Extensive Nightfall guide

Okay first of, this’ll likely be a long read without a TLDR section, but it’s a guide with guaranteed success of upping your game for the 25 times making it to the dropship challenge. I’m one of those weird people that already done the challenge so lets get right to it! Who am I to tell you what to do? I'm the guy who's gotten a 4/5 consecutive win streak in which I was kill leader 2 times! Convinced yet? Then let's go! [EDIT] @warslag was one of those people with too much time on his hands and could oddly enough make sense of what I've written down and made a TLDR highlight point bulletin, check it out at the 3rd comment 😉 Thanks buddy.

Your first goal to being better is knowing the map actually. Know where the high tier loot areas are. This is essential for one reason: armor. Acquiring an armor better than the lvl 1 isn’t essential but it is recommended, because shadows won’t one hit kill you and you never know when some greedy player wants to kill you. 

I’d advice going right to the circle but rather than land in the middle of it, stay near the edge. The reason? I have noticed a lot of ppl don’t actually go right for the circle and prefer to drop a ways off and run towards the circle. They obviously think that the Shadows will be more prevalent in the circle and they’re right. But if you stay near the edge of the circle, you can always turn tail but know that the storm won’t hit you if you have to run back. Even if you have to hide for a while because some Shadow wants your light, you’ll be close to the circle. 

Next is, have at least 6 syringes and 1 shield battery/phoenix kit. If you get hit by the storm, use syringes. If you get hit by a player, use battery/phoenix kit cause you have to heal up fast. That person you just killed is now a Shadow and can be at your location in roughly 15 secs seeing as the first time that a player is killed, you mostly spawn near the person who has killed you. And seeing that a phoenix kit takes 10 secs to pop, you can have 5 secs to get ready for round 2. After the second time, they don’t usually spawn near you, but they still know your position for a while so they can still know your general location. Besides that, other Shadows might come as backup after the second time. 

You want a weapon? Choose one you’re familiar with and that you can handle, preferably automatic with a decent magazine (search for at least blue extended mag) because trigger happy players will see a lot of action. Even if you don’t shoot alot, might be good for when you’re running for the Dropship. Nothing is worse than to have exhausted both weapons and getting smacked within 10 feet (3m) of the ship... my preferred weapon was alternator. Sometimes I even had 2. Does decent dmg and relatively high fire rate without too much recoil. 

You also need to know the dropship location. There are fixed locations. One in Runoff (almost in the middle), Slum lakes (near the top building next to the 2 supply bins near the jump tower), one in Artillery (left side of big bunker thingy), Relay (almost at the jump tower), Swamps (near the middle of that local on the right side next to one of the bigger houses), hydro dam (in the middle), to the left of repulsor location with the overhanging building, right in the middle of it, in Water treatment (right where the jump tower should be), over at the cage (on the north side of it), on the left side of Skulltown below the buildings, in Airbase on the lower side right where the raised platform is with the stationary dropship, the location below Artillery (right on the overhanging building) and on the right side of bunker in between the buildings. I might’ve missed 1/2, but you always know where the ship will be from the first circle if you are familiar with the locations so plan accordingly. 

[EDIT] Lastly... hopefully. Supply bins & doors. KEEP. THEM. CLOSED! Shadow players go by what they know and see. They know that there are legends hiding somewhere and they can see where they are if they’re in the open. They also know where high value loot areas are and what it means if doors/supply bins are open (like Gibby says); some people bin here. And likely they’re still around somewhere. If you keep doors closed and supply bins unraided, especially in high loot places, shadows will just pass through an area thinking nobody’s been there/nobody is there. I’ve had shadows run past me due to this method.

There’s also another reason to keep doors closed; shadows break ‘em. If you hear the sound of a door breaking, you know that there’s a shadow somewhere. You can hear a door breaking long before you hear that shadow sound. 

Okay onto what kind of player you are. If you’re confident in your shooting, I’d say shoot a couple people but I’d advice against this because you’ll eventually get killed... if not by another player, it’s from 4+ shadows who wanna kill you and surround you in order to do it. Use the shooting near the end to shoot incoming shadows. In the beginning you can obviously shoot people. 

