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Unexplained & Hidden Mechanics Guide

By Tamaster

MG Survive does a really poor job in explaining all the game mechanics properly. This guide aims to fix that by explaining everything the game does not.

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Created by

Tamaster
Offline

Category: Crafting, Gameplay Basics, Secrets, Walkthroughs

Languages: English

Posted

Updated

9 Jan, 2021 @ 12:41am

6 May, 2021 @ 10:19pm

4,664	Unique Visitors
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Guide Index

Overview

Section 1: About Items, Containers & Resources

Section 2: About the Base Camp

Section 3: About Gear, Equipment, Vehicles & Weapons

Section 4: About Combat, Enemies & Fight Mechanics

Section 5: About Salvage Missions

Section 6: Other Mechanics & Workarounds

Want to add something? All suggestions welcome!

Comments

Section 1: About Items, Containers & Resources

The game explains that Containers can be opened in two ways: by lockpicking them, or by breaking the lock. There is also a third way: if one fails the lockpicking minigame, the lever becomes red but can still be slowly pulled to the end, making a great sound that will attract enemies in a large radius. However, the container will open eventually and reveal its loot normally.
Containers will reset, become closed again and spawn loot again after some time. How much time exactly is not clear, but it's not less than 24 real life hours. So every 2 real days, go and check previously opened Containers (remember to mark them on the map with the stickers) - they will have more loot to gather.
Respawned Containers (mentioned in the previous point) will have different loot than the first time, each time past the first opening. They will NOT award any more Blueprints or otherwise special items, but will instead ALWAYS award Material, Weapon or Gear Cases, which can eventually award random Weapons or Gear to restore at the Workbench.
Resources gathered in the world such as trees to chop to get wood, gunny sacks, tires, iron barrels... anything you can actually pick up or destroy basically will respawn after a certain amount of other resources has been looted and some missions have been completed after. This is valid for ALL resources including non-event animal packs (wolves, sheep...) and herbs, they will respawn where you first met them after some time, EXACT spot.

UPDATED 17/01/2021: This does not happen by time, but instead happens by a combination of two factors: the first factor is items looted in a recent time-frame while the second is side-missions completed in single player. This means to achieve the best efficiency in item respawning you need to loot every location like teleport destinations, then after looting everything go and do some side missions (I recommend Movable Singularity missions because they give also a good amount of KUB, are fast and easy with Fire Arrows), do 3-4 of those and then you will see items will have respawned ready to loot again.

If you want to make more "Movable Singularity" missions spawn, then sleep in a Tent or Shelter some in-game days. More missions will spawn this way.
- Special thanks to valtrifonov for contributing to the research of this mechanic.
"Strong Kuban Energy Reaction" events tend to spawn near the location of undiscovered Containers. Yes, I made tests about this, and it's true: the game uses this specific type of Random Event to "guide" you to a lot of undiscovered containers you did not open the first time yet. The containers are usually near the area where the event takes place. This is NOT a rule for 100% of containers, but for most it will happen. So if you see "strong kuban reaction" event, go have a look.
You can convert materials into other materials. For example, you can make Concrete [Rare] from Cement [Uncommon] and Stone [Common]. This applies to ALL materials you have discovered: each has a conversion recipe you can use to obtain it from other materials. To do this, go to a workbench and select the option "Convert Materials", a list will show all the materials you know, and how to make them.

Exceptions: this process cannot be made to create organic harvested materials or special items such as animal skins, specific types of animal parts (such as "Striped Wolf Pelt" or "Bear Paw" for example), same goes for Herbs, in these cases you must harvest that specific animal or plant to get the material. But for all the other ones, it works.
You can extract animals and enemies with the Wormhole Transporter for different bonus effects. In the case of Enemies, they will yield 50% more Kuban than regular harvesting, and it's also faster. In the case of live animals (NOT animal corpses, those cannot be extracted this way), they will give the same materials BUT if you have a cage in your base (like the Goat Cage) they will instead be captured alive, and provide their materials over-time as a Harvest resource.

To do this with an enemy, you need to kill it with a Stealth Kill OR kill it by shooting the weak point on their backs (a little bit lower than the neck). After this the enemy will convulse on the ground for about 10 seconds, you have this time to extract him by holding SPACE down near it.

