After discovering that the seemingly pointless cocktail oldobos stim actually has a use (it's great for the junkie quest because it lasts so long — no longer have to remember to drink a hotrod every few minutes during a long woods raid) I thought it would be fun to experiment with the other "useless" stims.
First on my list was 3-(b-TG). It gives you:
Attention (+30), Perception (+30), Strength (+10), and Stam Recovery +1
You might recall that Attention increases your looting speed, as well as the chance to find the most valuable loot first in a container. Perception increases your hearing radius and loot detection radius.
When would you want those skills increased? When you are looting the large wooden ration, technical, and food crates. When do you have to loot a large amount of those crates? When you are doing hermetic bunker cage room runs on reserv.
To test out my hypothesis, I put a 3bTG in my gamma, threw a flashlight on my pistol, put on an M1 rig and loaded into night reserve. As soon as I spawned, I rushed the hermetic bunker cages.
Sure enough, it works like a freakin' charm. You can loot all of six crates in the most valuable cage room EXTREMELY fast. What's more, the most valuable items (like sugar, chocolate, water filters, saline) pop up first, so you can quickly shove them in your gamma. There's the added bonus of increased hearing so you don't have to wear headphones, and it is likely you will hear anyone sneaking up on you or the scav that spawns down there. I've been doing these runs whenever I have a spare 15 minutes, and because of the inflated prices of items like sugar, chocolate, water filters, nails, bolts, and saline, if I survive on my way out it is an easy several hundred thousand in profit. Even if I die, all of the items you loot down there can be easily used in the hideout for big money if they lose their FIR status.
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Quick guide on running the cages:
I like to run them at night, because there is much less of a chance of a player scav wandering down there. Or, when it is time to extract, much lower chance of getting sniped by a player scav. You definitely don't need nightvision, but it's a good idea to bring a flashlight on your pistol because unless someone hits the bunker button it is pretty dark down there.
Once you run down to the cage area, your first order of business is to check for bot scavs. They seem to have a 50% spawn rate and spawn in one of two places: either right in the middle between all of the cages kinda bar the server rack things, or in the back towards the dead end. Rarely, they will spawn later in the raid so when you are actually looting in the cages, be sure to loot crouched so they don't get a lucky headshot if they do spawn.
NOTE: I've done about 50 runs of these and I've had glukhar spawn twice down there. It's a rare spawn but it can happen. More power to you if you want to try and zero to hero them, but it is almost impossible to fight him down there even fully geared so if he does spawn down there you are probably better off just running away and restarting.
The next thing you want to do is close the side doors that lead to the watchtower and the K building exit. This is important because it makes scavs and players have to open the door before they come in, giving you time to react and run away if need be.
Next, unlock a cage, ideally with the most valuable cage first (the food one, I've gotten five sugar in just that one cage before). Before you pop your stim and start looting, be sure to unlock the other side of the cage so if PMC's come down there and push you, you have a way of escaping.
Pop your stim and loot.
NOTE: if you get into a fight down there, know that the chainlink functions is actually fairly bulletproof. I know BSG is working on fixing the penetration, but in my experience I've actually survived full vector and m4 mag dumps on me with only the cage in between. It's pretty funny watching someone waste 300k worth of 7n31 trying to kill you and your pistol while you jump around in the cage.
Extracting. A few options here. The ideal, and this happens sometimes, more frequently during day matches, just as you wrap up looting someone hits the hermetic bunker door button. If this happens it is fantastic, just run up and extract. Do be mindful to sprint past the bunker hermetic door though, as I have gotten tapped by the raiders that spawn.
If you don't care about min-maxing loot or don't have a red rebel you can just bring a big rig for loot, exit via the watchtower, run through blackknight, and hit sewer manhole.
If you are a greedy greedy loot goblin like me, I like to exit via the watchtower, run all the way back towards the map edge/ CP (or loot black knight if I'm feeling really greedy) and then make my way up to queen. During night raids, all the queen keys are usually unlooted, so I'll hit the KORL safes, go up to second floor, hit all the rooms on the second floor, and then jump out of the window and paracord extract. If you still have some empty slots left, there are 3 filing cabinets in RLSSA that you can loot, which can be profitable with diaries, slim diaries, and SSD.
