Growing Up on the Ark
Stepping into the Ark is a very daunting task. I’ve found that most people seem a bit overwhelmed with the initial load-up of Brink. I’m going to be giving some tips and information to help everyone out with leveling and starting out in Brink.
First things first. Where do you begin? You make a character. You need to pick a faction, and design your starting character. It does not matter what you pick. Keep this in mind. Pick for aesthetic purposes people. You get to play both sides, and upon creating a new character, all unlocked items carry over to the new character. You only have access to the medium body type, and a few clothing options. No need to go into detail here, just pick what looks good. You’ll be unlocking stuff in no time and be spending way too much time playing dress-up soon enough.
You’ll need to pick some weapons load-outs and choose weapons next. Again, there isn’t enough variance outside the different weapon types here until you start unlocking things in the challenge mode (we’ll cover this later). I recommend picking an assault rifle and any smg for your alternate weapon. This gives you the downing potential with the assault rifle, which has limited ammo (about 70 rounds) and the SMG for a backup when you run out of ammo for the AR. Please note that you need to check the round orb in the top left corner of the weapon box to select that weapon. Clicking on the middle of the box simply opens the customization options for the selected weapon. A white orb will appear in the corner of the selected weapon.
For now, abilities are standard load-out. You’ll unlock these as you level and are able to purchase them. We’ll go into much more detail on this later on in the article.
We’re going to go over a few things before you start playing. It’s important to understand a few things about the game, the ai, and the objectives before you get into the game.
First, when someone falls down, they generally are not “dead” yet. They are knocked down. Downed players can choose to wait for a medic to come and revive them. Do not keep shooting downed players. Try to run up to them and melee them on the ground (+20xp). (V) on a PC by default. This conserves ammo, which is a concern with most weapons in the game.
In the same vein as above, try to take out medics. You’ll see them dropping blue trailed items to downed enemies, which then pop up and start shooting you again. They need to go down first. If you can’t get in to melee an enemy medic, try to pull out your secondary weapon and finish them off with that.
While you frequently want to kill downed enemies, sometimes it’s good to leave them struggling, waiting for a medic. The time you’ll want to do this is when the whole enemy team, sans maybe one or two are downed and you can have free reign while they lay there moaning. Not to mention the pile of bodies makes for a nice trophy.
One of my biggest pet peeves is when people throw grenades and watch the enemy team scatter out of that nice big group and the grenade explodes harmlessly. COOK YOUR GRENADES. They are delicious. There is an audible click once the grenade is prepped for tossin’. Hold down that “G” button and let it simmer for about 1-2 seconds and then toss it into the enemy team. You’ll almost always be greeted with a nice big yellow number and a “Group” bonus for damaging several enemies at once. This is also a great way to make an entire team downed allowing your team huge progress on your objective.
Reload. Hit that “R” Button whenever there aren’t enemies in front of you. Switch weapons and reload the other as well. You always need full clips in this game. Even with great aim and massive headshot damage, you’re going to be needing a full, or near full clip to put down a single enemy at full HP. Pretty simple. And later you’ll have access to the duct-taped clips which speed up reloads. These are almost always a good choice.
Use that Objective Wheel. Middle Mouse Click. Push down. Hold. Rotate to you’re classes main objective., release mouse wheel. This highlights the location as a yellow outline in the world, allowing you to know where to go. Don’t be afraid to tap the mouse wheel and highlight the objective if you’re lost. Its good practice.
Look all over. For a few reasons. There’s awesome stuff all over. This is a beautiful game. And in addition to it look pretty and shiny, or rusty, there are soooo many opportunities for you, as well as the enemy team. You need to keep your eyes out for enemies that pop up above you and start shooting, or drop a grenade on your melon. At the same time, don’t be afraid to look for good spots to move to and get a high-ground view of the battlefield, just don’t focus on this too much right now. We need to focus on the basics for now.
Move. Don’t be static. One of the main features of this game is the movement. I know its hard to leave that nice piece of cover and run into enemy fire, but it’s for the best. Keep moving, even if it’s just from one piece of cover to the next. Or run a patrol route to familiarize yourself with the area around your objectives.
So you’ve read my first set of tips. Lets jump into the game and start going. It’s gonna be a bit rough, but you’ll get the hang of it in no time. We’re going to want to do one last bit of character customization. Set your preferred class to Assault. You want to be a grunt for this leveling playthrough. It makes gaining XP super easy, and lets you focus on the basics rather than nuances of the game such as re-routing and sentry deployment. Not only that, The core abilities in the game really play to the assault classes strenths and allow for more buffs than any other class for the first run through and especially in early game (5-6 missions in even).
