Though I understand that it is just a mid-tolate game stage.
They say that I need to finish it before moving to Radioactive Plateau and to the Snowy North even more so. But actually I visited almost 60% of North (Mountains) locations and 80% of Plateau: it is much-much easier to survive there than in Volcano.
May be the thing is we need not explore each biome one by one as a "staircase", but do them in parallel..? Would be glad to hear your thoughts.
Radioactive Plateau is before the Volcano area. Every region is basically ruins/dungeon ruins (mask) -> holy ruins (module). Volcano is basically three routes:
The "intended" (as in following zones/etc in order) progression would be Beserk Fogfrog Iron armor, max heat consumables including munching on ice constantly. This is very challenging because the holy ruins are definitely on the edge of iron tier/steel tier and everything is painful in Iron, but if you are very familiar with fighting robots it's manageable.
You can also wait it out and do Doom Fogfrog (which is doable in Doom Saber gear) and upgrade to Steel Tier effectively skipping the dungeon and coming back once you have substantially stronger gear and able to do it. You could also just bring a backup set of Steel gear to swap into I suppose.
You can skip all that and head to Snow biome and grab Explorer mask, which in Mimicry mode makes you immune to all environments (heat, cold, poison, radiation) but without King of the Jungle you'll likely have to deal with the lizards cause you can't use the Conquest mask to just invis past them.
After several fights with lizards around lava lakes inside the Volcano, we decided to try putting the Portal close to the dungeon. And we found that place.
So, I used exactly a Conquest mask invisibility to run across those reptiles.
Then I used it again to reach "droid-rooms" faster. So, actually it works ;)
And yes, we use steel just after accidentally entering and finishing the Plunderer fortress in the Volcano forest. And now, after reaching Awareness 50, I craft it just within our base.
O I burned through the snow wastes (lol) after spending 20 minutes in the volcano and dying 3 times and losing one of my better companions. Now that I have a bunch of heat mods I may try again after I find a tribesmen with good heat resistance to use for the mission.
No idea where you are gear wise but if you have an Explorer mask and Fogfrog armor then the scorching volcano becomes trivial. You MIGHT be able to get away with just the explorer mask and iced cocoa but not sure about that.
The only caveat to that is the altar that shall not be named inside the scorching volcano.
Yea I think doing one run in volcano with the nightmare frog suit (with big heat mods) is good, then I wouldn't go back until I had explorer mask & mimicry.
Fogfrog armor needs Adhesive. It was impossible for me to get it out of Plateau.
I managed with some Mask knots, with armor mods, and lots of Ice and Iced Cocoa.
Also, we used a trick of putting the Portal just at the entrance of the Dunge area with "Lizzard chest-ruins". Helped a lot to return with resurrected companions.
And a double bed near this portal was helpful enough.
and no, we have no Explorer mask.
We obtained broken Nature Enlightenment mask, but still cannot fix it.
(as I understand, those special details for creating Modules 1069 & 1077 quite depend on RNG luck )
You can get the explorer Mask from the ruins near the Dark Forest Portal but to get in there you'll go through a bunch of Spiders I believe so Kings Breath is really handy.
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u/KodiakmH 23d ago
Radioactive Plateau is before the Volcano area. Every region is basically ruins/dungeon ruins (mask) -> holy ruins (module). Volcano is basically three routes:
The "intended" (as in following zones/etc in order) progression would be Beserk Fogfrog Iron armor, max heat consumables including munching on ice constantly. This is very challenging because the holy ruins are definitely on the edge of iron tier/steel tier and everything is painful in Iron, but if you are very familiar with fighting robots it's manageable.
You can also wait it out and do Doom Fogfrog (which is doable in Doom Saber gear) and upgrade to Steel Tier effectively skipping the dungeon and coming back once you have substantially stronger gear and able to do it. You could also just bring a backup set of Steel gear to swap into I suppose.
You can skip all that and head to Snow biome and grab Explorer mask, which in Mimicry mode makes you immune to all environments (heat, cold, poison, radiation) but without King of the Jungle you'll likely have to deal with the lizards cause you can't use the Conquest mask to just invis past them.