If you’re not confident in your shooting or just don’t wanna do it. I’d advice against engaging (too much) and just run. In comparison to normal BR, they don’t chase you as much cause that means A) they’re exposed themselves to other people B) they’re exposed to faster Shadows who can easily detect them. I’d suggest just finding a good spot and hunker down and paying attention to all the fighting, deaths and the storm. 

Remember me saying Shadows can detect you, well if you played the game, you’ve likely been a shadow and you know you can spot enemies who’re out in the open even from freefalling. So look for a spot that obscured your heat signature, but this won’t help if you killed the person since you’ll still have a marker for 10-20 secs so just keep running and double back or something to your hiding spot. 

Good legends to use. 

So there are a couple of preferred legends and you usually see them in the top 10 but you can basically play with everybody. I’ll do the top 3. Pathfinder, wraith and mirage. 

For pathfinder it’s simple. Use locations those pesky shadows can’t climb up to like high antenna’s, you just have to be able to go up there yourself. Next to that, stay 100-200m away from the dropship, DONT use your tactical, cause if you use it too soon you might end up like me forgetting you used it and be clawed right next to dropship XD. Preferably use your ult right on the dropship if possible and be ready to start shooting cause shadows will come towards you using your own zipline. I mostly see this when ppl use their ult on same lvl, so either use your ult from an elevated or declined position so that you can use your tactical for last couple of meters. 

Wraith... be 100m from the dropship, start running normally and when you get the feeling or see enemies noticing you, use your ult to quickly close the gap and when your 20m (65 feet) from the supply ship, use your tactical for speed boost and unvulnerability. Works every time. 

This one is tricky... Mirage is solely dependent on if you can actually use his ult, if you use it too ‘late’ (when a shadow is near you) a shadow might get lucky and still hit you. This is no problem if you have blue or higher armor, but if you don’t, you’re screwed. So I’d say rather use it too soon than too late cause if you get clawed and get but are couple of feet from dropship, you might still get to it crawling. 

Octane’s a good one too if you calculate the jump distance when launching yourself from your jump pad. ‘Bad’ legends are definitely Bangalore and Caustic. Even tho your friendly, her ult and his tactical + ult slow you down. Even if you get hit by it before going in a portal for instance, you’ll still be affected when you get out of it somehow... almost got killed by 2 people this way on 2 occasions xD

so you might wonder if you should team up. Opinions are divided for both pre-10 and in the top 10. I’d say if you’re confident in surviving, don’t. You don’t know how skilled the others are, you don’t know if they made several enemies already coming for them, you also don’t know if they’ll ‘backstab’ you (both pre-10... in this case they’ll just shoot you and in top 10... in this case they might start shooting to alert shadows).

If you’re not confident in surviving, seek out the closest group and join up with them BUT watch your own back. They cannot be trusted as moments before they might’ve killed you :P I’d always say seek out a pathfinder or wraith if you’re near dropship or a wattson if there’s a building closeby the dropship. 

Should you help revive downed players. Absolutely NO! Don’t make my mistake! I tried it 2/3 times. Reviving takes 8/10 secs (really don’t know) and remember what I said about those 15 secs. You’re already in top 10 so any and every Shadow in the sky who sees a Shadow dying somewhere is going to that location as well as the downed Shadow. So you might be able to revive but he basically has roughly 7 secs to heal up... one time I got a guy up... 7 secs later he was down again. We were with 3 ppl but ended up dying because we wanted to help him. Another time I got killed by a shadow I didn’t even hear... 3rd time I actually got the guy up but he died right before making it to the dropship... 

it’s not worth it to survive so long just to die saving someone else who basically already has a death sentence. @warslag you’re a trooper for your ‘no man left behind’ attitude, but you see what it gets you :P

Use arc stars to clear up the way as throwables. I always had 2 arc stars and would throw them right at the circle, this’ll net you anywhere from 2-6 enemies gone or stunned which makes your end sprint that much easier. Grenades work well too but if it doesn’t hit close enough, they only just sustain a lil dmg and don’t die. This means in your sprint that you’ll have to shoot to clear them. What does that mean? You stop sprinting stupid! If there are Shadows behind you, you’re basically screwed. 

Well I think this is it for thuis ‘guide’ :P if you read all of it, whatya think of it. Took me damn near 45 mins on my phone at work to type this!

hope it helps someone!