I live in a suburb just north of the Island of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. We have a population of about 30,000 citizens. A typical suburb with lots of families, a few strip malls and lots of green spaces. When I first joined CHW in May 2021, I was the only player in the area. Everything was up for grabs. Montreal is about 30 minutes away so going there every day to hunt is not worthwhile; therefore, I had to build my hunting area from the ground up and plan my hunting accordingly to be somewhat competitive in events and the local leaderboards. In this article, I will expose how I manage to have good hunts despite being suburban.
Having a proper hunting area is essential for success. You need a good vault density, i.e. to have a good vault per hour rate in order to maximize your hunting. Vault density is very important during events, as it will help you achieve effort based Quest Chains and collect enough event resources for the Epic Cubies. If you play for crypto, obviously having more vaults means more crypto per hour; thus, being worth it.
You may be lucky to live close to the strip mall or the city center. This is where most System Vaults (SVs), including greens, will be present. You should build your User Vaults (UVs) close to these vaults to increase vault density AND to get the prime real estate for structures. Having your UVs in the city center will also attract more players and guarantee a stable UV key revenue.
If you do not live near the city center or you do not have a good number of SVs, you will have to build your hunting grounds from nothing. You must choose the location of your hunting area carefully. You can’t just place your UVs everywhere as they could be rejected on placement or be totally inefficient.
Let’s start with your HQ. You would be surprised to know that it plays an important part of having a good hunting area. The location of your HQ is essential in your hunting not only for your mailbox but also managing your Buddy Quests (BQs). BQ spawns beyond 2km of the HQ. If you place all your User Vaults within that distance, your BQ will spawn very far from your HQ at the nearest system vault thus complicating your BQs. Remember that you can enter your HQ as long as you see it on your map; therefore, you do not have to place your HQ directly at home. You can place your HQ in the opposite direction of your general hunting path, thus reducing the distance of your BQ spawns.
Next you have to find a suitable area to place your UVs. Look for locations where you can place all your UVs every 100m; bicycle paths, walking paths, public venues, large parks, and commercial areas are all very good. Your UVs should be on a path that you can do every day. Also, it has to be about 12 kilometer long (or 6km back and forth) in order to be able to complete your walking quest.
You can’t be competitive if you are alone. You need to recruit more players in order to use their UVs. Get your loved ones (16yo+), friends, neighbors, colleagues to play. Work with them to place their UVs optimally to create the ultimate hunting ground. The picture above is my neighborhood combining the UVs of only 3 players. It is not much, but it is ideal for my needs.
If you cannot have many players in your area that is okay. In that case you need two hunting grounds. Two?!? Why?!?! You have to adapt your hunting strategy if your local one is not dense enough. Having a second hunting ground will help stay moderately competitive.
The first is your local daily hunting path, like the one we discussed earlier but with a smaller number of UVs. This is where you do your daily hunts, ALL your walking quest, and accumulate keys. If you have more than 20 vaults in your hunting path, you will not be able to accumulate many keys that you will need for your second hunting ground.
The second hunting ground is a high vault density area that you can hit once or twice a week to counter balance your low density hunting ground. This is where you hunt for resources during events or when you want to get lots of crypto. That area needs to be at least 100 vaults that you can hit in a few hours. It also needs to have a good number of green vaults (5-15) as some events require hitting them..
This is a subdivision/suburb on the Island of Montreal that is not too far from my town. The local players (led by Systemcrash) set up their UVs to create a superb hunting ground around a large park with over 100 vaults within the full walking quest distance. Although it does not have that many Green Vaults, it is ideal for an intense hunt.
Hunting in high density hunting grounds requires many keys. The Walking Quest key bonuses and Mystery Boxes are generally not enough to have a sustainable key stack; therefore, it is important to manage your key inventory. I recommend that you check my Key Strategy article to learn how to build your key stack.
Playing in suburbs and in low vault density areas will often result in not having enough resources to build your Cubies. You can’t have everything. You will have to make tough choices. If you plan your hunting ground carefully, you will be able to eventually have an area that is fun and well suited for your lifestyle.
Happy Hunting!
This post was composed and submitted by Lucvend.
October 11, 2022
It’s clear from the map density that you don’t actually live in a suburban area but more like a less dense city. Nobody actually in the suburbs has enough POI density of “approved locations” per the game guidance to even place vaults in the density your images demonstrate.
October 11, 2022
Depends on how you define “suburbs”
The second sentence of this article, the author states that the population where they live is 30,000. He writes that he has to travel to denser areas (maps shown as images in the article) to get better hunting.
I live in suburbs, I have enough commercial areas near me to get a decent vault density, but not enough players to get it to look like the map images in this article.