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Mid game: Cambria, Alma and Grumm

Full spoilers ahead

This page spoils quests, characters and plot triggers. If you want a gentler start, read How to use the walkthrough first. The previous stage is covered in Early game: Drassen, Chitzena and San Mona.

By now you should hold Drassen (and have survived the counterattack), probably Chitzena, and have picked San Mona clean. The mid game is about the three big towns in the center and west of Arulco: Cambria (money, healing and shopping), Alma (the Queen's military heartland and the doorway to the endgame plot) and Grumm (the industrial powerhouse with the toughest defenses so far).

Everything below describes the standard campaign, which 1.13 keeps intact. Where 1.13 changes something, it is flagged explicitly.

Planning the mid game

A sensible order is Cambria first, then Alma, then Grumm:

  • Cambria sits in the center of the country, with roads leading to every other city except Balime. It gives you another mine, the only hospital in Arulco and a general store — but that same central position makes it a prime target for enemy counterattacks, so plan to defend it.
  • Alma is the army's headquarters and training center. Expect concentrated resistance in every sector, plus patrols roaming the surrounding jungle and farmland that quickly reinforce or retake captured sectors. Alma also holds the clue that reveals Orta, which you will want for the late game.
  • Grumm is a coastal factory town. Entry by land is limited — every road into Grumm passes through its mine sector (H3) first, and the only other way in is the warehouse district (G2), because half the city is surrounded by water.

The difficulty ramp is real in 1.13

In 1.13, the gear enemy soldiers carry improves with your campaign progress (not elapsed time) — the "Progress Speed of Item Choices" setting on the New Game screen controls how fast, and it affects your militia's equipment too. On Expert, starting garrisons are half again as large as on Experienced (150% vs 100% placement) and 25% of troops in enemy groups are upgraded to elites; on Insane, garrisons are doubled and the Queen's troop pool is unlimited. All of these numbers live in Data-1.13\TableData\DifficultySettings.xml and can be edited. Mid game is where this ramp becomes noticeable: loot the better weapons and armor that garrison and SAM-site troops start dropping, and keep upgrading.

Cambria

Five sectors: F8, F9, G8, G9, H8. Cambria is where the doctors live, and its silver mine in H8 adds a solid income stream.

Sector What's there
F8 Cambria Hospital — Dr. Vince Beaumont, Dr. Steve Willis, Nurse Jenny
F9 Cambria University (shut down by the Queen, now ruins)
G8 Residential district — Martha Graham's house
G9 Commercial district — Keith's store, Perko's repair shop, Rat
H8 Cambria silver mine and Mining Commission building

Taking the town

  • F8 (hospital): a large building with many corridors and rooms. Most defenders are inside; a few patrol outside near the garbage bins, and one hides in the warehouse on the west end — careful, it is full of explosives. There are two entrances into the central hallway: the south "front" entrance gets you to the heart of the building fastest, the north "rear" entrance has more doors to clear. The many windows let defenders take potshots at you, and there are lots of civilians about, so watch your fire and go easy on explosives.
  • F9 (university): the campus is ringed by solid concrete walls you can climb over. The sector has almost no lighting, so night assaults work very well here. Land mines litter the grounds — most are duds you can pick up, but one live mine is buried in the mouth of a one-tile hole in the wall on the south side of the cafeteria. Bring someone with high Wisdom or Explosives, or a metal detector.
  • G8 (residential): a mix of buildings and wilderness. Most enemies cluster around the built-up area, with a few in the woods and behind the rocks near the northeast roads. Approach from the west or south to use the buildings as cover.
  • G9 (commercial): a tight urban fight. Enemies bunker down in the stores and houses, with a large concentration around the ACA building in the center.
  • H8 (mine): heavily defended — the Mining Commission building and a small shack on the north end draw most of the garrison. The sector is dark at night; one classic tactic is to come in from the east side of the northern edge, climb onto the Mining Commission roof and fire down on the defenders. Watch for enemies on the storehouse roof.

Once the whole town is yours, expect the Queen to fight long and hard to take it back before she turns her attention elsewhere. Train militia early (see Militia).

