You might want to hold off with investing in this project. Clarinet gameplay isn’t currently as rewarding as it used to be. Moreover, you may need the funds for the Xmas brawl or workbench. Having two Retchers at this time of year should come in handy as well. They should be useful in the coming Xmas raid. Plus, another 75-level season may be just behind the corner, and it brings the Stegodong, a freezing 7-energy cannon (actually, it’s “Stegodon”, but I like promoting fun new names, so “Dong” for short). Then there’s the leaked coaxial helicopter rotor, which I’m sure is a movement part (looks like 28 blocks across). If the developers wanted to give us copter rotors as decor, they would start with configurations from some iconic craft, such as the Huey or the Mi-24 (and the base sits exactly where any 2x2 part would be placed on the garage floor). There’s also a leaked parameters sheet of a relic Cricket counterpart named “Mantis.” And now the defusing event is shaking up the market. Maybe you’ll be able to buy a Harpy cheap, especially if you’re considering other explosive weapons, or hold on to those coins for now.
Without Hans’ skill that extended the flight time of Clarinet missiles by 2 seconds, it’s harder to reach snipers. I can no longer reach them in certain situations I used to be able to for years. I can’t counter hovercrafts with two Scorpions as effectively as I could before, which is why I haven’t been using the weapon for a few months now. I see the Clarinet as a weapon that allows me to attack hard-to-reach targets, and thus choose the biggest threats to my team. Without Hans’ +2 sec. flight time, what I see as the main advantage of this weapon, has been significantly reduced. Now, the Clarinet’s usage has been shifted more towards being a ‘hidey cheat gun.’ It can still be fun, especially if you’re just starting to use it it, but the ‘endgame’ experience is quite disappointing.
I’m sure that you can have a great time with the weapon, and it could definitely be a fun learning experience. Seeing as the learning curve is very steep, you’ll be seeing your skill progress for a long time. I just wanted to caution you that after investing a lot of time, and, potentially, coins, you might be disappointed later on. But it depends on the PS. There’s a player using it at some 6700+ PS and reportedly having great fun, playing a lot. So perhaps that still works.
It’s good that hovercrafts can be hit again now that the hover flight altitude has been reduced by 12% in the Mr. Twister update, after the Supercharged update increased it considerably. During the period between these two updates, the Clarinet was almost useless. That showed us that the developers aren’t really interested in the weapon, in making it practical and fun to use. The fact that they still haven’t found a way to replace Hans’ skill adding 2+ sec. flight time is another such example. And I’m convinced that side-effect didn’t even occur to them while doing the co-driver change. I’ve been meaning to post a suggestion about those 2 seconds since summer, which included options for a dedicated co-driver and more, so I guess I’d better do it soon. At least I’ve more time to process and expand the idea.
After the grip of St. Wheels’ has been reduced, spinning into a firing position (as demonstrated at the beginning of The Road to Valhalla) is no longer as smooth and quick. Which reduced ther fun factor of using a boosted Clarinet car. It doesn’t make sense, it’s the same rubber. It’s a bizarre style of interacting with the player community by telling us how to play the game, changing that unexpectedly, without consulting us first, and for no apparent net benefit to the gameplay experience. The explanation given by the developers was that cars would drive more realistically. In my experience, they drive more laggy, and I suspect the secret reason was to make us notice lag spikes less, because we now drive laggy all the time. So we wouldn’t complain when lag hits. Others have described it as a “rubbery” feel of using wheels, and other similar terms. This drastic change was accompanied by making the Icarus VII more nimble and faster, putting wheeled vehicles at even more of a disadvantage. And with how Clarinet gameplay has suffered over the years, in particular by killing Hans (he got quietly ‘disappeared,’ but we know what that means over there), there is no elegant counter to them like in the past. I know, everyone has their way of dealing with them, and can give plenty of advice on ramming them, etc., but it’s not the same as dispatching them in the first 25 sec. of a battle, i.e., before they can do any damage. There’s a difference to a battle where a hovercraft with two Scorpions is allowed to shoot for half a minute or longer, and when it gets blown up to pieces even before it can even get into a firing position. The Clarinet used to be that difference.
