WET WORK: Extermination Mission Walkthrough – ICARUS

If you were the one to take care of the predator nuisance with the KILL LIST, then Sinotai probably got the word. They are having a similar issue — heavy personnel losses due to repeated wildlife attacks. Though, it sounds like you are exactly the kind of an expert they were looking for.

In WET WORK you will be fighting the Riverlands’ boss — the mighty Black Jaguar (or panther, or the black cat, due to the confusion with multiple past iterations), which will come with its own unique medal achievement. This guide will first list the relevant details of the mission, and then provide a step-by-step walkthrough.

Prospect Details

• Difficulty: Hard ()
• Recommended Level: 13
• Location(s): Riverlands (very similar to the Forest Biome)
• Objectives:
  • Search last known sighting: Investigate the remains
  • Locate the animal’s den
  • Craft animal bait (Cooking Station)
  • Lure the animal out
  • Eliminate the animal

Rewards

• 250

Variants Modifiers

Prospect Notes

To complete the objectives, you’ll need to search the recent attack zone in the riverlands, gather some iron, locate the animal den, and make some animal bait at a Cooking Station to lure the Jaguar out of its cave. Then, you will need to defeat the boss to complete the mission.

If you faced the Alpha Wolf in KILL LIST on even ground, you will find that Jaguar is much easier to kill (it has a much smaller health pool and fights alone). You will also be given an option to poison the bait in order to weaken the animal.

Objective Locations

Preparing for WET WORK

I recommend you bring the bone-grade weapons (even better, iron-grade) to the den itself. At the minimum, you will require a couple of Tier 2 stations to craft the lure (Animal Bait):

• Wood Bow or better
• Bone Arrows or better
• Bone Knife or better
• Stone Axe
• Stone Pickaxe
• Crafting Bench (to craft the stations)
• Stone Furnace (to craft Iron Ingots)
• Cooking Station (to craft Animal Bait)
• (Optional) Mortar and Pestle with Poison Paste unlocked (to craft Poisoned Animal Bait), not necessary with barricades
• (Optional) Barricade materials: a few Wood Walls and Wood Floors will do the job, but you can build out of stone if you want to be extra-careful

Mission Walkthrough

Step 1: Preparations and List of Materials

As soon as we land, Sol will give us the general area of the recent attack zone for us to investigate — within it we will need to locate a small pile of animal remains. So, let’s make some preparations and head out.

If you made it this far in the mission tree, you have probably developed a reliable routine for this, but here are some facts about this mission to help you prepare:

• Water supply is not an issue in the riverlands. You can bring a single Waterskin or not bother at all.
  • If you plan on upgrading weapons to iron and barricades to stone, an Oxygen Bladder can be convenient to have. You can set up a Crafting Bench and an Oxite Dissolver in a cave later.
• Expect to encounter a couple of bears, a lot of boars, and a few wolves. You will need to fight at least 3 cave worms.
• We are likely to reach the Jaguar Den before sunset, where we will set up our base.

To save yourself some time, you can just craft Tier 1 axe, pickaxe, knife, bow and ammo, a torch, some bandages, mine some oxite, and head out.

List of Materials

• We can gather all of the resources we need for this mission on the way, but here is the full list:
  • Whatever you need to craft a small shelter, about 2×3 (unless you want to camp out in a cave), along with a bed and a campfire
  • (Optional) Barricade materials
  • Fiber (68), Wood (62), Stone (116), Stick (12), Leather (32)
  • Iron Ore (8) -> Iron Ingot (4)
  • Raw Meat (3) — For crafting Animal Bait
  • (Optional) Silica Ore (4), Stone (12), Spoiled Meat (2), Sulfur Ore (1) — For crafting Poisoned Animal Bait, not necessary with barricades
  • Some bone for bone weapons or additional iron for crafting better weapons (in that case, you will also need to craft the Anvil Bench)

Step 2: Searching The Sighting Area for Remains

We are ready to head southeast to square G4 to search the last known sighting area of the animal.

As you travel, you can hunt, mine a stack of Stone, and chop down a couple of trees to get a head start on Wood. Grab just a little bit of Silica and a single Sulfur if you plan to poison the lure.

Once you enter the area (you will see and hear the partial objective get completed), open the map again and head towards the southwest corner of the circle, as you can see in the little image to the left. You can double-click on your map to set up a custom waypoint to help you track it.

Look for a bloodied pile of bones in a small clearing near a cliff. It might not immediately stand out, but it’s otherwise unobstructed. Walk onto the slope and search not far from the southern edge of the cliff.
(Click on the image to view it in full size.)

Once you locate the hunting remains, you should get an option to interact on hover. Press [F] to do so. Sol will speak and the objective will complete.

Step 3: Picking Up Some Iron

Our next objective will be to locate the animal’s den. However, with the magic of helpful foresight we already know that we will eventually need to craft a Cooking Station to make some Animal Bait. This station requires 4 Iron Ingots (8 Iron Ore), and we might even want some more for iron weapons and stone buildables.

So, we will head southwest towards our next location in square D6, but also make a stop at one or two caves on the way.

We have a pick of two caves conveniently located on our way south, in squares D5 and E5, as can be seen in the little image to the left.
(Click on the image to view it in full size.)

Cave #1 in E5 is larger, convenient for more extensive mining operations, but it comes with 7-8 cave worms you will need to fight off (and you probably know by now that their poison is quite potent). Cave #2 is smaller, populated by only 3 cave worms and offering plenty of iron for a Cooking Station and more.

