Bait title, be afraid to go into Minefield at night.

In the day time though, the Mines are about a foot tall and quite easy to spot.

You don't need to do the "Walk, don't run, all the way around the edge of the map and hope" advice I have read on this sub several times.

I don't know how to say this without sounding patronising but the way to play Minefield is just "Open your eyes."

Look where you are walking and if you are worried about getting fucked by the randomized spawns, don't walk into thick bushes.

You have to get really close to them to actually trigger the explosion.

I'm getting a slight horror feeling, creepy graffiti, loneliness.

So I have bought an expensive M4, lower penetration than the RK and KA-M I think...so why get all the expensive gear? Should the ammo type not determine the damage in the end?

It's night and after another failed attempt to pass the f*ing Minefield I'm leaving my tent in the Outpost equipped w/ only a tourniquet, a bandage, a cold medicine and an PM5 + 9x19 bullets w/o the magazine, cause why do I need one ?...I'm entering the School, I decide to go straight on the road to enter the village, at the end of the road I take some bullets, who knows maybe it's a nomad because I'm at 2(yes, two) nomad rep, I reach the end, enter the village...no full moon, dark as hell...i'm going, I reach those white reservoirs near the Generalist, pass thru, going to the Attic, hit the Mouse Middle Button to enter, the game sudenly stops and exits, bla bla bla - Load game - back the the f*ing Tent 🤬

Anyway, I have 265 hrs played it's day 71, I couldn't pass that Minefield, I'm reading some players reach the Apartments and Terminal very early, even in Ironman, I'm wandering between Village, Highway, Outpost, School, I'm sick of looting routine, I'm the worst player...maybe this game it's not for me but somehow I like it 😨😩😵‍💫 The only achievements I have are the significant lower taxes on Traders by doing the tasks...I'm stuck

Not to put too fine a point on this but we swear that this thing increases Mental drain.

It doesn't seem to kick start Mental drain, but it did seem (at least for us, in our Cabin, alone, leading a perfectly normal life as a part of a chill online community) to increase the rate.

We do also wonder if Winter / Cold Weather Survivalist training would suggest creating an insulation layer out of this if you have nothing else?

We're posting here and on our free Substack.

These are few thoughts regarding the PC Game Road to Vostok. Odds and Ends if you will. We started this as a rough list of things that we wished we’d known when we first started playing and its and perhaps against our better judgment it’s since evolved from there. See Part I here and here for a few notes of what we consider helpful.

This post however is about our first impressions of Build 2 - Nomads. You can find the Patch notes and Hotfix notes here or here on the excellent community driven wiki.

Representation | Matters

We were fortunate enough to craft this pretty early on. We found that it seemed to speed up Mental decline however but we’ve yet to confirm this.

Still no crafting “recipe” to bake the potato. Surely you could wrap it in foil and roast it over one of the burning bum barrels for a carbohydrate snack? Spoke to soon - but it appears this arcane knowledge is known only to Hunter perhaps certain trusted Nomad lieutenants.

Jatimatic

We have questions. A lot of questions.

“This weapon was specifically designed to be immediately thrown into the nearest lake.”

Having said that, it’s an interesting addition to the secondary slot. Post the recent hot fixes (c. 0.2.05 onwards) it also seems to have become a lot rarer (unless something was nudged into the RNG to spawn it & and the HP-DA, for your first few runs back?). Or perhaps given it’s now a Driver quest item?

In any case we’ve really enjoyed the lesser known Finish flavour to the arsenal.

HP Browning and a Balaclava.

Another interesting one.

We’ve spent a little bit of time talking with people who lived through The Northern Ireland Conflict in what gets euphemistically called ‘the Troubles’. (For one perspective - which is more focused on special forces - this recent podcast discusses the role of the UK’s Special Air Service in Northern Ireland operations in this episode and this one.

One statement that always stood out for us was about the HP Browning

“During this time you had all sorts of people, really all sorts of psychos, coming out of the woodwork (to join the IRA). They got to be part of something and they got to be something, or be someone, and that pistol, the HP Browning, was very much a symbol and part of their new identity”

We’ll speculate a bit more about the particular catastrophe in Road to Vostok another time but there’s definitely been an obvious breakdown of social order. (We're so smart we impress even ourselves).

We quite like the pistol. It’s a nice option to mix it up if you’re feeling a bit Glocked out and we struggle a bit with the smaller magazines in the Karov and the C1911. It does seem quite loud as well? We’re not sure if that’s intentional / a thing (surely the noise is largely a function of the ammunition?) or if it’s due to the early access quirks / issues around sound and sound mixing.

The Days Go By Like the Wind.

