There aren't many guns in Sector One. A few of the raiders in the southern half of the Plateau have scrap pistols akin to the starter guns issued to player characters, and from Pass Chris upward there's a few more ranged mobs. Mostly though it's melee all the way, and with a decent rifle it's possible to drop most mobs on open ground before they get within striking distance.
That changes drastically in Sector Two. If you ride straight north up the main road your first experience of the mobs in Northfields will be being shot to pieces by the Devil's Own, who occupy a small settlement that straddles the highway. This time I knew it was coming – it's not something you readily forget – and being on a bike, one of the faster mounts, I decided to run the gauntlet.
That didn't go so well.
The mobs up here hit noticeably harder than those in S1, and after a couple of runs at quests in the town of Aesterley I headed south again to Sunshine Corners, the first neutral quest hub in S2, to level up a bit and work some more on my gear. I'm still fairly happy with my pistols, but my rifle is starting to feel a touch underpowered.
I say neutral quest hub because Sector Two is where the faction system kicks into gear. I don't dislike the faction system – which essentially makes you friendly to three of the factions and hostile to the other three, but which three depends on which you choose as your main faction – but it was always my intention on this run to stay unaligned as long as possible, and focus on the neutral quest hubs.
Whether or not there's enough xp to be gained from just those quests – because I'm also intending to skip the PvP zones which make up a sizeable part of Northfields – remains to be seen. I'm close to level 21 now, and need to be level 30+ before I go to Sector Three, or I'll be locked out of most quests, and underpowered for any I can pick up. I'm still very aware of the countdown to shutdown, and don't want to waste too much time running up against brick walls. I did enough of that while completing the ATV questline.
Which is also why I've used the Fast Travel system a couple of times. FT is very limited in Fallen Earth, but even so I've rarely used it before this run, when I've taken a couple of quick trips back to the area around Embry in S1 to stock up on some mats I needed to sort out my recurring ammo shortages.
Melee still has its uses, but in Northfields I really don't want to be bringing knives to a gunfight.
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