The actual nodes are randomly generated, of course, so your results may vary. Still, if you plan on using a lot of iron for this mission, it’s a good idea to work with Cave #1, if not both of the two caves. Set up a little camp inside it: you will probably be mining for a while. Remember to supply yourself with enough food and oxygen.

If you are ready to tackle the Black Jaguar with bone weapons, do a quick dive into the Cave #2 and let’s get going!

Step 4: Locating the Animal’s Den and Crafting the Lure

Now let’s head to our final destination in the square D6. Don’t worry: the Jaguar will not emerge until we craft and place the lure near its cave. You will have as much time as you need to prepare.

You will likely already have a knife icon on your map that you can track. If you see a yellow circle instead, double-click inside the center of square D16 as you see on the little image on the left to set up a custom waypoint. The precise location will become pretty clear once you ascend the plateau.

In case you would like to have a couple of visual markers:

Feel free to investigate your surroundings: the Jaguar will not emerge until we deploy the lure in the next step. Now, let’s establish our base. I recommend you pick a location somewhere on the plateau — it can serve as an escape retreat if the boss breaks through all of your barricades.

The design of the shelter depends on your approach to fighting tougher animals. You could build a house with a ladder up to the roof to rain arrows at the boss from above.

You could build a tower with a ramp that will get demolished as you run away from the Jaguar. The only other requirement is that some part of it can fit 3 workbenches (unless you had them set up in one of the caves) and probably a bed to set as a respawn point and a campfire to cook and sleep.

The simplest solution is a small wooden house, 2×2 or 3×2, with protected windows:

Beware that soon a few animals will start appearing on top of and around the plateau: you will notice some deer, but there will also be a few boars, wolves, and even bears. Keep your guard up as you chop wood and gather fiber, venture to refill your water, or as you work with the benches inside your shelter.

Inside your shelter, build the Crafting Bench and the Stone Furnace. Then, smelt 4 Iron Ingots and build the Cooking Station.

Crafting Animal Bait (and Poisoned Animal Bait)

You will need 3 Raw Meat to craft the Animal Bait: 2 to craft Animal Fat (also crafted at the Cooking Station) and one for the Animal Bait itself.

If you are going to fully enclose the cave inside a barricade, you do not need to craft poisoned lure: it will simply not get to eat it before you land your first hit. For any other scenario, if you want the Jaguar to have a poisoned debuff as you fight it, craft Poison Paste at the Mortar and Pestle and upgrade your lure to Poisoned Animal Bait (at the Cooking Station).

I personally found that the poison debuff is not very potent, but it’s pretty easy to craft if you already have all of the materials on hand.

Step 5: Final Preparations

More opportunity for creativity: building some barricades. Before we deploy the bait, we have as much as we need to make it as hard as possible for the Jaguar to land a hit upon us.

Here are some of the things to consider:

• Your escape route: where are you going to retreat if the Jaguar breaks through? What happens if you get killed? (It could happen accidentally, if you climb on top of a rock but happen to tumble down the cliff, for example).
• Your barricade: below, we will show you an enclosure that will trap the Jaguar. The animal will eventually break through if it’s wooden.
• So, think about additional reinforcements or locate a rock you can jump onto — there are some convenient ones at the back of the plateau: if you face the cave, they will be behind you, on your right. The Jaguar was not able to reach me when I hopped onto one of the rocks there.

Now, here is one option: a simple, but efficient method of trapping the Jaguar inside that accounts for a variety of spawn locations:

Windows could make the Jaguar easier to hit, but they are also a risk: it could get out if it jumps or glitches up in the wall. Build Wood Windows if you introduce the holes. However, if you build the front wall right in front of the cave entrance, the Jaguar’s front half will stick out as it gets trapped inside the wall.

You will need 6 Wood Floors and 10 Wood Walls to build this particular 3×2. No roof.

Place a Wood Floor at the center of the cave, sticking out the front by a couple of inches. Build two floors on its sides, and make it a 3×2 by building another row of floors on the back. Fully enclose with Wood Walls, skip the roof.

With this design the key to success is landing crits right at the start (stab or shoot at its head) and repairing the wall while avoiding getting hit (at a short distance). There is a chance the Jaguar destroys the wall suddenly — in that case, retreat to your base or quickly scale a rock.

Step 6: Luring Out the Black Jaguar and the Fight

When you are ready, deploy the Animal Bait in front of the cave. To do that, open up your inventory, right-click the bait, and select “Deploy”. Click LMB to place the item down.

You will have a few seconds to get in your positon. If you built our barricade, you will see this after a few seconds:

In that case, the Jaguar will not be aggroed onto you just yet — immediately start landing critical shots. When you see the wall start taking damage, land a couple more hits, pull out a Repair Hammer, and try repairing the wall from a little bit of a distance. If you get hit a couple of times, ditch repairing and focus on landing critical hits, with a retreat plan in mind.

Completing the Mission

Once you defeat the Jaguar, the final objective will be completed. Your Jaguar Slayer achievement notification will come up on the top-left of the screen. Skinning the Black Jaguar will give you about 35 Leather, 6 Fur, 8 Bone, and 4 Raw Meat; nothing special. So, let’s head back.

At this point, you don’t have to get anything back to the drop pod. If you aren’t worried about losing some XP or have very recently gained a level, you can let your character die with minimum penalty and get back to the Dropship much quicker. (Do not do this if you brought Orbital items you would like to keep!)

Otherwise, head back to your Dropship back in the north of the Riverlands, extract, and enjoy your mission rewards and the achievement medal.

We hope this WET WORK walkthrough was helpful! Let us know if you have any questions or suggestions via the comments box below.