The last two dev streams made me wonder about the personal dynamics in the development team, the workplace atmosphere and the attitude to players. Did you even know there was a dev stream for the Mr. Twister update? Only in Russian. Why? Some English-speaking players were quite upset by that. My guess would be Alex, the main developer, chose not to do an English version after his poor performance in the stream for the Supercharged update. Watching that stream, it seemed to me that Igor purposefully dialled down his command of English, in order to make Alex look less bad. First of all, why would a developer pretend to be less fluent at English? Would his boss get mad if he hadn’t? Is it a healthy workplace atmosphere where things like that happen? And secondly, how would a boss like that treat players? Is that a clue as to who makes those ridiculous decisions on Crossout’s balancing and development in general? Seeing as it’s a country where treating one’s subordinates like trash is part of the culture, that could be the case. Over there, it’s not really bullying, it’s just viewed as being a strong-willed man, a ‘macho.’ I recommend watching any of the streams which Igor did with TheLittleSam. Speaking of Sam, I hope that he’s finally quit the development team. I used to think of him as a nice guy, until I read his forum post inaugurating the launch of this new forum. That made him look like a shameless liar with no respect for the playerbase. I don’t know. I want to remember him as a nice person, and for his sake, I hope he’s found employment somewhere much less negative. And why do Russians have to speak Russian as if they wanted to eat the interlocutor? That makes even an ostensibly nice person look evil.
I’d even consider a possibility of darker undertones on the part of some Targem or Gaijin employees, with how there are red star stickers in a postapocalyptic game. I do realize that if you have tank tracks and cannons in your game, you can celebrate your country’s military events, but should you? How would that look to other nations? The red star sticker isn’t even Russian in origin. It used to be silver, or golden. The red symbolizes something that destroyed their economy and culture, and debased the Russian people. But after the cultural revolution which erased what they had, the red star and associated symbols are all that’s left. I’m sure a Russian person knowing these things would be offended at Crossout celebrating what caused a symbol of what caused the downfall of their country. Perhaps this lengthy rumination contains some explanation as to why Crossout’s playerbase is treated this way. Why the developers didn’t care about losing it’s biggest English-speaking youtubers, most notably Treeburgers (who happens to be German). That guy is a powerhouse. The amount of work it takes to regularly make YT content, to stream. Maybe I haven’t been looking hard enough, but I don’t think Crossout has been fortunate enough to get another content creator like that. It’s too bad how the developers neglect every aspect of the game. In favor of monetization, one might think, but they even fail at that.
I didn’t reply to your previous comment because I was put off by how many players weighed in with their opinions despite not having even owned the weapon, or having very few epic missile patches. In fact, after posting the guide, I had a dream that two other comments appeared below yours, and just that happened when I woke up. Sometimes I get dreams like that.
To answer your subsequent questions. The shots that I missed in the Naukograd video weren’t that easy. I’d already knowm from other games that my reaction time is on the slow side, so that could be one reason. There’s a lot to process: piloting the missile, watching the minimap, remembering the placement of teammates and enemies. One thing I could have done to help me in that battle would be to practice in Naukograd in custom battles, both driving and piloting the missile. I did that for the Fortress and the Old Town after their updated version were released, and I noticed that it helped a lot. I was even going to make a detailed tactical guide for every map. Anyway, it’s good to launch bedlam in a custom battle, to practice your moves on every map. That way, you’ll be carrying out the same manoeuvers more fluently in PvP battles. That’s how I practiced climbing walls in the Sinto City (has to be done at an angle, though I remember that driving straight up to the wall used to work in the past).
One other thing a Clarinet pilot can do is to apply extra focus. I used to do that from around October 2020 until January 2021, then I forgot, I guess. It really helps with combat performance. But it extra effort and may be tiring. It’s as if your refresh rate goes up, you’re able to process more combat data, react faster, carry out more precise manoeuvers both with the car and the missile. Like a magic brain pill, except for free.
It’s best to pair the TOW with 2 Fuze drones. That way, you can focus on piloting the missile.
In the tests I did, the Spiderman® cabin’s new perk didn’t increase the missile’s speed. Unlike the brief change on 2019.09.21, which made it possible to control the missile in the boosted phase. That was introduced by the update on that day, and a quickfix disabled it a few hours later. I could boost the missile right after the launch, and it flew faster all the way, and perhaps farther. It was harder to control at that speed, which was an interesting, natural way of balancing that. It thus may seem someone had an idea for improving the Clarinet, but wasn’t interested in the weapon enough to pursue the matter further. Unless it was a bug.
I meant the frustration caused by blowing up something that cost maybe 100K coins with one shot from an epic weapon. A few times I received PMs suggesting that was the case.