To do this with a live animal, the specimen needs to be stunned on the ground. The easiest way to do this is to start sprinting fast (hold down SHIFT) and then perform a Sprint Punch (left click while running) on the animal - this will knock on the ground any Small and Medium animal (Goats, zebras, donkeys...), after that press and hold SPACE near them to send them to your base.

Exceptions: Large Animals are too big to stun with this method, but they can be extracted if stunned in other ways such as reducing their health to a very low amount. Some enemies cannot be extracted, generally those with a non-human shape. Those with a humanoid shape usually can. Also, this doesn't work with Birds, Rats, Gerbils and similar things because there is no way to stun them without killing them.

Section 2: About the Base Camp

You can gather a small amount of resouces and most importantly clean-up space, by dismantling the rubble piles present around the base camp's area. To do this, enter Bulding Mode and then select the "Move" option from the menu above (the one with 4 arrows icon). With that selected, hover the pointer over one of the rubble piles, and you will be able to dismantle it as if it was a structure.
If you want to free up a Goat Cage (or any animal cage) to put inside a different type of Goat (or other animal), then dismantle it and rebuild: the goats or whatever else will be gone.
Any defensive buildable item gives its defense power to one of the 4 colored zones of the camp, depending where it's built. If an item is put in a square where two different colored zones overlap, then its defensive power will be split 50% in one zone, and 50% in the other.
At a certain point in the story, the game will tell you about a certain time limit you have to consider. This is however not true: this time limit will not be real, and even if more time than described passes, the event will not occur until the main story mission has progressed more. So, take your time.
You can engage in co-op Salvage Missions alone, as they do not necessarily need other players, even if they're called "co-op". To do this, access the Staging Area by talking to Virgil (the computer) at the Base Camp, then set the match type to Private and select the level: you will be able to start alone. The difficulty and enemy numbers however, will not be different, so it will be ever harder as you will be alone.
The maximum stack of an item produced by your Base Facilities, such as the Water Collector, a Potato Field or Goat Cage is always 10 Slots. So for example, a Water Collector cannot contain more than 10 units of Dirty Water (because 10 Slots each with 1 Water) for pick up at the same time - after that it will not produce any more water you can pick up yourself. So remember to collect resources every once in a while, same for all other things that yield materials in this manner.
If you're not sure when the game last saved, you can use one of the Tents or Shelters in your base camp to sleep 1 hour. After this the game will always save.
After performing a Base Drill Operation with "Leave to Crew" option (this mechanic is unlocked after completing the campaign), some of your base's defences will surely get damaged or even destroyed. The "Repair All" function in the building menu will repair the damaged ones, but will NOT restore destroyed ones. Those will have to be rebuilt from scratch manually. So after each such operation, be sure to check the base layout and see what is missing.
There are two expansion levels for the base camp, which will allow you to build on a larger area and also raise the maximum capacity of buildings / resources. The first expansion (Level 1 to Level 2) is acquired during the story campaign and cannot be missed. The next expansion (Level 2 to Level 3) is acquired much later, after completing the Campaign and unlocking Base Digger missions, you must complete Base Digger Mission #5 successfully to get the Lv.3 Expansion.
You can use field manuals to enhance the ability of your crew members. To do this go in the base crew menu and use the Enhance option on the character you want to improve. This will make your crew members better in their skill, depending on what manual is used. For example, using a "Base Defense Manual" on a crew member will give +1 to their Base Defense skill.
You can make side missions respawn faster if you sleep for 24 hours in a Tent or Shelter. This works better after finishing the campaign, because more missions are available. Go to a tent or any other sleeping place and select the maximum amount of time - when you wake up there will usually be some new missions available to take from your base members. This is a great way to make missions you want spawn (like Rare Animals).
The members of your crew will perform differently based on their Employment History. For example a member with employment history as "Food Engineer" will perform well in the Food Supply Team, but would perform poorly in the Defense Team. When you move a member from one division to another, the game will update its status immediately and tell how it will perform in that section. The best rating is "Would accomplish some positive results" while the worst rating is "would perform poorly". So: pay attention to the employment history, it makes the difference.
The base Defense Team Rating will influence how many Defense Points each built defense unit gives to the base. For example with a Defense Team Rating of "D", an automatic turret would give 1440 Defense Points, but with a rating of "B", the same turret would give over 2000 Defense Points.
In order to complete a Base Camp DIg without any loss or anyway very minor ones (a few fences and small damages for example) you need the defense rating to be at least 3 TIMES the attacker force rating, if you choose to leave the defense to your crew (best option). So if the attacker force (the one with red skull icon in the Base Dig interface map) has 5000 force, to be safe you need 15000 on that specific sector.
- Special thanks to valtrifonov for discovering this.

