ArmA 3 Old Man Scenario (final release)

UPDATED: Final Release Changes since the beta version will be shown in bold type.

Part 1

Everyone seems to do video walkthroughs, but I guess I'm old fashioned and prefer text that I can follow along and read at my own pace, so here we go!

Unique things about this Scenario: When starting the game you can choose the ability to save from the menu or only save by "going to sleep" as in the beta version. Periodically there will be "auto-saves". But you can save by "going to sleep". But you can't just camp out by the side of the road. You can sleep at home on your sofa or rent a bed at a motel or hostel. I will also mention other places that you can sleep throughout the scenario. Besides saving the game, sleeping heals minor injuries and you can choose how long you will stay asleep, handy so you aren't bored while waiting for an appointment.
POSSIBLE BUG: There are only two autosave slots. However after the second save, subsequent saves always over write the top slot instead of pushing the previous save down to the bottom slot, so the bottom slot remains the first save that you ever did, making it nearly useless for recovering from a bad save point.
UPDATE: In the final release five save slots work as expected if you chose the ability to save from the menu.

There is also money. Money can be used to buy ammo, weapons and equipment, as well as renting a room. This game has been modded so that money is required to buy fuel. So avoid unnecessary driving! The game starts with $95.00 in your pocket. More money is earned by acquiring guns and ammo and selling them to the resistance at "Stashes" located throughout the map.

You will get hints from time to time. Be sure to read them. Waypoints are not highlighted! You need to know how to use maps!

Scenario start: Backstory explained as text overlay. Wait for a phone call from Arthur. Walk down to your truck which will be shown on the map. Head the way the truck is pointing, then turn right at the roadblock. From there go to where Arthur is waiting for you. He will ask for a lift home. Aim yourself at him so that you get a "Hold Space to make NPC follow you". There will be more dialog about a killer virus . But the inportant part is about finding explosives and wanting you to get rid of the C-4 that someone left in his shed, so that's your next objective.

Take the most direct road route to Arthur's home. At 135-079 the game will auto-save and you'll see a CSAT checkpoint up ahead. Since you don't have any weapons or anything else of note, stop as directed and you'll have no problems as a drone checks out your truck. Follow Arthur's directions. Park your truck next to the green house and get out. Follow Arthur to the shed. Open the door and look to your left. Open the green crate marked "Explosives" and take the Explosive Charge into your inventory. Arthur pays you $250.00 and the game auto-saves.

Arthur warns you not to go back through the checkpoint "now that you've got something on you". Go talk to the doctor in the green shirt. Head back towards your truck. You will get a call from "Keystone" who wants to give you some Intel, but only on your secure connection at home. So now time to get home. Leave your truck, it will not make it on the narrow trail that you will be taking, use the Quad bike instead. it's got a full tank. Take the trail going west, head is at 134-085. Turn left at 133-084. Continue straight at 131-087. You will pass a wrecked microwave tower at 128-086. The trail will pass just north of your home at 124-085, leave the trail, head to your house and park the quad.

Go inside, find your laptop and hold space to log in. You will get info about a possible weapons program and Keystone tells you that he will call back at 06:30 and to get some sleep. Go to your sofa and hold Space to sleep, then release. Drag the minute hand to determine how long you will sleep. While 06:30 is marked as an appointment time, set your "alarm" to 06:25, then click "confirm". This will save the state of the game.

When you wake up, you will get a call from the doctor, asking you to procure medicine. You will then get another call from Keystone setting a meeting time four hours from now. So you might as well use the time to help the Doctor. Take the quad to 109-079 on the map. Note: You can hover over the marker and a photo of the site will be shown, very helpful, as sometimes the markers are not right on. Go inside the warehouse. You will get an anon. Phone call, asking you to blow up a house. When the call ends, examine the laptop with space. That will load your tasks. While you are told that explosive can be found at the Red Spring Mine or the police station near your target, you should be still carrying the C-4 that you picked up from Arthur's shed. So head to your target, but leave the main road at 121-092 and follow the trail north to avoid a CSAT checkpoint. You may encounter some firefights along the way, go off the road to avoid contact if necessary. The trail ends at an overpass, but you are in a quad, go up the hill and join the main road at 122-096. When you get to the paved road at 114-098, go off road staying well south of the police station in Vagalala.
You can also avoid checkpoints entirely by taking a western route from the warehouse at 109-079.

Park your quad between some houses at 110-097 and go carefully on foot to your target. As you get closer, hit the deck and crawl. You must avoid contact at all costs! Crawl under the house as much as you can, plant the bomb and put it on a 120 sec timer, just in case. Crawl back out of blast range, but stay in view. If there are no civilians in range, touch off the bomb and head back to where you parked the quad. The contact will congraduate you on your success and the game will auto-save. Then you will get more phone calls. Oh BTW, do not bother with rescuing the captive. When I tried it, nobody was there. Now proceed to the guerrilla camp. Now that you proved yourself by blowing up the building, the rebels will give some medicine to you. You may now return by any route you like as you don't have anything on you now. Go to the camp and pick up the medicine.

