The Blue Sun Mod

[Dr.Q]

The labelled backpacks are meant for reducing clutter in the car, no further secrets behind those.

I haven't had any problems with the merc agent, they spawn at one of the entry points and then walk to the hotel. The agent then takes some time off, depending on how expensive that merc was.

A propos expensive, I'm not having any problems with the money in BSM. There's a free and pretty good merc you can get right away by going to Santa Maria. Solve his quest either way and there you go, won't need Benicia except for muling duties

[Kyle]

Dr. Q.,

Thanks for your help. I'm guessing that by the "free" merc you mean the drunkard at the bar? I'm avoiding him like the plague! Still, I never thought of him acting as a pack mule, so the next time I'm there he's "hired."

I've come to the realization that I'm "stuck" mid-storyline. Near the beginning of the game, I went all the way North to acquire an illicit means to get into the Forbidden/Restricted Zone. I paid approximately $500 to play an "Easter Egg" game to get it, and although I succeeded at this, no new map location was generated Southward.

I then went and spoke with the Minister who wanted me to kill the Marauders. I'm spoke with the Marauders' leader and made a deal with him, got his dog tags as proof that he's dead, and returned them to the Minister in order to get the paperwork to get into the Restricted Zone. I had to start a new dialogue with this Minister in order for him to know that I was ready to go South, and...

Nothing happened, not even a new map listing.

What am I doing wrong? Am I missing something simple, is it a bug, or...?

Thanks again for the help!

[MoreDread]

no you will just have to go exploring on your own =)

having done this mission means that you can now travel in the restricted zone
(marked by the borders around those 5 different cities you can see right from the start)

there are a few other cities and other sectors outside + theres a chance to get random encounters with bandits... those are a good way to hone your fighting skills and collect some loot.

for that it is very advisable NOT to miss that drunkard guy in the bar in santa maria.. because he will give you your first car.

beeing able to put loot in your trunk is essential if you wanna hunt bandits and not loose most of the loot after battles and it also greatly increases your traveling speed. (note that there are a few missions that don't work if you have a car... mainly escorting the german guy in puerto viejo and the assault on the convoy if you decide to work for tanya. if you want to do these missions, simply ask a bartender to look after your car for a while.)
the drunkard will also allow you to do quite a few missions for the corrupt policeman in sagrada. just give it a try, these missions are hilarious. you can fire him afterwards if you don't like paquito..

and Dr.Q was mentioning benicia, she is basically a free merc.
talk to the foreigner in the campecino hospital, he will ask you to save her from his overprotective father in santa maria. then instead of delivering her to her lover right away, you can just keep her in your team for free until you need that spot for hiring an 'actual' merc. (theres a non-violent way to solve this quest.. look around the forums if you can't discover it yourself, i explained it somewhere)

[Kyle]

MoreDread,

Well, I can't tell you how good it is to know that I wasn't "wasting" my time going waaaaaaay down south, enter that cloud, and just to see what would happen. So, the fact that I can even enter that region demonstrates that the Easter Egg mission worked, although I didn't know it yet!

In a way, having to explore that region with no assists makes it feel more foreboding, almost like living "Heart of Darkness." Interesting!

Now I have to get those "free" mercs, because my first encounter in the canyons was quite a challenge with me and the one merc I did hire, Warlock. Help is definitely needed from this point onward.

One thing that I miss from Brigade E5 is that a majority of these maps seem more restrictive both in the absence of vertical tactical options and with depicting regions that certainly look accessible to humans, but are made off limits in the game. The "Jungle" map is a good example of this. Those mounds look approachable to me!

The canyons map is the first map I've fought on where the threat of the lower and upper elevations kept me nervous. I hope that there's more of this down the road.

Thanks for your tremendously detailed response. It's got my interest level piqued!