EXCEPTION: The above-described rule does NOT count for "Base Defense Dig #6" as it has some special enemies that require specific defenses to be effective, otherwise major losses WILL happen even if you have 3 times or more Defense Rating.
Please note that the layout of your defenses MATTERS even in "Leave to Crew" defenses. For example a turret that is behind a fence (as it would be logical to have) will be less prone to take damage compared to one without protection. The same logic applies to all the rest. So my advice is: make a layout as you would do if you were to defend yourself!

Section 3: About Gear, Equipment, Vehicles & Weapons

It is possible to equip multiple arrow types at the same time on any Bow, and switch them when needed. To do this you need at least one "Quiver", and also at least 2 different types of Arrows. First of all equip the quiver in the Gear menu, as it occupies one Survival Gear slot. After this, go in the Weapons Workbench and select Change Equiopment, then go to the Ammo tab (the one with bullet icon): there you will be able to select what type of ammo goes where.

To have multiple arrow types, put in the Quiver whatever type of ammo it is designed to hold (Example: Heavy Arrow Quiver will only hold Heavy Arrows), then in the bow itself (which counts as a separate arrow container) you can put ANY type of arrow, but only 20 of them. So for example you can have 30 Heavy Arrows in the quiver, and at the same time 20 Flame Arrows in the bow "magazine" itself.

To switch arrow types, press down and hold the button assigned to select the Primary Weapon, make sure the Bow is highlighted, and then while still holdiong it down press Q or E to swap arrow types. You will see the Captain do an animation where he/she fiddles with the arrows a bit, and after a couple seconds you will have the other arrow type selected to shoot.
All vehicles such as the Jeep or the Walker Gear degrade over time by using them, and their ammunition cannot be reloaded in any way. However, the degradation occurs only if the vehicle is used for moving, NOT shooting. So, if you use a Waker Gear's minigun but stay still in one place, the degradation will not progress.
To throw grenades, lures or anything else a lot further, you can press SPACE to change the throw type from Underhead (default type) to Overhead. After doing this the throwing arc will change and become longer, allowing much more distant throws.
Reinforcing armor is useless. It only slightly upgrades the Durability value, while Armor value stays the same. There is no actual improvement whatsoever in my experience. So don't waste your Kubans and Materials on this. Weapon improvement is, instead, quite good and worth the effort.
Gear and Weapons crafted from "Broken" stuff found in Cases always has at least 1 or more special attribute, and cost about the same to craft as regular ones. So when possible, use "Broken" gear as a base to craft your weapons or armor, instead of normal blueprints: the result will be comparatively better because of the special passive skills. Sometimes these skills have to be unlocked for an extra cost, sometimes not, it depends each time.
Repairing any type of equipment will always cost the same no matter how much damage it has. Also, equipment starts becoming weaker only when it reaches less than 50% durability. If durability is higher than 50%, there is no need to repair. Keep this in mind to be efficient and avoid wasting resources.
Certain pieces of gear allow adding ammunition pouches to them via the Customization menu in the Gear bench. These pouches will allow you to carry a much higher amount of ammunition for your firearms. When acquiring a new gear piece, always check if it is compatible with ammo pouches.
You can aim down sight (ADS) in first-person with some weapons. To do this, aim the weapon by holding down RIGHT CLICK, then press SHIFT. The visual will switch to first person iron sights, or to the optical sight of the weapon, if the weapon has one. This does not work with all weapons, you have to try in each case.

