The Arma 3 mod, Exile, is an interesting venture into the survival genre. Featuring resource gathering, missions, and base building, there's a lot to do in Exile. There are lots of servers to choose from, and many will feature different maps and additional mods for those who get tired of the basics.
Arma 3 is one of those games where you can find a mod you like. There's something out there for everyone. Exile is a great choice, possibly the best, for those of us who enjoy survival genre games, but don't necessarily want to fork over another $20 to try one out. The mod is free, of course, and it's pretty well developed for only being out a few months.
The focus of Exile is to survive, do missions, earn respect (exp), and perhaps build a base if you feel like it. The mod has a built in economy of sorts, where the items you gather out in the world can be sold for pop can tabs, the mod's currency. Different servers will have different values for items, for instance, some servers I've been on have placed high values on sniper rifles and machine guns. Others just leave the values at the default setting, which can be pretty low for some things.
Making tabs is pretty easy. Almost every building on the server's map will contain loot in some form or another. Military bases tend to have more weapons and gear, stores and houses often contain pistols and food, while construction sites or industrial locations are ripe with building materials for your base. Load the items into your inventory and/or your vehicle, head to the nearest trading post, and sell for a profit. Rinse and repeat.
If you don't feel like traveling around a lot to find loot, you can always do missions. They require you to clear an area of hostile AI troops, and if you do so, a loot crate spawns. Missions will often have different rewards, some just award food-like things whilst others may provide you with a bunch of high value explosives or weapons. Keep in mind, the AI is really, really good. I'm constantly seeing the AI troops kill players over 600m away, though I think the longest I've seen was a 800+ meter kill. I'm almost certain other players could attest to longer range deaths.
One of the challenging parts of the Exile mod for Arma 3 is the other players. It's a free fire zone, folks, and you will be shot again and again by other people if you aren't careful. They may break into your base, steal your super expensive helicopter, or just blow everything up. Just finished a mission and looting the crate? Bam! Sniper just took you out and stole all your gear and the loot. So if you enjoy a hard pvp experience, this may be a good mod for you.
Another good thing about the mod is its compatibility with other mods. Most of the servers I play on feature expanded weapon and vehicle lists, adding in real world weapons and their variants, such as the M-4, AK-47 and MP-5, just to name a few. There are several really good maps out there, and ones I recommend include the standard Altis map, Esseker, and Lingor. These feature significantly different terrains and will have something for everyone, whether you prefer the woods, the swamp, or the desert.
I've only got two issues with the mod. The first is that it simply gets really repetitive after a while. After doing a few missions, building a base, maybe doing a loot run or two, there's not a lot different to do. The mod developers are adding new content, but there's only so much that can be done with a survival genre game. The other issue is the players. This is a kill on site game mode, and I haven't really found any good pve or rp servers. While there are some friendly players, most will either kill you on site or troll you in a safe-zone. I've had several issues with trolls stealing things (against server rules), but there's only so much admins can do.
I personally recommend the [GG] servers as wells as the GAMERSInc ones. The first has decent player count most times, but often only has a few in the evenings, while the latter is typically filled all times of the day.
If you are looking for a mod to spend a good number of hours on and you also enjoy survival games, the Exile mod for Arma 3 is a great choice. Check out PsiSyndicate's first impressions video below.
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