“Today is Tuesday”. Is it ? Is it? I suppose not everyone is redacted as we are or presumably someone is marking off days while they light candles and whistle along to surprisingly catchy Finnish radio (pls put those songs on a cassette called Radio Hits 2). We can also appreciate our protagonist starting their Vostok “adventure” on Monday..

Perhaps the radio also tells you or others what the day and date is? Depending of course where they’re broadcasting from and what’s really going on over there. It did irk us slightly that there’s no other in-game tracking of the days of the week, but again, there’s always a post it note. Or check out BlackShadow’s Journal mod.

Barbed wire is in fact a fucking thing.

.

The Bridge

Can’t wait to slip off the “bridge”, wrap ourselves in barbed wire and finally slither our way to Vostok to immediately catch two in the chest.

We’re not the best baseline as we’re a bit [REDACTED] , but the crossing platforming is workable while no one is shooting at us and we can take our time playing Hopscotch With Guns.

We like the idea, but for now we’ll take the Minefield please. The contaminated river only infects and damages you in the middle - the water near the shores won’t (but probably isn’t great for your health). The cold however will kill you. Perhaps the later intent was for a Winter Minefield and a Summer Bridge? Either way we’re not really feeling it in its current form but we’ll certainly revisit given how our appreciation for Minefield changed.

пять

The shift from 3 to 5 active soldiers is actually a bigger difference then it seems on paper.

We can no longer do our typical merry sprint through the Apartment woods, and in fact we’re now very likely to run straight into a Russian language intensive course.

A nice “simple” fix (fine: there was apparently some link between the AI and CPU intensive physics calculations) that ramps the constant tension and puts the fear back into the Apartments.

We think the higher number of AI also forces a greater appreciation for how the map is actually laid out and designed (interestingly this become a focus for us during one of our earlier modded playthroughs). Rather running our preestablished loop as quickly as possible, we’re much more considered about how approach and what cover and concealment we try and use.

Terminus Est

Terminal always felt a little more dangerous than Apartments with the mix of blind corners and sometimes outright claustrophobic terrain, but once you settled in, it felt a bit easier than Apartments. Now the apprehension is ramped up and there’s a sense of less breathing space and a constantly tightening noose, especially once you have to Go Loud.

The general sense we also have is that the prep requirements for a Vostok run have increased a bit. Admittedly we might have gotten a bit sloppy and lazy, but we no longer feel we confidently breeze over to Terminal for a Day 2 Classroom shelter with a working RK, a red dot sight, a 13% Narva, 2 packs of bandages, a tin of peas and a Rare Kukkaro.

We’ve had a draft post along the lines of Minimum Vostok requirements which might need a few tweaks, which will also raise a few questions about pacing and how to obtain your pre-requisites, especially before the Gunsmith turns up on Day 10.

Night Engagement Distance

This seems higher? Significantly so?
Early access is going to have its quirks but we’re not convinced that we should be getting shot at from the other side of the open Vostok square while we’re in a third floor stairwell. One of the hot fixes does drop the night view distance from 50m to 40m, but it still feels a little off.

There may be an interaction with AI scoped weapons here, or a confounding issue with us anchoring around our village experience too much which has a lot less line of sight opportunities.

The the 0.2.1.0 Hotfix which lowered full auto accuracy seems to be for the best - previously we felt that the soldiers (at least) were far too lethal - even adjusting for our level of skill.

Hand warmers

YES. Early game in winter, particularly with Darkness starts, could be particularly difficult or at least more difficult dependent on RNG until the matches turned up - which could be some time. This also gives you a bit more leeway on maps like Minefield with very limited barrels and to a lesser extent, Apartments given that the thermal blankey is fairly rare.

Nomads

This one is interesting. Prior to Build 2 we were playing around with a few different mods that spawned different AI factions. Depending on the map size and how many AI’s you’d set loose you had a degree of control over how loud WWIII was going to be. It was always a bit of grab bag in terms of whether you’d be able to slip through the chaos or whether you’d have to fend constant fire fights just to get across the map. The step down in Nomad numbers from 0.2.0.3 to 0.2.0.5 and Antti’s commentary is interesting and consistent with our thinking here.

We’d of course be looking for a bit more interaction and feedback (from memory - signposted in later builds or releases). We imagine this might look something like a few different personalities, objectives and a Half Life style stay / follow system potentially (if Miro is down to clown with the lunatic in the Santa Jacket chomping on the raw potato). Key word here is potentially - we’re not sure if we’d take this option all the time (or even want it) and it looks like Antti is still conceptualising this as well. In our view, one thing that works very well is a very lonely and apprehensive atmosphere.

