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The Level 2 Trader Blues

 I've reached Level 16 now, and have levelled up half my traders (Skier, Prapor, Therapist, Peacekeeper) to level 2, and have flea market access. Awesome.

So now I can pretty much run any weapon I want, excepting the ones banned from the flea. That's nice too.  But there is a hitch: the ammo.  Most of the better ammos are locked behind top trader levels and are not available on the flea.  Leveling up my traders to Level 2 got me access to 9x18 Pst gzh and M856, and PP. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?

There is a new weapon called the SAG, which is a 5.45 single shot carbine.  It has super low recoil and good ergo, much like an STM-9, but unlike the STM-9, it has the potential to use decent ammo, with rounds that can fly a fair distance.  With a little modification, the SAG becomes even better. It's responsive and zippy. A great little headshot machine. There are also some Prapor trades for BT ammo, so I started running the SAG with BT.

Ran a number of Reserve runs with this thing. The results are disappointing. I trained hard offline to be able to pick up the headshots, but the BT ammo is just struggling. Any helmet seems to deflect it, with or without a face shield. And even armorless scavs seem to shrug off body hits. It's just taking too many shots to bring down a target.  So I sold the SAGs.


Next up: the Ash-12. The main advantage with this weapon is that all of its heavy hitting ammo is available on the flea market, including the very deadly PS12B.  I love this weapon, and have written a lot about it before.  But unlike last wipe, acquiring the ammo is problematic.  Last wipe I bought hundreds and hundreds of rounds of PS12B and never paid more than 2,000 rubles per round, which is already a LOT of money.  But this wipe, I'm lucky to get them for 2,700 rubles a round, and oftentimes the prices are near 6,000 each. This I cannot afford.  

So, I've got an Ash-12 and have been running it. But feeding it is not always feasible.


My latest attempt: the VPO-209. I have a soft place in my heart for this weapon, as it really helped me during wipe 12.10.  It was my go to weapon back when I was a low-level, and even after I reached the flea market at level 10 I kept using it.  Its base recoil is way too high to be practically usable. With heavy modification and a suppressor I can get it down to 130.  Ooof.  Still too high, and now it's awkward as well.  But I've been testing it offline with .366 TKM-AP, it seems to be doing ok.  The round isn't as deadly as PS12B, but it's usually deadly enough. More testing is warranted, but I'm hoping this can be my fallback when the Ash-12 isn't available. 

It the VPO-209 doesn't work out, then I'm not sure what's next. Maybe the SVD? Or the VSS?

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