First Funding: Scavenging for Resources
The first exploration site reveals a scavenging for resources. Excellent! Just what everyone wants to do with newbie rookies.
With the change to these, just how difficult they are depends on who you meet. At the moment, only Pandorans come in an endless stream, so that makes them the worst to face, esp. early on when you can barely hold a rifle straight and the accuracy of that heavy cannon just astounds the world!
Keep in mind you want to pick up as much stuff as possible (forgetting about carrying strength). Make sure you leave lots of room in that backpack!
Everyone goes on grab and carry duty!
This particular map doesn’t exactly look easy. I’ll go for the 3 marked crates but all that open ground doesn’t feel particularly healthy. I think, if I can actually get up to that third crate, I may call the operation at that point (although it will depend on Pandoran types partly). That’s an awful lot of open ground to cover for those other crates, esp. on our first mission.
If facing Forsaken or Pure or bandits, you have more of a luxury of going around after you have eliminated them all and picking and choosing from all the crates.
Nonetheless, scavenging missions are one source of resources you should take at every opportunity. Your guys also gain experience. With the change coming in Cthulhu to Pandoran progress and research, there should be less of a complaint that ‘doing scavenging missions just makes the game harder so don’t do them.’ (Not that that should have ever kept you from actually doing scavenging missions. Isn’t the whole point of the game to play tactical battles?)
[I’m assuming, even though we have not revealed the Mist yet, that we’ve actually landed in an area of Mist (see message on load screen). Never had that happen before! Great! Let’s see if we can make it to 3 crates without getting heads blown off.]
- We move towards that first crate, planning to let the sniper go up and claim it. He can also use the platform as a fire base, hopefully safe from Pandoran fire. He spots one arthron at the same time. We put both assaults on overwatch and fly the heavy adjacent to the arthron to bash it. It is stunned and hurt but not dead and a second arthron is revealed (acid launchers). Keeping all operative fire concentrated in one area is essential for survival and killing Pandorans. In their turn, the wounded arthron hops around and does nothing while the second one comes close and spits poison in the face of the heavy. We should be able to survive this.
The arthrons go down easily from sniper + assaults + heavy bashing.
Turn 3:
The snipers goes up and checks out the crate. We also see a couple more arthrons, a couple tritons that like to shoot clear across the battlescape, and even a facehugger coming up on us. We’ll keep moving to our left, after the second crate, hoping to keep the enemy coming across open ground at us. One problem will be the tritons shooting from a distance and cover being scarce. It’s important to take the ammo clips and such as well. You can scrap them for additional resources.
The heavy jets over to the second crate. We’ll let him jet to the 3rd one in a turn or two, grab what he can, and then get out of here. He’ll have to recover some will points first.
The position at this point:
Turn 4: The heavy makes a third jump. One assault runs back and deals with the facehugger. The sniper grabs everything from the crate and fumbles his way through overwatch fire and jumps down beside that facehugger. Other assault grabs what he can from the crate. The Pandorans are getting thicker and we’re not killing any. 
And in the crate:
So now, can we get out of here?
Another facehugger appears out of Mist. Hopefully the sniper (down to almost no health left after taking two bursts from a triton) can kill it AND move 1 space and evac!
A pistol shot takes out the facehugger but the assault has to stand there for another turn. The heavy jets back again to the evac zone, the sniper evacs. Next turn, badly wounded but alive, one assault makes it out while the other comes up 1 space short! Survives several bursts from distance and evacs next turn.
The Loot:
Definitely worth it, though we did get banged up badly, but then, turns out it was in the Mist! Not bad for first mission.
Conclusions: Scavenging missions should be done at all times. They are a major (but often rare) source of income. With a bit more firepower and a couple skills (Quick Aim, Dash) it would have been a bit easier.
FOOTNOTE: It was indeed in the Mist! First time for everything!