Now might be a good time to use the "Fast Travel" option. Use M to open the map, and you'll see faint white lines radiating from your current location. Click on any destination. That will bring up the Travel screen. The minimum travel time is set, but if you want, you can arrive later. Note also that if you have a rolled up sleeping bag in your inventory you can "take a nap" and save the game. A sleeping bag, unlike your sofa at home, can only be used once. Note also that your vehicle will not come with you, even if you are sitting in the driver's seat.

Choose "home" and the default time of arrival. Now take a one minute nap on the sofa to save the game. Now get in your quad parked at home and use the trail that you smuggled the C-4 over to go to the doctor's camp. Find the doctor in the green shirt and hold space to give him the drugs. He will ask you for a large truck, he wants to evacuate his camp. As luck would have it, there is an unlocked Zamak covered transport truck at 122-081. Head back there in your quad, park it and take the truck. Go via the main paved road, leaving it around 132-081 to go cross country the best way you can find, the trails are too narrow with low hanging limbs in forested places. Avoid the red shaded area least you catch the disease. Park it where indicated on the map. You'll have to hoof it back to the garage where you left your quad. Use the X4 command to make it go quicker. Go to your home first and take a one minute cat nap to save the game.

Now take the quad to 116-078 near the meeting point. Use the "alarm" to skip ahead to 10:29. Then meet with Keystone who will tell you about hidden caches and give you an app to find them. You will do a trial run to find a sleeping bag out in the woods. BUG ALERT. The hint for sleeping shows CONTROL1 and CONTROL2. The correct keys are Spacebar for the first step and left mouse for the second. Return to your quad and take the trail (or the dirt road, your choice) to the area marked Cache on your map. Use the locator device, but be advised, it may hidden where you have to stoop low to get to it. Note that the exact location will vary each time you play the game. Once you find it however, the exact location will be marked on the map for easy return.

Once you find the cache, pick up the rifle, pistol and the ammo for same. There is also money. Take it. Take a one minute nap to save the game. Now go onto the next mission which is to check out the abandoned CSAT camp. You may encounter CSAT troops investigating the site of an IED attack. Drive slowly past, they won't bother you. The important things to look for at the abandoned camp is a piece of paper near a folding chair outside the tent and the white board on the floor of the tent. While you can also look at the blood stained stretcher and body bags in the nearby buildings, they are not important for advancing the game to the next objective.

Go back to the cache and take a one minute nap to save. Then head to Harcourt. There is a CSAT checkpoint at the bridge, but they don't seem concerned about small arms and they will wave you through. Drive though town and head for the dock area, going past and park at 133-054. I have not been able to do this part of the mission covertly, as soon as one gets to the warehouse, alarms go off. One must kill four men in white hazmat suits and two soldiers before the area will be safe to enter. Three of the hazmat soldiers will be hiding behind some crates although one will be partly visible. This is one of the hardest parts. Patience counts. Let enemy come into view. If nothing seems to be happening very carefully "slice the pie" advancing around the corner of the building. Fortunately they don't seem to know to sneak in behind you. Once clear, go inside and take everything from the desk. While checking the laptop and taking the secret documents is what is needed to advance to the next mission, take the drugs to use as trading stock if nothing else. Use the rubber boat docked at 113-054 to get back to the main island. Fuel is low, but you can get to 322-086 where you can find another vehicle. Don't try to wait it out. Even though you may get a report that things have "cooled down", CSAT is now blocking any exit from Harcourt to the main island. Go back to the cache and save the game. Now go back to Keystone to deliver the documents. The game will auto-save after Keystone gives you the objective of destroying the CSAT bio weapons lab.
UPDATE: When leaving Harcourt, watch out for an enemy solider blocking your approach to the boat. Kill him and take his rifle and four magazines for same. I found that it is hard to obtain ammo for your original rifle.

While waiting for more instructions, head south on the dirt row and go west on the paved road along the shore. Stay clear of the bridge. You will get a warning that the area is restricted, just keep driving. In Kotomo there will be a firefight. Do not engage, take cover. Friendly forces will prevail. Take weapons and ammo from enemy bodies and load them into your vehicle. Now drive to the stash at 100-063. Although you should have over $1000 at this point, it doesn't hurt to get more money and "brownie points" with the rebels. Make sure to keep some weapons and ammo for yourself.
UPDATE: You will need $4000 for your next purchase. You may also find three dead sholders to get weapons from on the road near the cache. Selling the weapons at a stash will get you the required money.

