This page chronicles the various aspects of my journey through Stonewood. It will link to my first blog post (yet to be published - I'll do it soon!) As the article is pretty long, there is a TLDR at the end.
Timing, storyline, quest progress and event quests
As the title suggests, it took around 10 hours to complete. I could probably have cut 1.5 to 2 hours if I didn’t solo my SSDs which required a bit of prep, and instead just relied on ‘Wait for Assistance’.
I focused entirely on the main questline and only did side quests and event quests if they could be completed at the same time, with one exception… I did do one mission in Crackshot’s neighbourhood for a quick coal farm! I was so short on coal at that point and couldn’t craft any weapons.
Possibly not doing the event questlines would have saved a bit of time, but I’m not sure I could have avoided doing some of them - when you’re looking for stuff as a ‘fetch’ quest then exclamations also come up on the mini map for the event quests, and you can’t tell the difference until you see the object. Also, they provided me with tickets, gold and other useful rewards (like Jilly Teacup).
I used public matchmaking throughout and didn’t play with any friends from my other account. I waited for assistance on one early SSD, but the assistance that I got was so rubbish I decided not to do it again!
I tried to use Play with Others to complete the storyline, as it gives 20% extra rewards which I thought would be useful, but it kept putting me in an inappropriate mission for the quest.
I loved hearing the storyline dialogue again! And it made a lot more sense having been through it once before. But does anyone know who Drake actually is?! (Context: he is the hero who Dennis says rescued him once when we first meet Dennis)
By the end of the day I was getting a bit sick of the same-ness of the quests, but I think that’s pretty standard when you’ve been doing the same thing for 10+ hours.
Heroes and loadouts
The ‘starter’ heroes, earnable from early quests, are Rescue Trooper Ramirez, Base Kyle, Skirmisher Edge and Shock Specialist AC. Yep, ninjas definitely get the worst deal in early Stonewood!
I decided early on to create a BASE-focused loadout which I would mostly use, and this was a good decision, particularly for missions where I was a bit under-levelled and my public teammates weren’t great.
About halfway through the day I developed a farming loadout with some Outlanders I got from llamas etc. and used that for the non-defence missions.
I found that heroes with crowd control abilities (Rosie, Teddy) were the best options for a main. As the commander perk doesn’t work until you evolve a hero, which you can’t do in Stonewood, then it didn’t affect my decisions on choice of main.
The combination of these loadouts worked really well, and I think I with a bit of variety I will keep on playing with these two loadouts until the end. It doesn’t make sense to invest Hero XP in other options when these are so solid.
However, by the end of Stonewood the green heroes were starting to feel a little squishy, and I think for Plankerton I will need to make sure that they’re all blue.
What I really enjoyed about the experience was having to play with heroes I would never normally consider on my main account because there are alternative stronger options (more applicable for my Outlander loadout than my Constructor one, because everybody knows that Base and Power Base are gods of the game).
A quick note on gadgets - because I was rushing, I only reached account level 20 which really limits the gadgets available. Just adrenaline rush and the terrible, terrible air strike. I missed my turrets so much!
Hero Loadout 1 - BASE focused defense
Used for SSDs, Atlas, Ride the Lightning and Retrieve the Data
Base Kyle (green, starter hero), Power Base Knox (blue, bought from store), ElectroPulse Penny (purple, event llama), Warden Kyle (green, event llama).
Team perk: Recycling. It was the only option, and quite rubbish as people kept stealing my BASE mats anyway.
I cycled the mains on this loadout, but preferred Knox or Penny who both have Rosie as their first ability, whereas Base Kyle has Bull Rush. Rosie was surprisingly decent in Stonewood as a good crowd control option.
Hero Loadout 2 - Farming focused offence
Used for Rescue the Survivors, Encampments, Elim and Collect and Resupply
Enforcer Grizzly (blue, Event llama), Shock Specialist AC (green, starter hero - his perk doesn’t help Grizzly but he was used to activate the team perk), Jilly Teacup (legendary, earned via completing the event questline), Fleetfoot Ken (green, mini llama).
Team perk - Long Arm of the Law. This was actually quite useful for farming, although it’s been so long since I played with it that I shot off the edge of the map several times by accident!
