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Secrets & rare loot

This page spoils every hidden stash, unique weapon and easter egg we could verify: the secret weapon-cache sectors (with their exact locations), the Rocket Rifles, the best fixed loot town by town, and the extra items 1.13 itself sneaks onto the map. It is one big spoiler by design — if you want to discover Arulco yourself, stop reading now.

Sector references like E11 use the strategic-map grid (letter = row, number = column). Everything below is vanilla JA2 content that 1.13 preserves, except where a paragraph is explicitly flagged 1.13.

Hidden weapon caches

Five wilderness sectors on the map have a second, secret version containing a small enemy camp with chests of equipment. In the 1.13 source and settings files these are called weapon caches; Ja2_Options.INI describes them as sectors that "hold usually a few chests with various mediocre to good equipment." A cache sector looks like any other countryside sector on the map screen — the only outward sign is the unusually large garrison sitting in the middle of nowhere.

Where they can be

The five possible cache sectors, as defined in the game's Mod_Settings.ini (and confirmed by the sector constants in the source code):

Cache Sector
1 E11
2 H5
3 H10
4 J12
5 M9

How many appear in your campaign

At the start of every campaign the game rolls how many of the five sectors actually get a cache:

  • 1 cache — 50% of campaigns
  • 2 caches — 37.5% of campaigns
  • 3 caches — 12.5% of campaigns

Which sectors are picked is random, so in a normal campaign you cannot know in advance which of the five locations are live — you have to go look (or read the enemy numbers: a big stack of troops on an empty map square is the tell).

Each active cache is defended by a squad of regular troops whose size scales with difficulty. With the stock DifficultySettings.xml values (guards = 6 + 2 × the difficulty's WeaponCacheTroops setting):

Difficulty Guards per cache
Novice 8
Experienced 10
Expert 12
Insane 14

Turning all five on

1.13 exposes the cache roll as an INI setting in the [Strategic Gameplay Settings] section of Data-1.13\Ja2_Options.INI:

ENABLE_ALL_WEAPON_CACHES = FALSE

Set it to TRUE before starting a new campaign and every one of the five sectors holds a cache. It sits right next to ENABLE_ALL_TERRORISTS (default TRUE), which does the same for Carmen's six bounty targets. See the Ja2_Options.INI tour and recommended settings.

What's in the chests?

The cache contents are placed in the alternate map files themselves and are not documented in any data file or wiki we could find — expect the INI's promise of "mediocre to good equipment" rather than endgame hardware. If someone has catalogued the chests sector by sector, the place to ask is the Bear's Pit forum (see community links).

How it works under the hood (for modders)

Cache sectors use the engine's alternate map mechanism: several sectors ship with two map versions, and the campaign-setup code flags the chosen cache sectors to load the alternate one. The same mechanism randomizes Skyrider's and MadLab's hideouts (see below). The five cache coordinates are externalized in the [Weapon Cache] section of Data-1.13\Mod_Settings.ini (WEAPON_CACHE_1_X/Y … WEAPON_CACHE_5_X/Y; 0,0 disables a slot, and these values override TableData\Map\AltSectors.xml), so mods can move or remove the caches entirely.

The Rocket Rifles

The Rocket Rifle is the Queen's fictional experimental weapon: a rifle firing 5-round magazines of mini-rockets, with a built-in laser scope and a computerized security system (so nothing else can be attached to it).

The security system is the interesting part:

  • A "clean" Rocket Rifle imprints on the first merc who fires it and refuses to work for anyone else afterwards.
  • Rifles looted from enemies are already imprinted on their dead owner. Fredo, the electronics repairman in Grumm, can "repair" a locked rifle to reset its ID.
  • The rifles you find at Orta and the one Sergeant Krott guards are still clean.

Every source of Rocket Rifles in the game:

Source Details
Orta (K4), underground labs The motherlode: threaten Dr. Ernest Poppin until he opens a store room holding six clean Rocket Rifles plus ammunition. Getting into the basement at all is a puzzle — see Late game: Orta.
Alma (H13), shooting range One clean rifle in Sergeant Krott's firing range. The moment the base goes on alert, someone hits the red button in the command room and blows the stash, wounding Krott — you must secure the command room unseen. See Mid game: Alma.
Iggy Palkov The recruitable deserter appears in San Mona (C5) at 70% campaign progress and carries one — imprinted on him, so it is only useful in his hands. See NPCs & recruitment.
Elite enemies Late in the campaign, elite soldiers occasionally carry (and drop) Rocket Rifles — locked, so budget a trip to Fredo.