The hospital

The hospital in F8 is unique: its doctors will treat your wounded mercs for cash. The rules:

  • You must fully liberate Cambria before the doctors will treat anyone.
  • The first time — or while town loyalty is low — they charge full price. The cost drops as you do good deeds for the town.
  • After you complete the Find Joey quest (below), a doctor will treat you for free once, and at a heavy discount afterwards.
  • At 100% town loyalty, treatment becomes free — but only if you behaved.

Do not steal the medical supplies

Taking the hospital's medical supplies raises treatment prices, locks you out of the free-treatment bonus, and makes it impossible to recruit Dr. Vince Beaumont. Leave the crates alone.

Martha and Joey (Find Joey)

Martha Graham, in her house in the western part of G8, asks you to find her fifteen-year-old son Joey, who ran away three days ago. She won't ask the army for help — they would just draft him.

Joey is in San Mona: either peeking in the windows behind the Shady Lady brothel (C5) or nosing around the abandoned mine west of town (D4). Hans (or the bartender) in San Mona has usually seen him and will point you the right way (see San Mona in the early-game chapter).

Joey is a brat and refuses to come along unless you threaten him. Once he agrees, escort him straight back to Martha in G8 — if a fight breaks out on the way, park him somewhere safe (a windowless room, behind a rock) until the sector is clear.

Rewards: a 15-point loyalty jump in Cambria (trimmed a little by the town's lukewarm rebel sentiment), working hospital treatment, and one of the preconditions for recruiting Vince.

Recruiting Dr. Vince Beaumont

Vince is a surgeon at the hospital who despises the Queen — the staff say he talks about taking down the regime himself. Once Cambria's loyalty is close to 100% (finish Find Joey and clear out the Hicks) and you kept your hands off the medical supplies, a merc with high Leadership can convince him to join for $500/day.

He arrives with the highest starting Medical stat of any recruitable character in the game, backed by very high Wisdom, the Teaching skill and ambidexterity — but poor Marksmanship and Agility, so keep him in the back. He is claustrophobic (keep him above ground) and an optimist (his morale holds up). In 1.13 he comes with the Paramedic trait, making him an even better dedicated medic. See Recruitable NPCs for his full stats.

Keith's store and the Hicks

Keith Hemps runs the general store in G9 (he shows up around 9:00 AM). He needs roughly 35% town loyalty before he will deal with you at all. He sells cheap secondhand goods — a good source of glass jars, toolkits, first aid kits and canteens — and buys most items at good prices. Two catches: he only holds $1,500 in cash, refreshed every 24 hours, and he won't touch weapons.

Why no weapons? The Hicks — a lawless hillbilly clan on a farm in F10, east of the university — steal every gun he stocks. Keith asks you to deal with them ("Eliminate the Hicks"), and if you let the problem fester too long he goes out of business entirely.

There is no peaceful solution: you have to kill the whole family. They carry shotguns and Ruger Mini-14s that hit hard up close, but they wear no helmets and little armor, have no night-vision gear, and never throw grenades — so headshots and night attacks are very effective. A proven tactic is to fort up in a small windowless room and let them funnel through the doorway into your interrupts.

Ladies, don't marry Daryl

If a female merc talks to Daryl Hick, he proposes and invites her into "the family". Accept and you can take the Hicks' weapon stash without a fight — but you lose that merc permanently (she cannot be re-hired, even after you wipe out the Hicks) and the town's problem remains unsolved.

Rewards: a Cambria loyalty boost, the Hicks' weapon stash, and Keith starts buying and selling guns and armor (he pays the best prices in the game for Guardian Vests, within his cash limit).

Perko's repair shop

Alish "Perko" Perkopoulos, also in G9, repairs damaged equipment for a fee. He is sloppy and frequently misses his own deadlines; he works faster if you hand items in shortly after midnight and collect them one at a time. He refuses to touch electronics — for those he sends you to Fredo in Grumm (see below).

Tip

Repairing badly worn gear often costs more than the item would sell for. Pay Perko only for items you actually intend to keep, and sell the rest — or better, bring your own mechanic.

