Hi,

I would really like to get past this point to see the story resolved. I tried five times now without any luck. Here is what I do every single sector:

- Check Signal, mark if closer or farther away on hand drawn map
- Scout ahead in whatever direction should get me closer
- If scout doesnt return, wait exactly one time increment
- If scout did return, go in that direction
- If socut didn return go into the other direction that gets you closer
- Mark every sector, along with signal strength, on hand drawn map

Usually, I get around 26 sectors in before something random kills me: a sandstorm, and I cant find any shelter. Or all my scouts randomly dont return after having scouted a base. I never lost a solder due to water or sleep issue. I think this is the optimal strategy for this mission, but still, I lose over and over and its very frustrating. Am I doing anything wrong?

Same here, but not because of random death. Instead I always run out of time. Tried to cut down on scavenging, but maybe not enough...

I got it on the first go - that might be luck, but here is how I did it :

Travel south and east. Until you've lost three men or so, don't bother with scouting. Always hydrate your troops, always recover water. If anyone is below "Perfect" on their stamina be sure to rest for three hours when the chance comes up. Once you have roughly as much water as you have hours left stop bothering to recover any from mud pits (but keep tapping cacti) and just do your best to keep everyone in tiptop shape so you can move as fast as possible. When you get down to 20 or so hours stop scouting again. At full speed you can advance as quickly as you can scout. Losing a few guys early on makes the water supply last much longer, which keeps everyone healthy, which allows scouting in the mid-game.

If you try to save everyone you'll doom everybody. Which is kind of the game's motif.

I finally got through it and I totally agree with your comment because it is simply the method i was using, so i might have missed something in the concept of that chapter, or it is the only chapter really based on luck.

Anyway the game is a gem, and i enjoyed every minute of it. (Actually i spent as much time for this chapter than i did for the rest of the whole game :p )

I have to ask; how the hell did you get chapter 4 completed?? On the first go even! I'm lost on how to go about it, but there's no way I'm playing on easy...

If you can get the radio fixed, and it gets whittled down to Jake and Burden, it's real easy.

Well I spent few hours trying to complete the demo (which is the same level with alot less ways to go about it) with no success, so I knew that being careful about morale was a priority. Like all chapters (minus the fitfth one it seems) there's alot of ways to succeed . The way I did it seemed easy enough though :

- Always prioritize the morale as the psychiatrist tells you to. For example don't try and fix the radio everyday especially if Donald is already feeling kinda low. (i finished fixing it the second to last day) Spam brandon to know everyone's state of mind.

-Don't be afraid of not being able to feed them every night. I used the pep talk from the psy often even though it means spending half of your actions for the day and have been careful about the subjects i picked, for example : i f I knew I wouldn't be able to feed anyone I'd take the hunger speech so that people wounldn't mind not eating ( good way to manage your food stock efficiently). Teamwork works really good for Donald to be alright it seems. If only one or two team members are low on morale you can talk to them also.

- Don't forget to collect few wood logs in the beginning so that you can put one in the fire when you see it's about to be put off. (starting a fire cost 2 actions instead of just putting a log so that it doesnt stop).

-Make at least 2 or 3 medecine for the medusea virus and don't forget to check noone is frozen EVERYDAY (including marvin) which means they're infected.

-You can cook the meat, it isn't essential but a good plus for them feeling good.
Apparently marvin is quite resilient because I didn't feed him that often.

- Last but not least, try and keep your ammo as long as possible (use them for hunting only as a last resort ), you'll need them in case you get attacked at night, make spears to hunt (they're also useful in case of an attack), don't hesitate to use marvin to hunt even though his chances to succeed are low.

Now I wouldn't recommend you to get rid of anyone, I don't think it helps there like it can in other chapters simply because it drops everyone morale really quickly which is the key in this level, like I said 10 times already :p

Anyway hope this helps, have fun and good luck :)

I'm also finding this mission very frustrating. I'm following pretty much the same pattern as the OP and keep losing (on easy mode too!). Unless the deadline is literally a few hours away, I always scout ahead - the time saved in the game isn't worth the bullshit of running into an enemy camp and instantly losing. I've never killed anyone, because I've always found enough water to quench everyone's thirst and *possible spoiler* it seems Abraham will always shoot himself at a rest stop once you've passed a certain number of hours.

Edit: I managed to reach the base a couple of times, but the game crashed when I did so. I gave up and modified one of the game files to make the mission trivial to beat. So far the worst part of the game - the Russian Roulette torture scene comes second.

Don´t like the instadeath-part of "Legend", too! (Forts istakill you if you haven´t scouted them before)
But in general, I like the style of that mission, it´s very intense and you are actual immersed very well, although it´s a hard clash after the three well-balanced missions before!

Finished the desert level! With approx. 20 hours before deadline. What I did was to cut everything very short, with exception from scouting:

- Don’t horde resources, prioritize moving forward and rather go low on water and ammo. Only scavenge so that you have the bare minimum to survive (e.g. if you have more than 20 water rations, don’t bother with digging for water, but as mentioned in other posts you should still get water from cactus since it don’t cost time).

- Always scout ahead. The chance of instant dead by running into a fort is not worth the benefit of saving one hour of scouting. I preferred to scout 1 zone at the time. Sometime I dropped scouting when I wanted to avoid a fortsdiscovered by scouting; under the assumption (which may very well be wrong) that there is low probability that two camp lies in close proximity.

- Stims is a useful back up to press your scouts to go further (in regard to staminia, not distance).

- Walk in a diagonal. The distance is shorter (at least in theory) to walk north, east, north, east, etc., than north,north, …, north and then east, east,…, east.

- Pay attention to the signal. If your camp in the north-east and you move north and the signal does not strengthen (your further away or unchanged) then you’re on the correct latitude, but not the right longitude. Thus begin to move only to the east.

This is just my tips, may not be correct since there are a lot of unkown randomness and I onky beat the level one time (original difficulty).