justinstyles

You're correct; no need to hide anyone (spotters or targets) for the Spot skill. I usually attempt to increase multiple skills simultaneously; might be counter-productive in the case of Spot. Hmm, does "training" work as compared to simply playing? For example, after I finished a mission, I was fetching loot and saw that character's AP increase to the next "level". So then I began using each character to fetch loot in an attempt to increase their AP... but I wonder if it helped or if the characters would have "levelled" their AP without the extra "training"? Or does "level" depend on the skill / attribute? I'm inclined to believe to "train" Hide or any of the direct skills (e.g., "Shoot", "Medicine") is better / faster than passive increases, but does attempting to increase "Spot" or "Interrupt" actually have a significant effect? Or, is it as if exceeding the posted speed limit in an auto? One feels that one's arriving faster somewhere, but it's a fraction of the time improvement as opposed to travelling at posted limit...? Best regards.

Hide is the easiest skill to increase. Detecting anyone (enemy, civilians or your squadmates) counts towards Spot. I found myself "training" a squad if someone was close to gaining a level in Intelligence.... One can gain Spot (and Hide) at base simply by keeping everyone hidden then moving someone to speak with one of the shopkeepers. Best regards.

The spawn points might be the same, but to be precise, the opponents don't always act in the same way... they simply often do. I find that the level of my squad has some impact on the number of opponents and their corresponding spawn points, not to mention the VPs of the opponents. Best regards. PS: Ever leave your game "idling" at the main menu? After some minutes, the screen will change to one of the maps (your favourite being one of them) and you'll see three sets of teams fight one another.... Too bad that doesn't ever occur in a similar manner in the randoms.

Never found a use (I hoard *everything*); I trekked round with those keys in inventory, but didn't find a door on which they worked. If someone posts a use, I'd be appreciative too. Best regards

I like at least two folks in most of the categories; I tend to look at their starting (whenever I get them, not the literal starting point at the beginning of the game) stats anyway.... That said, I enjoy the entertaining commentary as a major aspect of the game; I've played with squads containing everyone at least once. Some editorial comments: Rollo's big fuss about being injured (few points or many, he's too sensitive) is irritating. I'm ambivalent about both medics. Had the most difficulty in choosing among engineers and soldiers as I like all four choices. Best regards.

Enlarge upon your theory; it works better than you think. For example, try the Swiss mansion random mission. After eliminating all hostiles, if one stands on the first storey above the living room (where the three civilians congregate), most squaddies' Spot ability will increase at least one level. The exception seems to be folks whose Spot is below 70 and they have no abilities to increase (or haven't chosen them yet); those folks might not be able to increase the skill. Example: engineer Doug and medic Yves did fine detecting folks, but soldier Jerzey (whose ability to increase Spot I had not chosen at the time) had spot of 64 and did not increase at all (no blue bar movement). This Spot skill increase method works anywhere where you can't "see" folks, but you get the red silhouettes. A bit off-topic: are you the same Zombie who compiled the Excel file with the stats? Best regards.

Big Joe's found on another random map as well (the one with a brick building, a big shed, a wooden watchtower, a gun emplacement, and a fence enclosing all of these elements), but only under certain conditions. If Big Joe's found on that map, it's in one of the footlockers. I'm impressed by your discovery of the truck on that one map; I thought I'd played the game a lot yet never encountered a truck on that map, but didn't play this map nearly as often as you, apparently! I did "destroy" (to the same point as you; I could never truly destroy a vehicle completely, unlike demolishing buildings to rubble) trucks on other missions and sometimes those tools "fall out" of the truck, but they've always been visual garnish in my case (I never could fetch them). Then again, I frequently had little trouble luring opponents from houses on the two maps you've shown recently. When I had sufficient explosives and grenades, I'd create openings or collapse one floor onto another; I liked seeing the enemy fall from one area to another then have a rifleman remove him from a distance. I'm reasonably patient, but not sufficiently so to knife a path through a wall.... Best regards.

You're correct in your belief. Basically, as long as one can get an encounter more than once (i.e., any of the random encounters in S2), one can get multiple sets of rare weapons. There's another random in Switzerland that produces another rare weapon (am avoid spoilers in case someone reading doesn't already know), but for each successful completion of the encounter and fetching of that item, one can get that item multiple times. S3's randoms work a bit differently. There are recurring randoms and then another type: random and rare (I've read that one can get these latter types more than once, but for me, they've been unique encounters and I can't generate more than once per play-through). Granted, those latter type of encounters don't produce truly unique weapons, but they do generate decent cash, which is helpful in the mercenary world of S3. Best regards.