The mine

The H8 silver mine works like the others: the head miner runs it and assigns the workers, and its daily income scales with Cambria's loyalty — so the Joey and Hicks quests literally pay for themselves. If the mine ever falls back into the Queen's hands, the miners go back to working for her. While you are down there, look around: silver nuggets lying on the mine floor can be picked up and deposited like cash.

Alma

Four sectors: H13, H14, I13, I14. Alma is the military headquarters of Arulco and the main training facility for the Queen's army — a hybrid of a town and a base, teeming with soldiers, munitions and barricades. There is a silver mine in I14 run by head miner Matt Duncan.

Sector What's there
H13 Military HQ and shooting range — Sergeant Krott, Lt. Conrad Gillitt, General Theo Humphey
H14 Storage depot (two huge warehouses)
I13 Barracks and prison (captured mercs end up here)
I14 Alma silver mine and residential area — Auntie, Matt Duncan

Taking the town

  • H13 (military HQ): most soldiers are inside the building or out front near the southwest car entrance, so approach from the north or east; the tree cover behind the base makes the lone roof guard an easy first target. Two guards at the southwest entryway never move until they see you — expect them to be your last stragglers.
  • H14 (storage depot): nearly every enemy is inside the two massive warehouses, plus one guard on each flat roof. The big sliding doors are electronically locked and trapped — the only untrapped ways in are the small doors at the far north end of each building. A switch in the small office on the north side of the northern building opens every vertical sliding door in the sector: clear the roofs, line your squad up on top, flip the switch and shoot the gas tanks and rockets stored inside (anything caught in the blast is destroyed, so weigh loot against safety).
  • I13 (barracks and prison): the facility sits behind a wire fence with no convenient gaps — bring wire cutters or a grenade, or go over the roofs. If the alarm is raised, the guards flood the prison area with mustard gas; that only matters if one of your people is locked up inside, in which case reach the central security room before being spotted. Several lockers and chests here are trapped — shooting the locks is safer than picking them.
  • I14 (mine): come in from the north (from H14) and fight from behind the row of houses along the northern street; the flat-roofed liquor store on that street is a perfect sniper perch covering the whole road. Watch the fenced-off woods in the northwest — a group of three or four soldiers usually sits in there, unable to come out but with a clear line on that rooftop.

1.13: the mine garrison sends help

In 1.13, if you attack the storage depot (H14) first, be ready for reinforcements streaming in from the mine sector — the mine always has extra soldiers due to its strategic importance, and they will come to a neighboring sector under attack.

Sergeant Krott and the Rocket Rifles

The shooting range at the back of the H13 base is where Sergeant Krott works — and where a Rocket Rifle, one of the Queen's experimental weapons, is kept. As soon as the base goes on alert, someone presses the red button in the command room, destroying the stash and wounding Krott. To claim a Rocket Rifle intact, secure the command room without being spotted.

Krott himself has no stomach for the army — he just wants to go home to his family. Let him leave (patch him up first if the blast injured him) and he promises to spread word of your deeds, raising Alma's loyalty. That matters: Alma's loyalty is hard-won, and the mine income depends on it.

Recruiting Lt. Conrad Gillitt

Conrad is a Hungarian mercenary who trained recruits for the army at H13 under General Humphey. His contract has expired, Deidranna kept paying him late, and he is open to offers — from a merc with a modestly high Leadership. He asks $5,500/day; if your high-Leadership merc refuses the first offer, he drops to $3,300/day.

Two warnings: he is easily bored, and if you keep him talking too long he decides killing you sounds more interesting — make your offer promptly. He is also a non-swimmer, so keep him away from deep water.

He is worth the money. In 1.13 Conrad is a full Machinegunner (auto-weapons expert) with 95 Marksmanship, and he has the Teaching skill — which is worth even more in 1.13's trait system, where Teaching only has one level — making him one of the best militia trainers and town defenders you can get. Full stats on the Recruitable NPCs page.

