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While servers like Australia and the Amazon can seem tough
What makes them difficult is the competition there, nothing about the server itself directly impedes your survival, however
There are some areas of the game
Which punished players who aren't equipped to deal with the passive status effects dealt by the overworld
Probably the best examples of this are the polar servers of which there are two. I'll save Antarctica for another time.
Today, we're looking at the players surviving the brutally cold and icy Arctic server. What makes this server so tough
Is that for a large portion of the time the cold atmosphere
constantly drains stamina and HP
You'll need two things to not have the server drain your life to zero here. The first thing you need is some sort of armor
that has cold resistance.
Whether that comes in the form of thick fur, down feathers or blubber, without cold resistance
You'll see your stamina and HP crash hard. The second thing you'll need to do is make sure you spec into the endotherm class
This allows you to recover the most
stamina by eating. The cost of doing this is that you can't get any energy from sunlight and have to
continuously find loot in order to survive.
However, the polar night world event actually removes sunlight from the overworld for months at a time,
So pulling off an ectotherm build here would actually be next to impossible anyway
This is why reptile and amphibian players are currently region locked to the lower latitude levels
So today, I want to talk about the things that the best Arctic builds are doing to stand out in such a difficult meta
Before we get into it
I want to be clear on what I'm considering the Arctic so I don't get a thousand comments asking why I forgot something
the gray wolf, reindeer, golden eagle,
Wolverine, Orca, and moose all may venture into the Arctic, but since they're not exclusive to the Arctic
I'm omitting them for this one.
Now i'm betting a lot of you think you've got me figured out you're probably guessing that my top picks for the server are going to
Be the white wolves (because of their pack hunting strategy) and the polar bears (because of their insane base stats)
And I definitely don't blame you
I've showed a pretty constant bias towards high powered or tactical carnivore builds in previous videos, but in this case
I don't think it's that simple. Let's talk about the polar bear first. So bears in general have it pretty good
They're nearly unparalleled in combat and are also extremely versatile, thanks to their omnivorous playstyle.
They've also got an awesome unique ability that lets them skip the tougher stages of the game
Waiting until the difficulty drops back down to normal to continue their playthrough.
The same cannot be said about polar bears though. While they definitely have the same extreme combat power other bears do
They're not omnivores
They're fully committed to PK-ing and don't get much XP from scavenging like Grizzlies, Kodiak bears and black bears do.
In addition, they also don't get to skip the polar night like other bears can
Meaning they're stuck hunting during one of the most difficult world events on one of the most difficult servers in the game
furthermore even though they do have crazy high base stats
They don't have any broken special abilities that make them top tier. Their stealth is harshly reduced because of the lack of cover and also
their extremely pungent smell. This means polar bears must constantly outplay their opponents
Either by setting traps or somehow sneaking up on targets in spite of their abysmal stealth.
In desperate times it can mean picking really unfavorable fights.
Now as for wolves in the Arctic meta,
They're in kind of a weird place. They tend to hunt in smaller packs, either duos or trios
Why they choose to do this instead of forming bigger clans is beyond me, I'm not a wolf main
This is a problem because wolves really only have two options when it comes to prey, rabbits and musk oxen
Rabbits are pretty much free wins for wolves, but aren't worth near enough XP to sustain a team.
On the other hand, three wolves aren't near strong enough to bring down a good musk ox player
and so wolves are in the unfortunate but not uncommon position of being forced to eat their grief builds from lower weight glasses or
Hope to catch a musk ox that's either really new to the game or already low on HP
Again a lot of hunters do this
But hunting the weak is not a top-tier trait. Wolves are much better off in areas with mid weight herbivores
But really there's not much reason to play DPS when you could just choose the support version of this build anyway
Don't get me wrong, wolves are still pretty great and can score wins against bigger targets when things go according to plan
They aren't in near as tough a spot as for example the arctic fox
Which has hardly any favorable matchups in the region and has to mostly rely on stealth in order to avoid being
obliterated by bears and wolves. On top of this,
Arctic foxes are extremely vulnerable to the Arctic rabies virus and as a result its player base is declining significantly
I don't want to get too off-topic though. I'll cover virus players in a different video
Okay, so if the top predators in this region aren't the top tiers of the meta who is, is it the muskox
I was just talking about?
Well I certainly think the muskox is an excellent build. It's managed to max out its fur skill tree to grant a huge defense bonus
Biting or slashing through its hair is near impossible. Their horns and charge attack are also not something any player wants to get hit by
Having a favorable matchup against wolves and polar bears
Means their worst issue is lack of food. The spawn rate for plants is just abysmal in the Arctic.
Trees are completely absent there, and sometimes the best loot you can find is only moss or lichen.
If you like tanks but don't like starving,
I think your best option is to switch to a marine tank. There's much better loot available on the seafloor like clams, seaweed, and fish.
One of the top examples is the narwhal. The narwhal excels at being able to find said loot because of their echolocation
This is believed to be amplified by their ridiculous tusks, which can also be used to stun smaller prey.
Unfortunately this cumbersome, unwieldy weapon isn't too useful on defense and since narwhals are locked into the ocean server.
They don't have any counter play options against overpowered orcas that occasionally visit the Arctic server
That's why the best Arctic build is the walrus. Like the narwhal, it also survives off a loot on the sea floor
But it's got two tusks that are much more effective for defense. While they're admittedly not much better in the Orca matchup
They are able to escape onto land where they can easily hold their own
Even Polar Bear players would only pick fights with a walrus if they have literally no other
option. And when they do it usually doesn't end up going well for them
They're insane size and thick blubber makes most attacks from predators laughably weak
Meanwhile their counter-attacks do enough damage to make any aggressor reconsider choosing the class that they did.
Okay, so we can't talk about the Arctic without talking about the elephant in the room
One of the game mechanics called the greenhouse effect is slowly reducing the player cap in the polar servers.
This, combined with ganking by humans, has uprooted the former Arctic meta and in general just made it an unstable and unbalanced region.
What I'm trying to say is that like a few other things,
The best advice for someone trying to get into the Arctic would be to start a few years ago
So that about wraps it up for this video. Thank you so much for watching!