By now you should have received a message about the crashed airplane and the need to dive for the photos. Go to the market at 092-060. There is a boat at the dock at 094-062, so you won't have to swim. Once you purchase the rebreather (save it to the empty slot next to your bag), the game will auto-save. You will be wearing the rebreather. Take the boat to the site indicated and go for a dive. This will take awhile. The plane is small. Use +4. Once you get the photos, the game will auto save. Swim back to the boat.


UPDATE: This time I decided to skip all non essential missions and go directly to the primary task of destroying the weapons lab. To follow this play go to Alternate Part 2 Ending
All below this pertains to the beta version, some of the reported bugs may have been fixed.

Then sail back to the dealer where you bought the rebreather and buy an explosive charge. Then sail back to where you first got the boat, dock it and get your car. By the time you get there you should have received instructions about getting network documents and blowing up a radar station. Go back to the cache and take a nap to save the game. Go to the camp at 113-076 and use fast travel to teleport to the Safehouse at 105-106. Use the sleeping bag to save the game. Upon arrival you will find a checkpoint at 103-109. Avoid it by going through the woods, you don't want to raise any alarms until you have blown up the radar dome. Don't even think about using the truck, this will have to be done on foot. Time your movement to avoid patrols. Go up to the radar dome, plant your bomb and put it on a 120 sec timer. If you get spotted and are out of the blast radius, then touch off the bomb, hoping you get at least some of the soldiers too. BUG ALERT. Even though the dome was destroyed, no credit was given. Maybe it won't be until the aux radar is destroyed too. In any case, head back to the safe house, then fast travel home to sleep and save game. If fast travel is not available due to ANOTHER BUG, take the Zamark home.

Now it's time to pay that CSAT Base at 117-070 a visit. This one must be done stealth, there are far too many guards to take on. Approach from the east, crawl to the green barracde and wait for the roaming patrol to go away. Go inside the tent and take everything from the table tops, but what you need most are the network plans on the second table from where you entered. Crawl back out and make your way to the cache and SAVE. Now get on the quad and meet with Keystone Give him the plans and the game will auto-save. Keystone will announce "this is exactly what we need" and "we'll contact you when we have a plan. While waiting, I went back to the market at 092-060 and bought another explosive charge and more ammo for my rifle. Alas, he had no 9 mm ammo, but I did buy the two night vision goggles that he had in stock. More NV goggles are for sale at 081-106, 062-086 and 119-127. Fast travel is available at the safe houses located near these locations. When you have 5 in total, drop them off at 059-081. When this is done, you will get an invitation to go to Cerebu at 20:00 if you want to join in. Yes, you will take quite a loss, but you should not need much more money in the game. When done fast travel to your home and save.

Nothing else will happen, until around 19:00 so I decided to spend the time hunting for the aux radar, as the "Intel" for the main radar says "There ought to be an auxillary mobile radar somewhere nearby". Logically it would be on a hilltop, and yes, a R-750 Cronus Radar truck is at 111-135. It's a CSAT base with a lot of enemy presence. The way I successfully death with it is to come in from the east, using the two warehouse buildings for cover. Then crawl to Qilan AT get in as DRIVER, and drive quickly east and down the hill without rolling it. Then carefully turn around and go back up the hill stopping just as you crest the hill and get a view of your target. Switch to gunner, Use the AT and destroy the radar. BUG ALERT: You don't get credit for destroying this one either. Switch back to driver and go back down the hill. If you roll it, walk back to where your car was parked. If you manage to keep it upright take it to the stash at 118-132 and sell off the cargo. When you do, you will get an assignment to car bomb a police station.

If you want to take this assignment, stop by your home and take a nap to save the game then go to the camp at 113-076 so that you can fast travel closer to the location of the car bomb. Get in the car bomb. You will get instructions on how to set it off (Under "Message" > Bomb detonator). The game will auto-save at this point. Drive to the target. If you take the south dirt road there will be a checkpoint ato 051-036 which must be avoided. Hug the shoreline being careful not to run into any rocks and return to the road system at 055-038. Park your truck in front of the police van, run for cover and touch it off. Don't risk trying to steal a car, somehow every cop on the island knows that you are the one who blew up the police station. You will have to hoof it back to the safe house at 045-022, where you can rent a bed for $99 to save the game. Alas, that site has no fast travel. You will have to walk all the way to Lailai at 036-022 where there is an unlocked truck. Now you can drive to the safe house at 028-034, the one you arrived at to return back to the camp. Take the quad that you parked to drive home and save the game.

At around 17:55 Keystone will have you go to the RV point and give you another task. A thumb drive with a computer virus to sabatoge the CSAT network. Only problem is, adding it to the CSAT computer will set off an alarm unless you can get a card key from an officer.

Part 2 is HERE.