The robot wants a virgin rifle

MadLab's robot rejects Rocket Rifles with an "invalid fingerprint" — even Fredo-reset ones. The exception: a clean, never-fired rifle such as the one from Krott's range is accepted, and the robot adds its own "fingerprint". Combine the two Alma secrets and you get a rocket-armed robot.

The Auto Rocket Rifle

The burst-capable Auto Rocket Rifle is even rarer:

  • One can be found in the Queen's hideout under Meduna, but only if you enter the bunker through the secret garden tunnel in O3 rather than the palace fireplace — see Late game: Meduna for the remote-control trick that opens it.
  • Very late in the game, randomly generated (not pre-placed) elite soldiers may carry one.
  • Deidranna herself uses one. Consider that a warning about the throne room.

Other one-off items

Item Where Notes
Chalice of Chance Balime museum (L12), center display case Wanted by both Kingpin and Chitzena; siren tripwire on the case. See the quest.
The deed Given by Angel in San Mona C6 after rescuing Maria Kyle in C5 buys it for about $10,000. See side quests.
The videotape San Mona C5: chest in the northeastern-most house, or a side table in the Shady Lady's reception room Give it to Hans to reach Tony's back-room gun shop.
The Hummer Dave's gas station (L10), $10,000 A second vehicle, with free fill-ups whenever Dave has fuel.
The ice cream truck Hamous, on a random road sector Comes with Hamous. See Hamous and the ice cream truck.

Notable fixed loot, town by town

Map loot vs. enemy loot in 1.13

Items placed in the maps themselves — lockers, chests, stashes — are vanilla and always there. What enemy soldiers carry, however, is generated by 1.13's progression-based equipment system, so vanilla claims like "this guard drops X" are less reliable in 1.13 than the fixed stashes below. See enemies in 1.13.

San Mona: Kingpin's basement

The single richest stash in the game. Enter through the abandoned D4 mine: the tunnels end in a chest-filled money room directly beneath Kingpin's house — the game data places it in the D5 basement level (KINGPIN_MONEY_SECTOR in Mod_Settings.ini) — with a ladder leading up into the house itself (the room above is wired with alarms — think twice). Several NPCs, including Angel and Joey, hint at it. Taking the money starts a 72-hour countdown to repay it plus a 25% "service fee", after which Kingpin's disguised hitmen start hunting your mercs. Full consequences and strategies: Kingpin's money and Early game: San Mona.

Beyond the stash, the mob itself is walking loot — assault rifles and kevlar at a stage where you may still carry pistols — and Tony's shop stocks rare items you cannot buy anywhere else.

Cambria: the Hicks' arsenal

The Hicks' farm in F10 lives up to the rumor that the family has "enough weapons stashed away to start their own war": shotguns and Ruger Mini-14s on the family members, plus a guarded weapon shed. Clearing the farm also unlocks Keith's store in Cambria as a weapons buyer/seller. There is a bloodless way in via Daryl's marriage proposal — at the permanent cost of the female merc who accepts. Details: Eliminate the Hicks.

Alma: the army's own storage

  • H13 (headquarters) — the shooting-range Rocket Rifle described above.
  • H14 (storage depot) — two huge warehouses of army supplies. The big sliding doors are electronically locked and trapped; the only safe ways in are the small doors at the far north end of each building.

Grumm: a free LAW (if you survive it)

In H1, one soldier near the open crate in the center of town carries a LAW and is itching to use it on the first merc in range. Drop him first and it is yours. Conveniently, Fredo — the electronics man who resets locked Rocket Rifles — works in the same sector.

Tixa: armor and gas masks

The secret prison at J9 (see Late game: Tixa) has the best fixed armor haul in the mid game:

  • Lockers in the guards' quarters near the Warden's office hold Spectra vests, leggings and helmets.
  • Gas masks sit in lockers all over the complex, and most defenders carry one — fitting, given the Warden's tear-gas alarm.
  • One of the guards always drops a Steyr AUG (a vanilla constant; in 1.13 enemy weapons vary with progression).

