The Division DLC experience has been some journey. It's been time-consuming, grindy, challenging and, in this case especially, brutal in it's conclusion.
The concept of Survival is good, something different, but ultimately very frustrating because it's intent on showing absolutely no mercy and kicking you all over the place.
You're sent into Manhattan in order to extract some Anti-Viral agents, when your helicopter crashes into the middle of map. It's extremely cold, you only have a hazmat suit on, and you've contracted Sepsis, which will kill you within a matter of 1 hour. No bargaining on that.
The goal is to survive, and ultimately escape, but the disease flowing through you takes hold and will eventually kill you if you don't manage to escape within the 1 hour time limit, so something's got to give - And that's if the various other perils within the game mode don't get to you first. These include large groups of NPC's that patrol Manhattan's streets, booby traps and even the plummeting weather conditions.
You start out in a Safehouse with just a pistol and the aim centres around crafting warmer clothes, better weapons and the other necessary tools required in order to extract and escape. The game has a steep learning curve as you go through the process of understanding the map, and the best methods for success. This leads to some brutal difficulty, especially early on when you're running around with flimsy clothing and weak weapons - All it takes is to run into a group of enemies or find yourself caught short in the cold and it could be all over. If you have medkits, you'll be able to revive yourself, unless you die to the cold, which is always an instant death. If you don't possess any medkits, and die through either NPC's or a booby trap, you'll bleed out within 5 minutes unless there's another player willing to revive you. It's a fairly unforgiving experience for the solo player, which is how I mostly played through this DLC, and I failed time and time again.
You can play with other players, and the map is shared, so you'll see them running around alongside you, but, at least from my own experience, you'll be going alone if you're just looking to jump in and play. If you're feeling extra sadistic, you can play against other players too, something I was almost certainly looking to avoid.
The list contains 5 trophies, with a couple of these awarded to whet the appetite, including one for your first successful extraction, as well as crafting the Virus Filter and Flare Gun, both critical extraction components. Achieving a Master Rank will potentially cause a few issues for some, as this requires 10,000 points from a successful extraction, but I got this without even trying for it, so cannot really testify to any challenges.
The completion of this set runs through one trophy;
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| For The Hoarder... - Successfully extract 100 items from the Survival Dark Zone. |
The " For The Hoarder..." trophy, requires the player to successfully extract with 100 caches from the Dark Zone. Once you reach the Dark Zone area, you'll be able to find sealed caches containing weapons and equipment, which you can then open to reveal your prizes. They're effectively the loot element of this game mode, and are either dropped by enemy NPC's, or found in gear containers. You can only hold up to 6 of these caches per extraction, which means, in order to extract 100 of these, you'll need a minimum of 17 successful extractions. You'll spend alot of time working towards this trophy and I ended up extracting 18 times to reach 100, dying many times throughout the process along the way.
I found the best way to tackle this trophy was to identify a solid approach, and stick to it, which I broke down into 2 parts;
Stage 1 - Crafting the Virus Filter to enter the Dark Zone - This is the first mandatory step, but I also made sure I did the following before entering the Dark Zone;
- Gathered Fabric materials in order to craft more sustainable clothing to cope with the cold weather
- Gathered 2 Green Weapons Parts in order to build the Green M44 Marksman Rifle, which takes down enemies at this stage in a couple of shots.
- Gathered Fabric and Tools in order to craft the Virus Filter and reach the Dark Zone
Once I'd fulfilled these steps, I'd move into the next stage...
Stage 2 - Extracting from the Dark Zone, along with the following;
- Gathered Gold Weapons Parts and Division Tech in order to build the Gold M44 Marksman Rifle, which is much better suited to take down the now stronger enemies within the Dark Zone.
- Gathered Tools and Division Tech in order to craft the Flare Gun and Extract - if there are other players around, you may not need to do this, as you can always have the option of backing onto another players Extraction, but this isn't always guaranteed to happen before you die of infection.
- Collected at least 5 Loot Caches in order to fulfil the total towards the trophy requirement - The Hunter you fight at the Extraction Zone will always drop a Loot Cache, which is your 6th drop.
Settling on this method took some trial and error to reach, and there were many failed attempts along the way, some of which would come as agonisingly close as almost extracting, but either running out of time and succumbing to infection, or getting killed by NPC's near the end of the session. The Dark Zone is full of Purple and Yellow-graded enemies, and they will cause you problems in groups, which is probably the most noticeably unforgiving thing as a solo-player, and also why it's essential to craft the Gold M44 Marksman Rifle. It's a necessary equaliser to not always having the support of another player in gun fights. I know some people like crafting the turret, but I never did this personally, as my general tactic was to choose the path of least resistance, and this generally involved ignoring fighting.
Also, as soon as you call in an Extraction via shooting the Flare Gun, a Hunter will spawn in, which you'll have to beat before the chopper lands. They're powerful and if they down you, they'll execute you before you can revive, so this is a horrible knife-edge at the final step of any Survival Session. I came unstuck here multiple times, even during my latter parts of this trophy when I'd gained more experience. They're just tough foes that can get the better of you if you're not careful, which adds to the difficulty levels.
I did generally try to avoid conflict when I reached the Dark Zone. It's better to try and go about your business quietly, and only fight in situations of absolute necessity, if all you're attempting to do is achieve this trophy. It is discouraging to see so much time and effort go to waste when you die, and there were some times I'd play multiple Survival games in a row and come away empty handed every time, which is a big test of perseverance.
One thing I do need to shout out is how helpful other players are. If you get downed by enemy NPC's, and you don't have any medkits left, you'll get a 5 minute timer before you bleed out and your session ends. Your only hope at this point is if another player comes and revives you. This will cost them one of their own medkits, and if you die, they could scavenge all your loot off your corpse, so it was extremely refreshing to see alot of people choose the former option and help you up. This saved numerous sessions for me where I ended up getting extractions off after being on the brink of death, so this supportive environment is absolutely worth mentioning. It was my favourite part of a pretty rocky experience.
Once I'd gotten used to the game mode, and put in place a clearly defined plan of attack, I did start to find a much better flow. There were still some horrible endings to sessions where I'd get blown up by a bomb I didn't see around a corner, or not managing my time well enough to extract before death, or being sandwiched by groups of enemies coming at me from 2 different directions, but that's all part of the game. It's an aptly named piece of DLC that will always keep you on your toes, and the sense of relief upon achieving this final trophy was huge. I'm probably going to need to play something more casual next, that's for sure.
In terms of a time estimation, it's hard to gauge. 18 extractions totalling the full time limit of 1 hour in most instances would be around the 18 hour mark, but the number of failed extractions isn't accounted for anywhere. I would say I comfortably failed more than 18 times, but these wouldn't always amount to an hour lost each time, depending on at which stage of the run I died at.
However, one statistic that is tracked - I've ended up spending 9 days, 22 hours and 56 minutes beating the Division. That's 238 hours in total, the vast majority of this being on these 3 punishing DLC packs, which makes it one of the most time-consuming 100% games in my entire collection. It's definitely been a journey to remember.
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