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Engage and Eradicate

Now you’ve flown, driven, ridden, or dropped into a hot zone and you’re ready to fight, but there has to be more to it than just shooting folks wearing the other colors, isn’t there? Well, there is. There’s a lot more to it, and the deeper you go, the more you find. To begin with, the most basic point of the game is to attack and defend the various bases on whichever continent you’re currently on.

Currently there’s a few ways to capture a base in Planetside 2. All bases are composed of a central main point with several satellite points located not too far around it. These points all show up on your screen with a letter associated with them. To capture some bases, one faction much take and hold all points for a certain amount of time and the base will change over to the holding faction. In other bases, the points must be captured in a certain order, and in yet other bases, you need none of them, but rather only to hold the single central point for several minutes.



While you’re fighting, communication is key, and every battle goes better with teamwork, so join a squad. You can either join a squad by hitting the F11 key to join one randomly, or if you want to pick a specific squad, hit escape and select Social Menu (Looks like two people standing next to each other). The first page will search for squads and display them for you choose from. Once in, to communicate you can type like most games, or Planetside 2 comes with a brilliantly high-quality VoIP system. Default keys are “Z” to chat with your squad and Keypad 4 to chat with anyone in the vicinity. There are others, so you’ll want to check your keybinds to find out what else is there.

War of Economics

Like nearly every war in the history of mankind, the war on Auraxis is at its root about resources. Every sector of the map for each continent is associated with a set amount of resources. By holding territory, your faction will receive those resources over time. These resources are how you purchase specialized weapons/ammo, vehicles, and other things. Of course there’s also Auraxium, which is earned through capturing bases, fighting, and basically playing the game.

Implants

Implants are little bonuses you can get in Planetside 2, and they do a wide variety of things. Some implants increase the rate at which you accumulate resources or experience. Others decrease the amount of time you have to wait before respawning a destroyed vehicle. Some Implants just make you a little better at things like running, aiming, or reloading. You can load up to four at a time, so the customization options are fairly complex, while still not game-breaking. The down-side is that implants cost either resources or Station Cash (SOE’s system for exchanging real-world cash for in-game goods). Also, implants are only good for a limited time, typically 24-hours, so plan their use accordingly.

Certifications

With the additional resources, your time in battle should have made you a little experience and possibly even granted some certification points. To get to the certification menu, hit escape as we did for the Store, but this time select the second icon from the right that looks like a circle with a notch out of it. That will pop up the certifications screen.

There are certifications for nearly everything in Planetside 2, so you have to browse down to where you want to certify. In this case, let’s take the Combat Medic for example. Browse out to Classes, then Combat Medic, and then Explosives. Under that section, you’ll see an option to purchase a certification for the Nanite Healing Grenade, a frag that makes love not war. Throw that guy in a cluster of friendlies and heal them all. It costs 50 certification points. If you have enough available, go ahead and pick it up and you can be that friend with benefits Now you have the certification, but you can’t use the new item yet.  You’ll need to go back to an infantry terminal (one with a pistol icon over it) and load it into your kit.

No Longer Maggots

Congratulations, you’ve now passed your trial-by-fire and are now inducted into the honorable rosters of your chosen faction. You now know just enough to make yourself a worthy target for other, harder, more vicious species that inhabit Auraxis, the veterans. You may wonder how it is you’ll be able to determine the veteran from the fellow newb on the battlefield. Well, here’s your last bit of advice from me. There will be no tea-bagging, bloating, or similar childishness from a veteran. When you see the well-organized squad sweep across the battlefield like a tidal wave of death and wonton destruction, you’ll know; when you walk out of the doorway only to catch a nonchalant shot between the eyes as an enemy soldier walks past you...you’ll know. And when you look down the optics of your scope and see the tag Ricoxg pop up over the guy looking back at you… well, it’ll be too late to figure it out.

So get out there kids, and try to learn enough to make yourselves worthy targets. I didn’t write all this just for fun! See you on the battlefield.