General Humphey and the road to Orta

General Theo Humphey sits in the large room at the heart of the H13 compound, across the hall from the shooting range. He is classed as a civilian, so he won't attack until provoked — but do not shoot him before talking to him (that turns him hostile and the information is lost), and expect him to turn on you anyway if the conversation runs long. He is well armed and highly skilled, so don't get caught unprepared.

A merc with sufficient Leadership can trick him into revealing details about the research facility in Orta (sector K4) — a place developing "weapons like you've never seen" (the Rocket Rifles). The reveal is logged in your laptop journal, and Orta appears on your map. Orta itself, and what you can squeeze out of the scientists there, is covered in the late game chapter.

Alma's side quests

  • Kill the Bloodcats — Auntie, in the I14 residential area, begs you to destroy the bloodcat lair east of her house; the cats have killed four children and the army won't act. Bring a full squad, automatic weapons or shotguns, and hollow-point ammo, and move in a tight group — a lone merc caught by bloodcats is in serious trouble. Reward: Alma loyalty.
  • Free Dynamo from Tixa — head miner Matt Duncan asks you to break his brother Greg "Dynamo" Duncan out of the hidden Tixa prison. Completing it boosts Alma's loyalty and gets you a cheap recruit ($50/day, or free if you refuse his first offer). Tixa is late-game territory — see Estoni, Orta, Tixa and beyond.
  • Random bounty targets from Intercept's Most Wanted can spawn in H14 and I14 — see Side quests for the full terrorist-hunt quest.

Sci-Fi mode: the bugs are stirring

If you started the campaign with Sci-Fi mode on, the mid game is usually when the Crepitus wake up. The giant insects — created by the Queen's experiments, much like the bloodcats — infest one of your mines once either trigger fires: you hold three or more of the four big mines (Drassen, Cambria, Alma, Grumm), or you stumble into the hatch below Tixa prison that leads to a cavern full of larvae. The game then picks the infested mine at random from those four — skipping any that the enemy holds or whose head miner you attacked.

You get some warning in the form of a cutscene where the Queen orders Elliot to stop feeding bodies to the bugs. Then the head miner reports the infestation: the mine stops producing until you clear the lair beneath it, all the way down to the Crepitus Queen — every remaining bug dies the moment she does. Until you do, the bugs raid at night, and losing a town sector to them costs civilian lives and loyalty; leaving militia to auto-resolve against Crepitus is a massacre, so keep a merc or two in the affected town.

Two sources of intel live in towns you now hold: Ricardo "Rat" Grimaldo in Cambria G9 and his friend Gabby know what these creatures are. The lair assault itself is covered in the late game.

Grumm

Five sectors: G1, G2, H1, H2, H3. Grumm is the heart of Arulcan industry — a coastal factory town whose plants the regime converted into munitions mills. Its mine (H3) is well defended but crucial for your progress. This is the hardest of the three towns: barricaded houses, a machine-gunner in the factory and a LAW-carrying soldier in the commercial district.

Sector What's there
G1 Residential district — chance to find Slay here
G2 Warehouse district (fenced)
H1 Commercial district — Fredo, Arnold, Tina
H2 Munitions factory — Charlie's bar
H3 Grumm mine and Mining Commission building

Taking the town

  • G1 (residential): houses wall-to-wall with little foliage. Many soldiers sit inside the houses and will interrupt your mercs walking past windows; another group barricades a house at the central junction. One easily-missed soldier hides in a small fenced area among crates in the southeast. Pure urban warfare — clear it building by building.
  • G2 (warehouse district): a chainlink fence rings the whole sector with no openings, so bring wire cutters or a grenade. Most defenders are inside the two main buildings. Few lights and wide flat roofs make this an ideal night attack.
  • H1 (commercial): essentially one long street running northwest to southeast — a sniper's dream, if you position accordingly. One enemy near the center of town carries a LAW and will use it on the first merc he sees; he loiters near an open crate.
  • H2 (munitions factory): soldier groups sit both north and south of the factory, so watch your flanks. The factory itself is one huge room full of crates and assembly lines; the defenders inside will not come out no matter how loud the fight gets, and at least one carries a big machine gun — walking in through the small south door is a good way to get shot. Pop the vertical sliding doors open or blow a wall instead; the civilian workers generally stay away from the outer walls, but check anyway.
  • H3 (mine): the Mining Commission building is the only structure. The thick trees and boulders to the north give great cover but put you right on top of the garrison; the south and east approaches are more exposed but let you start the fight at a distance instead of with the whole sector on your head.

