5 tips to get you started in Crossout, the Mad Max-style MMO

We love it when a new MMO drives onto our radar, but it’s rare that a new game looks as interesting as Crossout. It’s a vehicle-based MMO, yeah, but that’s not the best description., Crossout looks like there was a head-on collision between Borderlands and Mad Max, and that twisted wreck then got welded on top of World of Tanks.

Crossout is free-to-play, so there’s nothing stopping you from jumping in. Here’s 5 tips to help you get your engine turned over for the first time.

It’s better to win recklessly than lose carefully

This ain’t a world for timid campers. It may go against your better judgement, but don’t worry about your car getting completely wrecked during a battle. Win or lose, everyone gets a free car repair after a battle, so it’s in your best interest to get in there and do some damage. Hunting as a pack and fighting as a team will always get you better results (and better loot) than trying to play it safe. It is the apocalypse, after all. “Safe” went extinct a few decades ago.

Handle your damage

Everybody in Crossout has a base level of hitpoints connected to the cabin--the place where you sit. Every vehicle, no matter how insanely built, has a cabin. When you add armor or metal crates full of ammo or extra tires, all of these additions bring more hit points into the cabin’s hitpoint pool. When the cabin hitpoints run out, you explode, end of story.

But: you installed each piece of your vehicle independently, and each piece of your vehicle can break off the same way. Everything you add to your rig has its own health stats, and losing tires or getting armor torn off affects how your vehicle handles. When you add two armor plates to the front of your cabin, an enemy will have to shoot off both plates before they can start doing vital damage. Keep an eye on each piece, but don’t worry about saying your prayers until your cabin health starts dropping.

Do not become addicted to fuel, my friends

In classic Mad Max style, gas is more precious than water out on the vehicular wasteland. In Crossout, you only need fuel to join PvE Raids. Everybody has a basic fuel ration for every week, but you can earn more by playing PvP. Here’s the cool bit: you have to add an oil drum to your vehicle to salvage fuel from PvP matches. It will add some weight to your car, but that’s a risk you’ll have to take if you want more sweet PvE loot.

If you have a successful rig with a few oil drums, you can farm up a lot of fuel. If you ever decide you have more than you can use yourself, head to the in-game marketplace. Everything in the game can be swapped or sold, and as we said: fuel is more precious than water.

Turn your coat

Everybody is an engineer. After all, there’s a lot of designing, fixing, and welding that goes into building post-apocalyptic death machines. Being an engineer lets you craft basic, common items for your rig. After you gain some experience and reach level 10, you can get more advanced gear by joining one of the game’s four advanced factions: Lunatics, Nomads, Scavengers, or Steppenwolves. Even when you’re in an advanced faction, you always stay an engineer.

Don’t stress about picking the best faction (which is obviously the Steppenwolves, just judging by the name alone), because you can always switch. Once every 24 hours, you can change factions to start earning reputation and researching more advanced loot and technology. The reputation you earn with factions doesn’t go away, so feel free to switch and switch back depending on who has the gear you’re after. Which brings us to the last tip:

Always Be Experimenting

Everybody who was all uptight about “rules” and “safety regulations” died when the bombs went off twenty years ago. Crossout is all about building a rig that handles how you want it to handle. There are no restrictions on mixing and matching technology, and you can build a vehicle in any shape you think might not get blown up (as often). Try weird stuff, try stupid stuff, weld something dangerous onto something crazy. You might discover the perfect killing machine.