Only been playing for a week, so these are probably old news, but they mostly have to do with luring... if anyone has any more luring tips, please share them because it's quickly becoming my favourite part of the game.
- At least on normal difficulty (not sure about the others), you can lure the smarter human opponents into a more favorable spot by laying a trail of bear traps. If you start where you want them to end up, then place 3 or 4 mines in a cluster and stealthily lay bear traps as you move closer to the opponent, they'll eventually notice the closest trap and disarm it; they'll then notice the next one, disarm it, and so forth until they reach the miney payload. Initiate combat, throw grenade at mines, opponent goes to hamburger heaven. I found this tactic really handy against the Rathound King, after my attempt to lure him into the well-lit area and snipe with the "Ambush" feat didn't pan out that great.
- Gas grenades are also fantastic lures. What I like to do is stay out of everyone's line of sight, unstealth myself, wait a few turns until I can use stealth again, then throw the grenade AND enter stealth mode shortly after it leaves my hand (so while it's in midair).
- Another way of luring enemies uses the same "do thing then immediately enter stealth" technique as the last tip. The area south of the GMS compound is a good example of a place with a beautiful environmental feature to shoot at (in order to lure the lunatics into traps). Not the explosive barrel, that thing will lure them out too far. God put targetable rocks in the map for a reason. Lay down some "bear" traps (gotta protect yourself against all the bears everywhere) and some mines on your side of the bear traps, hide behind conveniently large rock obstacle, exit stealth, wait, shoot rocks, enter stealth, hide somewhere far away. Rocks are fantastic because if you make a mistake, the rocks survive. Hell, every area I enter I now make a mental note of things I can shoot at to create diversions just in case I need to sneak past anyone/anything blocking my way somewhere else.
- Caltrops (if you have "Sure Step" or caltrop-proof boots) can be used to divert opponent movement in combat. Let's use the Siphoner Pools as an example because I remember this battle pretty well: the area in the middle has this sort of donut-shaped path around a rock, and you can trigger a Siphoner ambush to the left of this area (which is something I like to do while fishing). Most enemies will avoid stepping on caltrops if they can help it, so given my own immunity to them I threw some on the path next to the rock and traversed them at the end of each turn, back and forth. The Siphoners, however, would be all "I don't need caltrops in my foot today, I'm busy enough as it is" and walk *around* the rock, which is pretty helpful. Bear traps are obviously awesome as well, and if you think your opponent might try to avoid them in combat, you can use them in a similar fashion to block a route ahead of time. However, blocking ALL possible pathways with traps will encourage many enemies to simply disregard their own personal safety in an effort to destroy you, and then that's when karma bites them. "Karma" is French for "bear trap", as it happens.
- Another way of luring baddies is to use stealth mode and find the sweet spot where they very slowly realise you're there. As soon as their eye indicator turns from full yellow to empty orange, they'll try to chase you, and hopefully you'll be on the other side of a line of delicious traps by the time they find you.
- Animals don't have opposable thumbs and therefore cannot operate door handles. That is good. However, curtains do not have handles, and dogs can open them. That is bad. So if you need to hide from a dog or, even better, lure one into a room and then run out while closing the door behind you, make sure it has a handle. You can save a non-zero amount of ammo/traps by putting a door between you and a dog; the world is your trap.
- Non-luring pro tip: If you kill the Rathound King and loot his very unique costume, perhaps don't wear it when you go to turn in the quest unless you like being a victim of mistaken identity and shot on sight. If there's one thing I've learned so far, it's that the sentient beings in the game are far from stupid but they can still be easily fooled.