Teddy is a favourite of mine and is pretty decent in Stonewood, particularly for crowd control. However, to really make this loadout effective, you need to gather charge fragments as much as you can.
Weapons and traps
I earned a tonne of grey, green and blue schematics during the day, but almost all of them were trash weapons.
Instead, I played mostly with an epic Contender, which I pulled from my first event llama. The insanely high impact was a bit annoying for basic husks, but it was brilliant for dealing with Misties, which can one-shot you in Stonewood!
You get some weapons as quest rewards (backpack, not schematics). These were okay, e.g. a purple Equalizer, a legendary Doomhammer, and I did use them a reasonable amount. However, I mostly used my abilities wherever I could.
The weapon I missed the most was my triple movement speed perked Baron! I was soooo slow without it! (And I only got Fleetfoot towards the end of the day too).
The thing that surprised me most was the lack of traps and trap schematics throughout the day. I really, really missed my traps!
I earned a green gas trap as a quest reward quite early on, and levelled it up as high as it could go. As well, I pulled some wooden floor spikes, blue wall lights and blue retractables from llamas. I used these in my SSDs, along with whatever else was in my backpack. I did not see a launcher all day L
The green gas trap pretty much saw me through to be honest. Even in Stonewood, gas trap is King.
Building, trapping and resource gathering
I had to be very intentional about resource gathering - farming for a little bit every game, alongside doing all the other questline and mission objectives. This worked okay and normally by the time I reached my next SSD I had a full stack of all building materials (so 2000 of each - which didn’t go super far).
The biggest problem was getting enough crafting materials to trap thoroughly. I was short on herbs all day, despite pulling every plant that I saw. I was also short on quartz and duct tape. (And coal, as mentioned above.)
In SSDs, I got around this by blocking off almost all of the husk pathways to the homebase or amplifier using “sandwiches”. Then on the single remaining path, I would place a few gas traps, wall lights, wooden floor spikes and retractables. This meant that I could get away with crafting around 8-10 gas traps per defence (3-4 per approach), which seemed to work.
I put a defender pad on the homebase/amp along with Rosie, and my defender and I picked off the huskies or misties that got through the traps.
Survivors and research
This was by far the biggest issue - because I’d only been playing for a day and opened a handful of event and mini llamas, then the options for survivors were pretty terrible.
My squads looked like a hot mess, virtually no matching leads or matching personalities. You can only level survivors up right at the end of Stonewood too, which makes progression during the zone pretty tough.
I think this will be the biggest challenge going forward - getting decent and survivors leads when rushing through. This will make me quite underlevelled for all missions. In my first account it was checking the upgrade llamas every day for several months that helped me get the best squads in place.
Additionally, I had collected only 2 research points by the end of the day! It will be interesting to see where I am on research by the time I reach Twine (I suspect not very far).
Gold
You don’t get a huge amount of gold in Stonewood missions - between 20-40 per mission normally. The event questlines and mini llamas helped a bit, and by the end of the day I had around 3000 gold.
The only thing I bought during the day was a rare Power Base Knox for 400 gold (pretty much as soon as I got 400 gold). He is an essential Constructor.
Whilst the general advice is to buy an event-specific item you can, none of the current items are “must haves” (except maybe Zenith - but I’m not sure how much end game stuff I’m going to play with this account). I am rushing through so only getting things if they complement or enhance my existing two loadouts.
At the end of the day I also bought out all the rare flux, and I will use it as soon as I unlock evolution to increase the rarity of some of my green cards.
TLDR: Stonewood took me 10 hours total, which included soloing my SSDs.
The key points from the day were - a) use a constructor loadout for defense, and an outlander loadout for farming and ‘other’ missions; b) do the event questlines alongside main quest if you can because event llamas are a great source of survivors and heroes; c) uncommon items are fine in Stonewood but get a bit squishy by the end of the zone; d) learn how to funnel husks and do block offs as this saved my life; e) and finally, gas trap is king, always, even when it’s an Uncommon gas trap.
The most fun parts were a) hearing the storyline again; b) playing with different heroes, not the ‘meta’; and c) soloing my SSDs with very little resources or schematics.
The hardest parts were a) getting crafting resources for traps - super hard; b) getting lead survivors in such a short space of time; c) no turrets; and d) no triple movement speed legendary perked Baron L