So now we’re going to start the campaign. You’ll now be spawning with your selected weapons, and the default class you chose. This means you don’t have to go to the command center and choose a weapon loadout and change your class every mission start. First thing you want to do. Hit the mouse wheel, select the main objective. Run straight to it. Don’t stop and shoot at random AI bot that is taking pot-shots from 2000 yards away at you. As assault, you’ll be guarding things. A lot. This doesn’t mean sit still and wait for the game to end. It means patrol the area, support teammates, and buff your teams weapons (aim at them and hold F) whenever the skill is available. You will periodically gain XP while defending, as well as gain a huge bonus for damaging enemies while defending. The radius is generally the size of the room that the objective is in. Keep in mind that you don’t want to move too far, but don’t be afraid to run out a bit if the enemy doesn’t seem to be making it to your objective. Let enemies group up a bit, and toss a cooked grenade into their midst. This will get you big XP gains and make the AI on your team much more viable. They can win as long as they are largely unopposed. Try to toss grenades into spots you know enemies path into when you see them starting to come around the corner or through the doorway you know they’re going to use. If you get taken down, check to see If there is a medic nearby, and if so, will he be able to get to you without being killed himself. If so, wait for him to come drop you a shot, and then hold that “X” button to get back up. If not, respawn so as to not drive your team’s medics to an early grave. They will run straight to you, ignoring enemy fire.
So the highlights here – Guard objectives. Buff teammates. Keep moving. Be conscious of the AI and medics.
So you’ve won. You unlocked new outfits and audio-logs. Nicely done. Hit the next mission button. If you go to the appearance tab every time you complete a mission, you’ll slow your progress massively. This is not what you want to do here. You want to get those cool unlocks later in the game. (Most of the iconic outfits seen in the cinematic will require nearly 1 full playthrough of the game to unlock). So just keep going, and maybe every 3 missions head to the appearance tab, and reward yourself. Stick to the Medium body type. This brings us to another important point. Buying abilities.
Buying abilities is a tough part of this game. It’s hard to not buy skills for your current “flavor of the week” class choice. You want to put your first few skill points into some very important base skills that play to the points I made above. #1. Buy the reloading while sprinting skill. You want this. This means you can reload while moving from one piece of cover to the next instead of while your static getting shot at, or could be shooting. This will passively increase your damage potential more than any weapon upgrade or stat increase/buff. From here, you can choose a few of the base skills that look good. I would advise against the Combat Awareness skill for now. It will do more harm than good by distracting you. Stick to your objectives and keep moving, and this one isn’t really necessary. About half way through the missions, you’ll want to start grabbing Assault skills you like. For instance, I love grenades, so I bought the faster grenade cooldown skill. Basically just buy the ones that look good and try them out. This is a test character and you shouldn’t be afraid to screw up the build. You can pay 1 level to re-spec all your skills, which is a decent deal. This should be saved until much later in the game however.
So you’ve plowed through roughly 5-6 missions, customized your character 2-3 times now. It’s time to open up some more options. You deserve a little break from the story mode and the lengthy missions. Lets talk about challenge mode.
There are 4 main challenge modes. They don’t work like most games that award stars. You aren’t given a star rating based on performance, but rather the stars are more of a difficulty ranking system for these challenges. Levels 1 and 2 award weapon attachments and a few extra weapons. Rank 1 is pretty easy for all of them across the board. I would suggest starting with doing Rank 1 for each to unlock a large array of attachments for weapons at this point. Upon finishing one side of the story, come back and do rank 2 (much more difficult). Whenever you feel like after 2 stars, come back and do the 3 star challenges. They’re only reward is your score going on the leaderboard. No item unlocks from these, there is an achievement for completing all 3 star challenges however. The big item highlights are the duct-taped magazines and silencers.
Continue to play through the campaign, and when you’re ready, explore the online multiplayer and be sure to spend time familiarizing yourself with the levels, objectives, and other classes. I would strongly suggest trying the Engineer class after Assault. It’s a simple transition and allows for a little more error than the other two classes. I would also suggest sticking to the medium body type for the time being. Once you’re a little more familiar with the layout of the levels, give the light type a try and explore the higher tiers of the maps and alternate routes. There is no perfect way to play, just do what feels fun and comfortable. You’ll be competent and someone that other players benefit from having on their team in no time. This means its more fun for everyone, including you.
A few more points I wanted to touch on before you’re on your way and working to become a top denizen of the Ark.
Don’t be afraid to reward yourself. If you feel like you played particularly well in a match, jump into the appearance editor and put on one of those new pieces of gear you unlocked. It rewards good play and makes the game more fun.
Stand up and walk around a bit after every game or two. Don’t feel tied to your computer or console. This game does have fairly long matches and it’s important to stretch and move around a bit. Go grab a glass of water, or a pop or whatever. I like to get up and check my phone or tweet (@eG_Acefisher1) about my last round. It’s a great way to take a break and relax from the game, which can be pretty stressful at times with the fast pace.
Silencers. Put these on all of your weapons when playing against the AI. Computer controlled enemies will largely ignore you when you use a silencer. They will notice you if you use grenades or an unsilenced weapon however. They aren’t completely oblivious to you, but there will be a massive delay in them starting to attach you in this case however.
(note: I haven’t tested this with shotguns yet). Also they do have an “aggro range”. If you get too close, they will fire at you regardless of your weapon.
I’ll be posting more updates to this article in the future. As well as attempt to answer any questions anyone might have and address any mistakes I’ve made. Please feel free to contact me with inquiries or comments!
Enjoy Brink and look for me in-game!
edit: Thanks to fearlessfox I’ve taken his advice and added some much needed formatting. This should improve readability.
Also, you can look for an update and a multiplayer guide from me very soon!
I’d like to see a multiplayer version aswell!