
A quest board
Delivery packages
Deliveries are another form of your daily grind and generally speaking work similarly to daily quests. They may seem useless in the early game but become increasingly more rewarding in the endgame. To do a delivery you need to go to the guy with the backpack icon on the map who can be found at any base except for Swamps. There are two main types of backpacks for deliveries: light and heavy (standart/common type exists only on Cordon). Some armor suits can’t carry heavy backpacks so check compatibility of your armor.
When accepting the delivery contract you pay a deposit which is returned only if you successfully complete the delivery. If you’re killed with a delivery backpack on your back then it’ll drop on the ground, you can come back and pick it up again however other players can do it as well. If you pick up someone’s backpack you won’t be able to complete their contract, only return it to the contract provider for some money. However the pay for doing so is so miniscule that it’s just not worth it to bother with. So if you see someone’s delivery backpack on the ground just ignore it.
A common strategy to farm delivery contracts is to buy only 1-2 energy drinks+hercules, beeline for the destination and type /suicide in chat to fast travel back to base, pick another delivery and repeat the cycle.
If you don’t want to complete a delivery contract because you dislike the destination or don’t need the resources, don’t forget to decline the contract so it will reset the next day.
Signals
While not really part of the barter system, Signals still allow you to earn several resources and unlock unique items. Main reason to farm Signals is Trackers that can be exchanged at the trader near the mechanic in the Bar for an artifact detector, some simple paint jobs and crates with non-bound paint jobs that can even be sold on the auction. Weapon and armor schematics are another unique type of loot from signals that can be exchanged for unique bound-on-equip weapons and armor (schematics themselves can be sold on the auction as well).
To find Signals you first need to get SAK-1 Wide Range Detector and Candle Short Range Detector. You are given them during the first quest in the Forest/Pit.
To start searching for signals, open your SAK-1 by pressing X, check if the bulb on the left is blinking, if it is, click the right button at the bottom and then flip the switch on the right. After that you’ll need to wait for the scan to finish, the progress is indicated by the bulbs at the bottom section of the screen. While you wait you can close the detector, it will automatically open when the scan is finished. After the scan is finished click the button that appears below the square on the left, Candle SRD will be automatically equipped. Spin around until you find the direction of the signal indicated by the coil lighting up (you may need to turn on Bloom in settings for it to work properly) and follow it for 5 check points until you find the stash. Searching for Signals consumes charge of SAK and Candle, to charge them go to the same generator you use to charge your metal detector.
You can also use Buryat or Elbrus instead of Candle if you obtain them.
In addition to Trackers and occasionally schematics Signal stashes can also contain Repair parts, Data fragments, artifacts, ammo bags and some random sellable junk.
Signals do not spawn in Rostok, Limansk, underground parts of Army Warehouses and Fool’s path as well southern parts of Radar Station and Yanov.
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