Nuke Analysis of Royale (6th Place)

Just wanted to express some thoughts after playing Royale! As someone who has YET to win a Comp-based game (and has some of the most mid scores across all games), I was pleasantly surprised to place 6th out of 50 people! TLDR: Extremely fun, and a great mix of social / skill that demands a lot of your attention if you want to make it far (or win). During I would say the first 20-24 hours of the game, things were pretty chill for me. I joined, immediately ran away from the Eye, and landed in the Lake area (E3/E4 square for my game). Abdelmessih came into the Lake shortly after his first kill, but was quickly banned. So basically me and a frozen dead body just hiding by the lake. As I maneuvered around the board later at night, I was able to spot more people, collect more items, and found friendly faces all around. Nobody attacked me. That is, until I landed in the Eye for the first time. This was were the first (and only) person attacked me. Shockingly, I only participated in THREE total fights, and all of them were against Sophie. Record is 1-2, and we both ran away from a fight. Later in the day, Sophie found me and started killing me with weapons. Thankfully I beat her in Lucky Drop by 45 points, and Envious and I were able to rope her down in the square and use weapons to basically eliminate her. She ended up eating berries, though. As the game progressed, more career pacts formed and started bombing or chasing down other tributes. I was able to find Mario23, and papa and I used all our weapons against him to eliminate him for 14th. I was come and go last night after most of the massacre (it was down to final 9) and I spent the morning running around collecting more items. Eventually, Jtee and Tisha caught up to me and eliminated me, and here we are! Some things I wish I knew before playing (as someone who did not keep up with moderator blogs or past player blogs): - Camouflage was where I was at most of the time. Anytime you perform an action (collect a pop up, use a pop up, move to a new square) you give up your camouflage and it takes 15 minutes to reactivate. This can be helpful if others are in your area, because if their status changes, they most likely got a pop up that you may have missed. - Understanding your map is key. Having someone build a grid when the game starts and remembering which squares you can move to (if you need to move in a hurry) can be the difference between life and death. It's also just easier to use coordinates when talking to others about map locations. - Pop Ups seemed to populate more frequently if you leave at least one pop up (at least this happened to me). So if you can control a square and see a pop up, wait for a more important pop up to appear before grabbing the first one. This is also risky as someone may join your square and take the items you're trying to "farm". - I personally think the Teleporter is the best non-essential item (not including food or health pack). It allows you warp yourself to a spot of your choosing, and I don't think it decreases your stamina. Also, if the map starts to shrink and you're in a square that is cut off from the rest of the board, you'll need a teleporter or bees to escape. - Stamina was pretty easy to recover, but I would try to always be at 60-80% minimum in case you need to hop around. - Managing Food Levels was a BITCH. Stock up on Food as best you can. You will thank yourself when you're trying to sleep LOL. With that said, I believe purple food is always going to be poison berries. If someone shares food with you and it's green, I think you should be good! - A lot of people wanted bombs (and for good reason) but I think the Sniper is CLUTCH. You dont have to be in the area of the person you want to shoot, you can select the target, and it does 5 damage. So if someone tries to run away after you jump them, saving your Sniper to finish them off is the best strategy, in my opinion! - The game was a lot more social for me than it was showing off skill. I met some new people, and only got attacked once (but probably because I was camouflaged 80% of the time). - If someone comes into your square that you are not aligned with and immediately leaves, be on guard. It might be their alliance trying to find you on the map to come attack you. - This game definitely requires patience, but there were pockets of time were A LOT of activity happened (3-4 deaths due to a bomb going off in a occupied square, career pacts on the hunt), so try your best to find items, stockpile them for when you'll REALLY need them, and only share what you have if necessary! Knowledge is power!!!