Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden Tactics Overview, System Requirements Revealed

With less than ten days remaining until Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden’s release, we get this overview of the game’s tactical tricks and features that include stealth kills and character-altering mutations, along with this Steam announcement that has the minimum and recommended system requirements.

Here are a few bits about Mutant Year Zero’s tactics:

The most important thing to keep in mind about Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is that you can’t just run up to a group of enemies, take them on, and expect to come out of the encounter alive.

Doing this means you will be crushed. Over and over and over again. Instead you must learn to use stealth and plan your major attack in detail.

The tactical combat follows many of the rules from similar games (like XCOM) – you have two actions per round, shooting ends your turn, you can learn special abilities, you can overwatch etc – but there are many other factors you must keep in mind.

MAXIMIZE THE ADVANTAGES OF STEALTH

The main difference you notice in Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden, compared to most other tactical games, is the importance of stealth.

The obvious part is that you can take out single targets stealthily, while not alerting the rest of your enemies. The hard part of this is being able to deal enough damage, using just silent weapons, in just one round. Because if the enemy survives that round he will call out to his friends for help.

So, the key to increasing your damage with silent weapons is to upgrade them and use Mutations. Skull Splitter for example, allows you to get a 100% critical chance, but you take a 25% penalty to hit. Walk right up to the enemy you wish to take out silently – don’t worry about him noticing you, as he can only call out on his own turn – and use Skull Splitter at point blank range.

Another mutation you can use is Silent Assassin. It doubles the critical chance of a hidden mutant. Use this mutation after you have ambushed your target, but don’t move so close that he can see you. You are still hidden, and with this passive Mutation active you will have a very high critical chance.

The difference between being able to take out a specific enemy or not silently, can easily be the difference between life and death. Every single point of damage you can do silently matters.

MOMENTUM, MOMENTUM, MOMENTUM

You can only have three Mutants active in your team at any time. This makes each of their actions incredibly valuable. If you constantly have to move your Mutants to find cover or spend their actions on healing each other, you are wasting precious time which could be used to activate Mutations, throwing grenades, reloading or shooting.

Some of the best weapons in the game have to be reloaded each turn. This means you can’t afford to shoot that turn if you have moved. You lose close to half your damage output in a turn when you can’t shoot your most high-powered weapon.

This makes positioning and controlling the battlefield even more important in Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden than most turn-based tactical games. You must make sure all three of your Mutants are able to shoot as close to every turn as possible, without taking much damage in return. Losing one team mate in a team of five is bad but losing one in a team of three is crippling.

So, you must keep the pressure up on your enemies, killing at least one of them per turn. If not, you run the risk of being overrun very quickly.