Section 4: About Combat, Enemies & Fight Mechanics

Spears are the only melee weapon category that can attack through fences. Despite what the fence effect says [Attack Penetration: attacks can go through and hit enemies behind], other melee weapons will NOT go through. Only spears.
If two enemies are close enough to each other, a bow attack may hit both of them. This applies to Normal and Heavy arrows. If you see two or even more enemies clipped into one another (usually happens when they're attacking a fence or wall), there is a decent chance the arrow will damage more than one when it hits.
You can dodge by pressing SPACE quickly two times in a row. This will make your character throw himself (or herself) in the desired direction, and land on his / her belly on the ground. This can be useful to avoid explosions or enemy attacks.
Suggested by: Macdallan
Grass on the ground creates large fire areas in certain conditions. When you hit an enemy with a Flame Arrow or also a weapon that inflicts Flame damage, the enemy may catch fire. If this happens while the enemy stands on a dry grass patch (like desert grass), this vegetation will catch fire and become a large patch of flames. The patch of flames will inherit the damage over time of the source, so for example if a Flame Arrow does 25 damage per second as Burning, the same will be for the fire patch. UPDATED: The damage-over-time inflicted by the "grass patch fire" is equal to a % per second to the enemy's max HP. It will NEVER kill an enemy from full health, leaving them to about 15% remaining HP. So an enemy needs to be burned TWO times with "grass-fire" to actually die.
Wooden Walls, Barricades and similar constructions will NOT catch fire if struck by fire damage, despite being made of wood. So don't be afraid of this happening.
Heavy Special Attacks will always stagger normal Wanderers and even Trackers if they connect, interrupting whatever action they may be performing, including attacks. This type of attack needs first to be unlocked as a Skill, then you need to press R while holding down RIGHT CLICK (readying weapon). This will perform a different animation based on the weapon category.

The important thing is, that normal attacks have a CHANCE to stagger an enemy, but they also may not do so, it's random. In my experience Heavy Specials instead always stagger no matter what. This does not apply to Bombers, Mortars and larger boss-type enemies, stagger on them is NOT guaranteed even with Heavy Special.
You can melee-counter a Tracker's jump attack. You need to have the Counter skill unlocked to do this, it's in the Survivor skill tree (base class). The interval for pressing LEFT CLICK and perform a counter is very small, but if successful will grab and throw the Tracker away, knocking them down and making them vulnerable to whatever following attack or stomp.
Bombers will not explode if killed with a Stealth Attack or killed with a critical hit to their weak spot in the back of their bodies. Also, Bombers will not explode when attacking a Decoy. They will keep trying to melee it as long as it's there, but never trigger the explosion sequence. The same thing is valid for Detonators about Stealth, but Decoys WILL make them explode in the case of Detonators.

Section 5: About Salvage Missions

During a Salvage mission your Base's Kuban and Material reserves do not count. You only have what you find in that specific mission, other than what you took with you during the preparation phase in the staging area (ammo, gear, turrets etc). For this reason, it is important to kill as many enemies as possible, loot materials and finish secondary objectives between each wave - they will give you Kuban to invest in the mission.
Kuban gathered during a Salvage Mission can be invested into making the Digger work faster. To do this, interact with the Digger and select "speed up digging" - it will cost more each wave, and can be done up to 4 times each wave. The cost in the same waves will be the same, so for example in Wave 1 doing 4 times Speed up will cost 10.000 Kuban x4 = 40.000 Kuban.
When the digger is working faster, the speed bonus will be lost if the digger gets damaged in ANY way. This includes Trackers jumping on it out of nowhere or Mortars shooting it from the other side of the map (yeah... totally fair, right?). Once the bonus is lost the digger will keep going at normal speed.
In Salvage Missions, the digger will have a red circle around it that slowly expands as the Iris Energy gathered increases. The more Energy gathered, the bigger this circle will be. ANY defense inside the circle will be destroyed at the end of EACH wave. For this reason, plan ahead and don't place all your defenses in the same wave.
You can spend Kuban Energy to also activate additional defenses and bonuses. In the Digger menu, select "Tactical Support", there will be three options: "Deploy interceptors" will spawn fixed defenses such as machinegun turrets, traps and barriers around the digger, each map has a different pattern unique to that map. "Walker Gear" will spawn 2 walker gear vehicles armed with a powerful Minigun. "Refill Ammunition" does exactly what its name implies.
On Normal and above Salvage Missions, it is necessary to use the Digger Speed Up bonus to achieve an "S" rank. You will not be able to get an "S" rank without using the speed bonus, as there isn't enough time.
You do not need to activate the Support Diggers to achieve an S rank on Normal and Hard difficulty. All you need for S Rank is the main digger. The Support ones will reward more Kuban, but are not needed for S Rank in these difficulties.
You can bring materials from your base into a salvage mission, if you put them in your inventory before starting the mission. This way you can have materials to craft more equipment during the mission. For example, you can have maximum 3 normal auto turrets in your inventory... but if you bring the materials for another 3 turrets, you will be able to craft more inside the mission, by using the workbenches near the digger.
- Special thanks to valtrifonov for discovering this.
The "Detonator" enemy type is the only enemy that can hold an "Ammo Box" special item in its corpse, if killed with a Stealth Kill. The Ammo Box will refill some ammunition for ALL the weapons of the player that loots it. Usually it will give you 1 magazine for each weapon.