Glad to see people are still playing! (I'm on hiatus from S2 / S3 while I play through "Hammer & Sickle" a half-dozen times; I'm on play-through# 2) Hope FullAuto will permit me to elaborate slightly on his detailed posts: if you play on Allied side, your "shop" tends to offer (and replenish) weapons and ammunition from those weapons (i.e., Lee-Enfield, .45, etc.) while if you play on Axis side, you will see appropriate weapons (i.e., Mauser, etc.). There's the so-called trick of placing a weapon into the "shop", refreshing it then getting ammunition, but I found it only works for the appropriate "side" (Allied v Axis weaponry). Since I'm not well-versed in weapon manufacturing knowledge, I had a fair amount of "hmm, why can't I get more ammo for this weapon?" If you want to raise a character's weapon familiarity, you'll need to use the same weapon consistently without switching to another (durability doesn't exist in S2 so you can literally use the same rifle for the entire game; in S3, one ends up swapping or repairing due to wearing out). For engineers and medics, I tended to keep the same weapon for the entire game, which (slowly) builds their familiarity. Depending on which abilities that the character's class has, there are some that will allow familiarity to be increased faster while others increases its effect, but slows the rate of gain.... One can use same calibre ammunition rather than worrying about weapon-specific clips. For example, the Lewis MG ammunition can be used for the Lee-Enfield rifle. The posts at this forum are wonderful. I used my own experiences, the posts on this forum, and the gamefaq walk-through to attempt a comprehensive set of notes for myself (I finished six play-throughs so far of S2 and three of S3 thus far). I never did make it consistently to Nival's boards so they're only a small part of my S2 / S3 / H&S life so far. In terms of explaining gameplay mechanics, the Gold Edition "hardcopy" manual is poor; the S2 manual was OK and the S3 manual (PDF) was better, but somewhat reliant on knowledge of S2 conventions (not astonishing considering that S3 is an expansion). Although I quite like the H&S manual, some folks have said it's overwhelming; hard to please everyone, I suppose.

Finished two days ago with the "good" ending; really enjoyed HS. **spoiler(s)** (although I couldn't resolve the Gaffburg black screen problem (going directly from archive-looted location to Gaffburg) so I had to go to Gaffburg after visiting the scenes at the Hamlet and the Forest; that was the only way to get Gaffburg to load) After completion of the game, I immediately started a second game to try the stuff that I missed last time (e.g., getting Moshe, following up regarding the rumour about the antiquarian, etc.) and to increase the difficulty. Playing as a medic, it took a few tries to get across the border (kept being detected), which fortunately wasn't an obstacle at all during my first play. Ironically, upon my arrival in Gaffburg, he slaughtered the firing squad far more effectively with a single grenade (medics only receive one) than my first character did with two. The medic only needed one short burst to finish off the last Sentinel. Interesting though that in both play sessions, I couldn't get the "militia" guys to join the fray (I would choose the dialogue for them to pick up weapons and they do, but then they never attack anyone) when the other Sentinels return; therefore, I elected to not have them join and picked up all of the weapons from the initial combat (so that my character responds to Ferdinand that he has no weapons ). Since they still pick up weapons after my character killed the returning Sentinels, I'm not certain what effect, if any, there is or will be on my game. This round I've also elected to kill Peter Klaus and his gang. In the first play, I smooth-talked and he promised to send men to help to attack the convoy, but no one showed up (not that it was hard, but was interested in seeing the outcome). This was a difficult combat since I had two riflemen without scopes; an SMG for my character would've been wiser, but we scraped through it . I suppose I should say that I'm working on improving my character's medical skill . Onto the convoy....

Three years later, I'm finally playing this game and although I find it quite difficult, it fits my personality to want to explore every option: quite enjoyable. **spoiler(s)** I've been playing for ~two days' equivalent and already had the "very bad" ending (got to Wenzburg far too late because I discovered how to fetch the female uniform too late and couldn't find the route to catch the train) after ~1.5 days. Since then, I've gone back to an earlier savegame where I could re-try and am onto avenging some folks' deaths, as it were. Blunter II's walkthrough has been essential while the chap whose walkthrough is posted on gamefaq is missing some details, but did help me figure out that I'd missed things and the "why" I ended up with the very bad ending. I do fear that I've got a bug with Gaffburg loading (not the "can't leave" bug that I found on another forum, but a "can't enter and see the village"; after the photo-esque loading screen, a black screen appears that never displays the game screen), but am trying a few other methods before in the hope that I can trick the game into loading. The game is running poorly though... scrolling on the map is laborious at best (shuddering / jerky scroll). The non-game screens (map, menus, and sub-menus) are fine and the mouse / cursor moves smoothly, but the game screens have progressively slowed, starting with the Hammer archives map. I've played through the hamlet and am on the forester's map now, but I'm experiencing the scroll issue on all three. Hope that the preceding isn't read as complaints as I am enjoying the game, but playtime becomes severely limited because things are slow. Best regards --- js PS: notebook PC specs... P4 2.1 Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 32Mb ATI Radeon 9200 Mobility, ~5Gb free HDD space. I haven't loaded anything new onto the PC since installing H&S ~2 weeks ago; I only play S2, S3, and H&S on this machine for the past year.