People and services in Grumm

  • Alexander Fredo (H1) repairs electronics — the man Perko sends you to.
  • Arnold Brunzwell (H1) is a gunsmith and mechanic.
  • Tina Elzan (H1) runs a fabrics shop.
  • Sammy "Charlie" Elgin tends the bar in H2 — and he is the one target in the Intercept's Most Wanted terrorist hunt who is always present, always in this spot. Manny Santos, the barboy, is one of the Santos brothers. See Side quests.
  • Richard "Slay" Ruttwen — there is a chance of finding Slay, another wanted terrorist, sitting in a wheelchair in one of the G1 houses (he can also turn up in G2, in Cambria F9 or G8, or in Alma I14). He can be talked into a week of free service instead of decapitated for the bounty; the trade-offs — including the 1.13 INI option that lets him stay forever — are covered on the Recruitable NPCs page.

Travel, SAM sites and the helicopter

Arulco's airspace is guarded by four SAM sites: D2, D15, I8 and N4. Any sector inside a SAM's coverage is a no-fly zone for Skyrider's helicopter — enter it and the chopper gets shot up, forcing repairs before it can fly again. On the map screen, click Show Airspace (or press A) to see coverage: red sectors are hostile airspace, green are clear.

The mid-game towns sit deep in SAM coverage. The I8 site is directly south of Cambria's mine sector, making it a natural target while you are in the area. The two northern sites, D2 and D15, may already be yours from the early game; N4 is the Meduna site and a late-game problem — it is surrounded by layers of barbed wire and sandbags and backed by tanks.

Worth knowing about SAM sites:

  • Once you have captured a SAM site, Skyrider tells you where the rest are and marks them on the map. (If you took your first site before ever finding Skyrider, he only shares the locations after you capture another one.)
  • They are well guarded, but the guards often drop better-than-average gear.
  • Each SAM sector hides a few trapped chests in a locked room — disarm the traps first, or just shoot the locks.
  • Destroying the SAM control computer in tactical mode disables the site without capturing it — temporarily, since the enemy repairs it if they retake the sector.
  • The army aggressively tries to retake SAM sites, and keeps trying. Train militia there — in 1.13 you can train militia up to veterans in city and SAM sectors, and roaming militia patrols can intercept attackers before they arrive (see Militia).

Watch the roads for an ice cream truck

Hamous, an old Jagged Alliance hand, wanders Arulco's roads in a stolen ice cream truck — the game moves him each morning between five road sectors: D3, D7, D9, F12 and G6. A merc with decent Leadership (A.I.M. mercs may have better luck than IMPs) can hire him for $250/day, truck included. His Marksmanship (78) is respectable for the price, he has the Stealthy skill and the Primitive character trait, and in 1.13 his "Metaviran Native" background makes him thrive in jungle and swamp terrain. Don't expect brains: his Wisdom is 35.

Holding what you take

The mid game is a war on two fronts: taking towns and keeping them. Cambria's central crossroads make it the Queen's favorite counterattack target; Alma's sectors and Grumm's mine get hit too. Before you push on:

  • Train town militia everywhere, and garrison or militia-cover the SAM sites you captured — see Militia.
  • Keep your income safe: each mine's output scales with town loyalty, so finish the loyalty quests (Joey, the Hicks, Krott, the bloodcats).
  • Re-equip from what mid-game enemies drop. Thanks to 1.13's item progression the opposition is now bringing serious weapons and armor — so should you.

When Cambria, Alma and Grumm fly your flag and Orta is marked on your map, you are ready for the late game: Estoni, Orta, Tixa, Balime and Meduna.

Sources