Section 6: Other Mechanics & Workarounds

Metal Gear Survive does not tolerate well the practice of Alt-Tabbing. As you may know, pressing ALT+TAB on the keyboard will minimize any fullscreen application (such as games) and allow you to use the desktop for other things, such as googling something for example.

This game does not react well to this, and it may even trigger disconnection that will kick you back to the main menu. It happened to me a couple of times. So avoid Alt-Tabbing to be safe. If you need to google something, activate the Steam Overlay and open the Web Browser by clicking "WEB BROWSER" on the bottom left - it will allow you to surf the internet without Alt-Tabbing.

UPDATED: Another way to avoid this is using "Borderless Fullscreen" mode, which however may give other problems depending on your configuration. Try it and see if it is good for you or not. Using this mode will remove the ALT-TAB issues.

Want to add something? All suggestions welcome!

Of course I am not omniscent and may not know all the hidden / unexplained stuff there is in MG Survive. If you have more to suggest, post a comment, possibly with attached reference / proof / footage / whatever else to back your claim up.

Suggestions will be credited with the suggestion author's name and link to their profile.

Thanks!

17 Comments

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Dimokritos 27 Dec, 2022 @ 8:31pm

Cool guide
different ammo and ADS features are not explained in-game

I add:
-Press "space" key twice fast to dive of low altitude ledges to perform a barrel roll while landing,saving you time as it prevents the stagger effect from falling(possible even saving from injuries if height is not too great)
-You can slide down the tallest cliff with not injuries
-I use 2 monitors and "alt-tab-ing" is buggy in many games.
Borderless-window mode is the only option for multi-monitor systems and the first thing anyone should try if they have issues in any game while navigating different windows

mistakes:
-broken common/grey items do not have extra feature
-items at 0% durability will cost more to repair than X% durability
I used a machete to 0%DUR and the repair was 3 steel instead of 1
like crafting it again-not sure what is the limit for best efficiency
-defense units in a Salvage mission are destroyed even if they are OUTSIDE the circle.the circle does a splash damage to structures around

Naznomarn 24 Sep, 2022 @ 5:44pm

On alt-tabbing: I play with two monitors and borderless windowed mode. The game continues to play and take control from the controller but not keyboard and mouse in the background, so if you are using a controller, you can use the keyboard and mouse for internet browsing on one monitor, while continuing to play the game on the other without interruption.

Naznomarn 24 Sep, 2022 @ 5:41pm

On Salvage Missions at S rank - it is possible to get a little boost by going to the crystalised zones and picking up bonus Iris energy. Each bonus ball gives 500, and two usually spawn at the beginning. Remember to bag these
Iris required for S rank is:
Easy: 270k
Normal: 360k
Hard: 540k
Extreme: 720k
And when you hit the requirement, the wave will rapidly come to an end, with the timer speeding up.

Wenn-9-lann 28 Jul, 2022 @ 3:22am

A Bomber thrown with "Hammer Throw" will immediately start glowing red and explode shortly after.

cary me im K9H2O 23 Jun, 2022 @ 4:14pm

Phil-is-Offi-Cool covered this in his guide but if you convert dirty water into purified canteen water and then convert that into purified bottled water, you can create 2 purified bottles with 5 dirty bottles (instead of 6). Only drawback is it uses more Kuban.
https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1310439026

Tamaster [author] 21 May, 2022 @ 9:35pm

Cheers!

LETHAL NAHYON 21 May, 2022 @ 7:15pm

Cheers captain <3

Tamaster [author] 16 May, 2022 @ 12:02pm

@Popple

Have fun!

Popple 16 May, 2022 @ 12:01pm

Game was on sale for dirt cheap at Greenmangaming so I picked it up with some friends and this guide has been very helpful

Tamaster [author] 4 Mar, 2022 @ 12:22am

Thanks man.

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