Welcome, one11. I'm impressed that you can still find / buy a copy of S2 (I have located copies of S3, the expansion, occasionally on eBay). A few months ago, I gave up looking to purchase a back-up copy (I'm scared that I might be wearing out / damaging the CDs; I travel a fair bit and the "Silent Storm" series travels with me). Onto your query: your characters don't ever appear in the beds at the infirmary. They can be healed there by your character speaking to the medical staff, but it's instantaneous, as it were. As for your characters not dying, you are far better player than I; I've had dead teammates in the "easy" setting (S2) as well as customised difficulty (S3). I believe I read that one can have "dead" teammates "resurrected" at the easiest setting in S2 because they don't actually "die" but are unconscious and one can fetch them back to the base by literally carrying them, but I haven't accomplished this. Whenever they've died, they've died permanently (negative health). Perhaps someone will correct me, or better yet, clarify how to do the "resurrection". (granted, recently I play with five personnel (one less than the maximum team member limit) and experiment with tactics and character classes) There's a character who will appear in bed at the early stage of S3; any more detail might spoil things for you so please ask if you would like to know a bit more. Best regards --- js

(been a few years since I posted!) So I'm polishing my walkthrough of S3 and found a bizarre version on this bug (of wrong journal entry). I was being painstaking and (idiotically?) thorough. warning . . . . . spoilers . . . . . I tried "Pen" then "Border"; it produced the journal bug... so that's a confirmation. I tried "Godfather" then "Border"; it produced the journal bug... so that's another confirmation. I tried "Corrupt Official" then "Border"; it produced the journal bug... so that's third confirmation. Please note that I started each pairing above with the initial mission choices from Boris, in which one is given the choice among four missions; I successfully completed the first mission listed in the pairing then successfully completed "Border". After each bugged result of "Border", I re-loaded the game where I have choice of all four missions again. As you can probably predict from the thread, I then played "Border" first, expecting that I could proceed without the bug yet it resulted in the journal bug! So now I'm having to regress (which means re-playing "Act of Terrorism") to see how I can avoid triggering the bug. I'm playing the American / English Gold Edition (no actual version listed on the menu) and in previous plays of S3, I played "Border" first (coincidentally due to my preference to go for high cash pay-out missions when given a choice by the major or Boris). I suspect that with the lack of detailed help available to the original poster from the boards, I don't expect any advice of others (other than to either do what I'm doing or to move on and trigger the factory mission later via console), but if someone has gone down this path, your advice would be appreciated. Best regards. (and happy holidays!)

Coyot, yes, I'd be interested in potentially merging my walkthrough with your doc as it seems we're working on different elements. I'll post "chapters" in each reply to prevent a single lengthy post. {possible spoilers; please be warned} Work has interrupted some S3 attempts at the "Invasion" scenario, but had a few runs where I thought I could get through the mission if I didn't mind have one (or more) dead companions. The major factor was anti-PK weaponry. Still have yet to install any mods (although some are quite enticing) to avoid "corrupting" my walkthrough... but once that's complete, onto the mods! The one that I wish I had now is the "save anytime"...! BTW, the Sentinel troops are a strange lot. Some of them do a decent job of attacking while others will slaughtered without returning fire nor dodging (ducking... yes, but I think that's a built-in reaction as the civilians do the same in other scenarios). The chap at top in the bunker is the worst; nearly two dozen runs at this mission, and he has yet to do more than crouch. The troops near the stationary guns also do not participate. best regards.

I believe that there's a mod for being able to save anytime and anywhere in S2 and S3 (separate mods). Do the mods cause any side effects with the resulting save games? My RL job is seriously impeding game time and I keep having to either close the games without saving or simply reduce the occasions when I actually do play, neither of which are ideal. Since I'm playing at the "harder" levels, save anytime is disabled and is only permitted when there are no hostiles within "sight". Thanks in advance for your advice and opinion.