Scavenger

Scavenger, Darkwind: Scavenger, or DW:S are all names for the hardcore mode of Darkwind: War on Wheels.

Darkwind:Scavenger - more apocalypse, less country-club

Darkwind:Scavenger is a new game within Darkwind. In DW:Scav, there is no money. Stuff breaks much faster. You will find yourself scrounging up enough food and water to survive, and feeling lucky if you can field a not-too-badly worn pair of machine guns on your car. Life in DW:Scav is short and harsh - it returns Darkwind to its post-apocalyptic roots. More apocalypse, less country-club. To create your Scavenger gang, you must be a Darkwind Subscriber. Open your 'My Gang' page and you will see a button to create your Scavenger gang, which will operate as a separate gang to your regular Darkwind gang. You can switch from your "Normal gang" to your "Scavenger gang" by clicking the switch option.

Basic Rules

• No access to money
• No access to NPC markets or services
• No access to standard DW player markets
• Every player is given two gangs, one for standard mode, and one for scavenger mode.
  • Only one gang can be active/selected at a time. If your Scavenger gang is active, your normal gang will not receive weekly training
• PvP is open everywhere, including Somerset
• Gang members do not get weekly training, only field training
• To repair vehicles you need scrap metal and mechanic skill 50+. The amount of materials required depends on the damage done.
• To repair vehicle components you need car parts and mechanic skill 100+. The amount of materials required depends on the damage done.

Startup

When you sign up for DW:Scav you will find your lockup in Somerset already stocked with some of the basics to keep you going for a little while. A very little while. You get the following:

• 10 x Water Bulk Goods Units
• 10 x Food Bulk Goods Units
• 10 x Cans of Fuel
• 10 x Car Parts Bulk Goods Units
• 10 x Scrap Metal Bulk Goods Units
• 6 x Machine Gun Magazines

Your scav gang starts with 8 losers...erm gang members with a variety of skills. Each gang member requires 0.75 units of food and water every Thursday morning otherwise they will start to become ill, and their Activity Level will reduce. Depending on your Leadership skill you can recruit more gang members from Dexter's, or other taverns in other towns once you get farther afield. Of course this is more mouths to feed!

It doesn't matter where the food and water is located across the towns of Evan, as long as you have enough for the total of your gangers, although this may change.

Town Events

You can enter a town event as usual in DW:Scav. Don't forget to select an event where vehicles are provided or you may find you accidentally signed up with a wreck that you recently looted! There is no fee to enter these events. Scav gangs may find themselves pitted against normal DW gangs as well as NPCs and other scav gangs.

Prizes for the events are listed on the event's web page. It appears that you may be more likely to win particular prizes in different towns.

Vehicle rentals

There is no access to vehicle rentals in DW:Scav. However, you can enter a Amateur Night Combat town event to win a car. The winner of these events gets to keep the vehicle they fought in....whats left of it.

Scouting

Scouting or travelling as a scav gang works the same as for normal DW scouts but scavs and normal gangs can not scout together. It is ill advised to scout by yourself in normal DW, this is even more important as a scav gang. The enemies you come accross as a scav gang will also be in various states of repair. Should you successfully defeat your opponent you will be presented with the looting page as usual. You will find that weapons salvaged are not 100%. Don't forget you may have a return encounter, looting vehicles with damaged engines could be risky! Whilst it may be desirable to scout for traders to plunder, bear in mind you may upset the local Civ faction. If the local militia become too upset they may not let you escape into Somerset. This may not seem important but remember with damaged cars looted you may need to escape rather than fight! If travelling to other towns make sure you consider the fuel to get back or carry on you plans out in the wilderness - there may not be any fuel where you are going!

Trading

Trading is key in DW:Scav as it is unlikely that you can get by solo. In the market place you can list your items for trading and add sellers notes, perhaps to say what you are looking for in return. Beware. There is an element of trust with trades. If you give someone the password to "buy" your items on the promise of a password to their goods in the trade its possible they may not. This doesn't happen often as offenders will get a name for themselves and an inability to trade could be catastrophic!

Tips from other Scavengers

Fuel

• Unlike normal darkwind, you always want to syphon the fuel with your LOOT car, not the borrowed. It is also good form to let those that brought along a non borrowed to syphon gas first.

• If car has 2 unit fueltank and you want to refuel it, then leftover fuel (about 6.34 units) from fuelcan has been poured to ground. 25 units refill uses 3 cans of fuel.

• When tweaking cars, you will want to use tank sizes what are multiples of 8-10 units, so whole fuel canister is used without spilling anything to sand.

• Another approach is to have those 2 unit fueltanks at main combat cars, and to use "fueltank car" what serves fuel to battle-group. Though, it is also risky, if that car gets destroyed in battle.

Gangers

• Cargo some Tires. If you pack some tires along on your scouts, you add a few new 'internal' critical items that can be hit, instead of your gangers. Ghetto Kevlar.

• When recruiting new gangers, best available isn't a good option in SCAV; what's a 20 cyclist going to do for you? Recruit for what you need, there are no training centers.

• To keep water served to you gangers, ask if someone would give taxi for your ganger to Elmsfield. In Elmsfield you get very often water as prize in both requested and timed events. Remember water and food items are exeptional because those are only items what has global town locker space. No need to haul that water to your Somerset gangers. And if that your only driver dies in Elmsfield event, go quickly hire the new one from Elmsfileld tavern before that particular event ends, that way you don't need to ask again another taxi trip from Somerset to Elmsfield.

Materials

• Any weapon with more then 50% ammo can be 'trash'ed and it will place a clip of that ammo in the lockup.

• Lots of tradegoods are available, that isn't really posted on the forums or in the market. Ask in chat if there is something you want or need, and you can usually find it

• Dont forget to strip armor off before you trash a chassi for scrap. This is easily done by pressing one of the buttons A B or C instead of going to "modify amount and reducing all areas to 0.

• In footsquads, don't rummage through piles of junk. It can generate addition spawns of creatures, not that spawns is plural.

• Use calculator to plan armor patching to your car if you want to use scrap metal economically. If you add one point of armor, you use one whole scrap metal unit. also adding 16 points of C-class armor to Phoenix uses one scrap metal. The "rate" is mentioned in armor modify screen. Note also, that different car chassis has different ratios.

• Don't use any repairs automation, unless you are filthy rich and wasting raw materials doesn't concern you.
• Auto-fix uses scraps from other cities if there is no any in same city where car is being fixed. You don't get same advantage when using Modify values. That automation might warrant un-economic scrap expenses.

• Only useful automations are for Crew and Ammo.