A Beginner’s Guide to Cycle: Frontier
The new shooter on the block, The Cycle: Frontier by German development team Yager, is a massively multiplayer first-person shooter set in the distant future on the tumultuous planet Fortuna III. You find yourself in the shoes of a Prospector, a scavenger profession adopted by the colonists aboard the space station orbiting above the planet, which serves as your hub and is led by the resident Fixer Badum.
The game itself is pretty simple, but there are a lot of moving parts which can make it a bit overwhelming for beginners looking to try something new. To make those early falls into danger a little easier, here’s a brief beginner’s guide to The Cycle: Frontier.
PvE
Your main objective in The Cycle is to collect as many resources as your bag can hold before dumping everything into your escape ship when you leave the planet.. To make your job more difficult, various deadly aliens of different types, sizes and strengths patrol the abandoned ruins of the lost colony as you explore in search of treasure.
Items can be obtained from various boxes and cupboards scattered around the map, the corpses of creatures you’ve downed, or if you’re brave enough, other players’ pockets. Either way, the end goal of each drop will be to get in, get lots of loot, and get out alive.
PvP
PvP in The Cycle is the other part of the game that you will have to regularly face and it is quite easy to master. This is your basic Escape From Tarkov-esque setup where players are dropped into a massive map that stays open for hours, with the number of bodies running around regularly supplemented by newcomers.
Because the Bright Sands map most people play on is so big, you’ll often wander around without encountering anyone for a while, only to be ambushed or dropped by a sniper into an area that was empty a while ago. just a few minutes. So tactical thinking instead of running like it’s a COD: Warzone match is actively encouraged. However, if you are looking for this type of gameplay, check out the Crescent Falls map. It’s smaller, has a higher difficulty, more exotic gear, and fights are much more frequent.
Item Insurance and You
It’s never too late in your life to think about insurance, and in the case of The Cycles, it’s something you’ll need to consider from the first moment. Insurance is a system not to be neglected. It ensures that if you die in a fall, you will at least be adequately compensated for your lost gear.
While it can get a little pricey in the long run, it’s on average pretty cheap to insure a few essential pieces of gear like a rare rifle or scanner. Plus, if you lose it, you’ll receive some credits to use to buy another one.. You can also fully recover lost items instead of getting money by paying with Aurum or Insurance Tokens.
craftsmanship
There’s a crafting element to The Cycle, and it uses gear you earn from drops collected from containers or the special gooey bits you carve from aliens on the planet below. But unlike crafting in other games, and because it’s free, there is a paid element to be aware of..
Equipment ranging from weapons to tools, consumables, accessories and beyond are all crafted in the Fabricator and they all cost Credits, or a few extra Exotics to craft. Building each item also takes real time, with most low-end parts taking minutes, while rarer and higher items can take hours.. This can however be expedited by paying, you guessed it, with change. By using Aurum, which is the premium credit acquired through the microtransaction store, and some Krypto Marks, you can make the process instantaneous. Although the cost of this also decreases the longer you wait to use this option.
Tips for beginners
Finally, there are some beginner tips worth knowing before you load up on weapons, climb inside that drop pod, and shoot yourself to the planet below.
The cycle can be quite a trial by fire for beginners and it creates a wall that some people will no doubt bounce off if they get into the wrong frame of mind. So to make those first few minutes a little easier as you run around dodging monsters and deadly players, here are some tips you should know.
Don’t over-prepare
First of all, the best advice you can have for The Cycle is not to over-prepare if you’re new to the game. Unless you have enough pocket space, all those items you put in your luggage while hanging out on the Space Station will disappear if you die.
Only take what you’re willing to lose. Because it’s incredibly easy to get downed or maimed in the first few minutes of the game. This also applies to tools, armor, and consumables, so if you run out of credits to replace them, maybe leave them for the next delivery.
Focus on PvP or PvE
As for items, before you jump in, decide if you’re going to focus on PvE or PvP when loading up. If you’re looking for resources, bring scanners, armor, and some ammo to keep you alive while you hunt bugs or break rocks to get resources.
For those looking to commit their kill, focus on bringing plenty more ammo, grenades, combat boosts, and maybe an extra weapon or two to shore up any weaknesses in your loadout. The majority of other prospectors in the game tend to use a mix of the two. So they often don’t expect a fight and you can grab them for easy kills and all the loot that was on their corpses.
Get out of the landing zone immediately
After falling, it’s worth getting out of where you landed as fast as possible. The screaming atmospheric entry drop pods can be seen by other players and if you’re not quick, someone can knock you down as you continue to cycle through the animations to exit the pod.
Dragging away from your spawn is also pretty much mandatory as often the game will drop players in the same areas over and over again. This in turn leads to most resources in the immediate area being systematically and quickly stripped by people ahead of you, leaving a long way to the nearest node. Usually midway through the map or in areas classified as high danger.
Beware of other prospectors
It’s sort of obvious advice given the type of game The Cycle is, but it’s worth knowing as the game tries to imply that communicating with other players is often worth more than an exchange of shots.
Unfortunately, while this is often the case, the majority of other people you meet share this same camaraderie vibe. Everyone you meet will treat this like Call of Duty: Warzone and shoot on sight, loot your gear, then flee without even a glance in voice chat. Unless you’re playing in a party or getting that very rare unicorn from a player who’s willing to talk things out, it’s best to pop everyone you see before they do the same to you. .
Don’t be greedy
If there’s one thing that will get you killed fast, it’s greed. While getting items and resources is the name of the game, loading your pockets with tons of loot before calling the evacuation can be quite a dangerous gamble.
Going in and out with a handful of things is an easy way to earn credits and long-term averages on a big payday from a single drop. Also, the longer you live and run on the planet, the more likely you are to meet someone better equipped. If that happens, they might just take all of your wanted items for themselves in a couple of lucky shots..
Beware of insects
It cannot be stressed enough how prepared you need to be for bugs. The cycle hasn’t been out for long and although its beta version fixed many issues, it’s still prone to the occasional small crash. The bugs in question can range from the mildly annoying type to the unfair and broken type.
For example, monsters can randomly turn invisible or reset with invincibility after death before ripping you apart. Your entire inventory can completely vanish when you load into the game with their insurance refund not counting as the game thinks you entered without items. Some areas will also fail to load textures or collision boxes, causing the old round-the-world to crash. Sometimes item descriptions and pictures won’t load, so you have no idea what you’re getting in the boxes or how much they weigh until you evacuate. These are just a few encountered in a handful of brief sessions. Hopefully with developer activity these bugs will soon be ironed out with more fixes.
