Welcome to the Tarsus Academy, Alex. More specifically, your apartment there. This is essentially a tutorial level that doesn’t involve a whole lot of risk and will allow you to familiarize yourself with the “rules” of the game: security beams, crawling through vents, stealth gameplay, camera avoidance, multitooling, secondary quests and importantly, biomod installation. If ever you need more light, hit F1 to activate your Light biomod.
1: Take a moment to get adjusted to the interface; pick up a few items, toss others around, watch the holo, take the binoculars and read the datacube for a map. Your first primary goal will be to meet Billie Adams in her apartment, #454.
2: On your way, scout out your kitchen, take the food (for health if interested) and venture out to the hallways. After an explosive scene, talk to the janitor roaming around. Continue talking to him until he runs out of things to say; it will be the same for any other character. It’s not necessary but can give you a better picture of the backstory and sometimes, useful details. Continue to Billie’s apartment and use the intercom to tell her you’ve arrived.
3: Enter her apartment and talk with her. Your next objective will be to find Dr. Nassif in the Recreation area down the elevator. Head back out into the hallway and north to the elevator with guard posted nearby. Speak with him, and then take it down to the recreation area. When you step off and walk a bit into the hallway, Dr. Nassif has a chat with you through the window. She seems amiable enough, but do you get a sense she’s holding back something?
4: After Dr. Nassif, follow the corridor upstairs to meet Klara, your next objective. After the brief conversation, head into the next room, a running track over the basketball court, to find Leo, your other objective. Let Leo know you saw the dead body. After this conversation, another explosion happens. Jump down into the basketball court and through the side corridor into the locker rooms to pick up your gear.
5: Open the two left lockers to take their contents, and you’ll find the right ones locked. I’d recommend against using up the valuable multitools to open them, as they can be put to better use later. Head back out, stopping to talk with the guard on the way out. Here’s your first real choice: to stealth or not past the “Seeker” in the rec room. Use the pistol or hide in the shadows, avoiding him while creeping up the stairs back toward the elevator.
6: Continue toward the elevator to the apartments and Billie will stop you at the window where Dr. Nassif once was. She’ll tell you to grab the biomods and get out. Time to head to the Biomod lab. Head back into the elevator and take it to the apartments. After getting out, talk to the guard who will offer to take out the Seeker up ahead if you back him up. You can again choose not to be hostile or simply kill him. Be sure and grab the nearby fallen guard’s items before you move ahead.
7: Whatever your choice, take the first left into the nearby Klara Spark’s apartment. Grab the goods and head through the vent inside to Leo’s apartment. Grab the multitool in the vent on the way. Once in Leo’s, take the stuff and head across the hall, avoiding the Seeker if need be, to your own apartment. Billie will com you to watch the ceiling in the kitchen, revealing a nice little observation area where two scientists discuss matters. On the wall opposite the sink, jump onto the small cabinet and then hold the jump button to pull yourself onto a small ledge above the kitchen. Grab the boltcaster.
8: In your bathroom is an opening through the shower to a utility room. Climb through and pull yourself up the ledge on the opposite side by holding the jump button, then enter through the door into the Biomod Lab.
9: Watch the holo on the opposite side of the room to learn about installing Biomods, and also read the four datacubes which are on either side of the cabinet with the biomod canisters. Take all three inside the cabinet.
Biomods work like this. There are five areas of the body that can take exactly one and only one biomod enhancement at a time: arm, cranial, eye, leg and skeletal. Each body area has three choices of biomod, two for normal biomod canisters and one for an “illegal” canister. Does this mean you can have one normal and one illegal? No, you will have to decide which to install – one of the two regular canister options or the illegal one, for each body area. That means three enhancement choices for each of the five body areas, or 15 choices in all, but a maximum of five (not including the light) active at any one time.
You can uninstall biomods, and though you lose the canister, you can switch to a different biomod for that body area. Since you have three normal canisters, I’d recommend the Biotix Attack Drone on the arms for non-lethal take outs, Cloak in the cranial slot, and Speed Enhancement on the legs. Once installed, you can toggle them on and off by hitting the respective function key (for PC users).
10: After installation, head south through the door and speak with the nurse for some revealing info. In the next room you’ll have to avoid a camera, and will get a camera avoidance tutorial before you enter. It’s very simple to avoid them, since you can see which direction its light is emitting… a pretty graphic effect, but — lets be honest — not a very effective security measure on the part of the camera engineers. When its pointed in the opposite direction, simply walk behind the crates on the opposite side of the room, grab the energy cell on top of the crate, watch for the light and sneak up the stairs.
11: Walk around past a large window to the room you were just in, making sure the camera doesn’t see you, and enter another area where two scientists immediately talk to you, asking for your protection from the Seekers. Shortly after, two Seekers enter the area the same way you did, so you’ll have to decide how to take them out. If you have Cloak you can use the riot prod to jolt them into a lump on the ground, or simply use the pistol. The ammo, remember, is the same for every weapon. If you save the scientists, talk to them for a silencer that you can apply to the weapon of your choice. Pistol is a good choice.
12: In the next room is another scientist and some good items, including a black market biomod canister in a cabinet, though you’ll have to use a multitool to open it. The scientist will tell you about the yellow security beams. They’ll do physical damage, while the red ones trip alarms and green beams trigger damaging gas bombs. To get to the next room, you can EMP grenade the beam, move a barrel in front of them, or crawl through the vent to find a multitool… so I’d suggest the third alternative. In the next room is a medbot who will automatically heal you to max every time you approach them.
13: Heal up, proceed up the nearby stairs, and notice the vent. In the next room are two Seekers. Inside the vent is a spider bot (very dangerous and not seen until later in the first game). If you open and destroy the bot, you’ll have a good vantage point to take out the Seekers if you choose to kill them with the pistol. Otherwise you could use Cloak, enter the room and prod them, and then avoid the gun turret. Be sure to take the items off the counters before proceeding up the opposite stairs to the last part of this level.
14: Once up the stairs on the opposite side, grab the multitool and head through the corridor until you’re stopped by a hologram of Lin-May Chen, part of the Order, who beckons you to the church in Seattle. You’ll enter Upper Seattle after taking the elevator at the top of the stairs, and receive a few more objectives once there.
Warcraft Tavern
Warcraft DB
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