Orta: the rifle factory

The hidden facility at K4 is a Rocket Rifle manufacturing plant posing as a bloodcat research lab. Besides Poppin's six-rifle store room, one switch in the main underground hallway opens every door down there. Ways in (Skipper's keycard, bribing Walter Bazzon, or a LAW to the wall) are covered in Late game.

Balime: the museum and the shops

The Queen's favorite town holds the Chalice of Chance in its museum (L12), plus the best civilian shopping in Arulco: Franz Hinkle's electronics shop (buys weapons and armor, and barters), Sam Rozen's tool store and Howard Filmore's pharmacy. Dave's Hummer waits one sector west at L10.

Meduna: the bloodcat arena and the bunker

  • N5 is the Queen's bloodcat arena: a large pack of tame bloodcats fights alongside the elite guards — tame meaning they only attack your people.
  • The O3 garden tunnel into the palace bunker hides the Auto Rocket Rifle described above.

Hidden people, hidden places

These NPC hideouts are randomized per campaign using the same alternate-map trick as the weapon caches (the candidate sectors below come from the game's startup scripts and Mod_Settings.ini):

  • Skyrider's shack — the helicopter pilot hides in a swamp sector near Drassen: one of B15, E14, D12 or C16. See Find the helicopter pilot.
  • MadLab's barn — the runaway scientist hides in one of H7, H16, I11 or E4, in a barn that is conspicuously bigger outside than inside. Search the cabinets in the neighboring house for the switch that opens his hidden compartment. Finishing his project earns you the robot, the game's strangest squad member — see MadLab and the robot and NPCs & recruitment.
  • Gabby's shack (Sci-Fi mode only) — the other runaway scientist appears in H11 or I4, selling glass jars and scent-masking elixirs.
  • Micky O'Brien — the animal-parts buyer is placed in one of C5, C6, D13, H2 or G9 at campaign start and stays there. Devin the explosives dealer rotates through the same five bars; Carmen the bounty hunter only ever visits C5, C13 and G9 (see NPCs & recruitment).

Creature lairs

  • The bloodcat lair (I16), two sectors east of Alma, is the target of Auntie's quest (Kill the Bloodcats) and holds some loot that needs mending before use. Bloodcats drop pelts, claws and teeth, which only Micky and Gabby will buy.
  • In Sci-Fi mode (see new game options), the hatch in Tixa's dungeon leads to a larva cavern, and an infested mine ends at the Crepitus Queen: killing her instantly kills every remaining bug, and her carcass yields several jars of Queen Crepitus Jelly — keep using glass jars on the corpse for more until you leave the sector. Crepitus organs, claws, flesh and jarred blood all sell to Gabby (larva blood is worthless). Full bug-war coverage: the Crepitus.

1.13's own hidden extras

1.13 adds a mechanism for placing extra items into sectors per difficulty level (TableData\Map\ExtraItems\*.xml — see externalized features if you want to add your own). The stock game data uses it to seed five sectors with small pickups the first time you enter them. What you find scales down — and gets sillier — as difficulty goes up:

Sector Novice Experienced Expert Insane
A9 (Omerta) 4 Rags, Bottle of Alcohol 4 Rags 2 Rags Rag, Porno Magazine
A2 (Chitzena ruins) 2 First Aid Kits, Small 2x Scope 2 First Aid Kits 2 Wood Camouflage Kits Porno Magazine
C5 (San Mona) Knuckle Dusters, 4 Energy Boosters 2 Primitive Bandages, 2 Energy Boosters 2 Dirty Bandages, Bottle of Alcohol 2 Porno Magazines, Wine
H14 (Alma depot) 5 HE Minirockets, 4 × 5.56mm AP belts 2 RPK AP mags, 5.56mm AP belt 3 × .50 BMG AP mags, 4 VOG-25P jumping grenades 2 Porno Magazines, 3 Platinum Watches
I13 (Alma barracks) Steyr AUG-A2, M79 with 5 × 40mm tear gas/stun shells, 3 × 5.56mm AP mags Steyr AUG-A2, M79, one of each shell and mag Steyr AUG-A2, M79 with shells and mags, 2 Packs of Gum Steyr AUG-A2, XM25 with 25mm stun/tear gas/mustard clips

The knuckle dusters and energy boosters in C5 land conveniently close to San Mona's boxing ring, and yes — on Insane the game really does console you with porno magazines. Mods built on 1.13 use the same files to add far more, so under a mod this table may look completely different.

Sources