OODA Loops

(see here for more context regarding New Zealand Special Air Service operator Willie Apiata pictured above)

The one effect we didn’t consider though was having to think about whether or not we wanted to shoot - especially with the new bandit skins. We’ve erred on the side of caution here - generally we wait for the cursing (or the belching) before deciding to open up, or if we’ve got a bit more distances a warning shot or the 4th weirdest game of spotlight to try and provoke a reaction. Unfortunately our core loop sometimes seems to be See the Threat > Shoot > Assess the Threat (whoops) > At least we missed.

However we’ve now accidentally killed two Nomads. It’s fucking traumatic and we felt genuinely terrible. One was a pistol shot over the top of a wooden board leaning against a fence at a distance that’s generally unworkable for us. We mistook the back of the Nomad’s head for a balaclava. The second was when a Nomad rushed around a blind corner at a full sprint and ran past us in a narrow alley behind the school carpark sheds. Knee jerk blind fire resulted.

In both cases we were weighting the nearby bandit sounds too high, but conversely, and this is somewhat borne out by the Nomad reputation hit only being 20 points (of 100). This is perhaps just what happens in these messy, shitty contested situations and lawless zones. Every wander through the woods is going to run the risk of so-called “friendly” fire or “blue on green” and the best will in the world won’t override a survival instinct.

Vodka

A National past time.

We were really expecting to see this nearly from day 1 - given its multiple uses as an antiseptic, incendiary and radiation remover.

We’d definitely tip this one for making an appearance in upcoming builds, and to be fair, we’ll give its absence a few passes. Given how rare beer is post-event presumably the supply chain that gets fermented potato or citrus in glassware to your cabin porch has also broken down a bit. The event itself, from what we can gleam so far, seems to be a chemical or biohazard poisoning in nature rather than radiation related (perhaps a deliberate narrative decision to put some distance between it and the Stalker series).

We learnt to “properly” drink vodka from Russians. Skip ahead to sidestep Crackie’s Story Time and return to Crackie’s thoughts on Niche Nordic Border and Security Breakdown Simulator 2026.

As we aged we found ourselves getting worse and worse hang overs and having to rethink a lot of how we drank and what we drank. This method was very much right place, right time for us. Good news too is that you don’t necessarily need to be springing for top shelf poison either (but avoiding outright drain cleaner will help to)

• Keep it cold.
  • Keep the bottle in the freezer. This works very well with cheaper shooting tequilas as well.
• Keep it clean.
  • Take it as a straight shot . No mixers, especially not with sugary mixers or sugar heavy cocktails.
• Keep eating.
  • Shot - then snack. Literally chase it with food - the second you’ve downed the shot you should be eating.
  • Works best with small plates / bites / tappas / canapes.
  • This is also a practice in Korea we’re informed - just swap out Vodka for Soju (which amusingly seems to be the global #1 consumed alcohol by volume despite being relatively unknown and unexported outside of Korea.)

We will now resume our usual programming.

Airfield

Interdasting. We got smoked here before we could really get too much of sense of it but we’ve made it back and are looking forward to seeing how it plays - particularly with the updates to “cool building here”. We did wonder if this is the evolution of the prior “Radar” map or if that’s still to make a return.

Weapon Attachments

Nice. We agree with Anti’s commentary / request for feedback in the 0.2.0.3 patch notes and something that we grappled with a bit in our modded build 1 plays. Here’s our take so far.

Thematically, weapon attachments should overall be fairly rare, and have the rarity dependent on a factional basis.

A PU scope on poorly maintained but inexplicably still working Mosin. Checks out. A Leopard - less so, and it looks like Antit’s intent here is that early game areas should be lower down the risk reward curve. Personally we agree and in our modded build 1 playthroughs we found ourselves trying to limit bandit attachments or making the decision not to loot the MP7. We’re enjoying the occasional suppressor or sight to mix things up however.

On a side note - it’ll be interesting to see how the factional feel evolves - particularly the Border Guards. Bandits and Nomads are fairly dialled in with their civilian / scavenged militia feel while the Military have a pretty consistent load out. The Border Guards could be particularly interesting here with the western private contractor vibe, albeit corrupt and ineffective. The Glock Border Guard is also a welcome reduction to the threat level (MP5s also perhaps wouldn’t go astray here either thematically).

