Tag Archives: The Division 1.5

The Division 1.5 Expansion II Survival

The Division 1.5 Expansion II Survival

4_Stars

The Division 1.5 update went live with it’s second paid DLC “Survival” and it was worth the wait! We’ve played as teammates and run solo, PvE and PvP…and it is good all the way around. PvP solo is basically suicide unless you are crazy lucky. If you haven’t heard, survival is practically a stand alone game. Your in-game gear is useless, because everyone starts out the same. A pistol and some basic clothing, you immediately begin scrambling for materials to make better cold weather gear, or freeze to death trying. Bounding from hideout and fire barrel, desperately trying to stay warm, beseeching the server to drop water from the next bag you stumble upon. Survival is great and incredibly challenging.

My favorite part of survival is that everyone starts off the same. So it’s great for casual players and hard core players alike, with the exception that the hard core players will already have a good idea where the best loot containers are. The map is the entire game map, not just the Dark Zone or a small subset. 26 players start and it’s a race to extract the antivirus first. You first mission is to create a basic filter, but I recommend making an advanced filter as well before you journey into the actual Dark Zone. If you are close to the helicopter crash you can try and make a break for that to get some good weapons and armorer early. The helicopters are a blood bath in PvP, and other players are a great source for gear (so watch your back).

Once you have enough cold weather gear and some decent armor and weapons, plus your filter, you head into the Dark Zone. After you enter the Dark Zone pull up your map and it will show you two things. The location of the nearest safe house and the location of the anti-virus. Chose your poison, because you will need to hit both. You need the safe house to make your flare gun to call for the extraction, but you also want to be the first to extract your antivirus.

As if Survival wasn’t hard enough, once you call for extraction you new favorite hated NPCs will spawn called “Hunters”, and they are here to rock your world. I would give you advice on how to beat them, but I have yet to do so.

Graphics
Story
Mechanics
Combat
Lore
Economy
Replay
Average