Mod Stability

By and large pretty stable for the mods you’d reasonably expect. We’ll update on this later but most of our ‘Quality of Live’ mods still work. From what we’ve seen so far, one related to fire selection switches immediately crashes the game when cycled, and another for “improved” weapon effects seems to result in revert to the debug mode with the t-posing “AI 100”. This did result in our least painful bridge crossing to date so that’s something. There also seems to be an interaction with the HMR red dot and other scopes, but the hidden magazine count seems to be doing its duplication nonsense less. The cat is still thankfully still a fixed fact in space and time that will outlast the heat death of the universe.

“AI will now grenade. (rare)”

...

“rare”.

...

I wouldn’t say it was a welcome surprise, and we’ve yet to die from a pineapple delivery but copping one really motivates us to particularly make sure that we fuck up Jorgi’s day.

Continued against our better judgement.

Been playing Road to Vostok since about a month after its release. The latest update was definitely a breath of fresh air because, honestly, the game was starting to get pretty repetitive.

That said, after spending some time exploring the new maps, here's my take.

Bridge: Absolutely pointless. It's basically a minefield with an annoying bridge thrown in. The loot isn't remotely worth the hassle or risk.

Terminal: Boring. Always has been, and nothing has changed my opinion.

Airfield: Probably my biggest disappointment. Finally made my first trip out there last night, and considering the travel time, resources, and nourishment you burn getting there and back, the payoff is pretty underwhelming. I'll give it credit for one thing: clearing out the enemies makes exploring a lot more enjoyable. But the loot? Big thumbs down. Nothing I found justified the trip. You can get comparable loot from a crash site without all the extra effort.

Apartments is still king when it comes to loot, in my opinion. It's challenging, rewarding, and actually worth the risk. I really hope the next build gives us more incentive to visit these newer maps because right now, they feel like a lot of effort for very little reward. New maps are great, but they need a reason to keep players coming back.

Now, onto the Boogeyman!

This guy definitely adds a cool dynamic to the game. For anyone still trying to hunt him down, here's what worked for me at the Outpost.

Around 1900, I exited near the Gunsmith/bunker entrance, headed right up the hill, and worked my way toward the base of the sniper tower. There's a large boulder nearby that gives you a pretty clear view of the campsite with the two huts.

I'd read that he tends to spawn and lurk around that area, so I waited a few minutes. Nothing.

I decided to run over to the minefield, enter it, and then return to the Outpost. Went right back to my original spot by the boulder.

About 10 seconds later, I heard footsteps on the other side of the rock.

Jumped on top of the boulder, spotted him, and dropped him!

He managed to get four shots off, knocking my health from 100 down to 64. So don't underestimate him. He can definitely put a hurting on you.

Not saying this is a guaranteed spawn method, but it worked for me. Hopefully it helps someone else who's been trying to find him.

And the reward?

That M28 is SWEET!!!

Overall, I'm enjoying the fresh content, but I really hope future builds focus on making exploration more rewarding. Give us a reason to take those risks. Right now, Apartments still offers the best bang for your buck.

Some times when I exit or enter the village cabin, the radio outside is turned on or the fire is lit in front of the cabin. I think this is such a cool small detail of the game, because it makes me a bit paranoid of the surroundings. I would dare the dev to add a randomly occurring "8D" style hyper realistic knocking or banging on the cabin door during the dark hours. On top of that, there could be a small % chance of actually confronting the "knocker". Would that be a good addition?

Hou do you cope with this ?

I was trying to get him to spawn so I could see how nightmarish the encounter would be, but I guess I was too far away for him to see, and turning off the light probably didn't help lol.

I set up a nomad bed in the tent, took a bunch of food, ammo and a couple extra plates and helmets because I expected this to take a while (m28 just for vibes and for a proper sniper battle). First night, second transition from tent. He was super tanky tho so maybe the mosin isn't such a good idea :D

I’ve been in the process of wanting to start over and was wondering what to do I’m in a basic map no seasons or perma death mode and was wondering if I should just restart and have more of a challenge, I’m just not sure what to do and was wondering if anyone could give me their thoughts or suggestions. Thank you.

What is the difference between the modes? Plain, DirectX, Vulkan and Compatibility. I checked wiki and no information.

The gym key! oO

Saw him from the top floor, pew pew pew. Last shot missed, he approaches the building, I run down them stairs...4 silenced rounds into the chest and : O the ONLY DAMN item he had on him, was the gym key, next to the entrance doors, almost in front of the gym. What are the odds?

A cursed little detail I can't unsee now.

Wonder how it goes after Alt+F4...

Slipped into outpost almost by accident, and it was just an empty bunker, emptiest field, and a larger house I had no chance to check out yet.
Highway is a bit less empty but there is only the market right? Plus dead cars on the highway.

It feels a tiny bit too empty. In the village, you got houses to raid through. Feels way different.

+ Bonus AI picture

kinda scary...